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The Book Expo America Superlatives Post

Brenna Clarke Gray

Staff Writer

Part muppet and part college faculty member, Brenna Clarke Gray holds a PhD in Canadian Literature while simultaneously holding two cats named Chaucer and Swift. It's a juggling act. Raised in small-town Ontario, Brenna has since been transported by school to the Atlantic provinces and by work to the Vancouver area, where she now lives with her stylish cyclist/webgeek husband and the aforementioned cats. When not posing by day as a forserious academic, she can be found painting her nails and watching Degrassi (through the critical lens of awesomeness). She posts about graphic narratives at Graphixia, and occasionally she remembers to update her own blog, Not That Kind of Doctor. Blog: Not That Kind of Doctor Twitter: @brennacgray

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Now that we are all home and rested, some of us who attended Book Expo America this year got together to name some bests and worsts from the experience. Here, then, without further ado, are our BEA Superlatives 2014.

Best-Dressed Author:
A.S. King in her amazing knee-high green Doc Martins. (And her RiverRun Bookstore tote bag!) Clear winner.

Most Oddly Apt Product Tie-In:

The free The Fault in Our Stars kleenex packets that Penguin was handing out.

Book Least Likely to Appear in a School Library:
Penis Pokey by Christopher Behrens.
It’s a board book that, um, you stick your penis through. So.

photo

Most Racist Book:
Islamerica: Isa, Y’shua, Jesus by Alexander Wilbur Fredrickson.
“Liberal politicians deny it. The general public is blind to it. But radical Islam is on the rise — in America!”

Least Sexy Promotion of Sexy Books:

The Ellora’s Cave booth with their juiced-up hunks. Biceps are nice. Biceps that are bigger than my head are just frightening.

Most Creative/Pathetic Marketing Ploy:
“Enjoy the Toilet Paper While You Still Can” banners on the backs of the stall doors and above the urinals in the Javits washrooms.

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Most Javits Moment:
Brenna bought ten dollar juice. TEN DOLLARS.

Publicist Phrase That Most Needs to Die:
“I know you’ll get it on Edelweiss or NetGalley, but just take this print copy toooooo” (said while forcing a book on you that you don’t want to carry).

Booth with Highest Percentage of Pirate-Costumed People:
Scientology. (They also had the nicest carpeting.)

pirates

Most Appalling Lack of Crowd Control:
The signing non-line for David Mitchell (you can read the saga of this day here).

Most Liney Non-Line:
The non-line for the Lauren Oliver Rooms galley drop. The publicist kept yelling, You’re not allowed to line up! But no one was going anywhere, and people would ask, What’s this line for? And everyone in the non-line would say, It’s NOT a line.

Best use of Lego:
The Dorling Kindersley booth. They really rocked ownership of Lego and Star Wars trademarks.

boba fett and dr b

Least Humane Galley-Drop Style:
Penguin Books. They just stack them on the floor and you have to scavenge the piles like a dog to find the one you’re looking for. It reminds me a lot of how children feed the kindergarten fish.

Sentence That No Longer Causes People to Flinch:
“I follow you on Twitter.”

Coolest Usage of an iPad:
The photo booth at Open Road Media.

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brenna and josh