Quarterly Media Review: Summer '14

With everything going on in at the end of the summer and beginning of the fall, I didn’t have time for my ever-so-beloved Quarterly Media Update.  Never fear!   I have about five minutes to do a quick thumbnail version of what went on between June and August.  Here we go.

Books

The First Family by Mike Dash

This chronicle of the rise of organized crime is slow at points; it focuses, a bit too strongly in my opinion, on the early lives of key figures, and on intricate descriptions of crimes--both the mundane, like counterfeiting, and the lurid, like murder.  This should be more interesting than it sometimes is.  Luckily the pace picks up when describing the complicated relationships between rival families, and especially when it delves into the various techniques used by investigators who are, depending on their fortune, either smugly confident or desperate for a win.  The character profiles of some of the more prominent figures are good, notably that of pugnacious, obstreperous Inspector Petrosino, the Italian-American who made it his life’s work to destroy Italian crime in the United States.  Then, especially, there’s the obscurely terrifying boss Giuseppe Morello, AKA the Clutch Hand.  (And what an evocatively apt nickname that is!)  With much of his criminal activity shrouded in mystery, the author does a good job of piecing together his early life and connecting him to the dark activities that plagued early twentieth century New York, and tracing him through the boom years and the busts.

What really comes through in this mafia origin story is the sense of selfishness and greed that was bound up with grandiose notions of an old world gentility, a gentility that these beasts wouldn’t truly recognize if it hit them in the face. During Morello’s one lengthy prison stint, it’s clear that reform was never on his mind--indeed, that he probably felt he had no need to reform, that he had a right to his grasping crimes.  As soon as he was released he got to work re-establishing his place in the mob.  It’s a depressing lesson: crime may not pay in the long run, but it has enough perks to keep at it despite its dangers.  And the Morello family’s criminal legacy lingers on in today’s underworld.

I don’t think this book is essential for every library, but if you have a strong True Crime collection, this one belongs in it.  It’s a sort of twisted Book of Genesis for all the mob stories of the twentieth century.

Sous Chef by Michael Gibney

A fast-paced look at a day in the hard-drinking, sometimes philosophical life of the eponymous fine dining cook. I blazed through this compact tome, fascinated to take a more authentic look at the industry I know best from "Hell's Kitchen.” The author, himself an experienced sous chef gifted with words as well as knives, spends some time, in the few moments available for reflection, on the nature of service, whether there's really a place for ego in the kitchen, and the care with which truly gifted chefs approach every dish. There's plenty of bravado on display, too, though our unnamed protagonist (undoubtedly an author stand-in) has reached a tipping point in his career, somewhere between the vulgar boy's club of the line and the lofty concerns of the head chef--here depicted as an inscrutable, remote figure, a being who gives the impression of having transcended, somehow, even as he's high-fiving you or cussing out the prep cook.

If you have any cooking-themed programming, this book is a great insider look at an opaque industry for your community members!

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

This is a dark, grim book of Cold War-era espionage on both sides of the Berlin Wall, filled with analog tradecraft, hard-bitten career spies and the dames who love them, and the lingering specter of German anti-semitism. It's full of exciting twists and turns as well as several important explorations of the morality of the Soviet/socialist system, the empty ethic of the west, and the soul of spying. And it's a darn depressing book, described by one contemporary critic as possessing "an atmosphere of chilly hell." Very apt. But it's also an early appearance of my beloved George Smiley (of Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy fame), so it's got an underlying, distant strength of kindness.

Everyone loves a spy tale, but it’s good to remind your patrons that it’s not all shaken martinis and femmes fatales.  Make sure you have this volume in your collection.

Graphic Novels

Saga vol. 1 and 2 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

I like everything Brian K. Vaughan has ever written, including this gorgeously-illustrated space opera, love story, and family epic.  That said, he has a definite schtick, and for me, it’s starting to wear thin.  I’d like to see him write outside his normal register of “contemporary young people slang and humor in an unexpected context.”  The contrast of the vulgar sitcom banter with the sci-fi visuals and situations is amusing for a while, but after a time I find that I want the story to take itself more seriously.  It certainly deserves it.  On the other hand, I have nothing but praise for Fiona Staples’ expressive and fluid artwork.

Saga is an important work by an important creator, so if you have a graphic novel collection of any stature, you need to have the first few volumes, at least.  But if, by his next project, Vaughan hasn’t shaken up his style, it may be time to consider thinning the holdings.

Hawkeye, vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction, David Aja and Javier Pulido

A great, stripped-down chronicle of what it means to be a superhero--especially for a hero in the “highly skilled” category who is nonetheless surrounded by the “godlike” on a daily basis.  Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye--my longtime favorite Avenger, and so much cooler than the movie version you may know--is a wise-cracking, sardonic narrator who forces a smile between constant bruises and contusions. He just never quits.  This first volume shows him making a life away from the Avengers, but demonstrates that he never takes a day off from being a hero.  It’s a great microcosm that stands for the entire Marvel Universe and its ethos of “normal guy” heroes who will never pass up the opportunity to sacrifice for what’s right.

Hawkeye is critically acclaimed for its sharp, real writing by Matt Fraction and the great geometric artwork by David Aja.  This title belongs on every library shelf to demonstrate that heroes can flourish at every level of power and every level of society.

Television

The Americans (FX)

Season 2 was the “parenthood” season, for those of you following along at home, but I had the good fortune of bingeing out on the whole series this summer.  What a tense, thrilling show!  It delves into a period of our history that hasn’t gotten a ton of pop culture treatment--that is, the late Cold War of the 80’s, with all the attendant craziness of Reaganmania and various wild international developments.  But it balances really great spycraft with serious family drama.  Both seasons measured arcs that dealt seriously and realistically with deep-cover KGB agents settling into the middle years of their arranged sham marriage and the charged feelings that have inevitably developed between them.  Season 2, specifically, juxtaposed the agents’ very normal(-ish) home life with the deadly stakes of their profession, as a complex murder mystery causes them to reassess their relationship with Mother Russia and to take serious steps to protect their clueless, American citizen children.

But none of that matters.  This show makes you root for the KGB.  Wrap your head around that!  When this series becomes available, add it to your collection as a bookend to the aforementioned spymaster Le Carre’s work on the earlier and middle stages of the Cold War.

The Leftovers (HBO)

A series that brings to mind the famous poem by Stephen Crane: “A man said to the universe:/‘Sir, I exist!/”However,” replied the universe,/”The fact has not created in me/a sense of obligation’”--which is actually quoted in the pivotal ninth episode.  

Roughly 2% of the world’s population inexplicably vanished 3 years ago.  What does it mean?  Is it an event of religious ramifications or is it a freak scientific occurrence?  Is it of the utmost significance or merely a particularly bizarre blip in the convoluted history of the human race?  The show offers few answers to these questions, but it does a better job of answering, “How would you react if the world irrevocably changed before your eyes?”  The answer: given enough of us, we’d do almost everything.  Cults flourish, relationships splinter, and coping is necessary but hard to come by.  This series isn’t very fun, but despite its baroque concept, it feels very real--richly drawn and intensely felt . Sometimes that’s all you need.  That, and a great soundtrack, which this show also has.

Rectify (Sundance Channel)

Speaking of not very fun, but very real, here’s season two of the ponderous, philosophical Southern Gothic crime drama.  Daniel’s quest to find a place in the world he missed during twenty years on death row continues, as do his loved ones’ various efforts to deal with Daniel’s slanted worldview.  Meanwhile, the mystery of the murder that landed him in jail all those years ago continues to unravel.  What is guilt and what is innocence?  Who has baggage that needs rectifying?  Will Amantha last at her Wiggly Piggly job?

Bleak, meandering, thoughtful, difficult, rewarding--Rectify is William Faulkner meets “Masterpiece Theatre.”

Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie

I’m bundling these two films together because they both succeed on the same levels (and not at all because I’m way past my self-imposed deadline and really want to get this post out…).  They’re two properties that, on the surface, should not have worked--they’re just too out there.  But against all odds, the third-tier comic property and the Scandinavian building block toy made perfect, fun blockbusters.  They both have heart, too, in Peter Quill’s barely-concealed vulnerability and in Lego’s live-action metastory about toys unplayed with.  Guardians also advances the Marvel Cinematic Universe in crucial ways--the Collector!  The Celestials!  The Kree!--so I’m very on-board with where it hints we’re heading in that realm.  Less serious but equally fun: seeing lego versions of Batman, Gandalf, Han Solo, and Abraham Lincoln all hanging out.

Games

Sets

A deceptively simple-looking matching game.  Out of a field of cards, you have to find sets of those that exhibit each of the game’s various attributes without repeating--shape, color, outline, and number.  Oy, what a headache.  It’s fun, though, and good for quiet solo or group play in the library.

Arkham Horror (Fantasy Flight)

Let’s get the bad out of the way first: the best games provide on-board text, or even better, iconography, that almost makes it possible to play out of the box without looking at the rules.  Very good games at least use this text or iconography as a “crutch” so that once you have breezed through the rules, the game itself reminds you of its own ins and outs.  A highly complex game, Arkham Horror doesn’t really succeed in this regard.  Granted, there are so many moving parts here that it would be hard to do so, but I would have really appreciated something on the board to remind me of crucial details like the round sequence, the modus operandi when opening gates, or the process used to close and seal them.  For all of these elements and more, my rulebook became rather well-thumbed throughout the evening of my first play--and second, and third…

(And okay, game makers, can we please talk about your rulebooks, particularly the indexes?  I know this must be one of the most difficult elements of the design and publication process--meticulously laying out the hows and wherefores--but you’ve gotta make it accessible.  That means ‘well-structured’ and ‘well-indexed.’  This marks the second super-complex game I’ve played whose rulebook is neither--the other being, of course, Game of Thrones.  I’m starting to think I should moonlight as a volunteer rule indexer.)

Aside from that...what a great cooperative game!  If you’re into H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, this game encapsulates it really well.  It may seem a little overstuffed at times, but this isn’t an old-timey short story, after all--epic board games have more room for everything, the kitchen sink, and a shoggoth, too.  Replayability is a big factor here; there are so many options for characters to play, event cards to draw, items to acquire, and--most of all--cosmic baddies to face that each outing is sure to be a brand new experience.  And everything has the flavor of Lovecraft, in the pulpy bios of the playable characters, the headlines of the ‘newsflash’ cards, and in the beautiful artwork all over every square inch of the board and cards.

Word to the wise: though this is playable with as few as two people, try to get as many friends together as you can, and assign each of them an element of the game to keep track of (like that guy from Seinfeld who gives everyone a job at his parties, but better).  This would make a great program at your library around this time of year--you can encourage participants to dress up and really get into their roles, play freaky music, and even serve Lovecraft-inspired snacks!

Quarterly Media Review: Now More Libraritastic (Spring 2014)

I’m back with my much-delayed review of some of the notable media I consumed in the spring of 2014!  Despite the lateness of the hour, I have stuck to those that I read/watched/played in April, May, and June.  You’ll get your July next time.  

In my quest to make these recurring features ever more relevant and useful to you, my library-adjacent reading public, I have added a brief note on each item’s potential for use in your favorite biblioteca.  Feel free to jump around to what interests you, but books and movies are kinda obvious--expand your mind!  Read about board games and graphic novels (discussion of which falls under both movie and TV shows, oddly enough).

Books

The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The book so good it’s a recent winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

My review.

Library value: As if you need any encouragement to add Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest to your shelves?  This would make a great centerpiece to a seminar or lecture, perhaps tied to your community’s own history during the Gilded Age.

Spy books

A mixed bag: the past and the present, the East and the West, and one instance of pointless, self-indulgent schlock.

My review of Jack of Spies by David Downing

My review of Night Heron by Adam Brookes

My review of I Am Pilgrim, one of the few books I couldn’t finish.

Library value:  Two must-haves and a miss.  Jack and Heron are particularly attractive books, so adding them to a summer reading display would catch eyes.

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

A mind-bending Shakespearean metafiction of a narrative nesting doll.

Library value: This is tailor made for book clubs.  There will be a lot of contrasting opinions on the scurrilous narrator, his scamp of a father, and his sympathetic but difficult sister.

My review.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Did someone mention mind-bending metafiction?  The gold standard of the tenuously--and yet deeply--intertwined multi-narrative.  Sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, travelogue, etc.

Library value: This is one of those books, like House of Leaves and, to a lesser extent, American Gods, that needs to be on your shelves just waiting for the reader that needs to find it, wrestle with it, figure it out, dismiss it, come back to it, lather it, rinse it, repeat it.

TV

Game of Thrones season 4

That was a rollercoaster of a season.  It stretched longer than usual for me, since I was fortunate enough to attend a fan premier event in Brooklyn in late March; based on that first episode, I had high hopes for the nine that followed...hopes that were only partially met.  The highs were very high: various intense scenes with pivotal and fan-favorite Oberyn Martell, that massive battle at the Wall, and some definitive turning points in numerous storylines.  But there were missteps, to my mind, as well.  As good as most of Oberyn’s scenes were, I came out of the season feeling like he was underutilized.  Then I had some general pacing concerns, a fact born from the adaptation choice that undergirded this outing from the beginning: by and large, these episodes covered the last third of A Storm of Swords, a sequence of pages chock full with some of the biggest shocks and cataclysmic climaxes of the entire series.  Such events could leave viewers breathless and overwhelmed, but spacing them as the production did led to some uncomfortable dead space in certain storylines, space that was filled with varying degrees of success.  (Space that left the series open for that controversial Jaime-Cersei scene, a moment drawn from the books that the writers and directors nonetheless seemed not to know how to approach.)  I’m generally happy with the season, though, and thrilled by this year’s finale and where various characters are heading--and I can only hope that certain missing elements are being cagily held back to shock everyone, even book readers…

Library value: One university has already had a major course designed around this series and the books that inspired it.  Why not your library?  Make a Thrones course for the people.  Use it as an opportunity to bring in local experts to elucidate fantasy, filmmaking, adaptation, fandom, the Dothraki language...

Bob’s Burgers

What a delightful discovery this was for me.  What started as an idle need to watch *something* while hanging out with a friend on chilly late spring nights turned into my latest animation obsession.  It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed as hard as I did when Bob decided to live in the walls of his apartment/restaurant to avoid his overbearing in-laws (a natural, and hilarious progression of an otherwise tired TV trope).  Yet somehow even that was surpassed in humor shock value in one moment of absurd cow-death.  Yet more than just belly-shakers, Bob’s Burgers gives us a sweet portrait of a modern-ish, struggling middle class family, with megalomaniacal and bunny eared daughter Louise to enthusiastic, unexpectedly hard-bitten mother and wife Linda, and most especially awkward, randy, blossoming young woman Tina…*uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*.  But Bob himself brings new life to the trope of the schlubby, struggling, animated family man: he’s less dopey than Homer Simpson, more of a dad than Peter Griffin, and has more of a moral center than Stan Smith.  H. John Benjamin’s patented everyman drawl, with its notes of improv, make Bob the most realistic guy ever incarnated in lines and color.

Library value: The DVDs for seasons one through three are available.  Give your community the gift of Bob bingeing!  A’riiiiiight!!!

American Horror Story seasons 1 & 2

One thing I’ve noticed in the two seasons of AHS that I’ve watched so far is that there isn’t necessarily enough to the writers’ initial concept to fill 13 episodes, and so they end up throwing the kitchen sink at us before circling back to the logical, thematically-satisfying conclusion to the original conceit.  This season treated us to a potentially haunted asylum, a murderous maniac or three, twisted mommy issues, Nazi experiments, UFOs, the Devil, the Angel of Death...and I’m honestly not sure if more than two of those really had much of a bearing on the very effective finale.  It doesn’t really give a sense that the creators have any interest in providing neatly-bound stories.  But who cares?  Every smidgen of it is stylish and interesting, and you’re never sure which bit will end up being relevant to the endgame.  Most importantly, the cast knocks it out of the park.  Jessica Lange is particularly impossible to tear your eyes away from, whether as the southern mom with a dark secret in season one or as the harsh nun who feels an honest calling to help the wretches in her care in season 2.  Her various transformations, particularly throughout the second season, are transcendent.

Library value:  The lesson of American Horror Story is constant reinvention, within and between seasons.  Don’t let that be lost on your library.  Your Library Season One can be brought to an end; start season two with all new costumes and personalities.  Season One: Haunted Library...dusty and stodgy.  Season Two: Creepy experiments at the sleek info center.  Am I over-extending this metaphor?  Er, also, I’m sure your 20-something patrons would love an AHS themed Halloween party or something.

Veep & Silicon Valley

It has been noted that Veep is the king of the awkward human interaction on TV.  To be more appropriate, Veep is the president, and Silicon Valley’s first season makes a very strong showing for Speaker of the House, at the very least.  or maybe chair of the House Science and Technology Committee?  Regardless, both these shows provide laughs and groans in equal measure.  While Veep continues to expose what you can’t help but feel is a very authentic portrait of the venal, self-absorbed people who populate the heights of the American government, SV is much more everyman in its take on a group of brilliant but discombobulated techies attempting to launch a web startup.  I grew very fond of the hapless protagonist, in all his earnestness, and the various twists and turns of fate demonstrate the lingering uncertainty of the tech world.  (And if you weren;t afraid of the possibilities inherent in self-driving cars, you will be after this season.)  And Veep Selina?  She’s a trainwreck, but you can’t help rooting for her self-serving grasping at power, especially as she continues to suffer numerous unnamable indignities.

Library value: All right, I’m having trouble coming up with appropriate library ideas for these HBO and FX shows.  Obviously you should own all this stuff on DVD--especially these premium-station shows that a lot of your patrons may not be willing or able to pay for...and we want to discourage piracy, don’t we?  Oh, that actually gives me a grand idea.  I was going to say that we could take these shows as an inspiration to hold light-hearted debates on current events and technology developments--feel free to do that too--but an even better idea is to use all your premium channel DVDs in an anti-piracy campaign.  I don’t have all the details.  That’s your job.  But it would be nice for libraries to engage in this kind of thing in a variety of ways.  It can be fun!  And bloody and sexy, possibly.  Probably.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD season 1 and Arrow seasons 1 & 2

Let’s start with Marvel.  The series (which I always enjoyed because I’m a nerd, don’t get me wrong) really picked up toward the middle of the season, after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  In case there are any out there who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil the Marvel Universe-shaking revelations, but its ramifications really sent this show in a new direction.  The new status quo will lead to some interesting storytelling next season, even as things are looking strange for our beloved Agent Coulson in the wake of his death and rebirth.  I was, though, disappointed that, after weeks of non-stop tension, psychological drama, and even a taste of horror, the season ended with a glorified fistfight.  I would have expected they’d conserve a little of the budget to send the season off with a near-cinematic climax, but no.  And there were a few Chekhov’s Supervillains teased through the year that have yet to be fired, so hopefully next year we’ll get some of that.  All in all, I’m looking forward to a strong season 2.  My other new favorite superhero show was Arrow, which approached comic book adaptation in a very different--some might say more traditionally “actiony”--manner.  I continue to be charmed by its cast of supporting characters, and the acrobatic antics of the title hero put the somewhat clumsy choreography of SHIELD to shame.  The best element of the show continues to be its parallel narratives, showing Oliver Queen as the vigilante in the present attempting to fulfil his vow to save Starling City, while in the past we witness his gradual development into a hero.  The end of the second season was oddly inconclusive, though, to my taste--after a big buildup, it was certainly less climactic that season one with its doomsday device.  There’s a lot to be said about the difference in approach to comic book adaptation that these two series take--not least in regards to one actually directly adapting an established character, while the other adapts an entire universe through the actions of mostly original characters--but I think that’s better left for when both series come back in the fall, and I can do real side-by-side comparisons.

Library value: Everybody loves superheroes.  (Admit it.)  All these movies and TV shows are a great way to lure patrons into reading. “Love Oliver Queen in that WB show?  Here’s 900 pages of his comic book adventures!”  Keep these possibilities in mind the next time you’re working on your collection development.  Comics and graphic novels are excellent additions to your library.  Still holding out?  Wanna fight about it?

Guilty pleasures: Nashville, Revenge and Scandal

I can’t believe I got into Nashville this year, but there it is.  It helps that my boyfriend moved down there, but I got hooked on the show in a hotel room well before that happened.  The musical element is almost entirely non-obnoxious, and even pleasant more often than not.  It’s some fun, slightly-trashy evening soapiness, served up with a twang and unrealistic southern righteousness, but I found myself compelled by Rayna Jaymes’ quest to redefine herself in the music industry, and there’s an interesting gay subplot that deals sensitively with self-repression in a not always welcoming context.  Speaking of trashy soap, Revenge happily returned to form this year, with Emily Thorne focusing more on the Graysons and less on shadowy international cabals.  Victoria’s compulsion to end Emily grew ever more baroque, as a long-lost son’s return gave her all the more reasons to act the finely-appointed Hamptons mama bear.  Sadly, Nolan was a little underused this year.  We want more Nolan!  Finally, Scandal served up its usual jolts.  I can’t even talk about the murder and betrayal that went on.  Olivia Pope found herself at her lowest ebb, and it was heartbreaking to see this usually-composed woman racked with doubt and recrimination.  To say nothing of Mellie, whose self-abnegation for the sake of her husband has forced her to endure psychological wounds that the president’s uncomprehending scorn serve only to continually tear open.  And faces were licked, unfortunately.

Library value:  Okay, you got me here.  But just like with romance novels, your library needs a little guilt here and there.  Remember that we’re not running a boarding school!  Your patrons are free to have a good time.  Stock up on those DVDs.

Revolution

Farewell, Revolution, and my favorite character, the schlubby, heroic, dispossessed tech nerd Aaron.  I don’t think enough people gave this show the chance it deserved, but I suppose two seasons is more than a lot of ambitious sci-fi dramas get on network television.  To be fair, I merely endured the interminable gunfights and fistfights that always seemed to leave Our Heroes only negligibly differently-off each episode.  The territorial and philosophical differences between the various factions were interesting in the abstract, but when it was all reduced to fisticuffs, the appeal waned--though when “the Patriots” began brainwashing youth into killing machines, well, that offered a disturbing, dystopian element that the show needed (and hearkened back to its faux-Hunger Games roots).  But for my money, the best element of the show was in the burgeoning sentience of the nanotechnology that suppressed the world’s electricity in the first place, offering a “face” to the overall threat as well as an opportunity for eventual resolution.  Now we’ll never see that potential play out.

Library value: It’s always good to invest in some alternate sci-fi--it’s not all Star Wars and Star Trek, and some of the best speculative fiction is based right here on good ol’ planet Earth..  Bonus points for dystopia and for making your patrons think about the primacy of technology in their lives.

Movies

I’m gonna lump these together because I can, and we all know what I’m going to say.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier changed the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Godzilla was a fun romp.  X-Men: Days of Future Past was an effective reset to the X-Men movie mythos and a pretty affecting film in its own right.  And The Amazing Spider-Man --well, there was nothing wrong with it, but it just didn’t leave me as excited as the other movies on this list.  Sony hasn’t quite got the formula down yet.

Library value: I’m getting verklempt.  Talk amongst yourselves.  Here, I’ll give you a topic: The Marvel movies are way better than the (plans for the) DC movies, even considering underwhelming Spider-Man and X-Men films and really good Batman ones.  Discuss.

Games

Carcassonne

Here’s one of those classics of the mature board game set that I had been itching to try out.  It is not as thematically engaging as Puerto Rico, nor as cleanly enjoyable as Settlers of Catan, but it is definitely a worthy game.  You place tiles to build up the French countryside, extending roads, cities, and monasteries as you go.  It’s a bit of a puzzler, essentially the ingredients of an abstract game given some irrelevant thematic trappings (which I absolutely appreciate--when I play games, I’d much rather feel like I am in a way rehearsing some human activity, rather than simply plugging arbitrary sockets together.  Which I guess is something some humans do in real life, but I much prefer stepping back and saying “Oooooh French countryside in an alternate universeeeee, look what we didddddd”).

Library value: It’s always a good idea to stock up on gateway games and classic games.  This one fits under both categories.

Takaido

This game is a treasure.  You and your friends compete to see who can have the nicest time strolling from Kyoto to Tokyo in feudal Japan.  Each player adopts a persona, each with particular bonuses for engaging in the activities you can choose from along the way.  Do you have an artistic soul?  Then collect tryptichs of the splendors of nature you see from the roadside.  A bit of an epicure?  There are many fine meals to be sampled.  Or maybe your tastes are more hedonistic; feel free to indulge in the hot spring spas that dot your path.  All these and more make for a truly lovely frame to a game of collection and progress, where the slowest traveler--more intent on the pleasures of the journey, perhaps--always gets to go first, and the only requirement is that you spend each night in an inn with your fellow travelers.  It sounds like it might be dull, but instead Takaido captures the perfect balance between competition and relaxation.  It is also the most beautifully designed game I have yet played, with a foundation of pure white splashed with a sheer, shimmering palette that puts me in mind of sunlight shining through cherry blossoms.  No lie.

Library value: People of all ages will love this game.  This would actually be a great candidate for generation-bridging game events.  Nothing to get too worked up and competitive over--just a lot of enjoyment for everyone.

Libertalia

Is it too late to talk about the pirate craze?  Maybe, but this game remains fun whether Jack Sparrow is a la mode or not.  I played this one early in the spring, so its details elude me, but in general each player seeks to leverage the strength and skills of their pirate crews for advantage in claiming various treasures.  It’s sort of a light deck-based card game, with a lot of neat pirate ships to choose from and some entertaining scurvy cutthroats on your cards.  This is a game I felt like playing again in order to better appreciate its intricacies--I just haven’t had a chance yet.

Library value: What better activity for next year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day observances?  (You know your library celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

And that’s that.  Hope you found something of use in my report.  I just read and watch for fun (“I do not read to think. I do not read to learn. I do not read to search for truth.

I know the truth, the truth is hardly what I need!”--bonus points if you can name the musical), but every little stick of media can be turned into worthwhile programming or marketing.  Don’t be afraid to flavor your library with your personal tastes.