Compass Points 107

Hurrah – the festive season is almost upon us – a fantastic excuse to eat and dink as much as we like! But come January, we all know that what we – and all of your customers – will be in the mood for; yep, some sort of drastic detox. How fortunate then that published in that very month is Super Juice Me! A 28-Day Juice Plan by Jason Vale (author of the best-selling Funky Fresh Juice Book ) Jason made a groundbreaking and critically acclaimed film, Super Juice Me! The Big Juice Experiment, in which eight people with twenty-two different diseases between them, lived on nothing but freshly extracted juice for 28 days. Jason wanted to test what effect, if any, living on a juice only diet for 28-days would have on their diseases and overall health. The results at the end of the Super Juice Me! Big Juice Experiment were nothing short of remarkable, with every person experiencing positive changes to their health conditions; one person even lost 38lbs in just those 28 days! A DVD of this film is going to be shrink-wrapped to the front of Hello magazine in January – which will give it massive exposure. Super Juice Me! is without question the single most effective juice diet yet; as Jason says, “Give Me 28-Days And I’ll Give You Back Your Life”. He challenges anyone suffering from overweight or a lifestyle disease, to try it on for size. As you can imagine, the media will be all over this book! ITV’s This Morning will be interviewing Jason on 17th of December, OK! Magazine will review it on 22nd December, BBC Radio 2 Steve Wright in the Afternoon will feature it on 8th of January, Channel 4 Sunday Brunch will talk about it on 11th January and there will be lots more local and national radio interviews. So make sure you have ordered plenty – it’s going to be BIG! Super Juice Me! A 28-Day Juice Plan (£11.99, pb, 978 0954766450) is published by Crown House Publishing in January, and you can find out more and order it here

Click here to watch a trailer for Jason Vale’s Super Juice Me! documentary.

We are now entering a period of intense promotion on Radio Two for the The Popmaster Quiz Book. Just to remind you, this is based on the pop quiz that takes place on the Radio Two morning show hosted by Ken Bruce which reaches over 8 million listeners. Popmaster is a much loved feature – and there is no doubt in my mind that this book is the perfect Christmas present for anyone who loves Radio Two, anyone who loves quizzes, or any one who loves pop music – and that must be a fairly massive cross-section of all your customers! Starting on 1 December, there will be a full week of promotion for the The Popmaster Quiz Book on air on BBC Radio 2, which will continue with a plug for the title following the daily quiz right through to Christmas. There will also be a whole page promoting the book on the BBC Radio 2 website. The Popmaster Quiz Book contains hundreds of officially approved questions to tease and enthral from the BBC show offering readers the chance to score their own results and test their knowledge against friends and family. The format gives a clever way of revealing the answers, adding to the fun! The Popmaster Quiz Book (pb, £9.99, 978 190595950 1) is published by Red Planet and you can order it here

And if you’d like to do a different sort of pop quiz – then click here to find out which pop star is your alter ego!

The Costa Book Award Shortlist has been just announced and is getting lots of press coverage. Originally established in 1971 as the Whitbread Prize, the Costa Book Awards is the only major UK book prize that recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. You can read all about it this year’s awards in the Guardian here. We are delighted to announce that the Carcanet poet Kei Miller has been shortlisted for the prestigious Costa Book Award for Poetry for The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion. The other 2014 Costa Poetry Award shortlistees are Colette Bryce for The Whole and Rain-domed Universe (Picador), Jonathan Edwards for My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren) and Lavinia Greenlaw for A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde (Faber & Faber). Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on Monday 5th January 2015. The overall winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2014 will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony on Tuesday 27th January 2015. The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion (pb, £9.95 978 1847772671) by Kei Miller is published by Carcanet.

While we’re thinking about celebrating the most enjoyable books – have a look here at Scroobius Pip's animated poem Library - commissioned by Chris Hawkins for BBC 6 Music – much of what he says could also apply to your bookshop – apart from the bit about books being free that is!!

Homophobia in sport is very much a hot topic at present. There are still currently no openly gay footballers in any of the major European football leagues, and in his new book Proud, former Welsh Rugby Union captain Gareth Thomas says he contemplated suicide so he would "not be part of a horrible world I had created around me". Olympic diver Tom Daley revealed in December last year that he was in a relationship with a man, but there are far fewer examples in football. In 1990, former England Under-21 international Justin Fashanu was the first professional footballer in Britain to reveal he was gay, and he took his own life eight years later, aged 37.  When Robbie Rogers stepped out onto the field as a winger for the LA Galaxy in May last year, he made history as the first openly gay man to play in a major US professional sport. Just a few months earlier Robbie came out, only the second footballer in Britain to do so, and decided to quit football for good. Coming out to Play describes Robbie’s experiences as a closeted gay man in the rampantly heterosexual world of professional football, his decision to come out and leave behind the sport he loved, and his subsequent decision to return to football and sign for the Galaxy. Robbie Rogers knew he wanted to be a professional footballer from the age of four and knew he was gay from the age of 13. He kept the latter completely hidden until he was 25 because he considered those two realities irreconcilable. Finally, in February 2013, in a blog post that received global attention, he came out to the world. Robbie’s memoir tells the story of the torturous but ultimately happy and groundbreaking path he trod. It is a fascinating account of what it is like to be openly gay in the macho environment of the world’s most popular sport. On 26 or 27 November, there will Robbie will do a big interview with Ross Kingon ITV’s Good Morning Britain and there will be other media coverage during December. This is an important and timely memoir, and there will be many interested in reading it. Coming Out To Play (hb, £20, 978 1849547208) is published by Biteback and you can find out more and order it here

Provocations is a groundbreaking new series of short polemics composed by some of the most intriguing voices in contemporary culture, and edited by journalist, broadcaster and commentator, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Never less than sharp, intelligent and controversial, Provocations is a major new contribution to some of the most vital discussions in society today. There are three titles published in November all in hardback, from Biteback at £10, and you can see all three titles here

The first title is The Madness of Modern Parenting by Zoe Williams which argues that parenting has become a headache, leaving parents feeling failures because they can’t live up to all the expectations of society. This book is the antithesis of all parenting discussions and public policy, mainly through a series of bonkers research propositions, which take middle-class outcomes as superior, and then tracks back to isolate what exactly it is that middle-class parents do. We can all accept that a lack of parental love leads to terrible outcomes, but the truth is, pretty well all parents love their children. Can any parent or child really feel good in this quest for perfection and perpetual blaming? There will be an extract from this title in the Guardian shortly. Provocations: The Madness of Modern Parenting by Zoe Williams (£10, hb, 9781849547512) is published by Biteback and you can order it here.

Tell me, do you think you’ve done a good job as parents if your children turn into teenagers like Willow and Jaden Smith (whose parents are actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith)? Have a little look here at this interview with them and ask yourselves whether you’d be happy if your kids came up with such nonsense!

The 2oth Century in Cartoons: A History in Pictures by Tony Husband is published this month by Arcturus Publishing (hb, 978 1784044336, £12.99) A picture says more than a thousand words and this is a decade by decade résumé of the 20th Century featuring the work of the greatest cartoonists of their time. This book summarizes the major events of the century which saw the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, Prohibition, the Depression, the rise and rise of the automobile and cinema, the Second World War, the Nuclear bomb, Civil Rights, the Space Race, Chernobyl and a host of other events, all captured here in cartoon form to provide a vivid history as it happened. It features the work of the greatest cartoonists of the 2oth Century, from Clifford Berryman, Bernard Partridge and Ed Valtman, through DR Fitzpatrick and Leslie Illingworth to David Low and Ray Lowrie. This book not only tells you the story of the 20th Century but is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud – and there aren’t many books you can say that about! It is a really fresh take on history with over 200 cartoons of the highest standard; you are in the hands of expert artists as their work guides you round their - and our - life and times. Find out more and order it here

And if you feel you haven’t got time to browse through The 2oth Century in Cartoons: A History in Pictures to find out about our life and times – then why not watch this fantastic history of the world in two minutes!

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She died on 14 June1928, only weeks before the Conservative government extended the vote to all women over twenty-one years of age. Suffragette: My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst is the original autobiography of this massively influential and controversial suffragette. It is published by Hesperus in January (pb, 978 1843915591, £8.99) – and Emmeline’s story is the basis for the new Hollywood film Suffragette which is going to be HUGE! How do I know? Well, it features Meryl Streep in the role of Emmeline, and also stars Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter. It is already rumoured to be in the running for several awards. Suffragette releases in the UK on 16th January 2015. Emmeline Pankhurst was named as one of the 100 Most Important People of the

20th Century and featured in the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons. With insight and great wit, Suffragette: My Own Story chronicles the beginnings of her interest in feminism through to her militant and controversial fight for women’s right to vote. While she was the figurehead of the suffragette movement, it advocated some controversial tactics such as arson, violent protest and hunger strikes. Even today there is still debate about the effectiveness of her extreme strategies, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in Britain. Her mantle was taken up by her daughters and granddaughter with her legacy still very much alive today.

Order Suffragette here

There isn’t an official trailer for Suffragette yet, but you can watch a great little 2 minute clip here which tells you all about it – including both a sneak previews of Meryl Streep filming it in Britain earlier this year – and also some great archive film from the British Film Institute.

That’s all for now folks, more next week!

This blog is taken from a  newsletter is sent weekly to over 700 booksellers as well as publishers and publicists. If you would like to order any of the titles mentioned, then please click here to go to the Compass New Titles Website or talk to your Compass Sales representative.