Reader's Advisory: Westerns bookmark

Over the course of my schoolin', I've pretty much taken three adult readership advisory courses; I've only completed two of them. One was a Gen Ed and the latest is online through my college. The last assignment was due today; I passed it in on Friday 'cause I was eager to finish.

Anyway, boring back story aside, this time through adult reader's advisory I decided to focus on genres I have very little experience with. One of the assignments (actually two, but a different genre each time) was to design a bookmark. Not of the 'this is the library' bookmark, but one with recommendations along the lines of 'if you like crime thrillers, try these authors'. The Iowa Library has some examples on their site; they are .doc files and require you to download them to view them.

I decided to work on Westerns, which I had zero experience with. Almost. My experience with Westerns is essentially limited to the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly and a passing interest in Wyatt Earp. Better than nothing.

At first I thought I might link it to Firefly by choosing a book appropriate to each character, but that didn't stick. Then I thought about the appeal of Firefly itself and how it was a cross-genre show. I ordinarily have no interest in Westerns, but Westerns with spaceships? Those I'm okay with. So then I thought, 'why not lure people to Westerns via genres they already like?' and instead chose five of the genres covered in the course - fantasy, mystery, horror, historical, and science fiction - to choose cross-genre books from. That turned out to be much easier, though the thing where I was determined to find books I'd read myself added an extra layer of difficulty. I did okay on that front, though. I don't think I'd read the romance, but if there was nothing else to read... Anyway. Here are the results:

Bull, Emma. Territory. New York: Tor, 2007. Print.

Hockensmith, Steve. Holmes on the Range. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006. Print.

Lovelace, Merline. A Savage Beauty. Don Mills, Ont: MIRA, 2003. Print.

Matheson, Richard. Shadow on the Sun. New York: M. Evans and Co, 1994. Print.

Parry, Richard. The Winter Wolf: Wyatt Earp in Alaska. New York: Forge, 1996. Print.

Resnick, Michael D. Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future. New York, N.Y: Tom Doherty Associates, 1986. Print.

Related junk:

TV Tropes' "Badass preacher"

Goodreads: "Book recommendations: Weird West"

RPGnet Forum: "Fantasy Western in fiction"

Slap Bookleather: "Fistful of credits - Mike Resnick’s Inner Frontier" and "Here comes the space cavalry: Seeking the link between Westerns and MilitarySci-Fi"

Matt Molgaar's Horror Review: "Richard Matheson 'Shadow On The Sun' review". 

Base image for bookmark: "Old western silhouette" by mollygrue @ DeviantArt

HistoricalNovels.info: "Old West novels: Historical novels of the American Old West"

Western Writers of America: Literature of the West for the world

Publishers Weekly: "The winter wolf: Wyatt Earp in Alaska"

Library Journal review by Kristin Ramsdell: "A savage beauty". (EBSCO link)

Library Journal review by Ken St. Andre: "Holmes on the range" (EBSCO link)

Wikipedia (I know, I know): "Weird west". 

Templeton Gate: "Santiago: A myth from the far future"

I didn't have time to find this book, but it looks liked it'd been helpful: 

Green, Paul. Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television, and Games. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2009. Print.

If you end up using this, if you could credit scarletinthelibrary.blogspot.com and mollygrue at DeviantArt, that'd be nifty.

If You Liked The Hunger Games...

It's divided 'guy' and 'girl' by narrator. I glanced too quickly and got uppity for no reason at all.

Are Book Genres Being Replaced by Tags?

From io9: Are book genres being replaced by tags? Eric Rosenfield debates whether or not standard genres like 'fantasy' and 'sci fi' (and, one assumes, 'romance') can still be used to classify books when books have been splintered into tiny little niches that potentially cross over into multiple designations. Have an excerpt:

The thing is though, the handful of categories that fiction is still sold under-as classified on Barnes and Noble.com, "Fiction & Literature", "Mystery & Crime", "Science Fiction & Fantasy", "Teens", "Romance", "Horror", "Thrillers", "Westerns" (and lumped in is Poetry which is not fiction, and Graphic Novels which are another medium altogether)-are accidents of history and technology, and even these clear demarkations are of recent vintage; bookstores did not even have separate science fiction, mystery or romance sections until the 1980s or so, and books specifically marketed to niche groups were relegated primarily to book clubs, mail order, specialty stores, and if one was lucky, newsstands, all except the latter being where the modern genre categories really emerged after the implosion of the pulp magazine markets in the 1940s and of the bulk of the science fiction magazines in the 50s. And yet we now take these categories for granted and talk about "transcending" them as if they had such impenetrable physical form that they can only be passed over metaphysically.

The world that gave rise to these categories is fading rapidly into nonexistence. The new bookstores are not circumscribed by retail space, they're the limitless possibilities of a search box. We live in a world in which most any book you can think of can be downloaded to your home, and where anyone with an Internet connection can fill a blog with reviews, interviews, news items, and free-form ramblings about whatever she thinks is important. That is a paradigm shift on a level we don't fully understand yet.

I no longer believe we should stop using terms like science fiction and fantasy and so on; those terms can be useful in describing certain things, certain ways of reading. But their status as hard-and-fast slots into which we plug in all of our books is already starting to fade, as the once nebulous megacategory of science fiction and fantasy splinters into steampunk, urban fantasy, paranormal romance and so on, subcategories that once upon a time might have been merely commented on but which because of the 'Net have blossomed into subcultures all their own, distinct and often non-communicating with the groups reading the space opera or sword and sorcery that since Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings have dominated science fiction and fantasy respectively.

It is a big excerpt.

20 Librarians Who Save the World

From io9 via LISNews: Twenty Heroic Librarians Who Save the World. My personal favourite is Rupert Giles from Buffy. And I gotta say, if I could only wear a bikini while phasing through matter, I would have to do a lot more situps. There are a few things on this list I think I need to read! (I had no idea there was a librarian X-Man!)

And now back to studying for midterms.

Most Accurate Science Fiction

From io9 - Six Scientists On The Most Accurate Science Fiction In Their Fields. Firefly gets a nod for not having warp engines, but loses points on artificial gravity. (I personally always liked that space didn't have pew-pew laser noises and explosions, though I half-remember reading something about how there would actually be sounds.) It's mostly compiled from movies and TV shows, but there are a few books mentioned - A Handmaid's Tale, the Dune series, and a mention of Asimov's robot series.

I really need to get around to reading some Asimov someday.

(PS, the first few books of Dune are pretty good, but it gets really weird further in. Really, really weird. Even taking into account Dune should be forgiven a few oddities merely for providing us with the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear - "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - and walking without rhythm so you won't attract the worm.)