A Visitor to Boswell Shows up in the Acknowledgements Page of Jennifer Chiaverini's New Book

So our first Herta Mueller books came in, a reprint of The Land of Green Plums from Northwestern University Press. We kept a list of interested parties and one of them was our good friend Brian, ex-Brookfield Schwartz bookseller, and now of Half-Price Books.

The funny thing for me was that we have another customer that shares Brian's last name and I thought it was for him. For some reason, it's a source of continual amusement for me. If only I could have have more customers named Mary Smith, it would give me no end of pleasure.

You may have heard that Half Price is moving across the street into the old Schwartz space on Bluemound sometime in 2010. Here's the story.

While we were chatting, Brian was admiring our table of holiday novels. Among them was a pile of Jennifer Chiaverini's A Quilter's Holiday, the newest in her series of quilt-related novels. Chiaverini, a Madison author, was a big fan of the Brookfield Schwartz and spoke at the store wake, held shortly before closing. She was also a big fan of Brian--he's thanked in the acknowledgements. How swell is that?

We're still unsure of what kind of crafting business we have at Boswell. We certainly carry substantially more books than we did at1Schwartz on Downer, but mostly we've increased our knitting titles. I've been remiss in doing serious category analysis. An embarrassing flaw.

So far, Chiaverini has been doing events at Next Chapter in Mequon and Books and Company in Oconomowoc. I don't know if we could equal their audiences, but I like the author so much I'd want to someday try. So to the author, if you're doing a Google Alert (and every author should, it's what we have instead of clipping services), here's a heads up--lets do something creative together someday.

Except don't ask me to make something. I'm very clumsy.