Book Club Encounter at Boswell, A Short Play

An actual conversation from last weekend at Boswell.

Leslie: What are you doing here?

Lynn: I'm picking up my new book club book (slow unveiling), America, America.

Leslie: Well (dramatic flourish), I just my book club's new selection, Middlemarch!

And unveil, and flourish, and scene!

Thank you to all concerned.

So here's a little bit of marketing info on Ethan Canin's America America:

"In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family's generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. Ethan Canin's stunning novel is about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate."

This is the first published book of Canin's I haven't read and I feel incredibly guilty about the whole thing, especially because it involves the city of Buffalo. Don't count me out yet.

And now some marketing info on George Eliot's Middlemarch

"It was George Eliot's ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising fictional provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, "Middlemarch" is richer still in character and in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community. "

For a while, Middlemarch showed up in every novel I read. I was miserable to have not read it, but obviously that feeling ebbed, as I still have not read it.

Yes, we've come a long way since we've opened, regarding book clubs. We started with just a few on the hold shelf, and now we've got over 40 clubs registered. You can browse what our clubs are reading in our book club case, and after calendars wind down, we'll be expanding to a larger bay, because we can't fit all the selected titles in the case that's currently being used.

Your book club's purchases get an automatic 10% discount, and they qualify for the Boswell Benefits rebate of 5% more. We ask that at least three club members buy their books through us to qualify.

If your club picks their books annually, I'm happy to present titles that best suit your club. If your club already buys many of their books from us, this service is free. If you currently shop elsewhere or use the library, there is a small charge for this service.

I Obsess Over My Barbara Pym Hardcovers

When I was working in New York, our offices at Warner Books (now Grand Central) were located in the same building as a very large B. Dalton. What was very cool was that at one time, you could enter the store directly from the subway station (and then later on, you couldn't).

My boss Ling had become good friends with Jeff, the store manager, and they liked to chat about what was and wasn't working. But I didn't know a soul in the store; it was a large space and I just liked exploring it.

One of the highlights for me was the shelf of Barbara Pym hardcovers (mentioned in the last post). At one point, they had a faceout of almost every title, reissued from E.P. Dutton. How did they get so popular? In the 1980's, Barbara Pym mania swept the nation, or at least a little tiny subsegment of it. Anne Tyler was a huge fan, as was John Updike. English literary critics voted her the most underrated writer of the 20th century. After having her manuscripts rejected for many years, it led her to start publishing again. And yes, of course, I'm too lazy to verify anything I just stated--let's just assume my memory is correct, although it often isn't.

It seemed like everyone I knew was reading her. And what a joy the experience was. I wound up getting them all in hardcover and in paperback. I read the unfinished manuscript. And I even read the letters--name another author I can say that about! The 13 books have a place of honor in my dining room, the copy of A Glass of Blessings is somehow more faded than the others, perhaps because, being partial to it, I left it out longer in direct sunlight.

For some reason, Excellent Women is the one that prevails. I don't know if the plot is so different, or if it's title just perfectly sums up what Pym is all about. It's a similar dilemma to Anita Brookner, where everyone reads Hotel du Lac because it won the Booker, but there are many perfectly wonderful titles in her library. But I'll save that for another posting.

Why isn't there a series of BBC shows based on these novels? Wouldn't they be perfect for Masterpiece Theater? Or is that all classics now. Oh, remember when they dramatized the Lucia novels?

Did you ever Try Handselling a Book and Realize You Don't Have any Copies...

So I'm talking to a customer and the perfect book suggestion comes to me. The only problem is, when I get to the shelf, we don't have it. Not just that, we've never had it.

In some cases, I caught these gaffes quickly and it's paid off. We have very nice sales of The Distant Land of My Father, by Bo Caldwell, and I think in 75% of the cases, I put the book in someone's hand. Others I spotted yesterday. And only time will tell if it's worth it to bring these titles in. But now that I'm on the floor quite a bit, I have lots more opportunities than when I was a buyer, and I seem more persuasive than when I was the manager in Mequon many years ago.

The key on these things is, you really have to prove that you can sell the book. "It's your job, not your library" I used to say to eager booksellers who spent way too much time telling me what we were missing, instead of trying to sell what we had. And though as the owner, perhaps I can carry whatever I want, it's been my thought that I should have the same expectations of myself that I have of everyone else, if not higher.

1. The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth.

First I decided it was perfect for Lucy, the daughter of my friendstomer (friend/customer) Polly. I thought I'd ordered in one for stock too, so I brought it up at the Waukesha County book club presentation I did today. I had already convinced Cyndie (the member who set this up) to read it, but when I checked, I still hadn't been secure enough to bring in a stock copy. We sold about 30 copies of this book, a novel of two friends in 1970's San Francisco that is completely told in sonnets, when I made it my backlist push several years ago. It's a beautiful book, both structurally and emotionally, and whether you love it or hate it you have to agree--you've likely never read anything like it.

2. Village School, by Miss Read.

I hadn't even thought about Miss Read in years, until a certain retired sports hero's wife told me it was her secret passion. I thought, "Hey, I'm working with every Miss Read fan I know", that being Bev and Anne. We brought in several and are hoping it is as successful as another passion we share (well, Bev, me and Amie in this other case), Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking. After seeing a Schwartz store sell two a year if we were lucky, we've sold about 20 this year.

Which brings me to an author I thought was perfect for my Miss Read fan...

3. An Unsuitable Attachment, by Barbara Pym (et al).

I think we're due for another Barbara Pym revival and I'm ready to start it. It's another author that Bev, Anne, and I share (oh, and John E., who also loves Colwin). In this case, the story is about Sophie, the vicar's wife, who takes on the task of matching the eligible Rupert Stonebird to her sister Penelope, only she doesn't figure on competition from new arrival Iantha Broome. The 50's books are different from the 80's books (where there are even some gay characters) but they both share a profound human insight and a marvelous sense of humor. This is the bridge novel, the 7th novel that was somehow rejected by her publisher and led to a very long dry spell.

4. In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden, by Kathleen Cambor. My recent post on Mark Gates reminded me what a great book club book that was, and how little I was on the floor to hand-sell it. Best of all, it's still in print and available as a real book, as opposed to print on demand. During our Raymond Carver event, I started to talk up David Leavitt's Martin Bauman (Leavitt's veiled story about his professional relationship with Gordon Lish), only to find it was $21.95 and POD. Now it might be a perfectly nice book, but it's about $7 too high for my customers, and I was a little nervous about the quality to order it in.

A Mark Gates Note

My apologies for not publishing yesterday. I have been in a blur and really didn't want to write anything but this, and read anything (for fear that I might steal good bits) until my note about Mark was finished.

I first met Mark Gates when he was selling to my coworker John. We had been buying frontlist and backlist together, dividing up the list, and John inherited the line because it was previously sold by the Eugene Rotenberg (or possibly "Burg") commission group. That's another five stories in itself.

Isn't it funny how memory is? I would insist that Mark moved to Chicago to sell Farrar Straus Giroux in 1996, based on this fleeting impression of how I met him and this weird dynamic where I was more like a visitor to the office. If you told me he actually started selling us in 1991 (which is entirely possible), I'd admit that it wouldn't be the first memory I'd rewired to suit a story.

Afterwards, we both went to John and sort of asked, "Who was that?" (I was probably at my most manic, and Mark was sort of showing pity for having to work with a bit of a know-it-all, an interrupter, a suck up). Did I leave the card out of my brain file or something? Because I have that very clear memory of John telling me Mark's story, about he moved to Chicago to be a key account rep for FSG, an esteemed publisher that was still independent and run in the old family way by Roger Straus.

It was the next year in Schwartz lore that John left buying to open Schwartz on Downer, the location of the store that I've come to own. I returned to buying after a short sabbatical where , my goal was to write a book about old department stores, by the way. I still have piles of research, but I never knew exactly what I could contribute to the canon, and why anyone would want it. One of the ways I would detour with sales reps was to ask them about their childhood department store memories, and Mark had some nice tidbits about visiting the stores of Pittsburgh.

Pretty quickly my meetings with Mark grew to be a highlight of the season, starting of course with the little asides. He could be very passionate about the books, but was pretty blunt about books that he thought has little chance of working. This is quite common now, but in the days when many reps had strong commission incentives (and some did not even account for returns), it was common to see a rep that loved everything.

He could take something as seemingly drab as a trip to the grocery and turn it into a wonderful story. So you can imagine how a book he enjoyed would become a must-read for everyone around. In particularly, his appearances at our sales rep presenations would be much anticipated. When he loved a book, he could make it happen. When there was a list where he was lukewarm, he would just be incredibly funny. What made him a great rep is that he didn't stop thinking about the list after he sold it; if there was a book that was generating some good reads or buzz that we missed out on, he'd pretty quickly get us up to speed.

Mark had a way of being droll and a bit cutting, and yet he possessed a very warm heart. No matter that he sometimes dropped a less than angelic insight about someone, he had an incredibly warm heart. (editor's note: Really! Very warm!)

I have two strong book memories of Mark. I'm not including Maisie Dobbs, the Soho press title by Jacqueline Winspear that went on to great success, and where I credit Mark with rallying many, many indendent booksellers to get behind the book and spread the word out of his territory. It's a wonderful series, but my fellow booksellers at Schwartz led the charge, and I was just along for the ride.

Another book that Mark loved deeply was Nuala O'Faolain's Are You Somebody, a book he sold very agressively and passionately, and eventually developed a good friendship with the author. It was one of those books where I grew to appreciate his special working relationship with Maggie Richards at Holt, one of the few publishing folks I know that could match Mark jibe for jibe.

No, the focus was on books we both loved that we tried to help break out. The first was Kathleen Cambor's In Sunlight, In A Beautiful Garden, a novel about the Johnstown Flood, which coincidentally, was set in the town where Mark was born. It was a beautiful story that jumped around to the different residents, unknowingly in the path of the flood, while also focusing on the corporate titans of Pittsburgh whose neglect led to the tragedy. The book worked, but never found the audience I thought it deserved. (It's still in print from Harper, but I included the FSG jacket, which I like better).

The second was Alan Bennett's, The Uncommon Reader, which had a very different fate. I remember having these very intense conversations with Mark about how this book spoke to the true independent customer. How when I met my good friend Sue Boucher at Lake Forest, I started jabbering about the book, and John Eklund (who had facilitated our lunch meeting) was ecstatic about it as well, having read it in it's original magazine form and had no idea it was becoming a stand-alone. I think I must have raised my order to Spenser Lee (Maggie's longtime equivalent at FSG) three times, to the point where our initial order was 300 copies (oy, those were the days) and we still eventually ran out.

I love that book so much because Bennett, through his story of the Queen of England who becomes a passionate book lover, gets it. We book lovers are a different breed; we are a different bunch. They see us as crazy, and I guess I might say likewise.

Mark also had incredible charisma. Everybody wanted to be his best friend. I was certainly not exempt from that desire. When I got my Thanksgiving invite to visit Mark and his partner Steve in Madison, you be sure I jumped at it, even though it was probably given out of pity and I don't usually like holiday gatherings.

But do you know what was particularly special about Mark? You know how with most people when two good friends of someone meet, there's often this competition? Well, Mark had a way of making his separate friends become...friends. I am particularly grateful to Mary, Anne and Johanna for keeping me in the loop as Mark became less able to communicate.

I did get to visit Mark in Madison at least once, but my last meeting was at the bookstore, where Mark and Steve came to see Michael Perry (Coop), and buy a bunch of books, a last gift from Mark. He bought my passion, Little Bee, among other things, and only later did I learn that he wasn't really reading much anymore.

Here's Mark's obituary in Publishers Weekly and one in Shelf Awareness. He was PW Rep of the Year in 2006. And here's a link to the Wisconsin (Madison) Book Festival, a cause that was dear to Mark's heart. There are lots of other tributes around, but I'm sure his friends have already read many of them so I'm not going to link to them all.

I miss him. My sympathies to Steve, his family, his friends.

I Have Been Trying to Write a Customer Service Post Since We Opened, but Until Now, Couldn't Find Anything Funny in the Topic.

So many times have I started a customer service post. Every time something goes wrong, I want to write, "You're only as bad as your worst bookseller at his or her worst moment." And I include myself in that grouping.

Things go wrong. Not everybody likes our policies. People want us to break our policies about returns, for example, a bit tighter than with Schwartz. We moved much closer to other indie bookstores, and the world is moving that way in general. But all rules are situational, and we know that. And I'll bend a rule for a good customer.

Oh, and also, we do things wrong. There's that too. I make big mistakes sometimes, and I'm apologizing for that in advance.

All this leads up to yesterday's story. I'm working on the floor and get a call from a very, very, very, angry customer.

AC: I want to speak to the manager. Are you the manager?

DG: Yes, I can help you.

AC: The manager. I'm only speaking to the store manager.

DG: I'm the store owner. Daniel Goldin. I think I can help you.

AC: I am so pissed at this store.

DG: I'm sorry (natural instinct. Probably shouldn't ever be involved in a car accident that isn't my fault). What happened?

AC: My grandmother comes into your store all the time. She always shopped at Schwartz and she contines to shop there. So, she came in and bought four Windows books for nephew. It turned out he had a Mac. She brought them back and wanted the cash. You wouldn't give it to her because she didn't have a receipt. She was so upset she left without the books.

Later on I called back. I asked to speak to someone in charge and the woman said, "I can help you." I started talking about the books and she said, "I see them right here." My complaint started and the woman said, "Sir, people try to scam us about this all the time. We have to be careful."

I was incensed! How dare she accuse my grandma? (The vitriol went on for another 3-4 paragraphs but you get the idea. He was mad.)

DG: What was this woman's name?

AC: I don't know. She wouldn't tell me.

DG: What is my name?

AC: Um, I didn't write it down. I don't know (really, this interaction happened).

DG: It's Daniel. I don't want this to happen to you again. You should write it down. (OK, this broke the tension a bit)

Now here's the thing (and note that I'm dealing with this from our phone in the back right of the store). If your grandmother bought the books from us, we can figure out if she bought them through our Boswell Benefits program. We don't do this all the time, because it's a bit complicated. What's her last name? When did this happen?

AC: It's Van Damme. She came in on Black Friday.

DG: Boy, I don't recognize that name and I know a lot of my older women customers.

AC: She's in all the time. Everyone calls her Miss Lillian (yes, the name is changed).

DG: I don't have anyone on that program here. Is she on Boswell Benefits? That thing where we give customers a 5% coupon when they spend $100. Most people keep track of it by their phone number, just like the Schwartz program.

AC: Oh, Miss Lillian would never give out her phone number to anyone. That's private information.

DG: We don't use the number, give it out, sell it. And you don't have to use your phone number for the program. Anyway, she's not on it.

AC: Well, what are you going to do about it?

DG: I'm sorry all this happened, and I want to figure out what I can do, but first I really have to look at our sales, and talk to the person whom I think would have handled this.

End of dialogue.

I promise to call him back ASAP. I'm a little panicky about the whole thing. How could this have gone so wrong? And though I have an inclination to do whatever this guy says, I don't want to override the circumstances of what Amie (and it would have to be Amie, only she and Jason could really make those decisions without sending it "upstairs" in a weird situation like this.) But this really doesn't sound like Amie.

So I talk to Amie. She knows nothing about it.

I go look for the books, which were right in front of the woman who answered the phone. We can't find them anywhere. I check sales for Black Friday. No computer books sold.

The caller kept saying that his grandmother went to Schwartz and continued to shop with us afterwards. Maybe it was Next Chapter. I call. Nope, no computer books on hold. It couldn't be Open Book because they have no computer section.

I called back the customer and got his answering machine. Fifteen minutes later I called back again. No answer.

It's been another day and we never heard back. Do I keep calling? Did the caller realize it wasn't our store after all? Whatever happened, there was no apology. Was the whole thing a practical joke? There's not even a lesson in here!

OK then, maybe there is a bestseller list here. These could have been books she bought.

The Top 5 Windows Books, according to Ingram demand:

1. Windows 7: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue (and it's not even out yet)

2. Windows Internals, by David Solomon

3. Windows 7 Inside Out, by Ed Bott

4. Windows 7 Plain and Simple, by Joyce Jerry

5. Teach Yourself Visually Windows 7, by Paul McFedries.

Listen to Carmichael's Bookseller Carol Besse (OK, and Others) on NPR's "On Point"

I was driving around his week with the HHR that I rented so we could do four offsites this week. It also got me to Fox Wake Up News on Tuesday (and no, I don't know how to link to my interview) and to Alverno College, where I picked up the sign for our Jeannette Walls event (January 9th, 2 PM).

On "On Point", Carol Besse was discussing some of her favorite books of the year. Hey, I know who she is! Besse is one of the principals of Carmichael's Books of Louisville. Their two stores are must-sees for any book lover visiting that city. You just wouldn't believe how they pack such interesting stuff into such a small space. I've only been to the city twice but I think I went to one store or the other every single day I was there.

It's a really interesting segment, also including David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times and Laura Miller of Salon. But I'm a bookseller, so I'm most interested in Bessie's Best:

Nonfiction:

- Chris Hedges, The Empire of Illusion
- David Grann, The Lost City of Z

- T. R. Reid, The Healing of America

- Michael Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

- David Small, Stitches: A Memoir

Fiction:

- Chris Cleave, Little Bee

- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

- Tania James, Atlas of Unknowns

- Lydia Peelle, Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

- Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

Listen to the broadcast here.

And please visit Carmichaels web site!

More on David J. Wagner's American Wildlife Art, now Rescheduled for Monday, December 14th, 7 PM

On Tuesday we were supposed to host David J. Wagner to talk about his edited collection American Wildlife Art, which looks at the history of wildlife art, focusing quite a bit on Audubon. I think it would be a very interesting talk for a very beautiful book (which, yes, we have been selling), but ugh, that weather.

The lakefront actually got rain and mush, compared to points north and west of us. But still, it's often just fear that keeps people away. Fear of blizzards. How does Dairy Queen overcome that phobia anyway?

That said, since Wagner is local, we rescheduled to next Monday, December 14th, 7 PM. I asked David to write a bit about how the book came to be. You can read it here.

Shortly after I earned my Ph.D., I was invited by the eminent ornithologist and creator of Houghton Mifflin's enormously successful field guides, Roger Tory Peterson, to conceptualize and orchestrate a world-wide conference about wildlife art at the Chautauqua Institution to inaugurate the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, New York.

The conference took place in the fall of 1992. I specifically designed the conference to follow the chronology and themes of wildlife art history outlined in my Ph.D. dissertation. Thanks to Roger, funds were provided to attract speakers of the highest caliber. In session I, for example, speakers included Professor Roderick Nash (author, Wilderness and the American Mind, and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara).

Attending the conference was Robb Reavill, Science Editor for Cornell University Press. She subsequently recommended my dissertation for publication. To assess what was needed to expand my dissertation into a book and support her recommendation for publication, she retained Professor Nash to read and critique my dissertation and book proposal.

In the meantime, William G. Kerr, founder of the National Wildlife Art Museum in Jackson Hole, WY, asked Carl Rungius historian, Professor Donald E. Crouch, to review them too. The Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation consequently funded a postdoctoral fellowship that permitted me to conduct the additional research and writing that was needed to expand my dissertation into a book. The result was: american-wildlife-art.com.

15 years in the making, and it looks it. Beautiful!

Here's more about the Chautauqua Institution. At one time there were Chautauqua's all over the country, all promoting the arts and learning in pastoral settings. Now I think there are four--I stayed in one in Boulder, Colorado. My mom's friends in New York often go there for programming in the summer.

How did Things Go with Our Book Club Discussion of The Hakawati?

What a big sprawling monster The Hakawati is! Rabih Alameddine's third novel is framed by Osama, a Lebanese man in the U.S. who returns to Beirut to watch over his dying father with the rest of his remaining family.

This is a book about storytelling, so all there are a lot of plot strands to follow. There's the stories about his extended family, like Uncle Jihad, his sister Lina, the rise of the family's car dealerships, life in Beirut under the Civil War, and so forth. There's the fanciful tale of Fatima, a servant who becomes lover of a demon and partners with 8 mischievous imps (Adam, Noah, Ishmael...you get the idea) to do battle with King Kade, the white goddess-like figure). There's the retelling of the legent of Baybars, the 13th century fellow who rose from slave to warrior and battled...well, I honestly got a little mixed up with this story, as it's the one that started last.

Our opinions ranged from "This is why I read fiction" to "Boy, this guy bit off a lot. I'm not sure he was able to chew it all." Reviews similarly ranged from incredible to problematic, but of course tended more to the former. After reading The Hakawati, I tried to get as many insights as I could about the book. My one contribution that I hadn't read elsewhere, was noting that cheering for Fatima, aligned with the demon, throwing conventional good and evil on its head, played off the recent historical fragments where folks of different religions (and there are a lot of different religious peoples in the book) demonize everyone else, but to the others, they are the demons. Similarly, that is probably why the most likable folks in the book are named Osama and Jihad--this actually came from one of club members, not me. But I agree.

I think Alameddine adopts a style that rejects certain traditional forms for novels. In a sense, his first two novels (Koolaids, and I The Divine) are both composed of fragments, the second actually being all composed of first chapters. In the case of The Hakawati, Alameddine offered the least storytime to the most traditional novel narrative, that of the framing story of modern-day Osama. This is totally stolen from two other critics, but it may be why I dipped into Koolaids, but never read it.

We all felt we would have appreciated the novel even more if we were more familiar with the source material. I was fascinated by how he told stories from so many different sources and made them his own. As usual, the results were an embarrassing blot on my reading history--how could I not have read Ovid's Metamorphoses? And am I reading it next? No. I have event books to conquer.

The book club was successful for me, as I really wanted to read Alameddine, and this was what forced me to do so. And I liked it, though I'm not sure if I did as much as my fellow bookseller Elizabeth Jordan at Bookpeople. I couldn't find a post in their blog where she talked about it, but here's where she calls it her favorite book of 2008. And then you should jump over and read their blog.

We are probably doing too many long books in a row for our in-store lit group book club. I also realize that I have to do some crowd pleasers. And at least one of the members is chomping at the bit to pick the books. I am leaning towards a Herte Muller for March. They are short.

That said, here are our next two selections:

Monday, January 4th, 7 PM

The Post Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver

My sister Merrill has wanted me to read this book forever. Before you get all fluffy on me, it was long-listed for the Man Booker. So there.

Monday, February 1st, 7 PM.

Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis

The Florentine Opera is offering discount passes to book club attendees. We may do a second day-time discussion.