TYF Column: What Are We Reading?

I can’t quite tell you just how this book fell into my lap. While I grew up loving baseball, it was never to the point where I would be reading books about it. However, The Art of Fielding is about so much more than just the sport and instead tackles team dynamics, the pressure of being successful while also being young and grappling with self-doubt and an earnest fight to be the very best self you can be. The emotional core of the book hooked me from the very start, even if the deviation to side characters threw me at first. Henry, Owen, Pella and the rest of the team and their friends have earned a spot in my literary heart to the point where I’m actively worrying myself about them getting deserved happy endings. Not every chapter is thrilling, and I can’t say that I find the plight of Guert Affenlight to be all that compelling (since I’d much rather see the story from Owen’s POV) but regardless, the relationships are richly drawn and the characters’s individual insecurities even more so.

I have about 200 pages to go, and I’m already mourning the loss of these characters while simultaneously restraining myself from sneaking ahead to make sure they get a celebratory end.