The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon collects a trilogy of novels telling the story of Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter (generally known as “Paks”), a sheepfarmer’s daughter who runs away from home to avoid an unwanted marriage and to pursue her childhood dreams of becoming a paladin of St. Gird. The book is not without its flaws, but take it as strong praise that I was held rapt through all 1,100 pages, spending several days sneaking in a page or twenty whenever possible.

For those without the necessary geeky knowledge base, a paladin is a warrior whose unwavering moral rectitude leads to the divine gift of martial prowess and a smattering of other holy powers -- it’s a mainstay of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, Moon has admitted that she took inspiration from the character types in D&D. I’m putting this fact out front because it is generally a red flag in fantasy literature -- a novel born of an author’s Dungeons & Dragons game is often a mire of lazy and derivative world-building and blatant Mary Sue-ism. Luckily for everyone, Moon avoids these pitfalls. Her work contains tropes and archetypes that will be familiar to any D&D player or experienced reader of fantasy, but she combines these elements into a unique and fully realized world, fashions a compellingly sympathetic main character, and sends everything hurtling along a propulsive narrative.

There are obvious dangers in focusing on a character who is defined by her righteousness and unwavering moral compass. It’s hard to like a character who is too good. However, the character of Paksenarrion ends up being one of the strongest aspects of this book. Moon does an admirable job writing Paks with a believable naiveté, which makes her more human and vulnerable (and serves as a handy device for the reader to learn more about Moon’s world without overwhelming chunks of exposition). Also, while it’s always clear that Paks is gifted, Moon takes pains to show that Paks develops those gifts through hard work and dedication. Her growth as a warrior is quite satisfying and each milestone feels earned.

Moon missteps occasionally. Some chapters could have been trimmed, some details could have been left out (a genetic defect in the epic fantasy genre that can be traced back to the brace of coneys Sam and Frodo cooked up on their way to Mordor), and the foreshadowing gets a bit strong (I’m tempted to count how many times someone says “Gee, Paks, it’s like you’re gonna be a paladin or something!”). But these are minor quibbles. I’ve done some informal polling of others who’ve read The Deed of Paksenarrion and the standard assessment is “It was pretty good -- after I finished it I tracked down and read every other Elizabeth Moon book I could find.” I bought an eBook copy of the prequel but am saving it until I have the free time an engrossing fantasy epic demands.

~Andrew, Adult Services

Read Alike: Walking Dead

Robert Kirkman has shown himself to be one the big names in comics for the 21st century. He's written for long standing franchises like the X-Men, as well as original series like The Walking Dead. His writing is compelling and plot-driven with complicated sub plots. Mr. Kirkman produces books that are bleak, gruesome, and aware of conventions and history of the genre.

The Walking Dead captured the popular imagination with its menacing zombies and the complicated interactions of its cast of characters. Recently adapted as a television program, which is also available at Carnegie-Stout.

If you're a fan of The Walking Dead, we have more that you might enjoy:

World War Z by Max Brooks
A dystopian world inspired by zombie filled horror movies as written by the humorous nonfiction guide, The Zombie Survival Guide. Rich with detail, with subtle dark humor, this “historical account” of the zombie apocalypse is engaging. Similar in form to a collection of short stories, the action follows multiple characters.

Y the Last Man by Brian K Vaughan
Mr. Vaughan is known for his fast-paced stories, engaging dialog, well-crafted characters, and subtle consideration of social issues. His graphic novel series Y the Last Man follows Yorick Brown, the only man to survive an apocalypse and his adventures in a world populated entirely by women. Start with Unmanned, and be warned that this series contains graphic depictions of violence and sexuality.

The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Passage is the story of a band of survivors, the last humans uninfected by terrible plague developed by the government that turns the infected into vampire-like creatures. Bleak, suspenseful, and character-driven, with subtle homages to the work of Stephen King, this gory tale of survival in the face of unspeakable horror has appeal for those who don't typically pick up a horror novel.

Preacher by Garth Ennis
Mr. Ennis' work is not for young readers, readers with weak stomachs, or those uncomfortable with negative portrayals of religion. But if you're looking for a gritty, action-packed, dialog-rich story of a rag tag group of friends and their fight for justice and against evil, this is the series for you. Start with Gone to Texas, the Reverend Jesse Custer, his gun crazy ex-girlfriend, and an Irish vampire hit the road on a quest to find God and hold Him accountable for the state of the world.

Planetary by Warren Ellis
Mr. Ellis has written for DC, Marvel, Image, and even tried his hand at webcomics. He has an ability to blend cynical dystopias with hopeful idealism. Dark humor and wit abound in his stories that draw from current events and popular mythology. His series Planetary, follows the Archaeologists of the Impossible, who are anything but ordinary themselves, and their quest for the truth behind urban legends.

From Hell by Alan Moore
Mr. Moore's work has earned him both a Hugo and an Eisner, in addition to scores of devoted fans. Known for his intricate plots, thought-provoking themes and wit, Mr. Moore's comics are meant for mature readers and contain graphic sex and violence. Start with From Hell, a bleak and disturbing story of Jack the Ripper.

The Stand by Stephen King
Mr. King has long dominated the horror genre with his atmospheric stories of good versus evil. In The Stand humanity is decimated by a menacing plague, and the story follows and increasingly small group of survivors. The novel has been adapted as a television mini-series as well as a series of graphic novels. The graphic novel series starts with Captain Trips and is scripted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. The graphic novel is a faithful translation that keeps the tension high with short scenes and creepy art (warning: the plague victims are pretty gross).

Please stop by the Recommendations Desk on the first floor, check out NoveList Plus on the library's website, or visit W. 11th & Bluff next week for more reading suggestions. Or submit a Personal Recommendations request, and we'll create a reading list just for you!

Bestseller Read-Alikes for the Week of March 5

Can’t wait to get your hands on the latest best-seller, but the hold list is too long? To tide you over, every week we’ll offer similar titles and authors to the week’s fiction and nonfiction best sellers.

Fiction

This week's #1 fiction bestseller is Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult.The best selling author's latest follows Edward Warren, who has been living in Thailand for five years, who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. Edward receives a frantic phone call, and is told that his father lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara. With her father's chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father's organs. Once again, Picoult delves into the emotionally-charged dynamics of families, the secrets they keep and difficult choices that they must make. 

Other authors with similar writing styles to Picoult are:

Chris A. Bohjalian - Like Picoult,  Bohjalian writes books where his sympathetic characters face complex challenges. Some of his novels have a historical setting or include more elements of a mystery novel. Try Midwives, an Oprah Book Club selection, or Trans-Sister Radio, which covers questions of sexuality, gender, love, and family.

Anita Shreve - Shreve's novels focus on the emotional landscapes of her characters as they face challenges in their relationships both from unexpected disasters and the deeper questions of trust and communication. Newlyweds living in Kenya, Geraldine and Patrick of A Change in Altitude struggle to overcome a devastating mountain climbing accident.

Click here for more fiction bestsellers...

Nonfiction

This week’s #1 nonfiction bestseller is again American Sniper by Chris Kyle (click here for read-alikes for that book from last week). Number 2 on the the list this week is Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think by Peter Diamandis. Diamandis - Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation - proposes that the current exponential progress of technology in certain fields will allow us to easily provide for the needs of all people within the near future, and profiles some of today's most promising advances toward that end.

Books similar to Abundance include:

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley - The New York Times bestselling author offers a provocative case for an economics of hope, arguing that the benefits of commerce, technology, innovation, and change--cultural evolution--will inevitably increase human prosperity.

This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future, edited by John Brockman - "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" This is the question John Brockman posed to more than 100 of the world's most influential minds. Exhilarating, visionary, sometimes frightening, but always fascinating, their responses provide an eye-opening road map of our near future.

Click here for more nonfiction bestselllers ...

The Books You've Always Meant to Read

Inspired by this WPA-era poster created for an Illinois statewide Library Project we've been thinking about the books we've always meant to read, but haven't yet. Maybe the book is too big, or the subject too complex. Or maybe it's a book enthusiastically recommended by a friend who just knows you'll love it, but you're not quite sure. And there are those books that you think you should read, but, well, you're a busy person and don't have time to sit down and read War and Peace, for goodness sake!

From classic to contemporary, our lists are long. Here are a few highlights from library staff. Leave your list in the comments section, or join the discussion on Facebook and G+!

Allison:

• Twilight by Stephanie Meyer - A neighbor and friend just adores the "Twilight" series, and even lent me her copies of the whole series. But, well, it's Twilight, y'know?
• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - My mom, who knows a thing or two about books and about me, really thinks I'd love this book about a young girl who can taste people's emotions in food. It's on my coffee table, but so are about 10 other books.
• Under the Dome by Stephen King - I'm a huge King fan and I've read everything he's written, up until this book. I've tried, but it's just so, so big!

Sarah:

• My official To Be Read list has well over a hundred titles at any given time (Goodreads is both a blessing and a curse). I've had The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls on the list for over five years, and I never hear anything but praise. I think I'm slightly afraid that it won't live up to everyone's enthusiasm.
• A more recent addition to my list is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. I have checked it out from the library twice without reading it. I know it's a character-driven story set on the campus of a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin, but I look at the cover and think, "Ugh, 500+ pages of baseball."
• And sitting on my shelf of books that I own, but haven't read, staring at me accusingly is Moloka'i by Alan Brennert. I read the first chapter and fell in love 3 years ago, but somehow books I own just can't compete with library books and their due dates.

Mirdza: I’ve always wanted to read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time)—depending on the translation. I admit I haven’t read it, or baked madeleines. But I will some day!

Jennifer: I love to read "the classics" and these are the ones I had left on my list before I had my kids.

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - Fell asleep by the 2nd chapter.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Can never find the time with three kids.

Amanda:

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - When I was in 8th grade the teacher issued the challenge that if we read this book and wrote a review of it, all of our other reading assignments would be waived. I tried but I just didn't get it - maybe someday.
• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - I admire Wells for his stance on suffrage in a time when many men laughed at the idea, but have yet to read any of his work. My great aunt tells the story of hearing Orson Welles' reading The War of the Worlds on the radio in the 30's. She said they were so scared that her mother made the family go into the root cellar.
• Atonement by Ian McEwan - I lost a bet and was supposed to read this. Sadly I haven't yet.
• The Iliad or The Odyssey by Homer: I've SEEN these but have yet to read them. Something that has been around for over 800 years is probably worth reading.

Angie: Moby Dick! It has been my whale for over ten years! I decided I MUST read it when I couldn't answer the trivia question: "What famous book starts with the line 'Call me Ishmael ?'" I have started it no less than 6 times, get to about page 100 and get stuck every time in the section about the physiology of the whale. One day, one day.

Mike: I’ve always meant to read the German novel Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald: This stylistically complex, lyrical story employs a first person, stream of consciousness narrative to richly describe the struggle of Jacques Austerlitz to uncover his identity as he follows the memory of his childhood back to the heart the Holocaust in war-torn Europe. Although the pace is relaxed, the storyline is character-driven and intricately plotted, and the tone is haunting and melancholy. Or so I’ve heard. Wikipedia says Austerlitz is notable because of its lack of paragraphing, digressive style, and very long and complex sentences, including one sentence which is nine pages long. Along these lines, I like to believe I’d also enjoy reading H. L. Mencken’s Prejudices: The Complete Series, and The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams, and Ulysses by James Joyce. “Scutter, he cried thickly!”

Andrew: I’ve been meaning to read Orlando by Virginia Woolf for an awfully long time. I’ve made a little progress into it in the past year, maybe a quarter of the book. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it or it’s a chore to read, but something always distracts me . . .

Michelle: The classic Russians. I have not read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. No Brothers Karamazov. No Crime and Punishment. No Anna Karenina. No War and Peace. I haven’t even watched the movies. I have to save something to do in retirement. If I read one page a day, it would only take about 10 years to get through all four!

What book have you always wanted to read? What's keeping you?

A Review of Main Street Public Library by Wayne A. Wiegand

A few years ago I ran across an article in the March 2002 issue of American Libraries magazine by library historian Wayne A. Wiegand. In the article Wiegand encouraged readers to celebrate Women's History Month by remembering early female librarians. As an example, he included an excerpt from a contemporary account of Martha Chaddock, Dubuque Young Men’s Library Association Librarian from 1866 until her retirement in 1876. According to the account, if Martha Chaddock told a young library patron, "You have read fiction enough for the present, John; here is a book about birds that will interest you," the boy would "devour the birds, feathers and all." No one entered Chaddock's library "without having a great thought driven like a golden nail into his mind." A repint of the description of Martha Chaddock appears under "A MODEL LIBRARIAN" in the November 1870 issue of Association Monthly in Google Books.

Although Wiegand barely mentions Dubuque in his new book, Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 1876-1956, it is full of Martha Chaddock’s domineering spirit. Main Street Public Library examines the early history of four small-town libraries in the Midwest: Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Osage, Iowa; Rhinelander, Wisconsin; and Lexington, Michigan. Wiegand uses an impressive range of sources to reconstruct the history of these libraries, like board minutes, circulation statistics, librarians' correspondence, library association publications, newspaper articles and editorials, and so on. Wiegand even compiled a working database of titles owned by the each of the libraries from 1890 to 1970.

These sources reveal that the daily routine in a small Carnegie library one hundred years ago was not much different than today:

In 1918 Rhinelander was one of 211 Wisconsin public libraries, 89 of which occupied their own building; Carnegie had funded 63. Daily, [Jessie W.] Bingham and her staff changed date stamps, arranged book cards, entered circulation statistics, and shelved books. Periodically they read the shelves, often pulling worn books to be mended or unused books to be weeded. For acquisitions Bingham checked the pages of Booklist and other collection guides that the WFLC [Wisconsin Free Library Commission] provided, and upon purchasing new books ordered Library of Congress catalog cards. She also responded to any letters, regulated the schedule for the assembly room (including citizenship classes held every Friday night), attended to small bills and petty cash, and ordered necessary supplies, all of which she dutifully reported to her board (page 113).

But while the daily routines seem familiar, Wiegand’s bottom up, "library-in-the-life-of-the-user" approach shows that these libraries did not uphold what we think of today as basic tenets of librarianship. The libraries did not "keep their local citizens informed so that political democracy could function," nor did they "function as important information institutions to address local economic problems." And instead of promoting intellectual freedom, early librarians routinely excluded materials from their collections in attempt to "mold and police morality."

Some Wisconsin librarians, in my favorite example, removed comic sections from Sunday newspapers because "laughter they evoked disturbed the dignity of the library." And like today's entertainment DVDs, popular fiction was especially suspect:

In June 1921, the Bulletin of the Iowa Library Commission castigated "some libraries" for "making the mistake of advertising their new fiction" in local newspapers. "The desire to attract people to the library is legitimate," the author argued, "but to attempt to do so with new fiction as bait is like tempting a sick person to eat food which will make him sicker and also increase the percentage of sickness in the town." In the issue following, another author explained why the ALA [American Library Association] did not endorse serial fiction for boys and girls. "The fact that, after he had mastered the first book" of the series "he can sail through several volumes without mental effort, is exactly what makes the reading of series delightful to the child, and here is the greatest danger, for the child slips easily into the rut of easy reading." As a result, the author concluded, "librarians have adopted the general rule that any series that runs to more than four volumes is unsafe" (page 150).

Despite efforts to save patrons from the "rut of easy reading," much of what actually ends up in library collections, then and now, is driven by local demand more so than professional rhetoric. According to Wiegand, public libraries are "agents of social harmony," or places where community members meet to negotiate shared cultural values. And when they do, most people seem agree that their libraries should focus on making popular fiction available in various formats. When librarians discount this, Wiegand suggests, "we fail to account for the power of fiction to inform, foster ideas, construct community, develop a sense of discovery, inspire, and offer encouragement."

~Michael May, Adult Services

Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 1876-1956 by Wayne A. Wiegand was published in October 2011 by University of Iowa Press.

This review was based on the digital galley obtained from University of Iowa Press through NetGalley.com.