Lad Lit: Ninjas and Pirates

i-5e9e75fd42c8884415c934ad36862a60-P1000739lores.JPGI've taken out a couple of extremely laddish books from the library to read for fun. Seeing constant mentions of ninjas and pirates on the web, I became curious about the historical reality of these matters. So I've started on Stephen Turnbull's Warriors of Medieval Japan (2005) and I've got David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag (1995) lined up next. Here's a fine passage from Turnbull:

"... even though the Age of Warring States was a time when samurai warfare went through its biggest revolution in history under the influence of strategy and technology from both Europe and China, it was also a time of amazing nostalgia. In spite of the hail of bullets whizzing past his ears, and the ranks of lowly spearmen under his command, even the most modern samurai leader kept looking over his shoulders to a glorious and often hypothetical past. This golden age, in his view, had been a time when a battle consisted of a number of individual combats fought between honourable enemies who had singled each other out by the issuing and receving of challenges. The victor would have taken the victim's head as proof of duty done, and for his reward would have been as pleased with the name he had made for himself as with any grant of rice fields he may have been awarded by his lord." (p. 20)

My wife and I have very different reading habits. Ideally, I like to read only one book for fun at a time, and I don't stock up very far into the future. She, however, has tens of books and magazines going at any one time, and constantly amasses more. As I collect them from around the apartment I deposit them in our vertical book case. The floor and ten shelves are hers. The top two tiers are mine. Currently I have three copies there of a friend's kids' book to give away, plus three DVDs I've received as review copies for the blog, and the Swedish Tourist Association's annual that arrived yesterday.

[More blog entries about Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ; , , , , , , .]

Tags

More like this

From age 16 to 26 I was an active member of the Stockholm Tolkien Society (est. 1972). This charming association is organised around a schedule of annual feasts and a roster of themed activity guilds. There's the Medieval Dance Guild, the Gaming Guild, the gluttonous Hobbit Guild, the erudite…
Daryl Gregory has published a number of very good short stories over the past few years, notably a few science fiction pieces based on neuropsychiatry. So I was very keen to read his first novel, Pandemonium (Ballantine/Del Ray 2008). Genrewise it's modern fantasy in the sense that it takes place…
I'm not a very frequent theatre-goer, and if I don't like a play, I leave in the intermission. But I have had the good fortune to see some excellent productions through the years, notably of Shakespeare. (It is of course entirely possible to play Shakespeare poorly too, and I've seen it done both…
Anyone who uses the Library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters more than briefly will soon discover that its staff has a thing for page 17. Every book in that excellent library carries a stamp of ownership on that page. Last night I was reading Frans G. Bengtsson's 1947 essay collection För…

Yarrh, Under the Black Flag is quite good, but you wouldn't want to miss B. R. Burg's Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition...

By Pierce R. Butler (not verified) on 08 Nov 2008 #permalink

Whoever dies with the most books wins.

By Mad Hussein LO… (not verified) on 09 Nov 2008 #permalink

Nonono, books are just output devices. What you're saying is basically that whoever dies with the most ink jet printers wins.

Vad intressant med japansk krigshistoria och samurajer. Har du nån bra bok du kan rekomendera? Skulle också vilja läsa lite (om man hinner).

Elena, sorry, I've never read a book on this subject before. I'm not really into military history, so Turnbull's book has me wishing I had a book named "Women in Medieval Japan".

There is always Lady Murasaki's book, The Tale of Genji, I believe (though it's been at least 20 years since I read it, so my memory is just the least bit hazy). I'd give you more info but I can't seem to find it in my thousands of volumes, which fill every bookshelf in every room in my little house, and I've recently donated at least 500 books to various causes and libraries, so it might not even be in the house anymore! But it's bound to be online by now since that's supposedly the very first novel ever written.

By DianaGainer (not verified) on 11 Nov 2008 #permalink

My wife actually read Genji recently. She found it repetitive and dated, and couldn't understand the characters' motivations. She thus promptly donated it to the local library, which is what we do instead of buying more book shelves.