Just got the combined catalog for Counterpoint, Sierra Books & Soft Skull Press last week. Sierra Club didn't have much this time but there were several titles in the other two imprints that appealed to me. Here are the standouts:

Race to the Polar Sea by Ken McGoogan. BOOYAH! A polar history title! This one is about none other than Elisha Kent Kane one of the most famous northern explorers of all time and a standout in American exploration history. Plus he was in love with the woman who founded American spiritualism. Talk about a fascinating life! Kane is totally worthy of a standalone biography and I can't wait to see how this one reads.

Get Your War On by David Rees. Lots of folks might be familiar with Rees's iconic clip art comic strips using office worker designs to comment on the Iraq War. This collection includes material from his earlier collections and 65% new material from the last three years. From the publisher:

Thus by working with a deceptively limited palette of color (red), graphics (clip art of cubicle workers), and language (largely foul), Rees succeeds in depicting a country of grieving, angry and confused citizens, feeling hatred for-and feeling the hatred of-the world beyond our shores. In so doing, he has illustrated better than any artist, politician, or pundit the true state of America's soul...its violence, its compassion.

The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles, Ed by Jeff Martin. This one had me at the title - as pretty much anyone who has ewver worked retail will agree. (My first job was at a toy store, where we offered free gift wrapping, even during Christmas. All I'm going to say is that people were not as patient as they should have been.) Some of it is definitely humorous with a side of snarky: "Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job mystery series, describes all the crazy jobs she's done to write her books; Jim DeRogatis (author of Let it Blurt) describes hanging out with Al at Al Rocky’s Music Store; Colson Whitehead describes how three summers working a Long Island ice cream store put him off ice cream and desserts of all kinds for the rest of his life" But it sounds like the book has a high note or two as well, so I'm hoping there is an solid balance between depressing and fun.

This book however not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail, but finds the delight in it as well. If it weren’t for the customer, our economy would not function. And for every abusive customer or moronic employee, there are people that come into our lives and change its course forever.

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me by Martin Millar. Millar and Zeppelin...that's all I needed to read to want this one.

Martin and his equally nerdy best friend Greg have overactive imaginations. When they aren't fighting the monstrous hordes of Xotha, they are competing for the attentions of Suzy. But she's not likely to ditch Zed, the hippest boy in the school, for the likes of them, is she? Overhead, a Zeppelin approaches. Its passengers, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Hank Williams, think it's worth leaving heaven to see the greatest rock band in the world. Even the fairies are fans.

Meanwhile, twenty years later, Martin is trying to keep body and soul together in London, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, pretending to judge a literary competition and telling his friend, depressed single mother Manx, about the of his new book Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, realizing what a stupid boy he was to have been chasing Suzy, when the sweet if rather plain girl Cherry is besotted with him.

No one writes like Millar and I love that about him; he is brave in all the ways that few writers are. And please - ZEPPELIN!!!!

Trash Fish: A Life by Greg Keeler. I find books about fishing (and birding) oddly appealing and this one which combines a coming-of-age story about the fish crazy author sounds oddly touching. Plus the author is not only a fisherman, but professor, artist and songwriter. If he's funny to boot I'm going to love this book.

Fight Scenes by Greg Bottoms, Illus by David Powell. "In vignettes that focus on identity, culture and memory, Greg Bottoms re-creates the age of twelve - that awkward time between leaving boyhood and becoming a man." Stewart O'Nan calls it "Fight Scenes is as hilarious, ugly, sweet, sad, haunting, and brutal as the hard process of growing up too soon. A perfect calibrated collision of fiction and remembrance."

Sounds like a darker version of a Minx title for boys - color me intrigued.