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What I Just Finished Reading
Japanese Grammar – Keiko Uesawa Chevray & Tomiko Kuwahira
The final 15 pages contained an example sentence that, translated, reads “This movie is a porno, so you shouldn’t let children watch it.” I’ll be the first to admit to grousing that the examples given in language textbooks are often boring and paint-by-numbers, but really, Chevray and Kuwahira were just trolling everyone there.
Stonebreaker – Peter Wartman
Potential readers should definitely read Over The Wall before cracking open this volume. That said, it's a fun, quick story to read, with some nice artwork. Dialogue is sparse, but Wartman conveys quite a lot with his characters' deftly drawn facial expressions, the scenery is atmospheric, and the spare color palette applied to great effect.
泥棒と初恋 – 直野 儚羅 (Dorobou to Hatsukoi – Naono Bohra)
I enjoyed the middle two yomikiri, about a barista and the artist whom he had a secret crush on when they were both schoolboys the best. The sly humor in this volume is as good as anything Naono’s written, but I prefer her historical or paranormal romances to the modern workingman plots in this volume.
What I Am Currently Reading
Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley
Robin Hood is still assembling his merry band of outlaws, who as of chapter 10 have embarked on their first true exploit of derring-do.
The Truth – Terry Pratchett
Pratchett’s meditation on the definition of truth, and the role of the media and government in policing each other’s worst impulses is the perfect Wednesday reading as we gear up to Salute America.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
Zuboff is such a good writer one almost doesn’t notice the straw man she sets up in her passages on B. F. Skinner and behaviorism. But it’s there, and she would have done better to back up with her assertions of its purported threat and the public’s adverse reaction to it with actual evidence.
More fundamentally, I don’t believe behavioral nudges and gamification are inherently sinister, which Zuboff emphatically does. In some cases, I find them preferable to the alternatives. And in other cases, I even incline toward the more coercive end of the stick. For instance, Zuboff makes much of auto insurers’ use of monitoring devices to penalize drivers for speeding, hard breaking, failing to signal, and other reckless driving habits, whereas I find I am all for it, given my experience with drivers in this region. What I find sinister and objectionable is auto insurers’ combining this information with my social media activity or Amazon purchases, or peddling data on my travel destinations and body weight to data brokers.
Outrages – Naomi Wolf
I had this one on request at the library before the dust-up over Wolf's misreading of historical records emerged, so that’s perhaps colored my reading experience less than it otherwise might. I’m about 100 pages in and enjoying it well enough, but it does feel as though Wolf is stretching herself a bit thin at times to justify her contention that modern day homophobia has at least some of its roots in mid-19th century British society's growing understanding of communicable disease transmission. Wolf argues that this led, for the first time, to Western cultures conceiving of immorality as a public health, vice spiritual, issue, in that they began to posit that one person’s immoral acts could affect those around them.
I’m not sure this is true. And even Wolf undermines her own thesis when she quotes an eminent historian explaining how a medieval English law that prescribed burning for sodomy, sexual relations with Jews, witchcraft, and heresy was designed to protect Christendom from “infection.” So while Wolf thus far in the book has done an excellent job summarizing changes in social trends across time, she’s a little too eager to draw conclusions as to their causes that aren't as clear as she argues they are.
祈る人 – 深井結己 (Inoru Hito – Fukai Yuki)
Oh my lord, I’d forgotten how wacky yaoi (and slash, for that matter) plots were back in the mid-90s when the stories in this volume were written. An uke who’s as whiny, clingy, and immature as the worst “frail schoolgirl” stereotype? Check. Who’s forced to crossdress? Check. Against his will? Check. And is so attractive he’s mistaken for female? Check. And almost raped by a random dude because he’s so pretty? Check. Until the seme rolls up to save him? Check.
And I haven’t even mentioned the sister who forces Our Heroes to fuck in front of her to prove they’re brave enough to be in a committed gay relationship in a homophobic world on pain of her outing them if they refuse (because, logic?), the tragic misunderstanding that results when one of Our Heroes thinks the other is cheating on him (but it turns out the other men aren’t homewreckers, they’re half brothers from his mother’s six marriages), said mother’s tragic auto accident that facilities hot bathroom sex in the hospital every week, the wizened grandmother who total Fairy Godmother facilitates Our Heroes’ relationship after they try boinking in her tatami-beya, and on and on.
I mean, there’s still plenty of unrealistic stuff in today’s fanfic: A/B/O, sex pollen, coffee shop AU, etc., but somehow, it doesn’t feel unselfconsciously improbable as the vintage stuff does.
What I'm Reading Next
As I am notoriously bad at predicting what I will choose to read over the next week, I offer instead a list of the books I have acquired since last Wednesday’s entry, which in this case are Elizabeth Bear and Sara Monette’s A Companion To Wolves and Yoon Ha Lee’s Nine Fox Gambit.
これで以上です。
Japanese Grammar – Keiko Uesawa Chevray & Tomiko Kuwahira
The final 15 pages contained an example sentence that, translated, reads “This movie is a porno, so you shouldn’t let children watch it.” I’ll be the first to admit to grousing that the examples given in language textbooks are often boring and paint-by-numbers, but really, Chevray and Kuwahira were just trolling everyone there.
Stonebreaker – Peter Wartman
Potential readers should definitely read Over The Wall before cracking open this volume. That said, it's a fun, quick story to read, with some nice artwork. Dialogue is sparse, but Wartman conveys quite a lot with his characters' deftly drawn facial expressions, the scenery is atmospheric, and the spare color palette applied to great effect.
泥棒と初恋 – 直野 儚羅 (Dorobou to Hatsukoi – Naono Bohra)
I enjoyed the middle two yomikiri, about a barista and the artist whom he had a secret crush on when they were both schoolboys the best. The sly humor in this volume is as good as anything Naono’s written, but I prefer her historical or paranormal romances to the modern workingman plots in this volume.
What I Am Currently Reading
Outlaws of Sherwood – Robin McKinley
Robin Hood is still assembling his merry band of outlaws, who as of chapter 10 have embarked on their first true exploit of derring-do.
The Truth – Terry Pratchett
Pratchett’s meditation on the definition of truth, and the role of the media and government in policing each other’s worst impulses is the perfect Wednesday reading as we gear up to Salute America.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff
Zuboff is such a good writer one almost doesn’t notice the straw man she sets up in her passages on B. F. Skinner and behaviorism. But it’s there, and she would have done better to back up with her assertions of its purported threat and the public’s adverse reaction to it with actual evidence.
More fundamentally, I don’t believe behavioral nudges and gamification are inherently sinister, which Zuboff emphatically does. In some cases, I find them preferable to the alternatives. And in other cases, I even incline toward the more coercive end of the stick. For instance, Zuboff makes much of auto insurers’ use of monitoring devices to penalize drivers for speeding, hard breaking, failing to signal, and other reckless driving habits, whereas I find I am all for it, given my experience with drivers in this region. What I find sinister and objectionable is auto insurers’ combining this information with my social media activity or Amazon purchases, or peddling data on my travel destinations and body weight to data brokers.
Outrages – Naomi Wolf
I had this one on request at the library before the dust-up over Wolf's misreading of historical records emerged, so that’s perhaps colored my reading experience less than it otherwise might. I’m about 100 pages in and enjoying it well enough, but it does feel as though Wolf is stretching herself a bit thin at times to justify her contention that modern day homophobia has at least some of its roots in mid-19th century British society's growing understanding of communicable disease transmission. Wolf argues that this led, for the first time, to Western cultures conceiving of immorality as a public health, vice spiritual, issue, in that they began to posit that one person’s immoral acts could affect those around them.
I’m not sure this is true. And even Wolf undermines her own thesis when she quotes an eminent historian explaining how a medieval English law that prescribed burning for sodomy, sexual relations with Jews, witchcraft, and heresy was designed to protect Christendom from “infection.” So while Wolf thus far in the book has done an excellent job summarizing changes in social trends across time, she’s a little too eager to draw conclusions as to their causes that aren't as clear as she argues they are.
祈る人 – 深井結己 (Inoru Hito – Fukai Yuki)
Oh my lord, I’d forgotten how wacky yaoi (and slash, for that matter) plots were back in the mid-90s when the stories in this volume were written. An uke who’s as whiny, clingy, and immature as the worst “frail schoolgirl” stereotype? Check. Who’s forced to crossdress? Check. Against his will? Check. And is so attractive he’s mistaken for female? Check. And almost raped by a random dude because he’s so pretty? Check. Until the seme rolls up to save him? Check.
And I haven’t even mentioned the sister who forces Our Heroes to fuck in front of her to prove they’re brave enough to be in a committed gay relationship in a homophobic world on pain of her outing them if they refuse (because, logic?), the tragic misunderstanding that results when one of Our Heroes thinks the other is cheating on him (but it turns out the other men aren’t homewreckers, they’re half brothers from his mother’s six marriages), said mother’s tragic auto accident that facilities hot bathroom sex in the hospital every week, the wizened grandmother who total Fairy Godmother facilitates Our Heroes’ relationship after they try boinking in her tatami-beya, and on and on.
I mean, there’s still plenty of unrealistic stuff in today’s fanfic: A/B/O, sex pollen, coffee shop AU, etc., but somehow, it doesn’t feel unselfconsciously improbable as the vintage stuff does.
What I'm Reading Next
As I am notoriously bad at predicting what I will choose to read over the next week, I offer instead a list of the books I have acquired since last Wednesday’s entry, which in this case are Elizabeth Bear and Sara Monette’s A Companion To Wolves and Yoon Ha Lee’s Nine Fox Gambit.
これで以上です。
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