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From this month's Library Express:

Green Day Does Shout-Out to Spit and Passion; Fans Not Customers Author Appears on CNBC-TV’s Mad Money

The punk-rock band Green Day featured Cristy C. Road’s graphic novel memoir, Spit and Passion, on their website November 6. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day has said "Cristy C. Road is a bad ass. She has a list of published work that leaves me awed and inspired." The band plays a central role in the memoir; Road became obsessed with them at the age of twelve as she struggled to balance the values of a Cuban Catholic family with her newfound queer identity. Bitch has also praised the work, saying "Road's writing has long brought to vivid life the experiences of a queer-identified Latina punk rocker."

Meanwhile, a different kind of bad ass, Vernon Hill, author of Fans Not Customers, is also attracting attention. Hill, who founded the hugely successful Commerce Bank in the U.S. and Metro Bank in the UK and is one of only a handful of Chief Executives to become a member of the Forbes 20/20 club (in the same job for over 20 years paying more than 20 percent returns every year) will appear on the CNBC-TV show Mad Money with Jim Cramer on November 26. On November 25 the Philadelphia Inquirer  will run a review, and if you want to get an early taste of the book, American Banker will be posting excerpts from the book every Monday in November.  Fortune.com also plans a review.

» Fans Not Customers: How to Create Growth Companies in a No Growth World

February Sneak Peeks

Passwords Primeval

The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One

Hilda and the Bird Parade
 
The Festival of Earthly Delights

Léon and Louise Book of the Week on Oprah.com; “Never Seen” PBS NewsHour Poem of the Week

Alex Capus’s delightful new novel, Léon and Louise, was selected as the Book of the Week on Oprah.com last week! The book was highly praised by reviewer Leigh Newman who said "Capus' light, playful touch makes everything feel as if touched by an invisible French-speaking Mary Poppins, whether he's poking fun at a busybody landlord eating calf liver with onion or spinning up a description of Louise's polka-dot blouse. What results is a winsome bonbon of a novel in which "The End" feels like an unexpected and unfairly realistic awakening." Léon and Louise is also the Indie Next Pick for the month of November and was longlisted for the German Book Prize. On July 20 Publishers Weekly said “[Capus] is an apt storyteller who captures the complexities of love and the hardships of everyday life with a keen eye.”

In other pick-of-the-week news, Hoa Nguyen’s poem “Never Seen,” from her collection As Long as Trees Last, was chosen as the PBS NewsHour  poem of the week last week. The Poetry Project has praised the work, saying "[Nguyen] shares such a streetwise feminism, keeping the edge and making it something you can dance to.” And on August 29, The Huffington Post said “Nguyen makes poetry that sticks in the heart and the craw, and she deserves to be widely and aggressively read […]”

» As Long As Trees Last

Wall Street Journal Reviews The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

Diana Wagman’s new novel, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, appearing in print on November 3. WSJ called it “tense and fast-paced…Most literary abduction novels are about stolen children—Ms. Wagman offers a smart, affecting reversal.” Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets was also reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on November 4, lauded as "A brisk and vividly drawn kidnapping tale…[it] tilts on Winnie's strength. In her, Wagman has constructed a magnetic figure who is easy to root for...The book also benefits from breathless pace and a dialogue-heavy structure that hints at Wagman's screenwriting experience and keeps the pages turning." And, to round out the weekend, the novel was also reviewed on Book Page, which praised: “Events build to a fever pitch in Oren’s too-hot house, spinning out of control, and the climax is a wrenching, satisfying, awful surprise. Wagman has crafted a dark, funny and sensitive thriller that might be the first of its kind: the Oedipal abduction tale.”   ForeWord Reviews also shares a glowing review in their Winter 2013 edition.

Starred and Recent Reviews

Starred Reviews:

For Passwords Primeval: 20 American Poets in Their Own Words:

“The range of topics proves that poetry isn’t just for poets. This book will be a joy for anyone who loves the art of conversation, not just the conversation of art.”—Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2012

Recent Reviews:

For The Unreal and Real: Selected Stories, Volume One and Two:

“The Unreal and the Real guns from the grim to the ecstatic, from the State to the Garden of Eden, with just one dragon between. (Every collection needs one dragon.) In every good career-spanning collection, you can observe an author growing into her authority…[E]very story…explains that there is no better spirit in all of American letters than that of Ursula Le Guin.”—Slate, November 2, 2012

For Hilda and the Bird Parade:

“I'm glad to report that the book is ever bit the triumph that the earlier volume was…As with all the Nobrow titles, this is a beautifully made book, and as with all of Pearson's work, it is a beautifully told story…[The] perfect…gift for a comic-loving kid in your orbit.”—BoingBoing, November 1, 2012

For The Festival of Earthly Delights:

"And here is Dojny’s surprising strong suit: though the book is often slapstick funny, the characters also convey real depth and emotion."—The Rumpus, October 30, 2012

 

Six Consortium Titles Included in Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2012; Two Best Books of the Week

Despite setbacks from Hurricane Sandy, the Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2012 is already out. This year’s list included six Consortium titles. Kirby Gann’s Ghosting was selected for the Best Fiction list and Louise Krug’s Louise: Amended for the Non-Fiction list.  The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser, was chosen for the Poetry list. In Science Fiction/Fantasy, we were represented by Kij Johnson’s collection of linked short stories, At the Mouth of the River of Bees. Meanwhile, The Voyeurs, by Gabrielle Bell, took a spot on the Comics list and Hilda and the Midnight Giant by Luke Pearson was placed on the Children’s Fiction list.

Publishers Weekly also selected two Consortium titles, Staten Island Noir and On Being Ill as part of this week’s “ Best Books of the Week.” They praised Staten Island Noir as an “exceptionally strong anthology” and On Being Ill as “‘In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality,’ writes Woolf, and she proves her observation correct in this essay.” Congratulations to our publishers!

» Ghosting
» At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
» The Voyeurs

» Hilda and the Midnight Giant
» Staten Island Noir
» On Being Ill: with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen

Monoceros Wins ReLit Award

Suzette Mayr’s Monoceros has won the 2012 ReLit Award for Novels. The ReLit Awards are Canada’s “pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses,” says The Globe and Mail. The book was also longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award for Best Fiction, shortlisted for the W.O. Mitchell Award for Best Calgary Fiction, and chosen as a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2011.

eBook of the Week

Hipster Hitler
by James Carr

In a competition of the most hated memes of modern times, "Hipster" has now caught up with "Hitler." Artists James Carr and Archana Kumar thought, why not combine the two? After all, Hitler was indeed a hipster of his time, a failed artist in Vienna scrounging up extra dollars or kroner painting quick architecture scenes for the tourists.

In their heavily trafficked website, "hipsterhitler.com," these comic artists posit a new sort of history in which Hitler wears Silverlake-trendy glasses, thrift store sweaters, and outspoken T-shirts, and the reader begins to quickly understand the history of Hitler in a new and strangely engaging way.

The Feral House book of Hipster Hitler includes a few dozen pages of comics heretofore unseen online.