Sunday Bestellers: What's on Boswell's List for the Week Ending March 29, 2014?

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Bark, by Lorrie Moore
2. Words of Radiance, by Brandon Sanderson
3. Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler
4. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd
5. The Accident, by Chris Pavone

Our top four books are past events (with Bark getting a particularly nice pop on March 26, when we had an unusual number of individual sales for the book) and #5 is Hannah's rec, The Accident, which is also an Indie Bound pick and has gotten some major reviews. This week I actually hand-sold two copies, helping it get on the list. I only mention that because aside from event stuff, it's a rare thing these days for me to recommend the same book twice in a week.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Thrive, by Arianna Huffington
2. The Making of Milwaukee, by John Gurda
3. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book, by Diane Muldrow
4. Astoria, by Peter Stark
5. The Story of the Jews, by Simon Schama

As Arianna Huffington's new book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder was landing this past week, Sharon told us that we were getting substantially more calls about it than we had copies. Fortunately Jason was able to restock us quickly, and that helped us get our #1 pop on the book. Her book, about redefining success, of course has several pieces in The Huffington Post, but it's also getting attention everywhere, including this interview on The Ellen Show.


Paperback Fiction:
1. A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
2. Over the River and Through the Wood, edited by Karen Kilcup and Angela Sorby
3. The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer (event 4/24 at Boswell!)
4. Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
5. Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

How exciting that The Interestings is finally out in paperback! We've been selling the book and event in hardcover, with the book even skirting the bottom of our bestseller lists, but now it means our event is really coming soon. Can we get you as excited as we are? Here's the Liesl Schillinger review in The New York Times Book Review. And here's Wolitzer's interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Superman, by Larry Tye
2. How Can it Be Gluten Free?, by America's Test Kitchen
3. Wrigley Field, by Stuart Shea
4. Brain on Fire, by Susannah Cahalan
5. Merriam Webster Dictionary, 11th edition

Speaking of Fresh Air, Terry Gross had a nice sales pop with her piece on The How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook: Revolutionary Techniques. Groundbreaking Recipes. Jack Bishop and Julia Collin Davidson of America's Test Kitchen talked with Gross about gluten free cupcakes and cookies and what things will never probably have a successful gf incarnation...like puff pastry.  I just looked at wholesalers and they are all cleaned out, awaiting a restocking.

Books for Kids:
1. Bird, by Crystal Chan (event Thursday, April 3, 7 pm)
2. Hollow Earth, by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowman
3. The Scraps Book, by Lois Ehler (event Saturday, April 19, 2 pm, at Boswell)
4. Divergent, by Veronica Roth
5. Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

Nice to see some sales pop for Veronica Roth with both Divergent and Insurgent in our top five. As the trades have said, it isn't the phenomenon of The Hunger Games, but its a respectable showing that ensures not just a franchise, but the likely greenlighting of some more teen novels.We vote for The Testing.

In the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins profiles Joel Greenberg, who speaks on the topic of his book A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction. The Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center event starts at 7 pm. Admission is $10, $5 for UEC members. Observes Higgins, "The tragedy of their extinction is softened a bit by the knowledge that it, along with the plight of the buffalo, energized the nascent conservation movement and led  to the first laws protecting wildlife."

Also in the Journal Sentinel, Mike Fischer reviews Helen Dunmore's The Lie (Atlantic Monthly Press), another great novel for our World War I table. "That image of cracked time speaks to our own experience of how World War I changed everything, but we've had 100 years to grow used to it," notes Fischer. He praises Dunmore's poetic voice.

Jim Higgins also reviews Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor (Tor), calling this fantasy "also a satisfyingly psychological novel about a young man thrust into the most difficult job in the world, uncertain if he has either the shoulders or the stomach for it." If you are not familiar with Addison's work, Higgins notes this is the pen name of Sara Monette, fantasy and horror writer.

From Connie Ogle, originally in the Miami Herald, the subject is Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World (Simon and Schuster), which, coincidentally is the featured title on the front page of The New York Times Book Review.

And finally (who says we don't have a great book section?), Chris Foran rounds up baseball books for opening day. His picks:
--Pete Rose: An American Dilemma (Time), by Kostya Kennedy
--1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever (DaCapo, May 6),by Bill Madden
--The Cubs Quotient: How the Chicago Cubs Changed the World (Sherpa), by Scott Rowan
--Babe Ruth's Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball's Greatest Home Run (Lyons), by Ed Sherman
--Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves Gave us the Best World Series of All Time (Da Capo, April 1), by Tim Wendel
--The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marchal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl Into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption (Lyons), by John Rosengren
--Brooks: The Biography of Brooks Robinson (Thomas Dunne), by Doug Wilson
--Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball (Doubleday), by John Feinstein
--I Don't Care if We Never Get Back: 50 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever (Grove Press), by Ben Blatt and Eric Brewster.