Sunday, May 28, 2023

Boswell bestsellers, week ending May 27, 2023

Boswell bestsellers, week ending May 27, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Late Americans, by Brandon Taylor
2. Yellowface, by RF Kuang
3. Happy Place, by Emily Henry
4. Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
5. The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
6. The Guest, by Emma Cline
7. I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai
8. Pieces of Blue, by Holly Goldberg Sloan (Watch event recording here)
9. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J Ryan Stradal (Watch event recording here)
10. Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt (and watch this event video here)

The Late Americans is the top debut this week, with five raves, three positives, and mixed, and three pans from BookMarks, with an additional rave from Boswellian Chris Lee. My old friend Bill Goldstein at Weekend Today in New York also weighed in: "I love this book. It's such a brilliant evocation of life. And Brandon Taylor is a great novelist."

Hardcover Nonfiction
1. Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond (signed copies available)
2. Torn Apart, by Dorothy Roberts
3. Entertaining Race, by Michael Eric Dyson
4. You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith
5. A Fever in the Heartland, by Timothy Egan
6. Dare to Lead, by Brené Brown
7 Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, by Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (Register for June 6 virtual event here)
8. Bread Head, by Greg Wade (Register for June 13 Boswell event here)
9. The Wager, by David Grann
10. The Book of Nature, by Barbara Mahany (Register for June 20 Boswell event here)

Both Michael Eric Dyson and Dorothy Roberts appeared at the Fresh Start conference in Milwaukee last week. Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families - And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World was published in hardcover in April 2022, but the paperback doesn't come out until October 2023. I think the long-tail paperback seems to be more common with Hachette; other publishers seem to either publish in a year (or less) or skip the paperback altogether. Blurbs from Bryan Stevenson, Michelle Alexander, and Angela Y Davis.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson
2. The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd
3. The Late Mrs. Willoughby, by Claudia Gray (Register for June 8 virtual event here)
4. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
5. When Women Were Dragons, by Kelly Barnhill
6. Boy Parts, by Eliza Clark
7. Meet Me at the Lake, by Carley Fortune
8. Fox Creek, by William Kent Krueger (Tickets for September 22 Wilson Center event here)
9. Bunny, by Mona Awad
10. Red, White, and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

Second week out in paperback for Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, which had four raves and five positives from BookMarks in hardcover. From Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry: "Completely fierce, unmistakably feminist, and subversively funny, When Women Were Dragons brings the heat to misogyny with glorious imagination and talon-sharp prose. Check the skies tonight - you might just see your mother." 

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
2. Tears We Cannot Stop, by Michael Eric Dyson
3. Shattered Bonds, by Dorothy Roberts
4. Killing the Black Body, by Dorothy Roberts
5. Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin, by Kristine Hansen (Register for June 9 Boswell event here)
6. Quietly Hostile, by Samantha Irby
7. Dopamine Nation, by Anna Lembke
8. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
9. The Six-Minute Memoir, by Mary Helen Stefaniak
10. We Don't Know Ourselves, by Fintan O'Toole

Steady sales for Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence earns Anna Lembke a slot on this week's top ten, when unusually, the sales for the top books in paperback nonfiction are outpacing fiction. Two raves and one positives from BookMarks, two trades (Publishers Weekly calls it an "eye-opening survey on pleasure-seeking and addiction") and one from the New York Journal of Books, but there are also blurbs from Lori Gottlieb and Daniel Levitin, plus a note from the New York Times "Inside the Bestseller List" column, which is another indication that the book is working well.

Books for Kids:
1. Moving to Mars, by Stef Wade, illustrations by Erin Taylor
2. Every Day's a Holiday, by Stef Wade, illustrations by Husna Aghniya
3. Our World of Dumplings, by Francie Dekker, illustrations by Sarah Jung
4. One and Only Ruby, by Katherine Applegate
5. Gertie the Darling Duck of World War II, by Shari Swanson, illustrations by Renée Graef
6. Unequal, by Michael Eric Dyson
7. The Eyes and the Impossible, by Dave Eggers
8. The Labors of Hercules Beal, by Gary D Schmidt
9. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Renee Graef
10. Peekaboo Moon, by Camilla Reid, illustrations by Ingela Arrhenius

Gary D Schmidt has done schools with us twice in person, but this time his visit was virtual (recording here). He joined us for The Labors of Hercules Beal from Stratford, Ontario, where he was with students attending the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. From the starred Booklist: "Fans of Schmidt's books will enjoy finding that a young character in The Wednesday Wars has a significant role in Herc's story, set several decades later. This memorable novel offers emotional honesty, wit, and a hard-won, heartening perspective."

I should rename this blog "Daniel is really obsessed with BookMarks."

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