Snow, Holiday Market Craziness, Fiction Bestsellers

Well, our Festive Friday was down from last year. It's an uphill battle to begin with, as Boswell and Starbucks are pretty much all that are participating on our block. Most of the action is going on one block north. Plus, we had a little snow scare. Mike Trevey interviewed a few of us for TMJ4's news program, which you can watch here.

We have high-quality vendors, but there seem to be so many more markets of this sort this year, compared to even last year. It's a trend I noticed with farm markets as well. As wonderful as they are, it feels like they are becoming over-saturated.

So that said, I am preparing for one more today (Sunday), the Outpost and Our Milwaukee fair at Lakefront Brewery from 12-4 PM. I'm featuring in-store pricing, meaning if it's Boswell's Best at Boswell, I sell it at 20% off. We can't usually do that because we usually give a percentage back to the venue as well, but this is flat rate. I believe there are about 20 vendors, including...
■Astor Street Dance Studio
■Eclectric Dance and Yoga
■The Basic Shop
■Bella & Boo Organics
■Boswell Book Company
■Chartreuse
■CityTins
■The Conscious Bath Company
■Cream City Soap Company
■Eco Hatchery
■Fair Trade for All
■Four Corners of the World
■The Fast Foodie
■Indulgence Chocolatiers
■Ink Designs
■MilwaukeePhotos.com
■North Point Lighthouse Friends
■Open Leaf Excursions
■Orchard Street Press
■Radio Milwaukee (88Nine)
■Tri-Kleen Mobile Wash

I'm sure I'll be bringing some of these books. Yes, it's the hardcover fiction bestseller list for last week from Boswell. Surprisingly, the nonfiction is a little more action packed this season. There are very little new releases, and at least for us, nothing seems to be coalescing into a phenomenon. Maybe they are all being downloaded. Who knows?

However, that means we get to start pushing our favorites. Jason has compiled each bookseller's tops of the year (well, new-release hardcovers) and Stacie presented them beautifully in the newsletter, which yes, should arrive sometime! I'm not always a good planner, particularly when I'm juggling a lot of balls.

1. An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin

2. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

3. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin

4. Room, by Emma Donoghue

5. The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman (now that I've read it)

6. Squrriel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

7. Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett

8. The Passage, by Justin Cronin

9. Edge, by Jeffery Deaver

10. Juliet, by Anne Fortier

11. Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon (yes, we have hardcover copies of the NBA winner!)
12. The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise, by Julia Stuart

Lots of these books are on our favorites of the year list. In fact, the only books someone in the store hasn't read is the Jeffery Deaver, and maybe, maybe, the Steve Martin. I can't remember completely. I know I was supposed to, and those darn juggling balls got in the way.

And speaking of having Lord of Misrule, there are two other books we've got in good stock that folks seem to be searching everywhere for, or at least folks who wind up calling us told us they did so. They are the first volume of Autobiography of Mark Twain and Wasserman and Connolly's Wisconsin's Own.