Can Book Club Books be Funny? Contemplating This is Where I Leave You

I finally messed this up. I scheduled our in-store book club for the last Monday in August because we plan to close on Labor Day at 5. The problem was that I have to go to Utah, leaving the group to fend for itself.

Last week, just before I started this month’s selection, This is Where I Leave You, one of our regulars (let’s call her A) told me that she hated the book. Very, very sexist! She couldn’t wait to hear what another regular (let’s call her B) would think. She would hate it!

I panicked. How did this happen? I read a lot of reviews. I was told time and again that I would love this book. I had been calling Tropper’s book, my #1 book of 2009 that I hadn’t read.

Then I saw B. She told me that at first she wasn’t sure why I had picked this book. But by the end, she decided it was the funniest book she’d read in years.

Now I really am sad that I’m not going—what a spirited discussion this would have been!

Tropper’s novel is actually his fifth, but Dutton really did a good job repositioning Tropper. I saw more than one comparison to Perotta. Now I want to contact the editor (Ben Sevier) and ask how he did it (yes, I know it was a team effort). It’s not really different in style or tone from several of my favorite writers, who hardly get the laurels that Tropper received.

Not that they aren’t totally deserved. The story is about Judd Foxman, who finds out his father (the sporting goods titan of Elmsbrook, New York) has died, just after his wife has left him for another man. The family descends (three two brothers and a sister) on Mom, armed with just about every childhood grievance (and dysfunction).

On Facebook, I mentioned that I ran into my ex-coworker Dan, who had just finished this and was reading Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End, while I had just finished Ferris and was reading the Tropper? It’s a surprising coincidence, but not totally, as they are two very, very funny books that are face out in the front of our store.

And one other connection—if Then We Came to the End is a literary variation of “The Office”, then Tropper’s current novel is, as Lisa Schwartzbaum suggests in her Entertainment Weekly review, the book equivalent of “Arrested Development.”

Lisa Schwartzbaum in Entertainment Weekly
"Tropper steadily ratchets up the multigenerational mayhem, often involving unwieldy lust or vociferous inter-sibling squabbling, with the calm authority of someone who knows his characters from deep within his kishkes — that's Yiddish for 'guts.'

Janet Maslin in the New York Times
In a wry domestic tone nicely akin to Tom Perrotta’s, Mr. Tropper goes on to introduce a darkly entertaining bunch of dysfunctional relatives.

Caroline See in the Washington Post
The Foxman brothers must become men, though, God knows, they don't want to. They want to remain hard-punching, dope-smoking, lighthearted pranksters, but life won't stand for that.

Tod Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times
There's nothing perfect here for the Foxmans -- a father dead and a son cuckolded, and that's just what can be revealed without spoiler -- and Tropper wisely lets these characters exist with -- and without -- dignity.

The group meets tonight, August 30th, at 7 PM. Our next meeting is Monday, October 4th, where we discuss Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women. Both are featured in our fall-winter book club brochure.

PS--I love how Bantam repackaged Tropper's backlist!

Listen to Lanora and Lisa from Next Chapter and Books and Company on Wisconsin Public Radio

Listen to Lanora of Next Chapter and Lisa of Oconomowoc's Books and Company talk about their picks of 2009 with Stephanie Lecci.

In this interview, you will learn that Lanora is the true source for my rec for Beautiful Creatures. Yes, she told me to sell it to anyone who likes Twilight and the other Stephenie Meyer books.

Oh, and Lanora also convinced me to read The Most Beautiful Book in the World, another Europa discovery that, while a collection of stories, has enough of the vibe of The Elegance of the Hedgehog to be a great suggestion for folks who devoured Muriel Barbery's novel--the titles, while written by different authors, share a translator. (Alas, Gourmet Rhapsody has been disappointing to just about every reader.)

Lisa confirms that Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You is the book I should have read but still have not. And she's really got me interested in W. Eugene Smith's The Jazz Loft Project, a collection of photos from an ex-Life Magazine photographer who holed up in Chelsea in the early 1960's, and became perhaps the premiere jazz photographer from that era.

I Got to Talk to Susan Stamberg and Everyone Listened in on the Conversation

Here's the Link to the Indie Bookstore Holiday Pick Roundup. You can listen to me recommend Little Bee, as if you haven't heard me recommend it before. I've also got my other favorite books to talk about--hope I didn't make to many factual errors.

Needless to say, I was a little starstruck about the whole experience. And not just about Ms. Stamberg, though let's just say I am still a bit overwhelmed by those kinds of interactions. No, I was sort of starstruck at being grouped with regulars Lucia Silver and Rona Brinlee.

Especially Rona Brinlee of the Book Mark in Atlantic Beach, Florida. I still remember her 2008 piece where she talked up Wrack and Ruin and City of Thieves, books that are familiar to folks who shop Boswell regularly because I always want to talk about them. This year's book that she hyped that I'm obsessed with was Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You...except with everything going on, I didn't read it yet.

But Rebecca in our store loved it and my sister Merrill loved it and Dave loved it at Next Chapter. For me, that's an equation for sure-fire pleasing.

My next visit to Southern California is definitely including a pilgrimage to Studio City. And if I were living in Florida, I'd be driving hours to visit the Book Mark. Hint to everyone I know who lives in Florda.

Boy, It's Fun to Have Big-time Releases Come Out. Is That What Fall is Like?

For the second week in a row, there was energy in in the store as folks came in to purchase the new novels by Thomas Pynchon and Richard Russo. In the end, the former outsold the latter by 50%. We also had a nice bump on Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter, an author with some local connections and a great champion in our bookseller Anne.

Our hardcover fiction bestsellers for the week ending August 8th:

1. Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon (Bosweller's Best at 20% off)

2. That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo (same)

3. The Calligrapher's Daughter, by Eugenia Kim (see above)

4. The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson (also a Best, and last week's #1)

5. Fool, by Christopher Moore (Lamb was #98 on NPR beach reads)

6. The Defector, by Daniel Silva (our sales on this have far exceeded what Downer Avenue Schwartz used to sell. This is a good example of a book that is selling to folks that frequented our Shorewood location. Also, I'm pretty good at talking it up. We sold two backlist titles last week to new readers as well).

7. The Help, by Katherine Stockett. (flurry of publicity about how folks are reading this created more people who want to read this).

8. The Strangers, by Anita Brookner. (OK, that was me.)

9. Jericho's Fall, by Stephen Carter

10. The Dead of Winter, by Rennie Airth (selling substantially better than his last one, which my coworker Catherine at Schwartz said was disappointing).

Still not selling is Jonathan Tropper's new novel, despite our over-the top rec in both our email newsletter and event calendar. This week Entertainment Weekly made a similarly bold proclamation, putting it on their must list and also giving it a big A-rated write up.

We were struck by the similarities in type and background color of these three recently-released novels. We'd probably only noticed it because our Boswell Best titles are currently arranged by title.