Here's what's happening at Boswell the week of March 2-9: Donna Leon, Dennis E Staples, Linda Sue Park, Epic Reads Meet-Up with Mindy McGinnis, Elana K Arnold, and Evelyn Skye, plus Dan Pfeiffer next week

Here's a week of Boswell programs.

Tuesday, March 3, 6:30 pm, at Italian Community Center, 631 E Chicago St:
Donna Leon, author of Trace Elements

Boswell Book Company, Bartolotta Restaurants, and the Italian Community Center are pleased to host the author of Venetian mysteries for a visit with her haunting new novel in which a woman's cryptic dying words lead Commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region. Tickets cost $35 and includes admission, all taxes and fees, a copy of Trace Elements, and light appetizers adapted from Brunetti's Cookbook. A cash bar will also be available.

We actually hit the original space's capacity (150), but our friends at Bartolotta and the ICC were able to move us to a larger room. At blog post time, we've still got about 25 openings. Tickets at donnaleonmke.bpt.me.

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. As she has done so often through her memorable characters and storytelling skill, Donna Leon once again engages our sensibilities as to the differences between guilt and responsibility.

From Booklist’s starred review: “A meditative novel that looks at the water crisis in Venice - not flooding this time, but pollution - set against the eternal problem of justice… In an age where so many seek simplistic and wrongheaded answers to complex questions, it is comforting that Leon, in human complexity, remains one of our most beloved writers.” And of Leon’s series, the Washington Post adds, “Few detective writers create so vivid, inclusive, and convincing a narrative as Donna Leon… One of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever.”

Wednesday, March 4, 7 pm, at Boswell:

Dennis E Staples, author of This Town Sleeps, now in conversation with UWM Assistant Coordinator of Creative Writing Elizabeth Hoover, who will be interviewing Staples for Bomb Magazine.

Ojibwe author Staples visits Boswell with his brand new novel, one of Electric Literature’s Most Anticipated Debuts of 2020.

Living unhappily in his hometown on Minnesota’s Ojibwe reservation, a young gay man reckons with love, tribal lore, and a decades-old murder. Staples explores the many ways history, culture, landscape, and lineage shape our lives, our understanding of the world we inhabit, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it all.

Tommy Orange, author of There, There, praised Staples’s writing, calling it "Elegant and gritty, angry and funny. Staples’s work is emotional without being sentimental. Dennis unmakes something in us, then remakes it, a quilt of characters that embody this town, this place, which sleeps but doesn’t dream, or it is all a dream we want to wake up from with its characters."

A member of the Red Lake Nation, Dennis E Staples earned an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and Nightmare magazine. He is a graduate of the 2018 Clarion West Writers Workshop and a recipient of the Octavia E Butler Memorial Scholarship.

Thursday, March 5, 4:30 pm, at North Shore Library, 6800 N Port Washington Blvd:
Linda Sue Park, author of Prairie Lotus

The North Shore Library and Boswell Book Company are thrilled to welcome acclaimed children's book writer Linda Sue Park, winner of the Newbery Medal for A Single Shard. Admission is free for this event, but due to limited capacity, registration is requested at boswellbooks.com/prairielotus. Boswell will be on hand to sell Park’s books. At this point we're not at the community room's capacity.

Set in the Dakota Territory during the 1880s, Prairie Lotus is a powerful, touching, multi-layered book about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father's shop, and making at least one friend. The heart of the story is Hanna’s adjustment to her new surroundings and how she negotiates the townspeople's almost unanimous prejudice against Asians. The novel has poignant moments yet sparkles with humor, introducing a captivating heroine whose wry, observant voice will resonate with readers.

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called the story “an absorbing, accessible introduction to a troubled chapter of American history.” And Kirkus’s starred review adds, “Fans of the Little House books will find many of the small satisfactions of Laura's stories.”

Thursday, March 5, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Epic Reads Meet-Up, featuring Elana K Arnold, author of Red Hood, Mindy McGinnis, author of Be Not Far From Me, and Evelyn Skye, author of Cloak of Night

So many YA books, so little time. Epic Reads invites readers of all ages to join a round-table where you’ll get to strike up conversation with authors {SO MANY AUTHORS} who will gab about their books and other fan favorites. Small author dish sesh + killer YA books = a booklover’s dream, courtesy of Epic Reads.

Tickets are $20 and include admission, all taxes and fees, and one featured title of your choice. As an extra bonus, select all three with admission for one person and get the books at a special price of $54. Available at epicreads19mke.bpt.me. Please note that you'll have the opportunity to spend time with each author no matter which book you pick, you can bring extra books from home, and additional books will be available for sale at the event from all our attending authors. And yes, walk-up tickets are available.


Elana K Arnold, author of the Printz Honor book Damsel, returns with a dark, engrossing, blood-drenched tale of one young woman’s attempt to regain power when confronted with threats both familiar (toxic masculinity) and unfamiliar (wolves). From the Edgar Award-winning author of The Female of the Species, Mindy McGinnis, comes a harrowing YA survival story about a teenage girl’s attempt to endure the impossible in the Great Smoky Mountains - Hatchet meets Wild. And from Evelyn Skye, The New York Times bestselling author of the Crown’s Game series, comes the stunning sequel to Circle of Shadows, a fantasy series about two young warriors sworn to protect their Empress after the onset of war.

Elana K Arnold is author of the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of. Elana teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. Mindy McGinnis is author of YA novels, including A Madness So Discreet, winner of the Edgar Award. And Evelyn Skye is author of The New York Times bestselling Crown’s Game series.

Monday, March 9, 7 pm, at Turner Hall Ballroom, 1034 N Vel R Phillips Ave:
Dan Pfeiffer, author of Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again, in conversation with Joy Powers of WUWM's Lake Effect

Dan Pfeiffer's new book, Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again, is just released and is bestseller bound. Dan Pfeiffer will be at Turner Hall Ballroom on March 9, in conversation with WUWM's Joy Powers. But he's also coming back on July 12 to the Riverside Theater for a live podcast of Pod Save America. We've put together a few reasons why you should consider the Turner Hall event instead of, or in addition to, the event at the Riverside Theater.

1. The Un-Trumping America event at Turner Hall Ballroom is less expensive than the Pod Save America event at the Riverside Theater, and it includes the book, which has a $28 list price. In a sense, that makes the ticket cost $2 plus taxes and fees, as opposed to the Pod Save America event, which is $39.50 for the cheapest seats. There's no book included at the basic level.

2. Everybody at the Turner Hall Ballroom gets to meet Dan Pfeiffer. Only VIP attendees have a meet-and-greet at the Riverside event.

3. Show your Milwaukee pride. Dan Pfeiffer will be in conversation with Lake Effect's Joy Powers for the Un-Trumping America event. The Pod Saves America podcast features Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor. Who are they? OK, they are famous people, but still, Joy Powers is a WUWM gem!

4. Parking! The Bucks are in Denver for the March 9 Un-Trumping America event. Parking is going to be a breeze. Can you imagine what downtown is going to be like the day before the DNC?

5. At the Un-Trumping America event, you can say hi to some Boswellians.

If you want an easier, cheaper, and more intimate experience, there's no contest. That said, folks are crazy for the podcast event and it's likely to sell out. But if you are a true Dan Pfeiffer, you should really consider the Turner Hall program too, on March 9! Ticket link here.

Dan Pfeiffer was one of Barack Obama's longest serving advisors. From 2009-13 he was White House Director of Communications, and from 2013-15 he served as Senior Advisor to the President.

On Friday, two of us will be at UWM's Women Leader Conference, held at The Pfister Hotel. As is often the case, the event is sold out.

On Monday March 2, 7 pm, at Boswell, I'll be hosting our In-Store Lit Group's discussion of Barnardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, winner of the Booker Prize. As always, there's no registration and anyone who has read the book is free to attend.

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending Feb 22, 2020

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending Feb 22, 2020

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid (event Thu March 19, 7 pm at Boswell - register here)
2. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
3. The Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende
4. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
5. Olive Again, by Elizabeth Strout
6. Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin
7. Weather, by Jenny Offill
8. The Boy, The Horse, the Fox, and the Mole, by Charlie Mackesy (commas courtesy of Boswell)
9. The Authenticity Project, by Clare Pooley
10. Strange Planet, by Nathan W Pyle

Our announcement of Kiley Reid's event pushed Such a Fun Age back to #1 - it's not ticket with book but just registration, so you might as well buy it now. No, you should buy it now!

Continue to be confused as to why The Boy, the Horse, the Fox, and the Mole is not classified as fiction by one of our national arbiters of these things. If we moved every inspirational work like this over to miscellaneous, I think our fiction section would have a lot of holes.

And finally, nice to see a work of translation in the top 10. Per the publisher, Tyll is "a transfixing retelling of the German myth of Tyll Ulenspiegel: a story about the devastation of war and a beguiling artist’s decision never to die." James Woods notes in The New Yorker that Tyll is a classic trickster of European folklore, and set his story during The Thirty Years War of the 17th century: "Through this riven world, bristling with boundaries both political and ideological, dances our slippery survivalist, our great expansionist, Tyll - amoral, rebellious, untrustworthy, and exciting."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning
2. The Man in the Red Coat, by Julian Barnes
3. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-2000, by David Luhrssen, Phillip Naylor, Bruce Cole
4. Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich
5. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
6. Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty
7. Blue Zones Kitchen, by Dan Buettner
8. Untrumping America, by Dan Pfeiffer (event March 9 at Turner Hall Ballroom - tickets here)
9. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb (lunch event March 15 at ICC with REDgen - tickets here)
10. You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, by Alexis Coe

Julian Barnes usually shows up on the fiction list but The Man in the Red Coat is, per the publisher, "a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon, Samuel Pozzi." From Helen McAlpin on the NPR website: "Want a great antidote to distress over current events? Julian Barnes found it in his immersive plunge into the incredible flowering of sexual and artistic expression in Belle Epoque France, and into one man's mostly admirable life in particular. His 24th book (and eighth volume of nonfiction), The Man in the Red Coat, is a wonderful demonstration of the sort of free-range intellectual curiosity Barnes feels has been stymied by the xenophobia and national chauvinism behind Brexit."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Lucky One, by Lori Rader-Day (signed copies available)
2. The Bear, by Andrew Krivak
3. The Story of a Goat, by Perumal Murugan (In-Store Lit Group Mon Apr 6, 7 pm)
4. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
5. Mercy House, by Alena Dillon
6. The Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli (In-Store Lit Group, Mon Jun 1, 7 pm)
7. The Stationery Shop, by Marjan Kamali
8. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo (In-Store Lit Group, Mon Mar 2, 7 pm)
9. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng (Hulu previews have given the novel another pop)
10. Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I have had several friends recommend The Stationery Shop (including former Boswellian Rose) to me, so I just started reading it this morning, perhaps driven by the book's appearance, and perhaps because I have a copy and I've just read several event books in a row. Yesterday I finished Anna Solomon's The Book of V. She's doing Inklink and Boswell in late May. Here's Kamali's Publishers Weekly review: "In this tender story of lifelong love, Kamali (Together Tea) moves from 2013 New England to violence in 1953 Tehran as citizens, a new Prime Minister, and the Shah of Iran clash...Readers will be swept away." I could do with a good sweeping!

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Jesus Wasn't Killed by the Jews, edited by Jon M Sweeney
2. Fading Ads of Milwaukee, by Adam Levin (we sold out at our event! More coming)
3. Don't Overthink It, by Anne Bogel (event Thu Apr 9 at the Pfister Hotel - tickets here)
4. God Is Not Nice, by Ulrich Lehner
5. God Calling, by AJ Russell
6. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
7. This Life, by Martin Hägglund
8. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
9. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
10. 50 States, 5000 Ideas, by National Geographic

The arrival of Lent next week is apparent in a number of books that look at religious contemplation - or sometimes secular contemplation, in the case of Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. This Swedish philosopher, per James Wood (again) in The New Yorker, "involves deep and demanding readings of St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (with some Theodor Adorno, Charles Taylor, Thomas Piketty, and Naomi Klein thrown in), but it is always lucid, and is at its heart remarkably simple."

Books for Kids:
1. Jinxed, by Amy McCulloch
2. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
3. A Place for Pluto, by Stef Wade, with illustrations by Melanie Demmer
4. From an Idea to Disney, by Lowey Bundy Sichol
5. From an Idea to Nike, by by Lowey Bundy Sichol
6. From an Idea to Google, by by Lowey Bundy Sichol
7. From an Idea to Lego, by by Lowey Bundy Sichol
8. Run, Hide, Fight Back, by April Henry
9. Guts, by Raina Telgemeier
10. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (Puffin in Bloom edition)

School visits are gearing up again - we've got Lowey Bundy Sichol visiting several area schools for her business biographies for kids. For example, From an Idea to Nike is a fully-illustrated look into how Nike stepped up its sneaker game to become the most popular athletic brand in the world. Booklist wrote: "Throughout the books, upbeat drawings add a child-friendly look. An appealing series combining biography, history, and financial literacy."

Last week we hosted Amy McCulloch, whose Jinxed originally came out from Simon and Schuster UK. Booklist spells it out: "Kid-genius Lacey Chu is determined to join the Profectus Academy of Science and Technology in her quest for a career developing bakus, robotic animal companions with the utility of a smartphone. A disappointing rejection seems to end her dream, until she comes upon a broken-down, black-cat baku named Jinx. After repairing it, her newfound pet somehow gets her into the school, and the mysteries grow from there."

Over at the Journal Sentinel:

Tod Goldberg at USA Today reviews Jenny Offill's Weather: "The last time we heard from Jenny Offill – 2014’s brilliant Dept. of Speculation – the world was a fundamentally different place, at least in the day-today- living sort of way. Most of us weren’t terribly obsessed by a man in a large white house spinning the world into chaos one tweet at a time, though the actual planet already was waistdeep in the quicksand of our worst decisions, environmentally speaking.

"In Weather, Offill’s much-anticipated return, the author reclaims her distinctive narrative style – she writes in declarative bullets more than scenes – to deliver us a woman on the edge of our collective oblivion, both before and after 2016 election. The results are glorious, dizzying, disconcerting and often laugh-out-loud hysterical, in all the meanings of that last word."

Over at the Associated Press, Jeff Rowe looks at Olympic Pride, American Prejudice: The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood and Travis Thrasher. Rowe notes: "The book...grew from a documentary of the same name produced by Underwood. Conversations and details related in the book are drawn from reporting for the documentary and from family members of the 18 athletes profiled in the book."

USA Today's Barbara VanDenburgh reivews Caffeine, an Audible original from Michael Pollan. Apologies, but we're not able to sell this to you but here's the review.

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 15, 2020

Here are the Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 15, 2020.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Weather, by Jenny Offill
2. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
3. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
4. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
5. The Long Petal to the Sea, by Isabel Allende
6. The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
7. Agency, by William Gibson
8. The Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo
9. The End of the Ocean, by Maja Lunde
10. The Mercies, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

February brings several new releases to the top ten, but the strong sales are for Jenny Offill's Weather. From Heller McAlpin on the NPR website: "Jenny Offill broke through the funk of a 15-year gap between her first and second novels with Dept. of Speculation, a wonderful series of witty, plangent short dispatches about marriage, motherhood, and thwarted aspirations from an unnamed female writer whose life ventures dangerously close to the brink. Offill's new novel, Weather, takes a similarly clever diary-like tack, but it's even better — darkly funny and urgent, yet more outwardly focused, fueled by a growing preoccupation with the scary prospect of a doomed earth."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Lost and Found, by Paul Florsheim
2. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning
3. The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay
4. Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds, by Ian Wright
5. Salt Fat Acid Heat, by Samin Nosrat
6. Nothing Fancy, by Alison Roman
7. Friendship, by Lydia Denworth
8. Something that May Shock and Discredit You, by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
9. Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty
10. Catch and Kill, by Roman Farrow

Several new books on this top ten, but the big story is the long long road to the New York Times bestseller list for The Book of Delights, from Ross Gay, one of our bestsellers from our holiday season, with Chris leading the charge. It was almost a year ago that Geoffrey Cowles wrote about the book in The New York Times New and Noteworthy column. Nicole Rudick wrote about it in >The New York York Review of Books: "Gay wrote the book’s essays (and many others that didn’t make it into the final draft) over the period of a year, one each day, for the simple reason that he thought it would be nice to write about delight every day. The handful of rules he set out for himself included composing the essays quickly and writing them by hand. I decided to read one entry from the book each day, to follow the model of how he’d written them and to give each entry its own space to unfold in my mind—to let it warm me, I’d come to realize, like sunshine." And yes, the book's out of stock temporarily.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
2. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
4. Fledgling, by Octavia Butler
5. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
6. The Story of a Goat, by Perumal Murugan
7. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo
8. Ohio, by Stephen Markley
9. Brooklyn, by Colm Toibín
10. Black Leopard Red Wolf, by Marlon James

Now in paperback is Black Leopard, Red Wolf, finalist for the National Book Award and one of the Washington Post ten-best books of the year. I can give you a bunch of reviews (spoilers: the book is excellent), but the most interesting news is that Marlon James teamed up with his editor Jake Morrissey for a new podcast, Marlon and Jake Read Dead People, per The New York Times's Peter Libbey. It hasn't started yet so get in on the ground floor!

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Inside Game, by Wayne Embry
2. Fading Ads of Milwaukee, by Adam Levin (event at Boswell Fri Feb 21, 7 pm)
3. Seasonal Associate, by Heike Geisssler
4. Disassembled, by Tim Cullen
5. Upstream, by Mary Oliver
6. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, by Greta Thunberg
7. Falter, by Bill McKibben
8. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
9. Code Name Lise, by Larry Loftis
10. Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbotham

New in paperback is Adam Higginbotham's Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, winner of the nonfiction Carnegie Medal (that's the Caldecott and Newbery for grown-ups), and also made the best-of lists for the New York Times (ten-best of 2019), Time, and Kirkus. From Wired: "“Higginbotham’s scrupulously reported book catalogues the chain of events that occasionally reads as stranger than fiction. The book is more than a gripping history that recounts in great detail events at the reactors; it also offers contextual insights into the Soviet era that help to explain how such a failure could occur. . . . As is the case with many great nonfiction books, it has the urgency and intrigue of the very best thrillers." Please note that this actually might be from Wired UK, written by Greg Williams.

Books for Kids:
1 A Friendship Yard, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Olga Demidova
2. Monster in the Backpack, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Noah Z Jones
3. Girl Stolen, by April Henry
4. The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die, by April Henry
5. Squirrel's Fun Day, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations Valerie Gorbachev
6. Stories from Bug Garden, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Gwen Millward
7. Squirrel's World, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Valerie Gorbachev
8. The Lonely Dead, by April Henry
9. I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic 1912 Graphic edition, by Lauren Tarshis, with illustrations by Haus Studio
10. Here We Are, by Oliver Jeffers

Will every popular kids book at Boswell eventually have a graphic equivalent? It could happen. Breaking into our top 10 is I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic 1912, with illustrations from Haus Studio. School Library Journal (which notes that it's being adapted "like so many other popular series") notes: "Dark, subdued, inky art sets a somber tone, while a parade of mostly small panels builds suspense and promises to engage readers."

Jeff Rowe of the Associated Press reviews The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, from Fred Kaplan. He notes: "While we’re fretting about global warming, The Bomb gives us an even greater worry: nuclear war that would render much of the Earth a smoldering, radioactive wasteland littered with hundreds of millions of bodies and chilling, as a cloud cover of dust and debris blocks sunlight for years. Millions would require medical care that would be unavailable; the living would envy the dead."

Barbara VanDenburgh offers ten books for Black History Month, courtesy of USA Today/Arizona Republic. Read more about each book here.

1. Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick, by Zora Neale Hurston
2. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
3. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted into a graphic novel by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
4. How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
5. Children of Virtue and Vengeance, by Tomi Adeyemi
6. Red at the Bone,  by Jacqueline Woodson
7. All the Days Past, All the Days to Come, by Mildred D. Taylor
8. Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi
9. How We Fight for Our Lives, by Saeed Jones
10. The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

I don't normally read new books months after they come out unless we schedule an event or I pick it for our In-Store Lit Group, but one of our Group attendees asked me about How We Fight for Our Lives and I said, "I'll read it when you read it." I would love to read more about Jones's relationship with is mom. It's clear it's very important in his life, and I'd love more of those seminal moments that cemented their bond.

What did the book club think times four? Catching up with the In-store Lit Group

It's been a few months since I've done a recap of the In-Store Lit Group selections. I'm not planning on doing a full post on any of them, but let's have a mini write up of what did the book club think?

November: The Incendiaries, by R.O. Kwon
Set on a college campus, The Incentiaries is told from three perspectives. Phoebe Lin is a well-off student holding onto guilt for her mother's death in a car accident. Will Kendall is a student transfering in from Bible College. And John Leal is an escapee from a North Koean prison camp who is now the charismatic leader of a religious group on campus. The story may start with Will and Phoebe but slowly John's pull becomes clearer until things get out of control.

Both The Incendiaries and R.O. Kwon had a massive amount of media attention, but the book was rather quiet at Boswell and I thought our book club could jump start some energy in the paperback. There were great reviews, like Thu Huong-Ha's in The New York Times. And Ron Charles's review in The Washington Post was particularly insightful, and definitely helped generating conversation. He discusses how religious fanaticism is at the heart of the book. He also noted that all three of the story protagonists are lying in one way or another. Kwon noted in an interview that this book is inspired by her loss of religious faith despite the plot development being the journey of Phoebe from faithless to faithful. Fascinating to me, but I just didn't have many folks who wound up liking the book. There's something about the way the book is written that puts distance between the book and the reader. Oh well.

December: The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean offers a love letter to the Los Angeles Public Library with a three-or-perhaps-four sided narrative. The story is framed by the famous Los Angeles Public Library fire of 2006. Then there is a history of the Los Angeles Public Library system, with more than its fair share of quirky characters. And then there's a tour of the library system's various departments. And finally, there'a a little bit of memoir, as Orlean is inspired by her mother and their relationship with libraries. And Susan Orlean can make any subject interesting, so imagine what she can do with a library.

If you are a professional librarian, you might get a little bored of the system tour - I heard this from librarians. If you love true crime, you'll be let down a bit by the fire, which is never quite solved, though it does have a particularly lively suspect. Advice to suspects: one alibi is usually better than seven. And the memoir seems almost like a ghost element - there's one particularly emotional piece in the middle of the book about Orlean's inspiration for writing the story, and she returns to that in the end, but mostly, it seems like this was a long manuscript and that angle got a lot of cutting. The library history is particularly fascinating - especially the Great Library War of 2005. But really, if you love libraries, it's almost impossible to not love The Library Book. If nothing else, your book club will just tell library stories.

January: Ohio, by Stephen Markley
Four plotlines converge on New Canaan, Ohio, a small-to-medium city between Columbus and Cleveland. Instead of interweaving the four voices of the four, all high school classmates, Markley tell four novellas (would one call that Corrections style?), and while it would give away too much plot to explain each story, the opener, from Bill Ashcraft, a progressive, drugged-up bro with some hypocrisy issues, sets the tone. The story itself opens with the the wartime death of the effective hero of the story, who gets honorary memorial parade and all the trimmings. Pretty soon we learn that another character with a big voice has died of a drug overdose.

With the story taking place mostly over one night, with each character back in town for a reason, we get to relive a lot of the plot points from multiple perspectives (what I call Go, style, referencing the John August and Doug Liman film set in a dumpy Los Angeles supermarket), and so if at first you're confused, by the second or third time , you've got a better handle on things. This was Chris's favorite novel of 2018 and now wonder - about 80% of the group loved the book and another 20% despised it. There was no middle ground. Discussion was heated and it was very nice that we were able to have some intergenerational banter. Highly recommended, well, except for the people who hated it.

February 2020: Family Trust, by Kathy Wang.
I do love a dysfunctional family comedy and this one has the classic "fighting over the inheritance" plot that has brought life to a books like Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest. Wang has an insider's knowledge of Silicon Valley, which of course gave it a vibe like the HBO series Silicon Valley, and it's got a Chinese cultural spin (more specifically Taiwanese) that makes it more distinctive. The book club recently read The Wangs Vs the World, which was more of a road trip novel. Several us conjectured that this might have been bought in the wake of Crazy Rich Asians' success.

Could this book have also been called Crazy Rich Asians? No, because they don't feel rich. For the Huangs, there's clearly money floating around, but they all live in a bubble where they have this perception that everyone has more money than they do. And on top of that, they are all being roped into one scam or another, from shady investments to cheating spouses, to well, online romances - Linda Huang decides to start dating via the Tigerlily app, and she quickly spends her way to VIP status. It appears that online romance scams are the story for this Valentine's Day.

I was a little worried the group wouldn't have enough to talk about, but Family Trust kept us chatting for over an hour. The only hiccup was dealing with the complaint that the characters weren't likable enough. I don't know why that's an issue and why women writers seem to face that critique more than men do.

Here are our coming selections for In-Store Lit Group

Monday, March 2, 7 pm, at Boswell - Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Everaristo - Man Booker co-winner. Lots of enthusiastic buzz from attendees for this already

Monday, April 6, 7 pm, at Boswell - The Story of a Goat, by Perumal Murugan - Murugan was longlisted for the National Book Award translation prize for a different novel

Monday, May 4, 6 pm (note time), at Boswell - Mostly Dead Things, by Kristen Arnett, who will join us for spoiler questions at 6:30 in advance of her 7 pm public event

Monday, June 8, 7 pm (note date), at Boswell - Lost Children Archives, by Valeria Luiselli - New York Times Ten-best books of 2019

Monday, July 6, 7 pm, by Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi - National Book Award winner

Boswell bestsellers,for the week ending Feb 8, 2020

Here are the Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 8, 2020

1. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
2. The Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende
3. Best Kept Secrets, by Tracey S Phillips (event)
4. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
5. The Wild One, by Nick Petrie
6. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, by Michael Zapata (event at Boswell 2/27, 7 pm)
7. The Resisters, by Gish Jen
8. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
9. The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead
10. Lost Hills, by Lee Goldberg (also in paperback)

Here's the setup for The Resisters - in a future time, the haves (the Netted) live on high ground while the have-nots (the Surplus) are on swampland or living in water. To a family of have-nots is born a child with a powerful arm for baseball. Our friend Carole Horne at Harvard Bookstore said "I don’t know how a book can be so devastating yet so miraculously wonderful at the same time," while another prominent bookseller, Ann Patchett, called Gish Jen's latest novel,"palpably loving, smart, funny, and desperately unsettling."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Three Seconds in Munich, by David A.F. Sweet (event)
2. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning
3. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, by Ilan Stavans
4. From Here to Financial Happiness, by Jonathan Clements
5. The Making of Milwaukee, by John Gurda
6. Dining In, by Alison Roman
7. Nothing Fancy, by Alison Roman
8. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
9. Catch and Kill, by Ronan Farrow
10. The Body, by Bill Bryson

Great to see a sales pop for indie Restless books, whose new linguistic anthology, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, has an official rave from Kirkus: which note that its entries show how 'Yiddish is so deeply woven into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today.'" Lithub has excerpted an essay from Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo (In-Store Lit Group 3/2, 7 pm, at Boswell)
2. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
3. Morning Will Come, by Billy Lombardo (event)
4. The Drifter, by Nick Petrie
5. Lost Hills, by Lee Goldberg
6. Abigail, by Magda Szabo
7. The Story of a Goat, by Perumal Murugan (In-Store Lit Group 4/6, 7 pm, at Boswell)
8. Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman
9. The Ambassador's Daughter, by Pam Jenoff
10. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris

Magda Szabo's novels from New York Review of Books Classics continue to pop after the breakout success of The Door. Abigail is a coming-of-age story set in Hungary, originally published in 1970. Our publisher contact tells us this is her most popular work in Hungary and concerns a spoiled wealthy teenager is sent to boarding school with no warning. It has its own Wikipedia page. Despite its appearance as a television series and a musical, it has never before been translated into English. Thanks, Len (Rix)!

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
2. Fading Ads of Milwaukee, by Adam Levin (event at Boswell Fri 2/21, 7 pm)
3. Just Kids, by Patti Smith (UWM course)
4. Seasonal Associate, by Heike Geissler (UWM course)
5. 111 Places in Milwaukee You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
6. White Fragility, by Robin D'Angelo
7. Riverwest, by Tom Tolan
8. Fibershed, by Rebecca Burress
9. Spinoza's Ethics, by Benedictus De Spinoza, translated by George Elliot
10. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (just hit the NYT bestseller list)

Princeton University Press just released an authoritative edition of Spinoza's Ethics. Translated by the novelist George Elliot, this edition was edited by Claire Carlisle. Philip David calls it "valuable to readers of George Eliot as well as students of Spinoza."

Books for Kids:
1. The Friendship Yarn, by Lisa Moser, illustrated by Oliga Demidova (schools)
2. Monster in the Backback, by Lisa Moser, With illustrations by Noah Z Jones
3. Squirrel's Fun Day, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Valeri Gorbachev
4. Prisoner B-3087, by Alan Gratz
5. Squirrel's World, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Valeri Gorbachev
6. Stories from Bug Garden, by Lisa Moser, with illlustrations by Gwen Millward
7. Guts, by Raina Telegemeier
8. Unteachables, by Gordon Korman
9. Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever, by Aarbon Blabey
10. The Velocity of Being, by Maria Popoova

The Bad Guys are just the worst! And now in The Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever, they, well, after much research, I have no idea. Here are some great Good Reads reviews: "Funny and cute" and "Made me laugh out loud." Here are some bad ones: "Stupid, but boys love them" and "I wouldn't recommend starting with this."

From the Journal Sentinel:

Felecia Wellington Radel in from USA Today reviews the graphic adaptation of Parable of the Sower: "In 1993, science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler released Parable of the Sower, a novel that told of a future where people suffered the consequences of these same situations. Recently, four years shy of when Butler’s dystopian tale takes place, the Parable of the Sower, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings, brings that world to life."

Jennifer Forker reviews a new anthology from Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman for Associated Press: "The essays in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases may be brief, but each packs a mighty wallop. Brief is the name of the game for drawing readers into a compendium that holds this much heft. For in these pages are works of immense importance, covering landmark U.S. cases, primarily before the Supreme Court, that were argued or supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Edited by authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the book commemorates the ACLU’s 100th anniversary."

Set in a farm manor turned makeshift hospital in 1969 Laos, Paul Yoon's latest, Run Me to Earth, is reviewed by Kendal Weaver in Associated Press: "The house is an eerie, exhausting place where the teens hold each other to survive – sleeping, as one says, 'like young animals in a den... He calmly builds memorable scenes even when events turn violent."

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending Feb 1, 2020

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending Feb 1, 2020

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Everywhere You Don't Belong, by Gabriel Bump
2. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
3. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
4. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
5. The Wild One, by Nick Petrie
6. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
7. The Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende
8. The Confession Club, by Elizabeth Berg
9. The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood
10. Processed Cheese, by Stephen Wright

I'm not sure why this is, but we often have our first pop on a buzzed about fiction book from a new writer the week after it lands, rather than the on sale week. It happened for Long Bright River and Dear Edward and that was the case for American Dirt as well. In the case of American Dirt, there was a lot to read about the book, both positive and negative. Here's Reyna Grande talking about the controversy in The New York Times and how it it opened a conversation to diversity in the publishing industry: "Last fall, I was sent an advance copy of Jeanine Cummins’s new novel, American Dirt, and a request for an endorsement. As a Mexican-American woman and an immigrant, it was clear to me that I was not the intended audience for this story. And yet, I found it compelling. I noticed its shortcomings, the things she got wrong about our culture and experience, but saw past them. I felt that a book like this could complement the Latino immigrant literature that has and will continue to be written by Latino writers, myself included."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning
2. The Overground Railroad, by Candacy Taylor
3. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
4. The Body, by Bill Bryson
5. Climbing My Mountain, by Sheldon B Lubar
6. The Age of Entitlement, by Christopher Caldwell
7. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb (tickets to Lori Gottlieb REDgen luncheon here)
8. Salt Fat Acid Heat, by Samin Nosrat
9. Imperfect Union, by Steve Inskeep
10. American Oligarchs, by Andrea Berstein

We're back in stock on The Overground Railroad and I'm glad to see that demand is still high. The book got a nice LA Times review but so far hasn't been picked up by The NY Times of The Washington Post. That said, here's an Albany Times Union article about Candacy (by the way, sort of rhymes with Stacy) Taylor doing research in New York state, searching for records of gas stations, tourist homes, and beauty parlors: "Taylor scouted more than 900 sites from the Green Book and found just 26 that still exist when she traveled from her home in Los Angeles last summer to New York, where she was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem."

Paperback Fiction:
1. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
2. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
3. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
4. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
5. Abigail, by Magda Szabo
6. The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah
7. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo
8. Wrecked, by Joe Ide
9. Welcome to the Pine Away Motel, by Katarina Bivald
10. Family Trust, by Kathy Wang (I'm reading this today for tomorrow's book club discussion)

We had great success with The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend so we're thrilled to see the follow up, Welcome to the Pine Away Motel and Cabins. This time her story is set in Oregon and features a ghost that watches over her friends at the motel where she once worked. The truth is not every novel can be set at a bookstore. I hope that hotel book clubs will pick this one as reviews are positive. Publishers Weekly's reviewer wrote: "In a story about the lives a single person can touch, the highlight is fittingly Bivald's memorable characterizations, as she makes each person and their needs distinct and complex. This is a winning novel about the lasting impact of love."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario
2. Jesus Wasn't Killed by the Jews, by Jon M Sweeney et al
3. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
4. Just Kids, by Patti Smith
5. Seasonal Associate, by Heike Geissler
6. 111 Places in Milwaukee That You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
7. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
8. Fodors Costa Rica Esssentials 2020
9. Fading Ads of Milwaukee, by Adam Levin (event at Boswell Fri 2/21, 7 pm)
10. Paris 1919, by Margaret Macmillan

One of the UWM classes that has encouraged students to buy their book at Boswell has picked Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler (translated by Kevin Vennemann) as their spring read. It's a memoir about German novelist Geissler, who takes a job at an Amazon fulfillment center in Leipzig. Naomi Fry had this to say in The New Yorker: "Geissler’s aim is to communicate that beneath this abstraction, however, laborers are individuals. In that sense, Seasonal Associate belongs to the long literary tradition of social-problem novels, which includes Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath - all of which attempt to reveal, in their careful, humanizing treatment of character, fully realized protagonists caught within stultifying and impersonal industrial mechanisms. In a contemporary case like Geissler’s, this kind of project is no less urgent."

Books for Kids:
1. Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario
2. Where Are You From?, by Yamile Saied Méndez, illustrated by Jaime Kim
3. Becoming Kareem, by Kareem Abdul Jabbar
4. Infinite Hope, by Ashley Bryan
5. New Kid, by Jerry Craft
6. DK Explanatorium of Science
7. Fetch-22, by Dav Pilkey
8. Guts, by Raina Telgemeier
9. The Mitten board book, by Jan Brett
10. The Unteachables, by Gordon Korman

We had a nice school order for the acclaimed 2019 picture book, Where Are You From?, which among other honors, was a New York Public Library Best Book for Kids, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, and won the Nerdies Fiction Picture Book Award. As Publishers Weekly notes: "Although the book begins as a gentle riposte to narrow cultural and ethnic categorizations, its conclusion reaches out to all readers, evoking both heritage and the human family: pointing to his heart."

Journal Sentinel book page

A preview of some upcoming Milwaukee author events, including Donna Leon, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Emily St John Mandel.

Mary Cadden of USA Today reviews Isabel Allende's A Long Petal of the Sea: "The book opens in 1938. Victor Dalmau, a young medic caring for the wounded during the Spanish Civil War, restores the beating heart of a young soldier with the caress of his fingers. Victor joined the Republican Army in 1936, along with his brother Guillem, while still in medical school. The war, often historically overshadowed by World War II, which quickly followed it, is a brutal precursor of the horrors to come."

Jeanine Babakian of Associated Press looks at Jess Montgomery's The Hollows: "Set in 1926 in the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southeastern Ohio, The Hollows is much more than a murder mystery. It weaves racial integration, labor organizing in the Appalachian coal mines, prohibition and women’s rights throughout the narrative, set against an authentic backdrop crafted by Montgomery’s careful attention to historic detail."