Dewey Decimal Project: 796.962
Aug. 11th, 2012 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleA few months ago, I got an envelope that had been mailed book rate. I assumed, of course, that it was something from PaperBackSwap, but was cheerfully surprised when I opened it to find that instead ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lakeeffectgirl had gifted me with a copy of The Kid: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL by Shawna Richer. (Note: this is the second edition with an epilogue covering Sid's second season in the NHL; the first edition title was The Rookie.)
The book does precisely what it says: it covers Sid's first year in the NHL. It's somewhat useful as biography, but more useful, at least to the extremely new to hockey fangirl I was when I read it, as insight into how the NHL works. (It also led me to go read Wikipedia articles about both the rules of hockey and the labor dispute that led to the 2004-2005 lockout.)
The problems with it as a biography are twofold. First of all, Richer's original purpose in following Crosby around for a year was to write a series of articles for the Globe and Mail. I expect Richer cobbled together bits of that series into the book instead of starting over and writing the book from scratch. She has a tendency to repeat herself, and while the book as a whole is unfortunately underedited, there are a few patches that stand out as better writing, which I would guess are bits that were edited twice: once for the paper and once for the book. The second edition's epilogue only throws this into starker relief; it holds together as a coherent narrative, presumably because she wrote it all at once. The second problem with it as a biography is that by the second half of the book, Richer is trying really hard to make Sid interesting, which doesn't work for three reasons: Richer's writing isn't strong enough, Sid is too well trained in speaking to the media to let her get much more than his interview soundbites, and very few people, even if they are sports stars, are that interesting at age eighteen.
The shaky narrative structure and Richer's visible effort aren't the only problems with the book as a piece of writing. There's a lot of objectification that I found uncomfortable (one of the cringe-worthy lowlights is that she refers to Sid's "bee-stung lips" more than once). There is also Richer's tone, which is a specific sort of middle-aged heterosexual woman tone that had me drawing back from the book.
All of that makes it sound like I hated the book, which I didn't! As I said, it's a good look at how the NHL works, and there are some gems in it. I've been quoting the best bits on Tumblr (they lean heavily towards the end of the book, both because I didn't think to keep careful track of quotable things until I was halfway through and because the epilogue is the best writing in the book), and some of them are fascinating insights into Sid. If you're writing fic about him, this is probably a useful resource. If you're looking for excellent sports writing, you may want to try somewhere else.
lakeeffectgirl had gifted me with a copy of The Kid: A Season with Sidney Crosby and the New NHL by Shawna Richer. (Note: this is the second edition with an epilogue covering Sid's second season in the NHL; the first edition title was The Rookie.)The book does precisely what it says: it covers Sid's first year in the NHL. It's somewhat useful as biography, but more useful, at least to the extremely new to hockey fangirl I was when I read it, as insight into how the NHL works. (It also led me to go read Wikipedia articles about both the rules of hockey and the labor dispute that led to the 2004-2005 lockout.)
The problems with it as a biography are twofold. First of all, Richer's original purpose in following Crosby around for a year was to write a series of articles for the Globe and Mail. I expect Richer cobbled together bits of that series into the book instead of starting over and writing the book from scratch. She has a tendency to repeat herself, and while the book as a whole is unfortunately underedited, there are a few patches that stand out as better writing, which I would guess are bits that were edited twice: once for the paper and once for the book. The second edition's epilogue only throws this into starker relief; it holds together as a coherent narrative, presumably because she wrote it all at once. The second problem with it as a biography is that by the second half of the book, Richer is trying really hard to make Sid interesting, which doesn't work for three reasons: Richer's writing isn't strong enough, Sid is too well trained in speaking to the media to let her get much more than his interview soundbites, and very few people, even if they are sports stars, are that interesting at age eighteen.
The shaky narrative structure and Richer's visible effort aren't the only problems with the book as a piece of writing. There's a lot of objectification that I found uncomfortable (one of the cringe-worthy lowlights is that she refers to Sid's "bee-stung lips" more than once). There is also Richer's tone, which is a specific sort of middle-aged heterosexual woman tone that had me drawing back from the book.
All of that makes it sound like I hated the book, which I didn't! As I said, it's a good look at how the NHL works, and there are some gems in it. I've been quoting the best bits on Tumblr (they lean heavily towards the end of the book, both because I didn't think to keep careful track of quotable things until I was halfway through and because the epilogue is the best writing in the book), and some of them are fascinating insights into Sid. If you're writing fic about him, this is probably a useful resource. If you're looking for excellent sports writing, you may want to try somewhere else.
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Date: 2012-08-12 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-13 03:14 am (UTC)