Searching for Pete Nelson--There's More on His Resume Than I Thought You Were Dead

I've been thinking all along that Pete Nelson, author of the new novel, I Thought You Were Dead, was a first novelist. It's the #1 Indie Next book for April, but it certainly didn't get all those reads from track record.

If you read the flap copy for Nelson's new novel, or rather, a love story with a protagonist who has a different name, he's written "several books." But if you look at the author bio on our bookseller's web site for Nelson on Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis, you'll find out he's written 18! This guy is a seasoned writer and it shows. No first-timer's luck involved.

I only started to think about this when I was writing back and forth with Rick Reiken, author of my favorite book of spring, Day for Night, and he saw on my signature (where I list the last ten or so books I've read, with info if we're doing some sort of event) and wrote the following:

"I know him from around here - actually it was through Elinor Lipman that I met him, about 10 years ago. I needed a dog sitter on short notice and Ellie arranged it because she knew Pete had a dog and would be mellow enough to deal with my dog's separation anxiety issues. Incidentally, that dog of mine (a basset-German shepherd mix -- he looked like a giant basset hound), who passed away a few years ago, at age 17, was named Boz, and many people called him Boswell."

Lipman comes up because Reiken knows I know her. In fact, she went up to him in Northampton and said she was excited about Day for Night because Daniel and the Boswell folks had already talked it up to her. And that Boswell thing? Sigh.

So I write to Lipman. Here's what I find out:

"Peter was the first writer I met when I moved to Northampton in 1987. (We had the same editor, Mindy Warner, at Viking, and she put us in touch). Peter was well-known as a writer, singer and host to almost every act who/which came to the Iron Horse and couldn't afford a hotel. But more famous than Peter was Stella, his yellow lab. He had a loooooonnnnng coffee hour every day at a restaurant on Main Street, and Stella would wait patiently outside the door, pre-leash law. So well-known and beloved that when Stella died, there was a feature about her in the local paper, so I guess one could say she got an obituary. Of course, she wore a bandana."

Most folks don't know or remember that Lipman published a book of short stories at Penguin before she moved to Pocket for her first novel, Then She Found Me. Which was 20 years ago! Her new book, The Family Man, is just out in paper and is one of my book club picks for spring summer. Come into the store and pick up my handout (Or maybe that's another blog post).

Oh, Stella! Nelson's dog makes the reader fall in love with her the way a whole town apparently did.

Still looking for the obit. I'll let you know if we find it.

Pete Nelson is appearing at the store with Joe Meno on Tuesday, April 20th, at 7 PM.

Freshening Up the Film Table with Entertainment Weekly's Double Issue

I love movie tie-in tables. There's no question that one industry dwarfs the other, and even an art film can turn a book that dribbles in sales into a steady seller. And for a Time Traveler's Wife? That would make it a #1 bestseller. Even Evening, the Susan Minot book that was adapted into a poorly-performing movie, albeit with a screenplay by Michael Cunningham, soared in sales.

So that's why our table is more or less permanent, at least somewhere in the store. But it was put together very quickly, because my former boss Carol was filming a promo for the Milwaukee Film Festival just as our store opened.

Now we've freshened it up with a rather complete list of films adapted from books (including a major book with a name change--Saphhire's Push has become Oprah's Precious.) The list is adapted from Entertainment Weekly's double-issue movie preview. I have a subsciption (of course--how could I not when they gave Elinor Lipman's The Family Man a glowing review and also put it on the "Must List.") but it seems like an issue that we should sell out in the store.

Prove me wrong! We put copies of Newsweek on their "what books to read now" display and we sold out the magazine.

I love lists. Did you figure that out yet?

The Best Buddies Live on, Both on a Rec Case and On Our Bestseller List

One of the things we did for our grand opening with Elinor Lipman, Anita Shreve, and Mameve Medwed was have them come in and be honorary booksellers for the afternoon. I ordered some books they liked and we put them in the Best Buddies case.

The afternoon event was modest (compared to the evening), but their legacy lives on. I refill a book or two in their case almost every day. And I was so happy to see all three of their books on our published bestseller list for the week ending May 30th.

Hardcover Fiction

1. The Great Perhaps, by Joe Meno

2. Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See

3. The Family Man, by Elinor Lipman

4. Wicked Prey, by John Sandford

5. Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk.

On paperback fiction, Anita Shreve's Testimony was #7 and Mameve's Of Men and their Mothers was #12.

It doesn't hurt that Lipman is getting some of her best reviews ever for her new book, including a lovely write up in Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

Here are some books that they are recommending:

Elinor Lipman

The Suicide Index, by Joan Wickersham

Ms. Hempel Chronicles, by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

Indignation, by Philip Roth

Anita Shreve

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

The Transit of Venus, by Shirley Hazzard

Cal, by Bernard McLaverty (which I couldn't get in, it might be OP)

Lies of Silence, by Brian Moore (same)

Mameve Medwed

The Believers, by Zoe Heller

Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo

I Loved, I Lost, I made Spaghetti, by Giulia Melucci

The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver.

As we sold books, I also included books that I knew the Buddies liked, either because they reviewed them, gave quotes for them, or just sent me an excited email. It's been very fun, and I hope to do this with more authors in the future.

An Update on How Things are Going--And this if Officially Grand Opening Week

Well, by grand opening, you should everything done, right? Not exactly. My mantra of "Every day is a little bit better" still holds true. Our books are beginning to come in through Jason, our accounting system is finally working such that Amie understands it (I'm hoping I'll be next) and we're beginning to get in our sidelines such as Moleskine journals, Galison boxed cards and stationery, and Melissa and Doug and Mudpuppy toys. Card orders from Madison Park and Artists to Watch are en route, as our stuffed animals from Kids Preferred.

Bev is particularly fond of the social notes line, boxed cards with a postcard-style enclosure. Shown is the popular Scandanavian Modern collection. We also have a matching journal and sticky notes. I was more of a fan of the dandelions, which are featured on our gardening table, next to our new whimsical wooden animal compasses, which are only $2.50.

Signage? Our permit for our banner is approved and I'm paying the fee on Monday morning. I expected to have a temporary banner up right away and a finished sign for our opening. Now it seems like the latter was for our opening and maybe the finished sign will be up for our one-year anniversary.

Customers are already talking about which sections they'd like to see bigger, and we're working on that. We've got more books coming in every area, but aside from kids, there's been a lot of talk about our mystery section, which probably calls for a second post. (Note: Anne's mystery group is reading John Dunning's Sign of the Book on May 19th). Also poetry, but that might have to do with the fact that our first three events were all poetry-oriented.

We know how important signage is, and we're trying to get that up; I'm not a fan of our signage typeface and wanted to change it; in the end, I decided there was a lot of money I could save by holding pat. It's a project for another year. (I'm not even positive what the typeface is: I should probably ask Barb at DTS images. I think the closest we came up with was Arial bold.

Our first bookmark is clever, but the design is effectively a bust. Sadly, I didn't really focus on this until after it was printed. We're going to chalk that up to a $35 lesson and redo it. For the next couple of days, you'll get a slightly pixilated version with a badly thought out border and dueling typefaces. I'm hoping Monday will be, not amazing, but improved.

If we play our cards right, we'll even have some tee shirts by the end of the week.

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Here's a nice piece in this week's Shepherd Express about the closing of Schwartz and the opening of the two new shops. It seemed more like an article for February, when the Schwartz closing was announced, and I'm sad that, despite being a week beforehand, there was nothing about my wonderful grand opening events, but it's still a nice cover story, and should probably remind folks not to take these new independent bookstores for granted.

Here's a piece about our upcoming events with Jane Hamilton, Anita Shreve, Elinor Lipman and Mameve Medwed. And don't forget Mequon's Next Chapter has Elizabeth Berg coming. Whatever you say about the state of newspapers, we are very lucky in Milwaukee that we have local book coverage in our paper. Please consider subscribing--I do and I can read them in my store for free! Oh, and if you do, it wouldn't hurt to say you subscribe because of the book coverage.

We took an order for Anita Shreve's Testimony from a fan in Virginia!

Here's an interesting article in the Journal Sentinel about Mary Nohl, the folk artist of Fox Point who left an amazing legacy. We're hosting the authors on June 4th.

And this great article about the new edition of The Flavor of Wisconsin has left us scrambling for books. Thanks to Terese Allen who made sure we had an event booked (on June 11th) before the article went to press.

It looks like I'm going to be on Kathleen Dunn for pledge week this Wednesday, May 6th. Dunn's show is on WHAD from 10-11 AM. Here's a link to info about the show, and it also has Nancy Pearl's recent booklist. Here are the show archives.

On Monday, May 4th at 7 PM, I'm leading my first in-store book club since 1996 in Mequon for the wonderful novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. Hope I'm not too rusty!

Our Best Buddies Night Brings Together Anita Shreve, Elinor Lipman, and Mameve Medwed as Part of our Grand Opening Weekend

When Boswell Book Company announced its opening, one of the first people I talked to was Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me (the basis for the recent film directed by and starring Helen Hunt) and numerous other novels.

We met many years ago at a publisher dinner for Lipman’s second novel, The Way Men Act. So many of the folks I worked with were fans of Then She Found Me; my coworker Jeanne loved to tell how she came to the rescue at a quiet call-in radio show to rave about the book. How can I not succumb to this enthusiasm? I quickly became a big fan.

Lipman and I bonded further when Pocket gave her a layover day in Milwaukee for her novel Isabel’s Bed (or as I call it, “the bagel novel”) We had a lovely day, capped off with a bookseller dinner at Mader’s. It didn’t hurt that Lipman also bonded strongly with Schwartz’s marketing director Nancy. After that, we became one of Lipman’s few regular tour stops outside her stomping grounds in the Northeast.

Now I do not have many author friends of this sort; Lipman is gregarious and kind, the sort that makes it easy to fall into friendship, and seems to know everybody. So when she emailed out of the blue to say “What can I do to help? When is your grand opening?” I had no other option than to schedule the grand opening around her.

Lipman had another brainstorm, with origins in a successful Schwartz event some years ago. It came to pass when Anita Shreve had to cancel her initial appearance in order to be present at the Orange Prize awards, where she was nominated for her wonderful novel, The Weight of Water.

It was their idea to schedule an event together. “What could be more fun?” they proposed. What followed was a wonderful bookseller dinner at Bartolotta’s (this time featuring David Schwartz and Carol Grossmeyer among the attendees; I still have the photo), and then a very popular event, with many fans of one author being turned on to the other.

Then I thought of Mameve Medwed, an old friend of Lipman’s who has also become a friend of mine. They met together in an adult ed class before either of them had published a novel. They have always been champions of each other’s work, and often function as an early reader for feedback.

Medwed appeared once at Schwartz too for her second novel Host Family. Sadly, there was a terrible snowstorm the day of her event. I always hoped we could one day give her the audience I thought she deserved.

When asked if Medwed might fit in to this event, Lipman replied, “I can’t ask her now. She’s spending the weekend at Anita’s.” (Editor's note: totally untrue! The actual response was, "I'll ask her this weekend. We're all going to be together." Thanks, Ellie!)

They’re not the same kinds of writers (Lipman and Medwed tend towards the comic, Shreve thrives on dramatic tension) but they share many fans. I’ve read all three of their new novels and enjoyed them greatly.

Lipman’s new novel, The Family Man, is sort of a bookend to Then She Found Me, the story of a gay man rediscovering the daughter (well, step-daughter) he lost many years ago. It’s my favorite kind of book, about rebuilding family, written seriously but not taking itself seriously.

Medwed’s Of Men and their Mothers is also a meditation on parenting. Her heroines are generally put upon by the world, and part of the joy in reading them is seeing the bullies get their come-uppance. In this case, it’s Maisie Grey, who contends with a bullying ex-mother-in-law and a son whose new girlfriend has Maisie fearful that she’ll be falling into a similar role.

Shreve, you must know, is another beast altogether, and I say beast not in reference to Shreve herself, who is as charming as an author can be, but because so many of her novels explore the dark animal in our souls. Her new novel, Testimony, is about a boarding school scandal and how it destroys the lives of so many folks it touches.

Never content to write the same book twice (I’m particularly fond of her written-backwards book, The Last Time they Met), this time Shreve draws on her journalistic background to create a tableau of voices, using in novel form the techniques of the classic biographies Edie and Capote. It’s a powerful story, that, like so many stories I love, blurs the line between good, evil, victim, and abuser.

Our event starts at 7 PM, but really, the fun begins at 3 (and lasts till 5), when all three authors are joining us on the bookstore floor to be honorary booksellers. Medwed tells me this is practice for when she applies for a shift or two someday at her local Porter Square Books in Cambridge. All voracious readers, they’ve got recommendations aplenty. We apologize for not being able to stock some of Shreve’s favorites from Bernard McLaverty and Brian Moore; they seem to be out of stock indefinitely and possibly out of print. It’s a crime!

Come join us midafternoon on Friday, May 8th for this celebration of friendship. Bring your best buddy to the bookstore for some suggestions, have dinner (there are lots of wonderful eateries nearby) and come back for the reading at 7 PM.