Sunday, January 13, 2019

Boswell bestsellers - week ending January 12, 2019

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending January 12, 2019

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai
2. The Far Field, by Madhuri Vijay (event Tue 1/15, 6:30 pm, Shorewood Library)
3. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
4. An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
5. Fire and Blood, by George R.R. Martin
6. Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
7. Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver
8. Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarty
9. Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny
10. Winter of the Witch, by Katherine Arden

Just out on January 8 is the latest in what might be Boswellian Jen's current favorite series, The Winter of the Witch. Her review, which is the official Indie Next Pick review, notes: "Vasya is the kind of character you cheer for, cry with, and roar alongside. ‘Petrichor,’ the word used to describe that sweet, earthy smell after it rains, is how I would describe the Winternight Trilogy." Publishers Weekly agrees: "Arden’s gorgeous prose entwines political intrigue and feminist themes with magic and folklore to tell a tale both intimate and epic, featuring a heroine whose harrowing and wondrous journey culminates in an emotionally resonant finale."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Be Fearless, by Jean Case
2. Gift of Our Wounds, by Arno Michaelis and Pardeep Singh Kaleka
3. Becoming, by Michelle Obama
4. Letters to Our Palistinian Neighbor, by Yossi Klein Halevi
5. Frederick Douglas, by David W. Blight
6. Educated, by Tara Westover
7. Why Religion?, by Elaine Pagels
8. Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
9. In the Hurricane's Eye, by Nathaniel Philbrick
10. Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, by John Gurda

Elaine Pagels's Why Religion?: A Personal Story came out in November to rave reviews. For example, Jon Meacham (whom we're hoping we'll be talking more about soon) wrote: "In this compelling, honest, and learned memoir, Elaine Pagels, takes us inside her own life in a stirring and illuminating effort to explain religion’s enduring appeal. This is a powerful book about the most powerful of forces.” I still recall driving Ms. Pagels around when she came to Milwaukee. What an honor!

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Kite Runner graphic novel, by Khaled Hosseini
2. Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday
3. Requiem Rwanda, by Laura Apol
4. Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
5. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney
6. Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur
7. Best American Short Stories 2018, edited by Roxane Gay
8. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris
9. One Night in Winter, by Simon Sebag Montefiore
10. Macbeth, by Jo Nesbo

Released this week in paperback is Macbeth: William Shakespeare's Macbeth Retold, from Jo Nesbo. It's part of the Hogarth Shakespeare, which includes Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl (Taming of the Shrew) and Margaret Atwood's Hag Seed (The Tempest). From James Shaprio in The New York Times: "By making addiction so central to his plot, Nesbo also makes Macbeth’s paranoia and hallucinatory visions, so crucial to Shakespeare’s play, not just believable but meaningful in a contemporary way."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Beautiful Boy (both book jackets), by David Sheff
2. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
3. Call Them by Their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit
4. We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein
6. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
7. Birth of the Pill, by Jonathan Eig
8. Great Lakes Water Wars 2nd edition, by Peter Annin
9. Somos Latinas, edited by Andrea-Teresa Arenas and Eloisa Gómez
10. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari

We were part of a great event with David and Nic Sheff at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts. The authors of High: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction. Missed them? You can listen to them on WBUR here. There will also be a Lake Effect interview coming.We have signed copies of High too. You can see that Nic and David's backlist sold well too, most notably David's memoir, which with Nic's Tweak, became the basis for the film starring Steve Carrell and Timothée Chalamet.

 Books for Kids:
1. High, by David and Nic Sheff
2. No Talking, by Andrew Clements
3. A Place for Pluto, by Stef Wade
4. Tweak, by Nic Sheff
5. The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater
6. Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild, by Dav Pilkey
7. Sadie's Snowy Tu B'Shevat, by Jamie Korngold
8. Voices in the Air, by Naomi Shihab Nye
9. A Wrinkle in Time graphic novel, by Madeleine L'Engle
10. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery

It's January and that means that we're back to schools driving sales on the kids list. Our sales of No Talking are in advance of Andrew Clemenmts visiting a school district for his new book, The Friendship War. It hasn't hit our list yet, but I bet it does soon. Publishers Weekly writes: "In the latest on-point school story by Clements (The Losers Club), compulsive collector Grace is thrilled when her grandfather says she can keep the 27 boxes of buttons she discovers in his old mill. But after she shares some of the cache with her classmates, the show-and-tell spirals out of control, and kids schoolwide become obsessed with collecting and trading buttons."

From the Journal Sentinel:

-- Matt McMcCarthy reviews Jeremy Brown's Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History (USA Today)

--Matt Damsker notes that Tom Barbash's The Dakota Winters reads like "a journalistic faux memoir." (USA Today)

--Mark Athitakis finds Anna Burns's Man Booker-prize-winning novel The Milkman "quite" and piercing," reflecting on The Troubles as an allegory, rather than a historical record. (USA Today)

Online only is Jim Higgins's review of Tear It Down: "I won't lie to you: Animals, people, luxury vehicles and musical instruments are all harmed in Tear It Down, the new Peter Ash thriller from Whitefish Bay writer Nick Petrie." Our event with Petrie is Monday, January 14, 7 pm, in conversation with Bonnie North. Later in the month Petrie will appear at Books and Company and Whitefish Bay Library - then he's back at Boswell in February with Gregg Hurwitz.

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