These Things We Loved in 2015 Will Change Your Life.

We though we might have some kind of new opening this year, but how can we, the year is the year, and so in an otherwise terrible year in so many ways, for so many people, at least there are books, and television, music and movies. Though not enough, never enough. But here we are anyway, ignoring the rest of the year if only for a moment to share what there is, and what there was, with you, now, totally.

Memoirs that read like essays that read like memoirs and essay collections that read like memoirs that read like fever dreams, flash fiction and everything in between.

Hollywood Notebook/Wendy C. Ortiz, Benchwarmer/Josh Wilker, This Must Be The Place/Sean H. Doyle, Romantic Violence/Christian Picciolini, Belief is its own kind of truth, Maybe/Lori Jakiela 
 
Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

Crystal Eaters/Shane Jones, Loss Angeles/Mathieu Cailler, The Dark Will End The Dark/Darrin Doyle, Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty/Brian Alan Ellis, How To Carry Bigfoot Home/Chris Tarry, Fourteen Stories, None Of Them Are Yours/Luke B. Goebel

Books as collaboration by authors who may or may not have facial hair and/or appear in other categories.

Camouflage Country/Ryan Ridge and Mel Bosworth, Tables Without Chairs #1/Brian Alan Ellis and Bud Smith

And one more by Bud Smith because he's having that kind of year, yo.

F250/Bud Smith (obviously)

The movies we are happy we got to see during a year where we did even better than last year, though still didn't see enough to satisfy our movie Jones.

The End of the Tour, Straight Outta Compton, Ex Machina, Sleeping With Other People, Slo-West, Tangerine, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Brooklyn, Trainwreck, Mission Impossible: VI

Movies we are happy we got to see because our children wanted us to.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl

Movies we are really happy we got to see because our children wanted us to.

Inside Out

Documentaries that jammed.

Life In a Walk, Going Clear, Paper Tigers

Movies so bad, yet so good.

Entourage  

Movies just bad. Sadly.

The Fantastic Four. 

The best crafted movies of the year, even if they weren't quite our favorite movie.

Spotlight, Carol, The Big Short

Reboots that left us nostalgic and full of glee and sad.

Star Wars, Creed

The reboot that was not only bat shit crazy, but hands down our favorite movie of the year.

Fury Road

Movies we still hope to see.

Beasts of No Nation, Steve Jobs, The Revenant, Amy, What Happened, Miss Simone?, Room, Sicario

Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

On The Way/Cyn Vargas, Where To?/Dmitry Samarov, I Will Love You For the Rest of Your Life: Breakup Stories/Michael Czyzniejewski

Books we had the pleasure to blurb and hope you have the pleasure to read.

Bottom of the Ninth/Wyl Vilacres, Kinda Sorta American Dream/Steve Karas

Music which we yet again listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to these.

To Pimp a Butterfly/Kendrick Lamar, Something More Than Free/Jason Isbell, Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit/Courtney Barnett, Carrie & Lowell/Sufjan Stevens


Music we got to listen to live, which was way less than last year, though we did get to listen to it with the quite lovely Debbie Pritzker, which made it all better. 

Bill Joel/Wrigley Field

On the other hand, we did finally make it to the Chicago Humanities Festival. And yes, we did that with the quite lovely Debbie Pritzker as well.

Patton Oswalt/UIC Forum

Also, musical theater, for real.

Pippen, Kinky Boots

Television shows we kept on watching, that was actually good, and we watched a lot of television this year, that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Game of Thrones, Justified, Girls, The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Orange is the New Black, Homeland, Louis, Orphan Black, Rectify, The Affair 

Television shows we lovingly re-consumed because our older son said it must be so and annually at that.

Freaks and Geeks

Television shows we lovingly consumed, or continued to consume, because our younger son said it must be so.

Blackish, Fresh of the Boat, The Goldbergs

Television shows we watched because both children said it had to be, no questions asked, and we quite dug them.

Heroes, The Flash, Arrow

New television shows we quite happily consumed.

Bloodline, Daredevil, Catastrophe, Casual, Jessica Jones
Television shows we somehow didn't watch until this year and now can't understand how that was physically possible.

Fargo, The Americans

Television shows we continued to watch, and love, that no one else seems to watch.

You're The Worst, Married

Television shows we watched even they kind of sucked. Okay, there's just one really.

True Detective

The television show we watch and love so much we are tearing-up now just thinking about it, though that is because we have something caught in our eye, so fuck you.

Transparent

Possibly the single best scene in any show this year. Just saying.



Soaring debut novels and collections we were quite happy to imbibe on.

Drinking From a Bitter Cup/Angela Jackson-Brown, A Tree Born Crooked/Steph Post, Train Shots/Vanessa Blakeslee, If I'd Known You Were Coming/Kate Milliken, Lungs Full of Noise/Tessa Mellas

Quite terrific books by quite terrific literary citizens.

Zero Saints/Gabino Iglesias, The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes/David S. Atkinson 

Podcasts we still listen to again and again.

WTF with Marc Maron, Other People, The Slate Culture Gabfest, Serial, StartUp, All Write Already

And new ones we added, and will be happy to listen to again and again.

The Moment, Mystery Show, You Must Remember This

Poetry, or stuff quite like it, which we are proud to say we read more of this year than usual.

How We Bury Our Dead/Jonathan Travelstead, Addicts & Basements/Robert Vaughan, Hustle/David Tomas Martinez, errata/Lisa Fay Coutley, USA-1000/Sass Brown, A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us/Caleb Curtis, In Lieu of Flowers/Rachel Slotnick

CCLaP books we loved without (much) bias.

Twilight of the Idiots/Joseph G. Peterson, Big Venerable/Matt Rowan

Books by Jason Fisk, because he's the Jason Fisk.

Sadly Beautiful/Jason Fisk (of course)

Books we just didn't quite finish by year's end. But we will. Soon. Promise.

My Brooklyn Writer Friend/Greg Gerke, Kill Marguerite/Megan Milks, Single Stroke Seven/Lavinia Ludlow, Scary People/Kyle Muntz, The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic/Jessica Hopper, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Philip K. Dick, Rift/Kathy Fish + Robert Vaughan, Messila/Robert James Russell, Marvel And A Wonder/Joe Meno 

And most finally, there are many people to thank for making this a good year in spite of all that has been going on and feels like still will be. And we are most definitely overlooking some, a lot maybe, and we apologize for that, but there you go.

Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Moeses Soulright, Nathan Holic, Ryan W. Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear, William Walsh, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Michael Seidlinger, Gabino Iglesias, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Peter Tieryas Liu, Mike Smolarek, Duncan MacKenzie, Jeffrey Barken, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Joseph Bates, Paul Luikart, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Matty Byloos, Naomi Huffman, Brad Listi, Loren Kleinman, Michael Czyzniejewski, Ken Wohlrob, Myles and Noah Tanzer, David Masciotra, Clayton Smith, Mel Bosworth, Benoit Lelievre, Todd Summar, Megan Stielstra, Hosho McCreesh, Catherine Eves, David S. Atkinson, Debbie Pritzker, Peter Schwartz, BL Pawelek, James Yates, Kristin Fouquet, Clayton Smith, Seth Berg, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Robert Vaughan, Jillian Lauren, Meg Tuite, Robert Duffer, Brian Alan Ellis, Joseph Michael Owens, Angela Jackson-Brown, Keir Graff, Joana Topor MacKenzie, Joanna Shroeder, Johnny Misfit, The Book Cellar, Michael Paige Glover, Jennifer Banash, City Lit Books, Judith Tanzer, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Erika T. Wurth, Leesa Cross-Smith, Brian Gresko, Chris L. Terry, Mark Heineke, Mike Bushnell, Richard Thomas, Adam Tanzer, Patricia Ann McNair, James Tadd Adcox, Sean H. Doyle, Chris Oxley, John Reed, Jerry Brennan, Lauren Becker, Robert James Russell, Brian Gresko, Lori Hettler, Bill Hillmann, Brad King, Shawn Syms, Steve Karas, Barry Graham, David Tomas Martinez, Wendy C. Ortiz, Matt Micheli, Christine Rice, D. Foy, Robyn Pennacchia, Cari Luna, Angela Vela, Rachel Slotnick, Behn Reza, Boswell Book Company, The Mooney's, Eric Shonkwiler, Cyn Vargas, Allison Joseph, Sara June Woods, Steve Himmer, Sara Lippman, Mikaela Shea Fowler, Giano Cromley, Zoe Zolbrod, Tom Williams, Jennifer Pastiloff, Joshua Mohr, Susan Rukeyser, Patrick Wensink, Mark Cronin, BJ Hollars, Amy Guth, Robert James Russell, RA Washington, Davis Schneiderman, Ray Charbonneau, Sam Slaughter, Gina Frangello, Steph Post, Rachel Hyman, Nick Ostdick, John Tribble, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, Jill Howe, Amy Eaton, the Tomaloff's, Susan Messing, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Brandon Will, Sass Brown, Melissa Faliveno, Timothy Moore, Christian Picciolini, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, Gint Aras, Mark Schwab, Yogi Roth, Eric Spitznagle, Ryan Ridge, Lisa Fay Coutley, Tim Kinsella, Jeffrey Pfaller, Dane Bahr, Lee Krecklow, Keidra Chaney, Rob Funderburk, Jonathan Travelstead, Daniel Nester, Shane Jones, Christopher Bowen, Liz Mason, Chris Tarry, Al Kratz, Leah Angstrom, David Olimpio, Jessica Kashiwabara   

We are all CCLaP, all Chicago Book Expo 2015, all City Lit and all The New York Stories all of the time. We are also quite proud of all of it.

@cclapcenter @ChicagoBookExpo @josephgpeterson Yo, the @josephgpeterson is going to be there? So in.

— Ben Tanzer (@BenTanzer) November 17, 2015

And yo the Ben Tanzer too an even better reason. https://t.co/1IHhM8uh3E

— Joseph G. Peterson (@josephgpeterson) November 17, 2015

Fisk Peterson Tanzer (and a cast of thousands) The New York Stories CCLaP Chicago Book Expo 2015 and City Lit Books at 6:30 pm on November 19th.

For reals. More here and here. And quite certainly sure to change your life. A lot.

 

CCLaP Books represent.

Sell All The Books, yo.

No, really, let's do that. Book clubs. Fans. Friends. Family. People I only met once, but we had a moment. You're all welcome. Also, there's a party, so let's do that too. Cool? Excellent. See you there. And thank you in advance for all of it.

Self-serving This Podcast Will Change Your Life Twitter hype there is, yo.

Three CCLaP authors come together for this funny and illuminating podcast. https://t.co/ZxNZt6CgZB

— CCLaP Staff (@cclapcenter) July 3, 2015

Anarchic nonsequitor, high realism of the fake, and tribalism https://t.co/SeohmYFvzZ

— Joseph G. Peterson (@josephgpeterson) July 3, 2015

These Books - Big Venerable and Twilight of the Idiots - and This Podcast, Episode One Hundred and Eleven - Anarchic Non Sequiturs - by and starring, the Matt Rowan and Joseph G. Peterson respectively - Will Change Your Life.

We are so podcast. We are also old friends in the Matt Rowan and Joseph G. Peterson, who themselves are former podcastees with El Presidente and Timbre. Or Tamber. respectively. Not to mention Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Lindsay Hunter, George Saunders, Sam Irby, David Mamet David Foster Wallace, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and The Simpsons.

Yet, as if all that was not enough, that's not all, not even remotely, because we are Big Venerable by the Rowan and Twilight of the Idiots by the Peterson too. Both are recent releases from Chicago's own Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which had us wondering how these books just might hang together? And we think it has something to do with systems. Rowan seeks to understand the systems that imprison and embrace us - integrating themselves into our lives as they overwhelm with language and rules - even as he rails against them with an absurdity and wit that both mocks and models the absurdities of the institutions themselves. Of further note, is that Rowan's previous work Why God Why was a collection of stories short and fast, death by a thousand little cuts as it were, but in contrast, Big Venerable lets the humor breathe, the stories now expanded, the lives captured within richer for the effort. 



With Twilight of the Idiots, Peterson goes in a new direction as well, but in his case, he goes smaller, providing us with a collection of "yarns" after a career of novels and epic poem. The characters crafted within are certainly Peterson's people though, blue collar and raging, stumbling down streets, being tossed into bogs and frying fish, while all the while lurking outside the systems, and there's that word again, that won't have them, will never welcome them and are all too happy to pretend they don't exist. But they do exist in Peterson's mind, and like Rowan's people, on the page, fresh from CClaP, available now, and more than willing to change your life, if only for a moment. 

The New York Stories is here.

So please feel free to rejoice or whatever it is people do. Also, please consider hyping it, buying a copy, reviewing it and sharing it with your friends. It just might change your life.

The New York Stories is awesome blurb from the endlessly awesome Tim Horvath.

"Long before the floodwaters start to build in Ben Tanzer's New York Stories, we sense their looming presence--the characters themselves drift and swirl about this dying town, trapped in the eddies of past indiscretion, borne along by longings and regrets, snagged upon their betrayals and petty resentments. Yet while one might be tempted to write them off as premature ghosts, here they live on, and like Carver's, these characters call to us from across the barstool, the pool table, the couch, the car seat. And by the end, Tanzer has made a convincing case that a deluge of stories might be the very thing to save us." --Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Circulation

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

The New York Stories is awesome blurb from the endlessly awesome Michael Czyzniejewski.

"Ben Tanzer's New York is not the New York of Ellis Island or of Times Square. It's not the New York of Warhol or Scorsese or Giuliani. It's not the New York you know or have ever known. It's the New York you should know, the Tanzeriian New York of twisted invention, hilarious compassion, and intricate irony. Ben Tanzer has impossibly written yet another version of the great city, one that's a welcome addition to the proud canon of this salty berg." --Michael Czyzniejewski, author of I Will Love You For the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

The New York Stories is awesome blurb from the endlessly awesome (and quite freshy fresh mother) Sara Lippmann.

"In his beautiful and deeply American The New York Stories, Ben Tanzer returns to the upstate place where it all began: childhood, adolescence, the buds of adulthood. Caterpillar guts ooze out on the pavement, as do restless hearts. 'Thirsty's still serves beer, the Susquehanna River still flows, and you are here by the window, watching, waiting, wondering how you got here at all.' Characters may come and go and circle back in the fictional town of Two Rivers, but through it all Tanzer's voice is a transporting constant: intimate, immediate, full of wisdom and grace. Spanning three masterful volumes, brimming with lust and longing, humor and heartbreak and a healthy helping of what-ifs, this collection is for anyone who has lived and loved or loved and lost or any whirling, churning combination of the three. In other words, it's for all of us." --Sara Lippmann, author of Doll Palace

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

The New York Stories is awesome blurb from the endlessly awesome Dave Newman.

"The millions of unseen things that happen inside the heart finally start to come clear in Ben Tanzer's The New York Stories. Everyone here -- from the teenage girls to the grown men trying to sleep with them, from the guy in therapy to the therapist -- is filled with a desire so painful it will make you ache. Come to Thirsty's and drink a Yuengling because it might be all there is. Ben Tanzer knows that what we love most is what destroys us and what makes us feel most alive. He's reached into our music collections and pulled out the soul and the funk and the loud guitars and set it to prose that pulls us all across the page. Be prepared to laugh and cry and be swept away." --Dave Newman, author of The Factory Poems

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it. 

The New York Stories is new cover and awesome cover blurb from the endlessly awesome Elizabeth Crane.

"With great humor and the natural voice of your closest confidant, Ben Tanzer brings us stories set in our shared fictional hometown of Two Rivers, NY. With tenderness and heart, Ben brings us real people and their poignant, messy struggles, reminding us of the folly of our youth and the beauty in even our most mundane histories. Though my family left when I was small for the big city, Tanzer has given this reader the gift of a sliding door here, and I think you'll feel the same way, wherever you're from." --Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

The New York Stories (and Sex and Death) are most definitely The Great 2015 Indie Press Cheat Sheet.

And most delighted we are about that.

Hey fuck wow CCLaP Arcs.

Big Venerable by the Matt Rowan is so being released from CCLaP this coming April and our heads might just totally explode in anticipation.

Like totally totally for sure. And do feel free to learn more, a lot more, here. Nice.

Twilight of the Idiots by the Joseph G. Peterson is so being released from CCLaP this coming May and our heads might just explode in anticipation.

Like totally gloriously for sure. And do feel free to learn more, a lot more, here. Nice.

After the Flood from CCLaP is live and happening and coming out Monday.

Both excited and grateful we are. Details? Word. Here. Or here. For real.

After the Flood and The New York Stories line edits now yes.

Midwestern Gothic Winter 2015 Issue 16 contributor and After the Flood excerpt so soon we are.

And more soon on both. Promise. For now though, please do revel in this most stellar of line-ups.