1. Midnight Is the Darkest Hour, by Ashley Winstead
2. The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff
3. Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
4. Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (Tickets for December 6 theater event)
5. Absolution, by Alice McDermott
6. Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
7. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
8. When I'm Dead V3, by Hannah Morrissey
9. Foster, by Claire Keegan
10. Armor of Light V5, by Ken Follett
Absolution is the latest from one of my fave authors, Alice McDermott - her first novel in six years. Its release brings back memories of selling books with my late colleagues Anne, Elly, and Beverly, whose love for McDermott goes back to the days of At Weddings and Wakes; it was one of those novels that the Book Nook sold like crazy.
From Jennifer Egan's New York Times review: "Although she opens with an epigraph from The Quiet American, Graham Greene’s 1955 indictment of catastrophic American blundering in post-colonial Vietnam, McDermott asserts her revisionist focus in the novel’s third sentence: 'You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.' She then delves into the lives and activities of the blunderers’ wives during the last era in American life in which being a husband’s 'helpmeet' was widely seen as a worthy fulfillment of feminine ambition." Bookmarks round-up yields five raves and a positive.
1. Surely You Can't Be Serious, by David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abra
2. While You Were Out, by Meg Kissinger
3. Being Henry, by Henry Winkler
4. The Woman in Me, by Britney Spears
5. How to Know a Person, by David Brooks
6. Remember Love, by Cleo Wade
7. Start Here, by Sohla El-Waylly
8. Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, by Curtis Chin (Registration for November 5 event - that's today)
9. Democracy Awakening, by Heather Cox Richardson
10. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl (Register for November 20 virtual event)
It is unusual for Macmillan to distribute the top three titles on any of our lists, and even more so that two of the three come from the same division Celadon. In addition to our steady sales of While Your Were Out, we have our first week of sales for Henry Winkler's Being Henry. No, I don't know why the publisher skipped Milwaukee as a tour stop. No, I don't know if any of these other cities have Fonzie statues in their downtown. Thank you for calling.
Four positives on BookMarks. From Mark Kennedy at Associated Press: "Winkler’s 245-page book charts his course chronologically from the Fonz to Barry - and the frustrating fallow periods in between - painting a portrait of a man trying to overcome a bitter, loveless childhood and a disability that made reading impossibly hard and simply trying to become a better man."
Paperback Fiction:
1. A Dish Best Served Hot, by Natalie Caña
2. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
3. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
4. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab
5. The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa
6. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett
7. A Proposal They Can't Refuse, by Natalie Caña
8. The Boyfriend Candidate, by Ashley Winstead
9. The Genesis of Misery, by Neon Yang
10. Circe, by Madeline Miller
We had a nice event with Natalie Caña for her second novel, A Dish Best Served Hot. Many people think she is from Chicago because her series is set in the historically Puerto Rican Humboldt Park neighborhood, but that's partly because Milwaukee doesn't have such a neighborhood, with the community first centered on the Lower East Side, then Riverwest, then the South Side. That said, the community center in the novel is based on Milwaukee's UCC.
From Kirkus: "The latest in Caña's Vega Family Love Stories series is full of all of the dynamics that made A Proposal They Can't Refuse so irresistible, from a comedic cast of supporting characters to an emphasis on the importance of community. Saint and Lola's relationship is explored through both past and present timelines, emphasizing just how deep their history runs and providing an illuminating comparison between the people they were before and the ones who are much better equipped to pick up where they left off. A vibrant second-chance love story about repairing community and romantic connection."
Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
2. The Switch, by Jason Puskar
3. An Immense World, by Ed Yong
4. The Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen
5. How We Live Is How We Die, by Pema Chödrön
6. The Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros
7. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, by Nick Offerman
8. The Grandest Stage by Tyler Kepner
9. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund
10. All About Love by bell hooks
Jason Puskar, author of The Switch: An Off and on History of Digital Humans is Professor of English at UWM. A blurb from Mark Goble: "In this deeply ambitious and sophisticated book, Jason Puskar invites us to think more seriously about what happens almost every time we touch one of our devices and turn it on or swipe or click. From the technologies at our fingertips to the vastly larger networks of politics and language that they operate and represent, The Switch provides a fascinating cultural history of how we have made the modern world, and been remade in turn, by the simplest of human actions and the connections they enable."
Books for Kids
1. The Hour of Need, by Ralph Shayne, illustrations by Tatiana Goldberg
2. Let Me Finish, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Isabel Roxas
3. Minerva Keene's Detective Club, by James Patterson and Keir Graff
4. Lift, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Dan Santat
5. Curses Are the Worst V1, by Elizabeth Eulberg
6. Zombie Wedding Crashers V2, by Elizabeth Eulberg
7. Real to Me, by Minh Lê, illustrated by Raissa Figueroa
8. Tiny Mansion, by Keir Graff
9. You Are Here: Connecting Flights, by Ellen Oh
10. No Brainer V18, by Jeff Kinney
Minh Lê was recently in town doing an area school visit. Her most recent picture book is Real to Me, which was featured on the May/June Indie Next List. From Kirkus: "The imaginary-friend trope gets turned on its head. Told mostly in first person, this story follows a large furry green creature and a small Black girl who are engaged in a series of adventures...Together the two laugh and play, are brave together, and get in trouble. Others say that the friend is imaginary, but our narrator isn't so sure. And then, one day, the friend is unexpectedly gone. Now it becomes clear that the narrator wasn't the girl but the newly morose and lonely monster."
10. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl (Register for November 20 virtual event)
It is unusual for Macmillan to distribute the top three titles on any of our lists, and even more so that two of the three come from the same division Celadon. In addition to our steady sales of While Your Were Out, we have our first week of sales for Henry Winkler's Being Henry. No, I don't know why the publisher skipped Milwaukee as a tour stop. No, I don't know if any of these other cities have Fonzie statues in their downtown. Thank you for calling.
Four positives on BookMarks. From Mark Kennedy at Associated Press: "Winkler’s 245-page book charts his course chronologically from the Fonz to Barry - and the frustrating fallow periods in between - painting a portrait of a man trying to overcome a bitter, loveless childhood and a disability that made reading impossibly hard and simply trying to become a better man."
Paperback Fiction:
1. A Dish Best Served Hot, by Natalie Caña
2. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
3. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
4. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab
5. The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa
6. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett
7. A Proposal They Can't Refuse, by Natalie Caña
8. The Boyfriend Candidate, by Ashley Winstead
9. The Genesis of Misery, by Neon Yang
10. Circe, by Madeline Miller
We had a nice event with Natalie Caña for her second novel, A Dish Best Served Hot. Many people think she is from Chicago because her series is set in the historically Puerto Rican Humboldt Park neighborhood, but that's partly because Milwaukee doesn't have such a neighborhood, with the community first centered on the Lower East Side, then Riverwest, then the South Side. That said, the community center in the novel is based on Milwaukee's UCC.
From Kirkus: "The latest in Caña's Vega Family Love Stories series is full of all of the dynamics that made A Proposal They Can't Refuse so irresistible, from a comedic cast of supporting characters to an emphasis on the importance of community. Saint and Lola's relationship is explored through both past and present timelines, emphasizing just how deep their history runs and providing an illuminating comparison between the people they were before and the ones who are much better equipped to pick up where they left off. A vibrant second-chance love story about repairing community and romantic connection."
1. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
2. The Switch, by Jason Puskar
3. An Immense World, by Ed Yong
4. The Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen
5. How We Live Is How We Die, by Pema Chödrön
6. The Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros
7. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, by Nick Offerman
8. The Grandest Stage by Tyler Kepner
9. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund
10. All About Love by bell hooks
Jason Puskar, author of The Switch: An Off and on History of Digital Humans is Professor of English at UWM. A blurb from Mark Goble: "In this deeply ambitious and sophisticated book, Jason Puskar invites us to think more seriously about what happens almost every time we touch one of our devices and turn it on or swipe or click. From the technologies at our fingertips to the vastly larger networks of politics and language that they operate and represent, The Switch provides a fascinating cultural history of how we have made the modern world, and been remade in turn, by the simplest of human actions and the connections they enable."
1. The Hour of Need, by Ralph Shayne, illustrations by Tatiana Goldberg
2. Let Me Finish, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Isabel Roxas
3. Minerva Keene's Detective Club, by James Patterson and Keir Graff
4. Lift, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Dan Santat
5. Curses Are the Worst V1, by Elizabeth Eulberg
6. Zombie Wedding Crashers V2, by Elizabeth Eulberg
7. Real to Me, by Minh Lê, illustrated by Raissa Figueroa
8. Tiny Mansion, by Keir Graff
9. You Are Here: Connecting Flights, by Ellen Oh
10. No Brainer V18, by Jeff Kinney
Minh Lê was recently in town doing an area school visit. Her most recent picture book is Real to Me, which was featured on the May/June Indie Next List. From Kirkus: "The imaginary-friend trope gets turned on its head. Told mostly in first person, this story follows a large furry green creature and a small Black girl who are engaged in a series of adventures...Together the two laugh and play, are brave together, and get in trouble. Others say that the friend is imaginary, but our narrator isn't so sure. And then, one day, the friend is unexpectedly gone. Now it becomes clear that the narrator wasn't the girl but the newly morose and lonely monster."
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