USA Today Picks Fall Sleepers
As part of their fall preview, USA Today highlights three sleepers; titles that are NOT on their interactive calendar of the season’s big books.
We’re pleased to see they pick two titles we’ve been tracking; the third has not on our radar. Below are the titles, links are to the USA Today stories.
Fall sleeper: A blind cat leads the way in ‘Homer’s Odyssey’
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Looks like this sleeper is already a best seller; we hear it debuts on the upcoming (9/13) NYT Nonfiction bestseller list at #14.
USA Today also includes a video of Gwen Cooper reading from the book (with Homer providing appropriate commentary):
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Fall sleeper: David Small magnifies a troubled childhood
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The graphic novel Stitches, by children’s book illustrator David Small was one of the hits of BEA and a librarian’s favorite at the “Shout ‘n Share” session. Many predict that this book will serve as a “gateway book” to bring graphic novels into the mainstream.
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Fall sleeper: ‘Home Boy’ is a slam-dunk for H.M. Naqvi
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This debut novel is about three young Muslim men, living in NYC, who have to deal with prejudice and imprisonment after 9/11. Naqvi says of his own experience at the time,
You find yourself in the peculiar position that you are reeling from this great tragedy and then you are subsequently and consequently suspected of being somehow part and parcel of it.
Naqvi is a slam poet (he represented Pakistan in the 1995National Poetry Slam); you can hear echoes of that background in his reading:
