Sunday Boswell Bestsellers, Week Ending March 8, 2014, and This Time I'm Remembering to Post It.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Bark, by Lorrie Moore (signed copies available)
2. Words of Radiance, by Brandon Sanderson (event 3/22/14)
3. The Red Road, by Denise Mina (signed copies available)
4. One More Thing, by B.J. Novak
5. Still Life with Bread Crumbs, by Anna Quindlen

It take a great books to make a career, but it is clear that charisma doesn't hurt. Denise Mina's first visit to Milwaukee was full of both, and we all fell in love with her. While we were pleased with her turnout, she's the kind of author who could one day get hundreds of attendees, so keep watch for a return visit someday. She's also a voracious reader, recommending not only The Goldfinch and The Luminaries, but several UK novels that haven't come out you, like Suzanne Berne's The Dogs of Littlefield. To keep with the animal motif, she's also hot on Claire Cameron's just released The Bear.

Speaking of charisma and great turnout, we're looking forward to our event with Brandon Sanderson on Saturday, March 22, 7 pm. We'll be running it just like our Michio Kaku event, with line letters for everyone, partly so we don't miss anyone and partly so we can gauge the size of the crowd.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Things that Matter, by Charles Krauthammer (a few signed copies available)
2. Zealot, by Reza Aslan
3. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book, by Diane Muldrow
4. Schottenfreude, by by Schott
5. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato

When we fear a capacity crowd, we try to mention it as much as possible, suggesting you come early for an event. Folks who liked to time their day so they showed up at 6:59 have been disappointed by not one but two sellouts in the last two weeks. Not just Michio Kaku (and congrats to his #1 New York Times bestseller) but also Charles Krauthammer, who hit the 700 capacity of Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall.

Boy, we've had quite the role of authors. We've now co-hosted four of the #1 bestselling authors this year at Milwaukee events: Malcolm Gladwell, Sue Monk Kidd, Charles Krauthammer and Michio Kaku. I have the strangest feeling that Brandon Sanderson, though he's never hit #1 before as a solo writer, could join that list. We'll see next week.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat, by Edward Kelsey Moore
2. The Selector of Souls, by Shauna Singh Baldwin
3. Life after Life, by Kate Atkinson
4. Freeman, by Leonard Pitts
5. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra

Not one but two of the authors in this week's top five are being feted at upcoming Milwaukee lunches. The Delta Memorial Endowment Fund is hosting their 38th annual literary lunch at the ICC on Saturday, April 26 with Edward Kelsey Moore. Information is available at their sponsor's website, Jammin' 98.3.

The Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library Literary Lunch is Thursday, May 8, at the Wisconsin Club. More information in the latest issue of The Reader. And if you want to really lunch out this week, on May 7 is the annual Ozaukee Family Services annual spring brunch with Barbara Rinella as Elizabeth the Queen. It's at Shully's in Thienesville.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Monuments Men, by Robert Edsel
2. Shakespeare Saved my Life, by Laura Bates
3. Brewing in Milwaukee, by Brenda Magee
4. Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh
5. Alone on the Ice, by David Roberts

Alone on the Ice (W.W. Norton) didn't make it to our bestseller roundup in hardcover, but its story was compelling enough to pop off the new paperback table. Sandra Dallas in the Denver Post wrote: "In Alone on the Ice, former Colorado resident Roberts, whose first book The Mountain of My Fear, about his own brush with death on an icy mountain a generation ago, tells the Mawson story in cold prose. You feel the freezing temperatures, the fear, the desperation, along with the loyalty of the other AAE members."

Books for Kids:
1. The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau
2. Hollow Earth, by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowmn
3. Independent Study, by Joelle Charbonneau
4. When Audrey Met Alice, by Rebecca Behrens
5. Timmy Failure: Now Look What You've Done, by Stephan Pastis
6. What the Moon Said, by Gayle Rosengren
7. Wanderville, by Wendy McClure
8. Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage
9. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
10. The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, by Sheila Turnage

Hollow Earth's run as the All-City book club selection for teens is keeping the book on our bestseller lists, in between current and former event runs with, well, everyone else except John Green. I think I mentioned last week that Stephan Pastis made some school visits in the area; we still have signed copies of his books, plus Sheila Turnage, Joelle Charbonneau, Gayle Rosengren, Rebecca Behrens, and Wendy McClure.

I'm in the process of scheduling an event for Joelle Charbonneau for Graduation Day (the book goes on sale June 17) shortly. For those who missed her wonderful presentation, stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to the trilogy. And for those who aren't aware of Joelle Charbonneau's fight to stop penalizing wrong answers on the SAT (in the series, wrong answers are deadly), the College Board announced they have made that change going forward in 2016.

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dina Mengestu's All Our Names (Knopf, he moved over from Riverhead) gets a strong review from Mike Fischer. He notes: "Names both invokes and channels Great Expectations--a novel, like this one, about letting go of myths we'll never inhabit, so that we might craft new stories that set us free."

Jim Higgins rounds up some of our March events that might have a strong interest to teen readers, including Kathy Reichs and Shannon Hale, and even adult novels like Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs, and The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat, with Edward Kelsey Moore appearing at Books and Company on March 20. I second that Moore's book is very teen friendly, and Butler's too; both are about adults whose relationships were formed by their high school years and in both cases, parents can read along, not worrying about things being too violent, too racy, or too cursey.

One day we hope to host Laura Lippman, but it's something to aspire to, right? Meanwhile we can admire from afar, with this nice profile of the author, in conjunction with the publication of After I'm Gone. Leslie Gray Streeter for the Palm Beach Post notes that Baltimore looms large as always, but Lippman defends her license to make stuff up. She is a novelist, after all.

Gift Post--A Cool Bag Came in on Backorder, A Card Line with Graphic Punch

Anne and I have been receiving various gift items this week. We were very happy to get a tote bag with a typewriter motif (pictured). We also restocked our ever-popular magic wands. You never know when you're going to need one.

On the card side, we had several vendors ship March 1, meaning they arrived this week, but the most notable was British import line called 1973 Ltd. I first spotted at Bookpeople last summer. I bought a card from the collection and tried to order it myself. The problem was that you had to buy the cards in dozens and I just didn't think I could make such an initial commitment to a line that I liked, but I didn't know how others would react.

This is a lesson in working with reps. It turned out that one of my card reps did represent 1973; I spotted it at their showroom in Chicago, featuring the very card I bought for myself, "Lucky Day." It turns out that they had negotiated the ability for us to buy in half dozens, and that was all I needed to seal the deal.

The order arrived yesterday, and several Boswellians have commented on how much they like it. I do tend to focus on artists and my favorites of the bunch are Sean Sims and Pintachan. The former has a bit swinging sixties London vibe while the latter isn't quite as locked into a time and place--it's just a retro modern cartoon look, sort of Jay Ward/Powderpuff Girls mashup.

Now that it's Lent, we'll be setting up the Easter table, though not in the most prominent display spot in the store. It's been a work in progress for the past few days, though one in the kids' section has been up for at least a week.

When a Book "Barks" in Canada, What Does it Say? A) Bow Wow B) Arf C) Yip Yip Yp D) Milwaukee

One doesn't think of how dollar currency fluctuations affect book sales in the United States, but in Canada, it's a different story. For several years, the American and Canadian dollars were pretty close in value, to the point where you even saw books with the same list price in both countries. Well, that's not happening now.

At Lorrie Moore's event on Monday for Bark, our friend John came in with his copy already bought, from a store in Toronto. I was little surprised to see a Canadian edition, as the American first edition already had dual pricing, with $24.95 the price in the United States and $28.95 in Canada. However, at some point the Canadian dollar declined again, so Penguin Random House Canada decided to do a $29.95 Canada only edition, saving the $28.95 Canadian editions for the U.S.distribution I guess.

I don't know how Canadians felt about that, but I know that it made me happy and here's why. Being that they repriced the book, they figured they should also add the very strong Toronto Globe and Mail review to the back cover, and that meant one of the existing reviews needed to go. You would have thought they would have taken away the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quote, right? But no, they kept Milwaukee, and took out Jonathan Lethem's New York Times Book Review quote.

Does that make us an honorary Canadian city or something? Perhaps, as local Shauna Singh Baldwin is on the Scotiabank Giller Prize committee (or jury, as they say in Canada), along with Justin Carwright and Francine Prose. Congratulate her next time you're at the Safe House.and don't forget about her latest novel, The Selector of Souls, now imported from Canada in paperback.

Seven Reasons that Might Talk You Out of Buying “The Enchanted,” But For the Folks Who Can Jump Through These Hoops, Be Prepared to Immerse Yourself in a Great Novel.

There sure are a lot of major releases out this week. Today I'm going to talk about a sleeper title. The author is not coming, but we've had some strong enthusiasm on staff for the book. That said, I'm not going to talk you into buying it. I'm going to talk you out of it. Bear with me. It's Rene Denfeld's The Enchanted.

1. The Enchanted is set on death row, but it’s not an inspirational book about saving lives. Yes, there is a woman trying to save them.

2. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like books where the characters don’t have names, you’ve got another hoop to jump through. The lady trying to save the folks on death row is “the lady,” and there is also “the fallen priest,” “the warden” and “the white-haired boy.” The narrator also appears to be nameless, but eventually he is identified.

3. For those folks who tell me they want to like their characters, let me just say that evil is a relative thing. Can there be people in the book worse than murderers? The answer is yes. They got a Donald Ray Pollock quote. Does that say enough?

4. Do speculative touches drive you crazy? I’m just warning you that The Enchanted has them. Are these touches real or in someone’s head? Maybe. I’d call the book sort of The Lovely Bones meets The Green Mile. There’s no Stephen King or Sebold quote but there’s one from Erin Morgenstern. One of the advance reviews also referenced King. I think he'd like the book, but he doesn't do advance quotes. It will be on his favorite books of 2014, or maybe 2015 if his pile is too high.

5. This book is not just dark and violent, but also a bit grotesque, hence the Kathleen Dunn quote. Imagine a very, very serious Chuck Palahniuk novel that took ten years to write and has a completely different prose style, more poetic than cinematic.

6. Though the Harper folks talked about reading the book over and over or multiple times, I just can’t see how this is possible. It’s not the densest read in the world but it takes some time. You also need to put the book down and exhale. And admittedly at the beginning, it takes a bit of time to get the lay of the land and that can slow a read down. That said, once you have the rhythm, about a third of the way through, it starts moving faster. (Jacket at left is the UK edition).

7. This should talk as many folks into the book as out of it, but I should note that Denfeld wears her ideological heart on her sleeve. Had this been her first novel, it would have likely been a frontrunner for Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize. It's not hard to imagine what she thinks about the dehumanizing conditions in prisons, and the strange dilemma of some folks wanting to incarcerate more people and yet not buy the accompanying costs.While Denfeld has not specifically addressed this in her nonfiction books, which have touched more on gender-specific concerns in The New Victorians and Kill the Body, The Head will Fall, her most recent book, All God's Children, about the street culture of Portland, Oregon, touches on this.

Have I talked you out of the book yet? It’s just that it’s exhausting to listen to customers come into Boswell complaining about a book that they never should have started. Sure it’s a great book, but it might not be right for you, not alone and not in one of those book clubs where everybody just whines and doesn’t try to come to understand what they just read. Make the best of it, folks. Figure out what the author was trying to do. (The UK edition is at right.)

For you folks who want a good, plot-heavy story with likeable characters and a traditional payoff, I've got another ideas. Head to Shotgun Lovesongs, from Nickolas Butler (yesterday's post), or how about my mom's favorite novel in a long time, Jamie Ford’s Songs of Willow Frost. It didn’t seem to hit its market in hardcover (or so I can gather from the five-month paperback release), but they’ve gone with a more traditional and less urban Chinese iconic cover for the March 11 release of the softcover. It's really been her favorite book in over a year, and she's gotten a number of friends to read it as well.*

But for you adventurous readers who want a book to go in places that you didn’t expect, who want a story that raises more questions as it answers others, and sees the world in shades of grey, then I think The Enchanted is for you. It also doesn’t hurt that the writing is quite lovely, of course. And if you’re worried about being totally beaten down by the story, Denfeld gives us several emotionally reassuring plot developments though I think you might be surprised that you’re cheering for some of them.

I was reminded of Quentin Tarantino’s Fresh Air conversation with Terry Gross on violence.

"Now, I wasn't trying to do a Schindler's List you-are-there-under-the-barbed-wire-of-Auschwitz. I wanted the film to be more entertaining than that. ... But there's two types of violence in this film: There's the brutal reality that slaves lived under for ... 245 years, and then there's the violence of Django's retribution. And that's movie violence, and that's fun and that's cool, and that's really enjoyable and kind of what you're waiting for."

There’s mostly the first kind of violence in this story, but there’s at least one of the second.

Here's more enthusiasm from current Boswellian Hannah Johnson-Breimeier: “It takes a certain sort of genius to take a heavy and politically fraught topic, give it characters and a setting and then build a story so breathtaking that it will stand out as an immediate classic. Rene Denfeld has done this in The Enchanted. Hers is a story about inmates slated for the death penalty, the prison that houses them, and the investigator who works to save their lives. With writing that is a blend of Cormac McCarthy and Colum McCann, this first novel gives readers an impressive humanity that will be hard to shake.”

From ex-Boswellian Stacie M. Williams: “Denfeld's debut novel (though not her debut book) proves that it's possible to create a mosaic of horror and wonder that fractures the light of our preconceived notions into tiny, bloody pieces. Set mostly on death row, moving outside the prison walls only to give more brushstrokes to the portraits of those living and working in that dank place, The Enchanted features characters both named and nameless who embody the worst and best mankind has to offer. A mute killer with books as his only connection to life outside his cell's shadows, observes (and imagines) the lives of those around him: an excommunicated priest whose past is murky, the female death penalty investigator assigned to a man approaching his final breath who doesn't want the appeal opportunity being offered, a young man freshly jailed who accidentally facilitates backroom dealings... How a novel can be this devastatingly sad and so damn beautiful, I simply cannot say.”

From Publishers Weekly: “This is a stunning first novel from an already accomplished writer that will leave the reader hoping for more fiction in the author's future.” The review seemed star worthy; I’m not sure why it didn’t get one.

From Library Journal: “While dark enough to appeal to fans of fantasy and horror (think Stephen King's The Green Mile), this is also a work of love and redemption. Read this magical book, and prepare to be spellbound.”

The Kirkus Reviews reviewer didn’t like it, finding it over-the-top and filled with too many victims, tossing around the word “melodrama.” For some of you, take this as a warning. For others, it’s a dare.

*I am reminded of the fall of 2008, when I had read all these Paris-set novels. I would tell folks, you're either going to love Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay, or Fault Lines, by Nancy Huston, but there's no way you're going to like them both. Every so often, someone would buy both anyway, simply for curiosity's sake, or perhaps to taunt me.

Nickolas Butler's "Shotgun Lovesongs" Rises from the Eau Claire Prairie to Tell a Great Story About Home and Friendship, Out This Week (and Event on March 11, 7 pm).

When I was reading my Lorrie Moore books, I remembered one of my beefs about setting for many literary novels. A book set in New York would be vivid and place-y, and one set somewhere else would be blurry. I think the mindset was that every reader wanted to read about New York, but reading about anywhere but a few key coastal cities would turn the reader off as too provincial.

Needless to say, think about where the editors and publishers were who were saying this. And for many years, that was also probably true about the concentration of writers. And while there are still more writers per capita in the New York area, a lot fewer of them live in the part of New York, Manhattan, that carries international appeal. Say what you want about Brooklyn, it's hip and it's cool for sure, but it's also quite provincial, without any of the distinctive landmarks (both architectural and otherwise, such as Broadway, Times Square, Wall Street) that make a New York novel a New York novel.

Heck, you could probably transpose the story and have it set in Los Feliz in Los Angeles, or Chicago's Wicker Park, or Seattle's Ballard or any number of places, and nobody would know the places. But that wouldn't work for most New York editors, who probably are less familiar with these well-known places than you'd think. Heck, I've had to have the "please don't fly an author from Milwaukee to Chicago" conversation twice in the last two weeks. So I don't expect to see a highly-promoted novel set in Milwaukee in the near future.

But small town, rural settings? For some reason, Wisconsin wins on this front. As one of 50 states that also has just under 2% of the national population, you might think publishers might want to shy away from a story that's Wisconsin-y, only publishers also like track records, and as track records go, Wisconsin is not bad. Since we've opened, there's been David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (well, it was during Boswell's time on Earth for the paperback) and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Going back further you've got Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World and Christina Schwarz's Drowining Ruth, among others.

That may be why the small-town Wisconsin setting did not intimidate St. Martin's Press when they signed up and started promoting Shotgun Lovesongs, the first novel that is getting a lot of buzz from Nickolas Butler. We started hearing about it early on from Anne, our rep who was looking for reads. Almost immediately we got one from Nick, our former bookseller who is now at Bridgetowne Framing Gallery in Wauwatosa, and I read it as well. 

Then parent company Macmillan organized pre-publication bookstore visits to stores in the Chicago area, and that included us. He got to meet a number of booksellers, and out of that, we got another read, from Conrad. The Indie Next numbers came out and Shotgun Lovesongs wound up getting enough recommendations to make it the #1 pick from independent booksellers for March. And we wound up getting more good reads, from Sharon and Jannis.

Here's Conrad's recommendation: "I plowed through this book in one day, and I'm not a fast reader. It's not that it's a short book, although at 320 pages, it isn't exactly a doorstop either. And it's not that I couldn't put it down, I didn't read it in one sitting, but I kept coming back to it. What it is: unsparing, no-nonsense prose, redolent of the voices of Wisconsin; a study of the vicissitudes of friendship and love, betrayal and redemption, and the magnetic draw of home; a paean to the lives of the common (and not so common) folk of our state."--Conrad Silverberg

And here's mine: "The push and pull of a small Midwestern town is the driving force of this wistful novel about four childhood friends who are bound together, despite their desire to strike out on their own. Kip has left to earn his fortune in Chicago, Ronny to be a rodeo cowboy in Wyoming, Beth to find herself in Minneapolis, and Lee to New York to become a successful folk rocker. Only Henry stays behind, taking over the family farm. But each character is called back to Little Wing, Wisconsin, some to confront destiny and others to tackle demons. There’s a love triangle at the center of the story for sure, but at its heart, Shotgun Lovesongs is a gentle but still barroom friendly classic buddy novel."--Daniel Goldin

As I was playing around a looking for a hook, I called it "Footloose" without the dancing, but you might also call it a variation on "The Big Chill", only without the suicide, and the soundtrack will probably be by Bon Iver, not assorted Motown artists.

So now Shotgun Lovesongs is out. Our event is next Tuesday, March 11, 7 pm, and we're not sure if there's any sort of friends/family component to the audience at all*. I'm thinking not. And up until now, you probably didn't know who Nickolas Butler was. We're hoping that you'll be curious anyway, to hear about the little Wisconsin novel that could.

Here's a piece about the novel being acquired by Fox Searchlight for film development.

Here's a profile of Butler in Publishers Weekly from Julie Buntin, about how the book was acquired by Kate Gilligan at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's. There's a little piece where they talk about Butler's many jobs, including hot dog vendor and fast food maintenance man. Author bios with odd jobs seem to resonate with publishers; it means life experience. One odd job that Butler had didn't make the cut however For at least a couple of years, he did author escorting in the Madison area, picking up writers at the airport, bringing them to media interviews, and dropping them off at area bookstores and college events. 

And you can practice your German, reading about Shotgun Lovesongs here. I have included the UK and German covers. The German one is sort of confusing to me, as they kept the title in English. At one point, I that they had changed the American jacket and asked the publisher about this, not noticing the German logo on the book.

So last thing, and it brings us back to until-recently-Wisconsinite Lorrie Moore. I always mention upcoming events before our author introductions. At hers, I talked up Nickolas Butler's appearance, and Moore decided that this was a great title for a book. Instead of writing that book, however (titles cannot be copyrighted, which is why Len Vlahos' novel, The Scar Boys, has song titles for chapter headings instead of the original lyric snippets), she decided to just rename Bark when she signed my copy. And that answers that question of what my signed copy of Lorrie Moore would look like this time.

*Addendum. Due to an on-sale date change, our event is the official on-sale date for the book, March 11. 

Tuesday New and Noteworthy Books from Brandon Sanderson, Dinaw Mengestu, Helen Oyeyemi, Carol Casella, and David Grand.

When I got to work today, we'd already sold several copies of Brandon Sanderson's new book, Words of Radiance (Tor), with a few people waiting outside the shop when we opened. Maybe you think this happens all the time, but it doesn't. One young reader pretty much spent the whole day in the store reading the book he bought. I asked him how far he'd gotten at the end of the day, and he was close to halfway through. I wish I was that fast a reader!

I was chatting about the book today with our friend Jim, who noted that Sanderson has one of the best organized blogs in the business. This post notes how the preorders go to Weller Book Works (did I ever mention that Sam Weller was friends with Harry Schwartz?) and the midnight signing, generally the biggest event of the tour, is at BYU. You of course can also preorder a copy of Words of Radiance through us, for our event on March 22. I should note that while we hosted Sanderson in the past, it was for one of his young adult novels and I expect this should be bigger.

Several other upcoming event books go on sale today, including Cara Black's Murder in the Pigalle and Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs. I already wrote at length about Black's book and her event on March 12, and I'll have a separate post on Shotgun Lovesongs later this week.

Dinaw Mingestu's All Our Names is the author's first book for Knopf; he was previously at Riverhead. The publisher writes that All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. It's scheduled for the cover of The New York Times Book Review on March 23 (editor's note--it's not this week, as that space is reserved for Phil Klay's Redeployment), as well as a major review in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Still at Riverhead is Helen Oyeyemi's Boy Snow Bird, which is scheduled to land in the stores on Thursday. Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale (yes, this is Snow White) of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. And yes, this was also the front page feature of The New York Times Book Review.

The talented Carol Casella returns with Gemini (Simon and Schuster), set in the intensive care unit of Seattle's Beacon Hospital. Dr Charlotte Reese's job is to battle death--to monitor erratic heartbeats, worry over low oxygen levels, defend against infection and demise. One night a Jane Doe is transferred to her care, unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. As Charlotte and her team struggle to stabilize her, the police search for the driver who fled the scene. As Charlotte finds herself making increasingly complicated medical decisions that will tie her forever to Jane's fate, her usual professional distance evaporates. She's plagued by questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she doesn't regain consciousness--and when? Read more in Wingate Packard's Seattle Times review.

And finally there's David Grand, whose new is novel Mount Terminus (FSG) After his mother’s death, young Bloom boards a train with his bereaved father, Jacob, to travel west across mountains and deserts to California. There, in a villa built atop a rare desert spring, they live apart from society, supported by the income from Jacob’s invention, the Rosenbloom Loop, a piece of technology that has revolutionized the nascent art of filmmaking. But Jacob can’t forever protect his family from his past—the dramatic series of events that has taken him from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on New York City's Lower East Side and into the graces of beautiful twin girls, and finally to this fragile refuge in pre-Hollywood Los Angeles. And Bloom, now an eccentric dark genius, can’t live alone at the top of the mountain forever. This intensely Los Angeles book has a nice write up from Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times, of course.

Hope one of these books (or maybe more) catches your eye.

Boswell's Manic Monday Event Post, Week of March 3, 2014--Lorrie Moore, Joelle Charbonneau at Hales Corners, Charles Krauthammer at Centennial Hall, Michael Parker with Murray Farish, Denise MIna, Storytime with Jannis, Paul Geenen at MPL.

Having just send out our email newsletter yesterday, I'm loathe to re-recap everything again the next day when I can just link to it and leave it at that. Instead, I'm going to give you some extra details on each event that I might not have had time, space, or inclination to include.

Monday, March 3, 7 pm, at Boswell
Lorrie Moore, author of Bark.

Any regular reader to the blog would know that Moore is coming, considering that I've talked about it in the last three posts!

I've had an interesting conversation back and forth with a critic, calling me out on saying you shouldn't judge an unthemed collection on its collective merit, and he's absolutely right. That said, what I was trying to note was that while both Moore's writing style, subject matter, and underlying themes have changed over the years, the later stories in Birds of America and the early stories in Bark are not really that far apart in when they were written.

More from Connie Ogle in the Miami Herald.

Even more from Holly Silva in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. If we were in St. Louis, our event would be most likely cancelled, due to weather. While it's been a tough winter, it could have been worse. The current storm (nicknamed "Titan" by that storm-namin' Weather channel) is the latest to just graze us, saving its fury for locales further south.

Our in-store lit group has been bumped to Tuesday, March 4. We're reading Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers. I'm still reading it, in fact.

Wednesday, March 5, 6:30 pm, at the Hales Corners Library, 5885 S 116th St, Hales Corners, WI 53130: Joelle Charbonneau, author of Independent Study.

We had a wonderful event with Joelle Charbonneau for the The Testing, the first book in this dystopian series. This time we're doing a day of school events with the author too, and it turns out a number of teachers are big fans of this series.

Hales Corners is located right off Highway 100. If you're heading south, it's a right on Janesville Road to 116th Street. Charbonneau will also be signing at Mystery One earlier in the day. It was originally set for 5-6 pm but we've asked it to be moved up, as getting from Mystery One to the Hales Corners Library during rush hour in a half hour is a difficult task.

The Boswellians who are serious series readers have told me that book two in a trilogy can be really tough to pull off, though now-at-HarperCollins Stacie said she thought the second installment was better than the first. The problem is that you need to get from here to there, so there's a lot of a focus on the travel route. The reviewer at Kirkus says as much, but still is hot for the volume three, which comes out later this spring.

Thursday, March 6, 7 pm, at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall, 733 N. Eighth Street 53233: Charles Krauthammer, author of Things that Matter.

1. Doors open at 6 pm. Hey, it's cold out there!
2. There is a surface lot across Wisconsin Avenue with a flat $5 charge, plus both street and garage parking nearby. There are also lots on Michigan and a close garage at MacArthur Square, and hey, if you belong to the Wisconsin Club...
3. Unlike some of our other events, Dr. Krauthammer will be signing on stage after the event. In order to make sure everyone can get there book signed afterwards, he is not able to personalize.
4. We are assuming that this is an event that could reach capacity. The library will close the doors at 700 attendees. I would suggest arriving by 6:30 pm.
5. We expect to have signed copies at the bookstore after the event. You can reserve one here.

Friday, March 7, 7 pm, at Boswell: Michael Parker, author of All I Have in This World, and Murray Farish, author of Inappropriate Behavior: Stories.
Liam Callanan will be introducing this event.

 Both Michael Parker and C.J. Hribal teach with Liam Callanan at the Warren Wilson MFA program for writing. Because it's a low-residency program, they are able to get folks who teach full time at other places. While a lot of writers get to know each other at places like AWP conferences and retreats like Ragdale, I have noticed that some of the strongest bonds form at these low-res programs, as there is less writer overload (AWP) and you're likely to see fellow writers again (unlike retreats).

As you can see from this 2012 Publishers Weekly survey, Warren Wilson College is the top-rated low residency MFA program in the country.

So that's how Michael Parker got here. Murray Farish, who teaches at University of St. Louis, was planning to go on a midwest tour and we thought they'd match up well together. While publishers sometimes come to us with a ready-made pairing or trio of authors, you have to make sure everyone is on board when the bookstore does it. In this case, the authors both agreed and it was set.

But I digress, as usual. We're a little before pub date on All I Have in this World, so all we have our the advance reviews. Publishers Weekly called his newest "stylish" and "engaging." And while the Kirkus reviewer had quibbles, he or she still called it "smart writing." Can I just note that I've heard that it is now grammatically acceptable to use "they" and "them" when gender is either unknown or out of traditional boundaries? I may start doing this, except it will bring back old memories of my third grade teacher twisting my nose. I'm saving that one for my memoir.

Murray Farish's Inappropriate Behavior is a Midwest Connections pick. Kirkus called it "edgy writing in an unnerving collection of short fiction" while Publishers Weekly notes that "Farish is at his best—and in the case of the “The Passage,” he’s masterful—in the stories in which the cracks are just beginning to form in the facade of normal life." And Derek Harmening goes into more detail on the Curbside Splendor blog.

Saturday, March 8, 2 pm, at Boswell:
Denise Mina, author of The Red Road.

So Carole, a fellow Glaswegian, comes into Boswell this week and says she's looking forward to Denise Mina. The thing here is she says "My-nah" and we'd been saying "MEE-nah." We're going to double check on that one. I don't want to flub the introudction.

Then I'm at a grocery store getting some Brussels sprouts with Sriracha glaze and while it's not as good as the dish I had in Delancey (see the Seattle blog post), it leads to a conversation with Ruth, who also told me that she's very excited about Saturday's event.

So there you have it, two experts who are super-excited about Denise Mina, perhaps the next mystery writer you haven't read you whom you should start. Since The Red Road is an Alex Morrow novel, we're suggesting that if you don't want to jump in with the new one, you should try Still Midnight, the first in that series.

Allan Massie in The Scotsman says that Denise Mina is so good, you'll want to read The Red Road twice.

Barry Forshaw in the (UK) Independent calls her "one of the finest practitioners of the criminal art" as well as "a social commentator of perception and humanity."

Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times says "If anyone can make you root for the murderer, it’s Denise Mina, whose defiantly unsentimental novels are less concerned with personal guilt than with the social evils that create criminals and the predators who nurture them."

We have a lot of mystery events coming up in the next two weeks, so I've decided to rank them on a squeamish-osity scale.

Very low squeamish level: Joanne Fluke on Tuesday, March 18, 7 pm
Modest squeamish level: Cara Black on Wednesday, March 12, 7 pm
Decent squeaming level: Denise Mina

I think she's still out-squeamished by Murray Farish, but until he has a mystery, he doesn't get to go on the scale.

Sunday, March 9, 11 am, at Boswell:
Storytime with Jannis, featuring Peter Brown's Mr. Tiger Goes Wild.

These storytimes have proven to be quite popular. Start practicing your roar.

Sunday, March 9, 2 pm, at the Milwaukee Public Library's Rare Books Room, 807 W. Wisconsin Ave. 53233:
Paul Geenen, author of Civil Rights Activism in Milwaukee.
Note: we originally listed the time as 3 pm. My apologies.

This is a repeat of our previous in-store event, now at a reasonable temperature.

Event preview for next week--mark your calendars for Kathy and Brendan Reichs at the Shorewood Public Library on Tuesday, March 11, 6:30 pm, for an event featuring Exposure, the latest in their popular Virals series.

Sunday Bestsellers for the Week Ending March 1, 2014--There's Lots of Michio Kaku Plus the Anti-Michio Kaku Too.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Bark, by Lorrie Moore
2. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd
3. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
4. One More Thing, by B.J. Novak
5. The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman

I scoffed at B.J. Novak's One More Thing(Knopf), well, at least when we didn't get on the tour, but he's the real deal, a writer with good reviews and a collection with legs. Kera Belonik interviews Novak for the Los Angeles Times, where she notes Novak "is more of a littérateur than he lets on. In fact, he labored over rewrites and tested the stories before an audience; an avid reader, he's a huge fan of writers such as George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart, whom he was excited to meet two weeks ago at a PEN benefit."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Future of the Mind, by Michio Kaku
2. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato
3. Capital in the Twenty First Century, by Thomas Piketty
4. Operation Paperclip, by Arnie Jacobsen
5. Fresh from the Farm, by Sue Middleton

It's not often that I can talk up a Taunton title on bestseller list day, but I'm happy to say that Susie Middleton's Fresh from the Farm: A Year of Recipes and Stories, has popped enough for an appearance. It's a year in the life with recipes, from the former editor of Taunton's Fine Cooking magazine. Here's more from a piece in The Oregonian.

And Belknap? How often do we get to talk about this imprint from Harvard University Press? Well Capital in the Twenty First Century has gotten a lot of buzz in the financial press, with this review in the Economist followed by a book club discussion on their blog. The book looks at capitalism and income inequality, which has been a hot-button issue, not just among economists, but politicians as well.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Addicts and Basements, by Robert Vaughan
2. Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
3. The Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner (book club discussion 3/4)
4. A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
5. A Life in Men, by Gina Frangello

Our event from last Monday bookends this week's top five, with local Robert Vaughan reading from his first full-length collection and Gina Frangello here for her first novel from Algonquin. Both Vaughan and Frangello were headed to AWP, the national conference for writing professionals. Enjoy Seattle!

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Civil Rights Activism in Milwaukee, by Paul Geenen (MPL event 3/9)
2. Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku
3. Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku
4. Parallel Worlds, by Michio Kaku
5. What Should We be Worried About, by John Brockman

Agent and chair of a science-based salon John Brockman puts together an anthology every year on a topic of interest. This year's almost seems to be the anti Michio Kaku. While Kaku tends to be enthusiastic and optimistic about scientific breakthrough, What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night (Harper Perennial) offers theses from Seth Lloyd, Daniel Dennett, Douglas Rushkoff, Matt Ridley, Daniel Goleman, Brian Eno and more. Ah, so you've noticed they aren't scientists! I guess this is a forest/trees sort of thing.

Books for Kids:
1. Hollow Earth, by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowman
2. Timmy Failure: Now Look What You've Done, by Stephan Pastis
3. Timmy Failure: Mistakes were Made, by Stephan Pastis
4. Better Off Friends, by Elizabeth Eulberg
5. The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau (event 3/5 at Hales Corners Library)
6. Independent Study, by Joelle Charbonneau
7. Angel de la Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery, by Evelina Galang
8. The Lonely Hearts Club, by Len Vlahos
9. Scar Boys, by Len Vlahos
10. Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

Finally at #10 is a book by an author who hasn't visited Boswell. This time Pastis did schools only, and Barrowman was some of the after-effects of Hollow Earth being named the "one city, one book" selection by Wauwatosa. I should note that we do have signed copies of Timmy Failure: Mistakes were Made and Timmy Failure: Now Look What You've Done, plus Elizabeth Eulberg's Better Off Friends.

In the Journal Sentinel, Mike Fischer reviews Kinder than Solitude (Random House), by Yiyun Li. He writes "Never directly named, Tiananmen nevertheless looms large in Kinder Than Solitude, Li's second novel; much of its action unfolds in the massacre's immediate aftermath. And in Solitude as with Li herself, the toxic fallout continues to poison those who survived."

In the print edition only, the featured reviews are for Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction and Tom Zoellner's Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World--from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest, from the Seattle Times and Los Angeles Times respectively.