Another Lil' Valentine's Day Post--Something for the Brainy Lover, and Also for the Lover who Finds Brains Delicious

So I came back from the east coast rather overwhelmed by Valentine's Day. I was shocked by how much display space was allocated to it, even in bookstores. We have a nice card spinner and a table of books and gifts, but it ain't nothing comparatively.

A few things have come in since I originally posted about it. We got these Valentine's puzzle lockets, with sweetie pie pictures of kittens and puppies. A little precious for me, but perhaps mitigated by the potential confoundedness of the puzzle.

There are some new brainy Valentine books in. Irving Singer's Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up is abridged from his 1984 opus, The Nature of Love. MIT professor Singer discusses romantic love, the Plantonic ideal, 19th-century remonatic love, and what the future holds, based on scientific research.

I'm also intrigued by Andrew Shaffer's Great Philosphers who Failed at Love. I don't know if this is failure, but did you know Jean-Paul Sartre adopted his mistress as his daughter? A. J. Jacobs calls the book, "Thought-provoking and mildly distubing." The book is printed with dark blue ink! I don't see that much, so I like to put these things on the table. To sweeten the deal, I might suggest pairing your book with Lil' Smoochers cinnamon candies. "They make kissers kissable." Patent pending.

Want something less brainy? How about no brain at all? You might want to pick up Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime: A Book of Zombie Love Songs, by Michael P. Spradlin. A sample:

"Oh yeah, I've turned into something,

You just won't understand.

When I say that you're delicious

I want to eat your hand,

I want to eat your hand,

I want to eat your hand!"

Perhaps you might want to add on a tin of Zombie Mints with that. And yes, they are brain flavored.

Five Very Exciting Things to Tell You About Our Event with Jennifer Chiaverini on Tuesday, February 22nd.

1. First of all, the new book, The Union Quilters, is coming on Tuesday, February 22nd. Still in the series, it reaches back to Civil War times to document the travails of the women of Elm Creek Valley. Let's just say that these Civil War wives* are having some issues on the home front. Publishers Weekly found this heartwarming story heartwarming and accessible enough to attract to readers. And yes, we have the launch event, that Tuesday, this time at a special location. Read on!

2. We're hosting an event, once again with our pals at Patched Works of Elm Grove. I went out to visit Julie again, this time when they were actually still open. Julie showed me Chiaverini's new collection of fabrics, being sold at the store. One of the fabrics was actually used on the jacket of the new book.

Can I just say again how much I love fabric stores? I roamed the aisles for about 15 minutes, looking at all the fascinating patterns. Some were quite beautiful, some funny, others odd. Yes, something for everyone. Need a pattern with a coffee bean? Patched Works have several. If I knew how to sew, I'd be a fabric junkie.

OK, this one is my favorite, it's 5th from the left (or 6th, if you count that little sliver at the bottom). Very Danielish.

3. Whereas last time we hosted the event at Boswell, this time it's at the Sunset Playhouse! After visiting the Patched Works, I headed over to the Playhouse (at 800 Elm Grove Road, only blocks from the store) to take a look around. But the box office is open 1-5 pm (Tuesday through Friday, till 4 pm on Saturday) and I was about two hours early. Rats. And no, this is not the best picture, but it shows there is plenty of free parking!

Coincidentally, the Playhouse is making a bit to get more attendees from Milwaukee. I came back to Boswell to find that our activity display in our vestibule (this is placed in the store by a third party) had not one, not two, but three fliers advertising upcoming shows.

a. January 27-29 is "Caps for Sale", based on the classic children's book by Esphyr Slobodkina. It's a "bug in a rug" show. Hey, you only have one day left for this one. It's 10:30 am and 2 pm on 1/29. Ticket info is at 262-782-4430.

b. January 31-February 1st is "Best of Broadway", three shows. Tickets are $17 for this one, a tribute to The Showstopper.

c. Now through February 6th is "Guys on Ice", the ice fishing musical comedy which has previously played at the Milwaukee Rep, or so I remember! Tickets range from $10-22.

I know you want to sing along to "The Beer in the Bucket."

4. Yes, you can get a free pin with purchase. Once again Jennifer Chiaverini is offering a commemorative pin with purchase of the new book, The Union Quilters. I asked Chiaverini if I could show a copy of the pin and she gladly obliged me. So yes, if you buy the book from our website in advance of 2/22, you will also get the free pin. Purchase here. (And also yes, you can buy the book on our website and have us bring the book to the Sunset Playhouse to get it signed. Of course you can!)

5. It's going to be a great event, and it's free too. Use that money to buy a copy of the book, get a free pin, get some beautiful fabric. What more could you want? RSVP to our Facebook page.

*For a historical perspective, why not have someone in the group read Carol Berkin's Civil War Wives, now out in paperback.

My Public Admission that I Bought a Car for the Store (Which Was, By the Way, in the Original Business Plan Almost 2 Years Ago)

So it's come to this. I bought a car for the store. Up until now, I've been taking public transportation and bumming rides and setting up rentals. We got to the point where I was renting a car one week per month, and it became harder and harder for me to shoo all my offsites and deliveries into these one-week boxes. Here are some other funny don't-have-a-car moments of my first 663 days of Boswell:

1) I've taken the bus to at least two events, complete with boxes of books. The good news is that the 30 bus runs straight down Wisconsin Avenue, giving me good access to the Milwaukee Public Library, Marquette University, and several other destinations.

2) In my early days, I walked home from the Italian Community Center with a hand truck of books. For those who don't know, that was about 3.5 miles.

I looked at Zipcar, which has a station at UWM, but becomes very expensive if you use it regularly for more than a couple of hours at a time. The cars are often small, not having storage space for our boxes. I needed something with a decent amount of cargo space, but I still wanted a car frame that would give us reasonable gas mileage. I went almost fifty years without a car and I didn't want to blow my track record on a guzzler.

After a number of suggestions and some research, I wound up buying a Scion. I thought the older models were cuter (those boxy things you see all around the store) but they are almost too small for our needs, and turned out to be quite expensive used. High demand, apparently. It suprised me that the current model is far less iconic, but apparently it has better wind resistance. And I could also do a separate post on colors in the car industry, which are currently very blah. Many car lines follow the makeup industry, doing the equivalent of turquoise lipstick*, a limited edition in a crazy color that gets some press, but the cost of the crazy color (bright blue for 2011, a purplish blue for 2010, which they did have in stock) didn't warrant the extra cost for the store. The xb used to be on the Yaris body, but to my knowledge, the second generation is a Corolla in a fancy dress.

In a way, this car is a return to the wood-paneled station wagon that Schwartz used for stock transfer (before the van) and I used to get to my position managing the Mequon store in the mid 1990s. There's a pretty good story about one of my breakdowns, involving an exit ramp and a call from the police.

We're hoping that having the car will allow us to more easily do the offsite events and conferences we've been putting together. We already do some school deliveries, and I'm hoping to be able to step that up. And maybe to some other locations around town. I don't want to over-promise. For now, the car will help us get to Bethenny Frankel's event tonight (1/27, 8 pm) at the Pabst Theater. Tickets are still available.

My only regret is that I'd gotten rather friendly with the clerks at one of the rental counters, and had some nice book discussions. Not friendly enough that they shopped at Boswell, but I guess i would have had to become a super-deluxe gold customer to make that happen.

Are you kidding? I have plenty more regrets than that. I'm not crazy about driving, and have so far been taking the bus to work when I don't have any auto needs. I'm worried about my book reading--the bus offers 45 minutes of reading, often uninterrupted. Sometimes interrupted, but better since they turned off those awful televisions.

*I read an interesting book about the makeup industry once, but for the life of me, I can't remember its title.

Serendipity Strikes! A Found Review by an Old Friend, an Author Event that Finds me Meltzered!

This trip east has been full of pleasant surprises, though it will be an unpleasant surprise if my flight doesn't get out of Boston before the 6-10 inches of snow that is expected.

In between Winter Institute in DC and my Mom in Massachusetts, I visted my nephew in New York. After we made plans, he learned he would be posted to Asia the day after I left. Looking for reading material, I spotted a copy of New York County Lawyer, a free publication that at one time was likely filled with ads targeting, well, New York County lawyers. He could not explain the quarter page ad highlighting the services of a personal injury lawyer based in Miami.

Turning to the book review, I read a piece on Tales from the Sausage Factory: Making Laws in New York State, by Daniel Feldman and Gerald Benjamin. The authors will appear at the New York County Lawyers Association for a discussion and signing on January 31st at 6 pm, 14 Vesey Street. All my lawyer readers should take note! And why am I so excited to read about why making laws turns out to be not like sausage making at all? It's because the review was written by ex-coworker Eugene Strupinsky. It was like a visit from an old friend!

So Eugene (a long-time reader of smart mysteries and thrillers) was probably with me when I made a spontaneous decision to see Brad Meltzer at Brookline Booksmith this past Monday. I had already decided to purchase a couple of books there (see previous post), but in all my visits, I've never actually gone to one of their events. Meltzer was appearing for his new thriller, The Inner Circle, the story of a Washington DC archivist who discovers that the George Washington's secret spy ring still exists.

Though I'm not generally a thriller reader, I do divide the genre into books that I would read if I read thrillers and books that I probably would not. Meltzer's always been on my shortlist of the former, partially because he takes his time writing books (generally not more than one per year) and seems to enjoy playing with the genre. I also like that he dabbles in comic books, and well, he seems to have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Meltzer's got a lot going on right now, as his History Channel series, "Brad Meltzer Decoded" is also currently airing. You known I'm not always crazy about slide shows and Powerpoints, but the piece showed about putting together promos for the the series was hilarious. I now know that "the pose" (arms crossed, looking off to the side) is so difficult that an amateur needs a bit of training. Meltzer's a natural, however, and self developed "the squat."

There was something about the combination of cocky and self-deprecating that was incredibly charming, a forthrightness mixed with intelligence and quick-wittedness that left me sort of in awe. I had already spent my budget for the evening, but I'm going to pretend to be a customer and sit in one of our comfy chairs and try reading The Inner Circle. Sadly, today is the last day of his tour so only readers in Los Angeles (likely none) would be able to take my rec and see him, but there will be other tours.

Meltzer, you are something else.

When my Mother Starts Talking About a Book, You Know Something is Up--On Large Print, Steve Martin and Julie Orringer

Greetings from Brookline, or should I say Bookline? I'm sure I'm the first person in recorded history to use that pun. My job, besides cooking oatmeal, was to bring my mom some books as a gift for a friend, large print please. Does she know how hard that is? It's one of the reasons, frankly, that the new news is that older customers are moving to ebook readers faster than expected. The selection of large print titles has deteriorated, and there is very little published that is beyond genre thrillers. HarperCollins aggressively publises Luxe titles into midlist, but Random House and Hachette are very selective. And Macmillan, Simon, and Penguin sell off to Gale, which usually means high prices, short discounts, and ugly covers. Let's just say we aren't their target customer.

No offense to anyone metioned here. If you feel otherwise, let me know.

So Mom gave me one request, and the other book was open for suggestion. I browsed the shelf of Brookline Booksmith and found a gem, the large-print edition of Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. The book looks great, and Grand Central even included the color plates that are in the regular edition. It was one of our hits of the fall season, and my Mom (and likely her friend) are amenable to a little artiness. If you didn't read Mary Louise Schumacher's essay on the novel in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, you should now.

For her request, she told me that friends are beginning to talk about The Invisible Bridge. I was so excited that I started shaking. "Your friends want to read one of my favorite books of 2010?" I was ready to go out and buy five copies.

I got a little panicky as the book's paperback release is today (1/25) so maybe there wouldn't be hardcover still available. Since I know there is no large print edition of this book (it's already come up twice in the bookstore), I expected that the hardcover would be larger print than the paperback. Sure enough, when I got there, it had a staff rec, and face-out quantity. Let's hope the print suffices.

So now I'm telling you that my mother's friends are recommending The Invisible Bridge. What more do you need? Perhaps that it was Jason's favorite novel of last year. Perhaps it's me running on at the mouth about how spectactular it is. Tolstoy, I am telling you, War and Peace! Am I going to get in trouble for that? Eh, I'm just a bookselling schmo. What do I know?

There's been some tweaking of our event with Orringer, already scheduled for, well, we just found out that the exact date is up in the air*. I asked the publicist if I could partner this event with my spring book club presentation. Not that I'm worried about the crowd, but I'm always a little worried, and I want whatever it takes to get this event to the next level. I've done this event twice (with Valerie Laken and Eric Puchner) and we've had respectable turnouts both times. The other side of my diabolical plan is that I know Orringer is a big fan of at least one other book on my spring list of picks. If you were clever, you'd figure out what it is. And I know you are clever.

You also look good with that new hat. Where'd you get it?

*No, you're not hallucinating. It used to say April 7th.

NBCC Nominations and Random Thoughts

So the world is in fact passing me by. I leave and they annouce a bunch of awards. Here are the National Book Critics Circle Nominations.

fiction
Comedy in a Minor Key, by Hans Keilson
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

Jason is particularly hyped about Skippy Dies, which he has been pushing all fall. They won't be able to write those "what happened to Freedom" pieces for this one. My thought is that if the news departments, instead of the critics, were in charge of this award, it would go to Franzen right now. With Franzen included, the book that seemed missing to me based on media review saturation was David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

nonfiction
Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans
Empire of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, by S.C. Gwynne
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North America, by Barbara Demick
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson

Wow, this is the closest list to The New York Times best books of the year I can remember, with four of the five nonfiction books matching (Empire of the Summer Moon is the odd book out). Fiction only has Jennifer Egan in common. It probably happens every year.

And yes, we have our event coming with Jennifer Homans and the Milwaukee Ballet on Thursday, February 3rd, at 7 PM. I tried to take a picture of our front window but it did not reproduce well. If anyone has any advice on how I can take the store display photo without glare, please let me know, as this has continued to vex me.

Blogs Travel Too, Plus Bestsellers

While I was in Washington DC, our friend John was selling to accounts in the Pacific Northwest. Here are his last missives from Seattle and Portland. I spent the day in meetings, but did get to have dinner in Chinatown with my friend Eric. You might hear about that again when I finish reading Country Driving, by Peter Hessler; he's reading at Boswell on Friday, February 11th, at 7 PM.

It's Sunday! When I have nothing else to say, there are always the bestsellers.

Hardcover Fiction
1. Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon
2. The Empty Family, Colm Toibin
3. Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, by Christine Sneed
4. We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen
5. Gryphon, by Charles Baxter

Hardcover Nonfiction
1. Welcome to my World, by Johnny Weir
2. Apollo's Angels, by Jennifer Homans
3. Decision Points, by George W. Bush
4. Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff
5. Life, by Keith Richards

Paperback Fiction
1. Tinkers, by Paul Harding
2. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
3. Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
4. The Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore
5. The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson

And our #1 nonfiction paperback was Just Kids, by Patti Smith.

Jason's very excited to see We, the Drowned. It's a great novel of a seafaring culture (Danish) that takes place over 100 years, a brutal depiction of that life through the perspective of the Madsen family.

The only other interesting thing I have to say is that in 2009, our perennial fiction titles (Olive Kitteredge, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and The Elegance of the Hedgehog) were all by women, while of late, it's men. When will it flip again?

A Really Great Seminar on Organization

Over the years, I've sold quite a good number of copies of David Allen's book on organization, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity, as have most bookstores. Apparently a lot of businesses swear by the GTD model. So we were lucky enough to be able to attend a seminar with Allen at the recent Winter Institute. And just while I'm writing this, Jason calls out to me, "That David Allen thing was good." And it was.

Allen's point was that in order for us to be the best we can be about what we do, we've got to get the information out of our head and file it, at least temporarily. There was a lot of advice on overcoming anxiety and staying focused. We laughed about how many uprocessed emails we have (in the hundreds), but after his talk, I actually had some very practical ways to unload my inbox.

It didn't hurt that Allen's presentation was quite engaging. He didn't make us participate in any group exercises, which always makes me happy. I can't wait to go home and read the book. And yes, of course I already own it.