Addict Lit--Crack From Clegg and Good Old Alcohol for Huneven

L., one of our good second-hand customers came in over the weekend. She mostly shops another place (unnamed), but she likes to trade in with us for credit. (Yes, we buy second-hand books for credit. Call us at 414-332-1181 to let us know when you'd like to come in) The thing was, she knew exactly what she wanted to use the credit for, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, and our copies hadn't come in yet.

It's the story of a literary agent who hits bottom on a crack addiction, and her enthusiasm led me to read an advance copy of the book myself. I had been toying with it, particularly as my editor friend David highly recommended it. The publisher's packaging reminded me of Nick Flynn's Another Bullsh*t Night in Suck City, which I read several years ago. I seem to remember that fragmentary style has some similarity, the parental issues, the drugs. And look at how similar the jackets are!

Clegg jumps around, circling his final meltdown with stories from his childhood (and a psychological problem that went ignored by his family), his teenage welcomes to alcohol and drugs, his rise as an agent, the secrets the permeate his life. I had a lot of sympathy for his boyfriend Noah, but as the story continues, I realized how complicit he was in the addiction and the secrets, starting with how they made up a story about how they met. I guess phone sex line didn't go well with friends. Maybe not a bad idea, but those secrets led to Noah agreeing to serially forget about Bill's drug relapses.

It's one of those punch-in-the-face books that offer a special kind of reading experience. I didn't know why I was reading it, I felt a little dirty, and I couldn't stop. And yet not trashy--that's quite the balancing act.

Here's Clegg's profile in the New York Times that compelled our customer to rush right over and get a copy.

Speaking of addiction, how can I not mention that Michelle Huneven's breathtaking Blame is out in paperback. I'd say finally, but it's been less than a year and I only say finally when it's more than a year. As in, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers is finally coming out in paperback this fall. And it is.

Huneven's novel is one of the best renderings of recovery that I've read, fictional or true. Patsy McLemoore is first shown through the eyes of her boyfriend's young cousin (family friend? who can remember?), a falling-down mess. Oh, that ear-piercing scene!

Her path to sobirety is laced with darkness and humor and filled with side characters so rich they threaten to take over the novel. We had a very nice first week of sale on the book. Thank you reviewers and NBCC and all the authors (like Sue Miller) and readers who've been singing the book's praises.

I convinced L. to read this until she came back for the Clegg. Hope my suggestion clicked!

How Did Things Go This Week?

I'm a little too anxious today to come up with a cohesive post. We've got five offsites this week, and I've been at four of them. Find me tomorrow at the Women's Leadership Conference at the Pfister.

We've had a nice week wit The Tortoise and the Hare. I talked it up to two folks from the Jane Austen Society at the Library Literary Lunch, and today one of my favorite authors ordered a copy from us.

We had a mini-bookstore at the Wisconsin Club. In addition to the above-mentioned Tortoise, titles we sold in multiples included Yarn, Little Bee, and Murder on the Eiffel Tower. And Sue Miller hand-sold a few copies of Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening. I'm not sure why I brought that instead of Breakable You, but since it worked, I'm not questioning.

Miller's other recommendations:

The Privileges, by Jonathan Dee

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro

and

Blame, by Michelle Huneven, which is hard to find in hardcover right now, and releases in paperback May 25th. (Editor's Note: and by this I mean that the book was out of stock at our nearby wholesalers).

Miller's talk on The Lake Shore Limited was very well received! Thanks to all involved.

Countdown to Sue Miller at the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library Literary Lunch

What a great review by Michiko Kakutani in today's New York Times for The Lake Shore Limited! I'm not linking to our website because instead of buying the book, you should email or call the friends for your ticket to the luncheon...if they are not sold out!

For ticket information, please contact the Library Foundation at
414-286-8720 or email friends@mpl.org.

Here's a link to a pdf of the new Milwaukee Public Library Reader with more on the lunch and Sue Miller. There's also a great story on Milwaukee's new poet laureate, Brenda Cardenas. My apologies that I still don't know how to do accents on Blogger. Note that we have more copies of Cardenas' most recent collection, Boomerang, directly from Bilingual Press. They should be here by Friday!

More on Miller. I asked her publicist Sara if Miller could recommend a few of her favorite titles. I said we'd post them on our blog (here they are) and feature them at our event.

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro

The Privileges, by Jonathan Dee

Here's the New York Times review if you missed it. And Los Angeles Times. And New Yorker (with Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic).

and

Blame, by Michelle Huneven. Sigh. Actually, triple sigh. I've heard great things about the new Dee, and I kick myself that I haven't yet read the Munro.

Plus I also asked for an underrated author that she'd love to promote, and she touted Brian Morton. If you haven't read one of his novels, most recently Starting Out in the Evening, you're missing a treat. Everyone I know that has read this has said it's one of the most underrated novels of the past few years. Read more in The New York Times.

Critics' Group NBCC Picks Huneven Among the Nominees for Prize--Everything Else is Gravy

It turns out that most major awards are determined by fellow writers? (Note to insiders--remember that the prime market here is my customer. Only maybe you've not really thought about it either).

Pulitzer--writers

National Book Award--writers

Man Booker--writers

Nobel Prize--friends of King Carl XVI Gustaf, some of them writers

Thurber Prize for Humor--writers, including last year's nominee Sloane Crosley, whose new book, How Did You Get This Number, is coming out in June. I still would like to get to 100 copies sold of her last book. If we can do this, we will have cake. We're in the 60's.

Et cetera.

But the National Book Critics Circle award actually comes from professional book reviewers, those other people (well, besides booksellers) we count on to find out what to read. There's a board (our former book editor from the Journal Sentinel, Geeta Sharma Jensen, was on that and so I occasionally got to hear some inside, thought not secret, scoop) and though many critics do write books as well (Boswell fave The Magicians was written by Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman, for example), it's certainly not required.

Of course, all other nominees were a blur after seeing Michelle Huneven's Blame nominated for the NBCC award for fiction. Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel and National Book Award nominee Bonnie Jo Campbell were also among the nominated in fiction.

In some ways, the NBCC puts more focus on serious nonfiction, with four categories--biography, autobiography, criticism, and nonfiction--in which to spread the love. The nonfiction then becomes a catchall of history and social criticism. It's also my thought that so many categories dillutes the impact. What we find in the store is that an already buzzed-about book that wins in one of these categories will have a greater pop, but it's hard for a title without too much momentum to break out, the way it can in fiction (which, as you'll notice, is not divided into genres and short vs. long form, or anything else).

I find it interesting that so many of the strong biographies last year were of literary figures. Instead of the Raymond Carver bio that the New York Times touted, nominees included Brad Gooch's Flannery O'Connor and Blake Bailey's John Cheever. In fact, the two lists (NBCC vs. NYT) had no fiction books in common, although they did share several nonfiction titles.

Perhaps they should do what the Kosta (formerly Whitbread) Prize does, and make the various nonfiction prizes battle it out for a superprize.

***

While we're talking lauds, note that local fave Dwellephant's graphic novel Missing the Boat was named by Comic Book Resources to be one of the top 100 comics of 2009. Click here for some of the list (including MTB) and link to the rest.

Sarah Crichton Explains Why the Twist in Blame was (and yet was not) Revealed

Three of my favorite novels of 2009 had twists. They are:

Little Bee
Await Your Reply
Blame.

Don't try to figure out what the twists arebefore reading them--you're only hurting your reading experience. However, it is an irony that the only book where I don't feel that knowing the twist really changes the read (Little Bee) was also the only book where the publisher took great lengths to keep it a secret. In Await Your Reply, the publisher just kept quiet. In Blame, in at least the advanced copies to booksellers and reviewers, the twist was revealed.

I sort of put out the challenge to Michelle Huneven's editor, Sarah Crichton, to explain why the twist was exposed to advance readers. Wonderfully enough, she replied. Here are her thoughts on the matter:

First off, you've got to make a basic distinction between the copy that appears on the Advance Reading Copy (the galley), and the copy that appears on the actual published book.

The galley copy that bothered some advance readers is written with a very specific audience in mind. It's not copy on the published book, written for the general consumer. It's copy written for that one second when I have a potential reviewer's eye, or that nanosecond when a bookstore owner flips through a catalogue and decides whether or not to order copies of the book.

This was such a hard year for books--to get reviewed, stocked, sold-- and I so loved Blame, I needed to do what I could to get it into position before publication. I needed to intrigue people; I needed to shake up their expectations, and to do it quickly.

I've been a reviewer; I've edited book sections. I know how quickly these decisions get made. I did not want reviewers or bookstore owners to shrug it off, thinking, Oh, I get it, it's a novel by a woman about a recovering alcoholic.* I wanted them to know there was a LOT more to it than that, and I wanted them to sense that it was not only brilliant, but a blast to read.

Did we reveal too much? Maybe. Maybe I could have been a shade more subtle. But at the same time, this isn't a thriller, where the point of buying it and reading it is to savor the twist that invariably comes. And we didn't mislead anyone, or mis-represent the book.

And in the end, in a difficult year, a wonderful novel emerged from the September pack. Blame was widely reviewed, and stocked, and sold-- and, best of all, read by a broad audience.

First of all, thank you to Ms. Crichton.

As a bookseller, I don't think about the difficulties in getting books reviewed, what with shrinking sections and limited attention spans. And I can see the problems of having books cast off into the land of women's fiction genre writing without that twist. And as I once said, I did learn the secret in Blame before finishing, and I still loved the book.

Did reviewers take this knowledge and let the cat out of the bag to the general public? It seems that most critics kept the secret. Here are some links to reviews:

O Magazine. One of their favorite books of the year. Not revealed in copy, but spoilers in the reading group guide.

New York Times includes in Fiction Chronicle. No revelation. Compares to a hummingbird--I like that.

Carolyn See reviews Blame in The Washington Post. No spoilers at all, and indicates that she thought that one of Huneven's books wasn't that good. I hope it wasn't Jamesland!


The San Francisco Chronicle used the Associated Press review from M. L. Johnson, which pretty much revealed the twist. So I say here, spoiler alert.

A short review in the Los Angeles Times. Very short, considering this is Huneven's home paper.

The Wall Street Journal review from Gabriella Stern. No spoiler. I kind of like the no-quotation marks dialogue, by the way. Adam Langer uses it in his novels. Yeeks, how did I not pay attention to his recent memoir, My Father's Bonus March? On the pile it goes.

More links on Huneven's website. And really, my main point is to keep hammering home that you (the reader) should read this novel.

*A fellow bookseller chaffed when I made to much of the recovery angle. She said (and I pretty much quote) "Who wants to read a book about that?"

Groupie Post-I Muse Over Vroman's Blogger's Year in Books, Because it's Such a Good List

I must link to Patrick at Vroman's blog right now. His year-in-books roundup pieces have been something I've been looking forward to, if for no other reason than I read and liked four of his suggestions, and that made me think I should read some of the others. The links are not to the Boswell website, but to the piece on the Vroman's blog.

Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. Another take, another rec. Patrick claims that on a recent writers' survey, Await Your Reply showed up more than any novel of 2009. I'm glad to see that our yearend push on this book got it into lots of folks' hands who might just now be putting it on their best-of list.

Blame, by Michelle Huneven. Another book I loved this year--his posting has a spoiler alert. Also, a complaint about the publisher giving too much away. Honestly, nobody knows why they did this and I would love to hear her editor Sarah Crichton's point of view on this. I'm not criticizing her--after all, she acquired and edited the book (as well as Kathleen Dunn's seemingly favorite book of the year, David Finkel's The Good Soldiers. To hear her interview, follow the link and head to November 19th) I just want to know why they revealed the twist in such a straightforward way. It's like publishing a mystery and detailing whodunit. Oh, yes, that's called a thriller.

Don't Follow me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the 80's, by Richard Rushfield. One of the most eclectic people I went to high school with attended in the late 70's. I don't know how her memoir would have turned out. Let's put this in perspective--we were on the math team together, and she was the odd one out. The math team--yes, every subgroup has its pecking order, even the ones that are themselves at the bottom of the totem. We raised money for team jackets by selling bagels. That sounds like a post in itself, doesn't it?

The Great Perhaps, by Joe Meno. This was in the running for my three-book push at the end of the year, and I hoped that if it didn't hit mine, it would hit Sharon's. We actually had a respectable sale on this in cloth, and it was also the GLIBA (Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association) novel of the year. I'm looking forward to the paperback. I won't forget you, Joe!

How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely. Both Jason and I read this, but couldn't seem to get its momentum going. I can't wait for paperback because it's a paperback original. It's very insidery, but I get the feeling a lot of our customers like insidery. Lanora read and liked it too--I wonder, I wonder how Next Chapter or Vroman's sold it. That's four bookseller recs right there--maybe it's worth checking out.

Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel. Debut novel of three confused characters, playing with language. Was this novel overlooked because it sounded too much like John Irving's? If I were a critic, I'd review them together!

Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead. I will someday read this book. I feel like I missed out.

My vow in 201o is to read more nonfiction.

Who Got the Print Event Calendar/Newsletter and Why?

If you are a regular customer of ours, you may have gotten our new event calendar/newsletter in your mailbox. But you may not have. Here's the scoop.

We had enough budgeted to send a bit over 1000 newsletters. You you had to be on the Boswell Benefits program, you needed to give us your street address, and you had to spend, as it turned out, $31.27 since we opened on the program for qualifying purchases (newspapers, textbooks and certain other items excluded). And for the most part, we only sent locally, since the mailing was to try to get folks to come back to the store to shop. We've got lots of ways to keep in touch for folks further afield, such as the email newsletter and this blog.

Oh, and one other thing. If we added your info after your purchase, that purchase counted towards your Benefits, but not towards whether you got the newsletter. Hey, the system ain't perfect. Did I mention it's DOS?

Lanora at Next Chapter suggested to me that an occasional mailing is really worthwhile (Thanks, Lanora). Though folks often tell us they prefer email newsletters to print, it turns out they respond better to print mailings. We have many theories:

1) Overwhelmed by emails and they aren't opened. We currently have a 1/3 open rate, which I hear is actually quite good. We try to keep it high by limiting our mailings, by promising you that we will have interesting and unique writing inside (very little repurposing).

2. Emails are opened, but they aren't followed up on. Folks are afraid to print out emails. And sometimes they are very long. I printed out a friend's bookstore email and it was 19 pages. I've been trying to keep ours to five, but the last one was eight. But if you don't print it, you forget about it.

3. Emails disappear unless you actively find them; print newsletters stick around till you throw them away. There's also the bathroom factor. Everyone needs fresh reading material, right? Is this too gauche to mention? Maybe, but you know it's true.

4. And there's the clutter. Your email inbox is packed, but if you're like me, you get very little mail, and even less that's interesting. So we'll be very interested to see how folks respond to our newsletter. We've got over 20 events and most of them are book related. We've also got new Boswell's Best titles, and staff picks from almost every bookseller (see the newsletter for why one's missing).

Here are our picks:
Amie: Stitches, by David Small

Anne: The Calligrapher's Daughter, by Eugenia Kim

Carl: Love and Summer, by William Trevor

Conrad: Friends like These, by Danny Wallace

Daniel: Blame, by Michelle Huneven

Greg: The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Jason: Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon

Jocelyn: The Child Thief, by Brom

Mark: Sleeping Naked is Green, by Vanessa Farquharson

Melissa: A Big Little Life, by Dean Koontz

Pam: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Rebecca: This is Where I leave You, by Jonathan Tropper

Sharon: The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson

Stacie: The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

It took a while for Bev to get into The Help, but she wound up liking it alright.

The letter from me that graces the first page? That's repurposed on our web site.

And yes, you can pick up the newsletter in our store too.

What did my Sister Merrill do on Her Visit to me Last Weekend?

It's tough visiting someone running a bookstore, unless you really love hanging out in bookstores. Last weekend, my sister Merrill visited me from Arizona. You guess the rest.

On Saturday, we had Dava Sobel for one of her many Milwaukee appearances. She also did a great show at the Milwaukee Public Museum, and then there was that great show with Galileo's Daughters. We learned that Sobel is working on a play about Copernicus (there really isn't enough material for a full book) and she also has a nonfiction idea for a book that's just great, but I won't reveal here, in case someone tries to steal it.

It turns out that Sobel commissioned some illustrations for The Planets that were left out by her new editor at the last minute. After the book had disappointing sales in hardcover, they included them in the paperback.

On Sunday, Merrill helped us with our Ralph Nader event. She helped with chairs--our lift was just like the one they use for moving theater chairs. (Merrill's note: "And my old catering days. Don't forget that.") She's also quite a good schmoozer, having good conversations with both authors and numerous customers.

I assigned Merrill bathroom duty, but it turned out that we didn't have to close the store because we didn't hit our capacity and therefore she was off the hook. Sales were above expectations, however, and Mr. Nader was grateful that we ordered aggressively.

In between, she read. I was a bit jealous. She finished up Kate Christensen's Trouble ("Boy, all her characters sure are thin and beautiful.") and then jumped right into Paul Rudnick's I Shudder. We also had some nice meals at Beans and Barley, Honeypie, and our fancy meal at Crazy Water. We both admired the cookbook shelf at Honeypie. I wish I'd taken a picture.

Being a good sister, Merill also bought some things to take home with her including:

This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper

The Hour Between, by Sebastian Stuart

Blame, by Michelle Huneven

and after watching the event:

Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel.

Oh, and a snappy pair of reading glasses.

And finally, Merrill would like to say hi to Denise in Brisbane (or thereabouts) who I'm told is a regular reader of this blog. Hi also from me.

On Archiving Emails that Never Go Away, and How I Plan to Add to the Clutter--more on "The Nineteenth Wife" and "Blame"

Our email newsletters are now archived. It costs $5 a month, but it seems like it's worth doing. Oddly enough, the Schwartz newsletters are still archived somewhere, even though the Dickens folk are not likely keeping up the payments (note to Carol, I hope not!)

That said, I was able to locate an author photo I needed. And here's a link to our essay about authors with Wisconsin ties, featuring David Ebershoff's Nineteenth Wife. We're selling the book quite well in paperback, helped along by a selection by our in-store Readers of the Lost Art. Oh, and I have handsold a few myself.

It's one of those books that can appeal to lots of different customers:

1. It's got a straightforward historical angle with some lascivious details, a la Loving Frank.

2. It's got a strong mytery/thriller component; in fact, in much of Europe, it was published as a mystery.

3. It's got a strong gay character that has closed the deal for some of my customers.

4. It's take on alternative marriage and family can make for a very interesting book club discussion.

***

Speaking of books I really like and old articles from Schwartz, Nancy led me to this interesting article by Michelle Huneven on walking and reading at the same time. Thanks, Nancy!

That's just another thing I love about Huneven. I am well known for my walking and reading, and feel a bond with others who do so.

You've heard me go on about Huneven's new novel Blame, but our sales aren't much. Here's Entertainment Weekly's enthusiastic take to convince you.

And just to bring it on home, here's our latest email newsletter, which has my ode to Blame, not much different from what was posted on the blog earlier, but headed for 3000 more mailboxes. Oh, and there's other stuff in the newsletter too.

I Love, Love, Love "Blame", the New Michelle Huneven Novel, but I'm Afraid to Look at the Jacket

I've been so excited and so nervous about reading Michelle Huneven's Blame. I've had just about everyone who knows me well read her previous novel Jamesland. In fact, I secret divide the world into two categories--those who've read Jamesland and loved it, and those who either didn't love it or...didn't read it.

Of course, one category only has a teeny tiny number of people in it, and the other category has a toilet paper shortage. (Editor's note: this comment has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. I'm not sure where it came from. I would joke that I must have been on a drunken bender when I wrote this, which is something that Patsy could have said.)

So Blame arrives. I don't read it right away, thought I can't say what I'm waiting for. I miss the Indie Next deadline (sorry Spenser, but I don't think my vote would have made the difference, do you?)

I decide to read it blind (I trust Huneven that much), but fifty pages into it, I glance at the back jacket and...a secret is very obviously revealed. I'm not happy. My reading experience is destroyed.

Or is it? It turns out I'm as happy as ever. The characters are as glorious as ever and her writing style is a dream. Only now do I realize how well she can write about addiction and recovery (I didn't even think of this as a theme in Jamesland, but it's clearer after reading both books that Huneven understands this and can speak to folks going through it.

I'm still tense, even though I know what's going on. How's it going to happen? What's Patsy going to do?

Maybe, in retrospect, it didn't matter. And really, I don't even know if they gave as much away on the finish copy. If they did, I'm thinking of wrapping the books in home-made dust jackets. I have a lot of grocery bags in the back room, after all. Now there's a cover treatment publishers haven't considered to save money!

I think I would have preferred the publisher marketing strategy of Chris Cleave's Little Bee or Katrina Kittle's The Kindess of Strangers. But in the end, maybe it doesn't even matter. Or maybe it's better to know. If I could gather together a few hundred readers who were willing to shell out twenty something dollars, I could get some nice data. Please sign up at our front desk.

That said, here are my thoughts:

"Know that Huneven’s third novel is about a woman with terrible alcohol abuse problems who hits bottom, and winds up in prison for hitting two women with her car. The story starts from someone else’s perspective (her boyfriend’s niece), and totally flips it out (a popular gimmick at the moment, but I’m still enjoying the “prelude changeup” as I call it. Then it’s all Patsy MacLemoore, and we go down (way down) and back up with one of the most real and glorious characters I’ve read in a long time. But how can I feel otherwise from the author of Jamesland? Like that wonderful novel, she brings such warmth to the story and its inhabitants. They are quirky and real and fully alive, and even the most unpleasant (and there are a few) have sparks of sympathy. I’m jealous of Vroman’s, for having such a wonderful story set in their backyard of Pasadena and Altadena. Now that I’ve read a few of her books, it’s clear that Huneven writes about addiction and recovery like few others. Above all, Blame is suffused with humor and grace, making this the kind of book I didn’t want to let go."

***

Later in the day. The book arrived. What happened to the dust jacket. The publisher was a little more circumspect about exactly what happened, but does announce a twist.