Among the books displayed by ARPress at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in Frankfurt, Germany, from October 15 to 19, 2025, Dad Only Tried to Shoot Me Twice by Mark Eric Johansen stood out quietly amid the buzz of the world’s largest publishing event. The fair, in its 77th edition, felt like a live pulse of the book-world: five days where ideas, culture, commerce, discovery and connection all collided in one place.
This year, the fair added several new layers of energy. For starters, the Guest of Honour was the Philippines, presenting under the theme “The imagination peoples the air.” That meant a special pavilion, a series of cultural and literary events highlighting Filipino voices and storytelling traditions.
Also, the fair leaned hard into cross-media formats: the newly emphasized “Book-to-Screen Day” on October 17 signalled that publishers and creatives are not just thinking print, but film, TV and streaming. For example, you could stroll from a rights negotiation meeting straight into a panel about turning a novel into a streaming series, then glance over to an audio zone where narrators and audiobook tech were on show.
The public programme (open to all from Friday onward) featured a dizzying range of stages: manga, comics, cosplay and games got serious space this year; there was a “Centre Stage” in Hall 4.1 for cultural and political talks (featuring big names like a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ex-NATO Secretary General) and a “Reading Zone of Independent Publishers” where up-and-coming voices were amplified. Even the logistics showed how the fair is living up to its global claims: over 4,000 exhibitors from across the world, and the event framed as “the defining fair for the print and digital content business.”
The opening hours show the rhythm: trade visitors got access from 15-18 October, while the general public could join in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. What this means in practical terms: imagine showing up early in the week for rights talks or author meet-ups; imagine a Saturday afternoon where the booths flood with families, manga fans in cosplay, readers browsing new titles, authors signing, coffee in hand. Meanwhile behind the scenes, deals are being made, translation contracts drawn up, creators from around the world comparing notes. The venue itself, Messe Frankfurt, becomes a micro-city of publishing, buzzing with voices, booths, panels, unexpected side-conversations in hallways.
For a book like Dad Only Tried to Shoot Me Twice by Mark Eric Johansen, this is fertile ground. In a setting where major genre titles can dominate the spotlights, the special, quieter books still find their nook, but now with the benefit of tremendous visibility. The broader themes of fair, cross-media adaptation, international rights, younger reader engagement, creative-tech intersections, mean that even a book whose focus is more contemplative, or niche can ride the wave of attention simply by showing up in the right context.
Dad Only Tried to Shoot Me Twice by Mark Eric Johansen is a powerful and deeply personal memoir about growing up in a household marked by alcoholism, violence, and emotional chaos. Told with raw honesty and unexpected humor, Johansen’s story is a testament to survival, forgiveness, and the search for peace amid dysfunction. The title itself captures both the dark absurdity and the heartbreaking truth of his upbringing — a childhood shadowed by fear but also shaped by resilience.
Through vivid storytelling and emotional depth, Johansen invites readers into a world that is painful yet profoundly human. He does not ask for pity but for understanding — revealing how trauma can both break and build a person. His reflections move beyond bitterness, turning a history of abuse into a narrative of endurance and grace.
The memoir begins with Johansen’s earliest memories of his father — a man whose charm and volatility were equally unpredictable. Living with an alcoholic parent, he describes the daily instability of a home that could shift from calm to chaos in seconds. The prologue likens it to “being on a runaway train,” where love, anger, and fear coexist in constant motion. With each chapter, readers witness moments of confusion, heartbreak, and reluctant humor as the young Mark learns to navigate an environment no child should endure.
He recounts incidents of physical danger, including the harrowing moments that inspired the book’s title. Yet, beneath the violence lies a complicated portrait of a man broken by addiction and of a family struggling to hold together what addiction tore apart. Johansen’s storytelling captures this duality — both the devastation and the fragile threads of compassion that persist even in pain.
Dad Only Tried to Shoot Me Twice is compelling because it tells the truth without flinching. Johansen’s voice is unfiltered yet compassionate, filled with dark humor that makes the unbearable somehow bearable. The book’s strength lies in its authenticity — there is no pretense, only the raw humanity of a man who has lived through chaos and emerged with clarity.
Readers will find themselves both heartbroken and inspired. Johansen’s story reminds us that trauma does not define a person — endurance does. It is a memoir of forgiveness, courage, and survival that speaks to anyone who has faced fear and chosen faith instead. Above all, it is a story of hope — that even when love fails us, the will to live and heal endures.
This year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse felt alive with possibility. The cultural dimension (Philippines guest of honour), the expanded public access, the varied programming (from comics to film-industry panels), the global-rights stage, all of that created a backdrop where a book doesn’t just have to be good, it has to connect. And walking among the stalls, one could almost sense the collision of story and technology, tradition and innovation, local voices and global echo.
So, when someone notices Dad Only Tried to Shoot Me Twice by Mark Eric Johansen in ARPress’s display, maybe on a table near the broader non-fiction section, maybe in a quiet corner of a genre bay, they’re not just seeing a book. They’re seeing it in a moment: a moment of publishing’s future meeting its roots; a story offered amid thousands of others, inviting a reader to pause, to pick it up, to ask “what might this one say to me?” And perhaps that is why books like this matter even more in a fair like this, because among the big lights and big deals, there’s still space for the voice that whispers rather than shouts, for the reader who wanders, for the author who offers something earnest.
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