Sunday Bestseller Post: What Sold at Boswell for the Week ending November 30, 2013?

The first holiday weekend keeps us hopping, as you can see on the lists. Yesterday we had our 11 authors selling books during the Indies First/Small Business Saturday promotion. Jim Higgins of the Journal Sentinel video interviewed several of the participants. You can watch them here.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Driven: From Homeless to Hero, My Journeys on and Off Lambeau Field, by Donald Driver
2. Good Stock: Life on a Low Simmer, by Sanford D'Amato
3. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
4. My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel , by Ari Shavit
5. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, by Ann Patchett
6. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, by Malcolm Gladwell
7. Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition, by Ben Schott
8. Schlitz: Brewing Art, by Paul Bialas (event at Boswell Dec. 9)
9. A People's Art History of the United States, by Nicolas Lampert (event at Boswell Dec. 3)
10. Humans of New York, by Brandon Stanton

One beer book, one Packers book, one local restauranteur (now semi-retired) And a book about German. Welcome to Milwaukee!

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
2. Dog Songs, by Mary Oliver
3. The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
4. Aimless Love, by Billy Collins
5. S, by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
6. Sycamore Row, by John Grisham
7. The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
8. Longbourn, by Jo Baker
9. Inferno, by Dan Brown
10. Stella Bain, by Anita Shreve

We usually have three hardcover novels in sales contention but this year it seems like I'm missing the third book, with Tartt and Catton being numbers one and two. Jason just added The Good Lord Bird to our Boswell's Best, hoping that this plus the National Book Award winning status will kick the book into high gear. 

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, by Allie Brosh
2. My Life with the Green and Gold: Tales from 20 Years of Sportscasting, by Jessie Garcia
3. On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, by Simon Garfield
4. World Almanac and Book of Facts 2014
5. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon
6. The Onion Book of Known Knowlege
7. I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, by Sylvie Simmons
8. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain
9. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, by Susannah Cahalan
10. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander

I think I have to specifically do a blog post on map books because they seem particularly hot this holiday season. Nice to see a good paperback pop for Simon Garfield, for example. I'm also not sure what has kicked the Leonard Cohen bio into high gear. The book came out August 27th, but it's weeks on the bestseller list have been in November.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Dear Life, by Alice Munro
2. Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
3. The Dinner, by Herman Koch
4. A Long Way from Verona, by Jane Gardam
5. Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon
6. A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver
7. The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
8. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan
9. The Aviator's Wife, by Melanie Benjamin (event at Lynden Sculpture Garden on December 4)
10. All Saints, by Liam Callanan

Several of our visiting authors had sales pops from their visits for Indies First with Liam Callanan's All Saints hitting our top ten. It's also our in-store lit group read for January 6th.

Books for Kids
1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Volume 8: Hard Luck, by Jeff Kinney
2. Jumping Penguins and Laughing Hyenas, by Marjie Tolman
3. Steam Train, Dream Train, by Sherri Duskey Rinker with illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld
4. The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak
5. The Journey, written and illustrated by Aaron Becker
6. Squirrels on Skis, by J. Hamilton Ray with illustrations by Pascal Lemaitre
7. Flora and Ulysses, by Kate Dicamillo, with illustrations by K.G. Campbell
8. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book, by Diane Muldrow*
9. I am a Bunny, by Olie Rissom, with illustrations by Richard Scarry
10. Almost an Animal Alphabet, by Kate Viggers

Hannah's recommendation of The Journey: "The girl in this beautiful wordless picture book from Aaron Becker is bored and no one in her family has time to entertain her. Just in the nick of time, a magical crayon appears on the floor of her bedroom. She uses it to draw her way into a day of adventure in a kingdom where people travel by boat through waterways in the city and steampunky air ships reign over the skies. She gets into a bit of trouble, is rescued, makes a friend and together they draw their way out of boredom."

This week's highlight in the Journal Sentinel is their list of 100 books for gift giving. I'm not going to list them all here, but you can link to their page. We've also got a display of many of the titles at Boswell.
Here are the Editor's Picks:
American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, by Deborah Solomon
Beyond the Rift, by Peter Watts
The Burglar who Counted the Spoons, by Lawrence Block
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
Men We Reaped, a memoir by Jesmyn Ward
The Most of Nora Ephron
At Night We Walk in Circles, by Daniel Alarcon
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, by Robert Gordon
Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books, by Claudia Roth
The Spymistress, by Jennifer Chiaverini
A Thousand Perfect Things, by Kay Kenyon
Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, by Alisa Solomon

Jo Baker's Longbourn (Knopf) is reviewed by Wendy Smith, courtesy of Newsday. "I think she would have appreciated Baker's bracing rewrite from the underdog's point of view."

Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery (Yale)is reviewed by Milwaukee-area writer and mother of two, Erin Kogler. Raising Henry "is not only a chronicle of her son's first three years of life, but it also asks the larger cultural and historical questions about disability."

Scott Eyman of Cox Newspapers (meaning the Atlanta Journal Constitution) does a roundup of coffee table books, including Birds of America, Cosmos, The Art Glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Great War: A Photographic Narrative, Colt: The Revolver of the American West, Vanity Fair: 100 Years, Art Deco, and Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait. I told you it was from Atlanta: why else would you include a book on the Gone with the Wind actress?

*Yes, we know this is not a kids book.