Our friends at Crown have been talking to us about Dean Jensen's Queen of the Air for close to a year now. I knew we wanted to do something special for our event, which is on Thursday, June 13, 7 pm, at Boswell. So since Mr. Jensen is a gallery owner and art critic, I thought it would be approrpirate for us to do some art of our own, and I asked Stacie if she might put together one of her incredible dioramas, this time with a circus theme.Mel also helped, by making that beautiful pink and red crepe paper adorned Leitzel.
And of course I knew we had to do a special blog. I had dreams of writing about the history of circuses in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, taking my father to see the tents at the circus parade, the struggles of the Baraboo Circus World Museum, and the rows of chairs that would line the streets days before the Great Circus Parade passed though town. Interesting yes, but would that convince you to buy the book or at least come seen Jensen? I had no idea. But then I thought, why not just talk to my fellow Jensen fan Mel about the book, much like Halley and I like to talk about cards. And that's what we did.
D: Did I tell you to read Queen of the Air?
M: You said forlornly, “I don’t have anyone reading this book” and I said “I’lll do it.”
D: My heroine.
M: I read the first three paragraphs of the prologue as soon as you gave it to me and went home and almost finished it in one sitting Well, a couple hundred pages that night.
D: What did you love about the book? I mean what did you like about it? Or did you love it?
M: I did. I did love it!
I love how narrative the prose is, how it’s like listening to someone tell a story, instead of reading. It reads like fiction.
D: I love the way it captures a world when this was our entertainment.
M: The time period is fascinating too. She was so young, eight when she started performing. And there was that guy who carried his baby when they did their trapeze act.
D: It’s such a doomed romance.
M: Terribly sad! It’s also awesome how beloved she is. She’s the kind of celebrity was different. She was everyone’s darling.
Nobody wanted her to fall. Nowadays we want our celebrities to fall.
D: Maybe because they were worried about her literally falling. So there’s this motherly concern in addition to the glamorous aura.
M: She might have been young and overly sexualized, but really it was about how she, a woman, was the highest paid peformers of all the performers, including men.
D: But of course way less than the owners.
M: The thing that kills me is that she performed two shows a day, which means more than 200 revolutions a day, which required her arm to pop in and out of socket, at a time before we knew how to treat strained ligaments.
D: I didn’t even consider the health ramifications. I was too worried about her falling.
M: You weren’t thinking about that gouge she had in her wrist?
D: I am insensitive
M: No circus union!
M: Consider this. Her mom was a burlesque dancer into her forties
D: I think the mother-daughter dynamic of the book is as interesting as that between the lovers, or the one between the performer and the audience.
M: It was so unhealthy and competive. And yet tender, because she taught her everything she knew.
D: Does she know at eight that she’s destroying her mother’s career, or at least self-worth?
M: Completely undermining her mother in front of thousands of people. And on top of that, her mother didn’t want to be a mother.
D: Oh that horrible situation with her Mom contracted out to that awful man!
M: And yet Nellie Pelikan was able to give her kids a world class education. (Pause)
D: Alfredo Cordona was a crazy figure, wasn’t he?
M: He oozed machismo. And the way he carried on and yet was completely jealous of her every move.
D: Oh, it was awful.
M: And Leitzel had this beauty and the beast complex. What losers she married!
D: And poor Vera.
M: A lot of people wouldn’t have had the opportunities they had if it had not been for Leitzel. Leitzel rescued Vera and made her part of Alfredo’s act.
D: She made him dump Cora. She didn’t know.
M: And we haven’t even talked about the Silver King, Mr. Leamy. He was like precursor to Hugh Hefner. I see Richard Gere in the movie.
D: Yes, they were the Leamy Ladies, like the Playboy Bunnies with different standards. Who do you see for Leitzel?
M: How about Marion Cotillard? But of course she’d need to be able to do accents.
D: This book has everything, doesn’t it?
M: It really does. It’s both enlightening and voyeuristic.
1. Yesterday morning I appeared on the Kathleen Dunn show on Wisconsin Public Radio (WHAD, 90.7 in Milwaukee), chatting about summer reading. As promised, here's the list of the titles that were discussed.
The Art Forger, by B.A. Shapiro. This event is being held at the Charles Allis Art Museum on Wednesday, July 24, 6:30 pm.
The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau. This event is Monday, July 8 at Boswell.
The Son, by Philipp Meyer, is the novel everyone was recommending at the Book Expo.
The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon was the book recommended by David Sedaris.
David Sedaris’s current book is Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls.
Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, which was our Tuesday night event. She’s still doing some Chicago appearances, including Printer’s Row.
Hothouse, by Boris Kachka, is a history of Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and it was the nonfiction book that everybody talked about at Book Expo.
We’re going to talk about Look Homeward Angel, by Thomas Wolfe, for a book club discussion in September.
The Dinner, by Herman Koch, is a great novel for folks who loved Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.
The Other Typist, by Suzanne Rindell is another great Gillian Flynn-ish type read, set in the 1920s.
The Chaperone, by Laura Moriarty. It is not a novelization per se, but uses the life of Louise Brooks as a jumping off point.
Melissa Olson’s urban fantasies are Dead Spots and Trail of Dead.
Speaking of the 1920’s, we discussed a little Gatsby, what with the film's recent opening. This led into Beautiful Fools, by F. Clifton Spargo is about the Fitzgeralds. The author will be at Boswell on Monday, June 10, at Boswell.
Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm, by Monte Reel, will be at Boswell on Tuesday, June 11, at Boswell.
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, by Denise Kiernan will be at Boswell on Saturday, June 8, 2 pm. This is from our category, "People that would make good guests on the Kathleen Dunn Show."
The World According to Garp, by John Irving is a beloved book from a caller, wonders whether writers are changing their style for ebooks. That was a good question. Yes and no, depending on the writer!
A caller wanted a comforting novel having read a number of Ayn Rand novels.
Grasping at straws I found comfort in suggesting David Rhodes and his novels Driftless and Jewelweed, who is appearing on Thursday, June 6, at Boswell.
Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus, by Dean Jensen might be a suggestion. He’s coming to Boswell on Thursday, June 13.
Inspirational? Perhaps Tuesdays with Morrie or The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom.
The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, is short and sweet and philosophical.
The hot book of the same type this fall might well be The President’s Hat, by Antoine Laurain.
A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher, by Sue Halpern is the book Dunn wants to read this summer.
The Stolen Dog, by Tricia O’Malley, chronicles a dognapping on the East Side of Milwaukee. Our event is Friday July 12.
Maddie on Things, by Theron Humphrey, is a wonderful book based on the Maddie the Coonhound blog, and is coming to Boswell on Tuesday July 23.
A novel with a dog character is The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, coming Wednesday, June 19, at Boswell.
Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter, is the subject of our window diorama.
A listener has bought a lot of Sandra Brown for her elderly neighbor and wants suggesting. Can she try Nora Roberts or Mary Higgins Clark. The author I was trying to think of that wouldn’t come to me was Catherine Coulter, by the way.
A listener got a suggestion to read The Road when he told them he had enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath and Peace Like a River. I went back to The Dog Stars.
2. Coincidentally, my seasonal recommendations for Susan Stamberg aired on June 4, along with recommendations from Rona Brinlee of the Florida independent, The Book Mark, as well as Lucia Silva, former buyer for the late, lamented Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City.
From Rona Brinleee: Daily Rituals, by Mason Curry Equilateral, by Ken Kalfus Life after Life, by Jill McCorkle The Other Typist, by Suzanne Rindell The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, by Anton Disclafani.
From Lucia Silva: A Guide to Being Born, by Ramona Ausubel Ways of Going Home, by Alejandra Zambra Poems to Learn by Heart, by Caroline Kennedy Pacific, by Tom Drury The Dark Road, by Ma Jian.
From me: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong The View from Penthouse B, by Elinor Lipman How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid Queen of the Air, by Dean Jensen The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon The Supremes at Earl’s All You Can Eat, by Edward Kelsey Moore.
Jason warned me that June 4 was a big on sale date, but the heavy schedule of new releases left me overwhelmed with choices. What to cover? I finally decided that the nonfiction looked more interesting, despite the allure of Colum McCann's TransAtlantic. I'll leave that for another post.
The first title off the shelf is The Boys in the Boat: Nine Amiercans and Their Epic Quest for Gold a thte 1936 Berlin Olympics(Viking), by Daniel James Brown. It's about the University of Washington crew team (the author lives outside Seattle), using as primary source materials the diary of one of the members, Joe Rantz, a kid who, as the publisher says, overcame a devastating family history and crushing poverty to compete against "the German and Italian crews under Adolf Hitler's gaze." He's got nice quotes from James Bradley, Nathaniel Philbrick, and Laurence Bergeen (popular historian side) and a Mary Whipple and Luke McGee (the crew side--most of us have no idea who crew superstars are). I guess Weinstein has film rights. Jerry Harkavy in The Arab Times (first time I've quoted from them) says "it’s a quintessentially American story that burnishes the esteem in which we embrace what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation."
It seems everyone is doing trailers nowadays. Here's the one for The Boys in the Boat:
Keeping to that hemiphere, Charles Moore'sMargaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands, the Authorized Biography (Knopf) has been out for several weeks and was released in a timely fashion after the subject's passing. This is an official biography, written by a longtime journalist. I am very impressed with its heft. Good paper!
I read a couple of reviews which were on the boring side. This is volume one, she had several suitors, she had to overcome misogynist barbs, and so forth. Sir Malcolm Rifkind in The Scotsman (another quoting first) writer, on worrying about the task of plowing through a huge volume, "I need not have feared. Moore’s biography is, in fact, outstanding. Not only is he the first biographer to have had unrestricted access to her personal papers and every surviving private letter written by her, he also approaches each historical event with which she was involved as an opportunity to understand better her personality, beliefs, fears and prejudices."
One of the weird things I noted is that many reviewers have enjoyed quoting exactly how many pages the Moore book is, Rifkind only includes the body, not the index and notes (758), while Margaret Quamme in the Columbus Dispatchmust have included the endpages to get from 860 to 896. She wonders if the book might be "too much of a good thing," observing "American readers might wish for a shorter and more focused biography. Moore, though, assumes that his readers already have a clear understanding of the intricacies of the British political and economic system."
This is getting a little dry. But since we are speaking of women and power, I wonder if a transition to What Do Women Want: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire(Ecco), by Daniel Bergner, might be just the counterpoint. It's a "bold and captivating" adventure in the world of sexuality by a contributing writer to The New York Times. Lizzie Crocker in The Daily Beastfinds that "Bergner seems to be onto something when he comes to the conclusion that women also crave sexual novelty—and that they struggle with monogamy just as much as their male counterparts"
It might just be me, but I think the book could have been a bit more fleshed out. 197 pages, pretty large spaces between the lines, $25.99 price point. As an alternative, if there was nothing more to be said, I might have shrunk the trim size to a more impusle-y trim, ditched some of the white space, and gotten the book under $20. But that's just me.
Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey, by Peter Carlson (Public Affairs) is a rather intriguing title for a nonfiction book. Per historian James McPherson, it's about "two Northern war reporters who were captured by the Confederates at Vicksburg," noting that "for the Civil War, truth is indeed stranger than fiction." The publisher notes that their journey is one of the great escape stories in American history, packed with drama, courage, horrors, and heroics, plus moments of antic comedy.
Carlson is a longtime Washington Post reporter and columnist who now pens a column for American History magazine. He's got some nice quotes from David Finkel (who was at a table with me at a convention dinner), Paul Hendrickson (who is edited by another person at another dinner) and Christopher Buckley (whose addition gives the notion that the book is funny). Steve Weinberg in the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune notes that while there are comic elements, the book is more harowing than funny.
And finally there is Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind (Twelve), by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower. Hachette, I'm loving that you are moving away from the 99 cent price point for upmarket books. I just think it looks so bargain basementy. Let's hope that Harper and Macmillan follow suit. To me, even pricing (00) says quality and 95 cent pricing says classic. Either one works for me. I'm glad nobody has jumped on 97 cent pricing, as that means clearance, at least at Gap-owned stores. Was I talking about a book here?
Yes! Per the publisher, these two acclaimed scientists have a revolutionary theory that alters out understanding of human evolution. It says that the human leap in evolution was psychological, specifically the willful ignorance of our own deaths. Apparently the authors talked about this and years later Vakri, on learning that Brower died, completed Brower's manuscript with this theory. Variations of this theory include our propensity to smoke and eat fatty foods.
Want to know more? Varki has a nice interview in Publishers Weekly. One thought: "One of the theories about major depression is that depressed people are the true realists—if you really want to know the facts, talk to them. The rest of us, fortunately, are in a state of denial and optimism. What is optimism? Denial of reality. What is extreme optimism? Extreme denial of reality."
Michael D. Langan reviews the book in the Buffalo News. "This book is a warning about this remarkable ability of denying reality. It is a gift, the authors write, which will either lead to our downfall or be our greatest asset."
I'm still running a bit late on the blog, but this time, the delay was due to my focusing on our email newsletter, featuring events for not just this week but next week too. I made a mathematical calculation that our open rate for the email newsletter is higher than the reach of the blog, even with our reposting events Hey, I should link the email newsletter on Facebook, and also here on the blog.
Here's what's going on this week, plus a preview for next Monday, just in case I'm late then too.
Tuesday, June 4, 7 pm, at Boswell
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made the Mary Tyler Moore Show, as well as the co-writer of Sexy Feminism: A Girl's Guide to Love, Success, and Style.
I really, really, loved this book and if you're the kind of person who didn't go out on Saturdays so you could watch great television, or later on, stayed at home to watch marathons, this is for you. You know piled up my reading is, but I dropped everything to read this, and there was no event in the pipeline when that happened. It just turned out that Armstrong had family in Chicago such that she could add on a day and come up to MKE.
Todd VanDerWerff in the AV Club gave the book an A-.
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show was such an important series that a book that exhaustively spells out every innovation it pioneered might become exhausting. Mary And Lou And Rhoda And Ted occasionally leaves the reader wanting more information, but in most cases, it proves an engaging, highly entertaining read of a show that set out to simply be very good and ended up rewriting TV history. For fans of the series and fans of the medium, it’s a must-read."
Saul Austerlitz in the Boston Globe is also a fan.
"Armstrong’s history of 'Mary Tyler Moore' is warm and funny and rife with juicy details about the show’s production, but what it is, more than anything, is a group portrait of the talented, ambitious young women who maneuvered, wangled, and pleaded their way into writing for the show. It is about secretaries who transformed themselves into writers, and helped to transform Mary Richards into the closest 1970s television came to a feminist icon. Brooks had once expressed his belief that there was a world of comedy trapped inside his wife’s purse, which he could neither access nor entirely understand. But he was wise enough to recognize that limitation and bring in a team of mostly untrained female writers for Mary Tyler Moore who could.
Thursday, June 6,7 pm, at the Whitefish Bay Library
Ridley Pearson, author of Choke Point and The Risk Agent.
When a journalist reveals the existence of an Amsterdam-based sweatshop that employs and enslaves young girls, private security firm Rutherford Risk is hired to find it and shut it down. But with enemies around every corner, combat veteran John Knox can't tell the good from the bad. I like that this is a different spin on a thriller. The agents, Knox and his partner Grace Chu, are neither detectives nor special agents, but really corporate agents, though their mission involves collaborating with local forces. Pearson also tries to bring a bit of a sense of mission to the story, and it's a timely one too, what with all the recent tragedy in Bengladesh.
Pearson has put together a fun trailer that's also offers the exotic flavor of Amsterdam.
Thursday,
June 6, 7 pm, at Boswell: David Rhodes, author of Driftless and Jewelweed.
Who can forget our wonderful event with David Rhodes? He and his wife Edna will be returning to Boswell for Jewelweed on Thursday!
From Library Journal: "At the center of this brave and inspiring new novel is Blake Bookchester, imprisoned as the story opens, though the charges against him are questionable. Aided by friends and neighbors in the small town of Words, WI--the setting of Rhodes's acclaimed 2008 novel, Driftless--the thoughtful and fundamentally decent Blake experiences a rebirth and regeneration"
From the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune: "Jewelweed is a novel of forgiveness, a generous ode to the spirit’s indefatigable longing for love." Read the rest of the review here.
And from our own Sharon K. Nagel:
"After several years away, David Rhodes comes back to the Driftless Region of Wisconsin in his skillfully wrought new novel. After serving time on a drug charge, Blake Bookchester is paroled to his hometown, to live in his father’s house, and try to get his life together. Blake struggles with his newfound freedom, his relationship with his father, the opinions of the members of his community, and the very real presence of Danielle Workhouse, the woman that he has yearned for these many years. Filled with complex and captivating characters, Jewelweed is told in flawless prose with an endlessly interesting narrative. My return to Rhodes’ world reminds me that it has been too long since my last visit"
Friday, June 7, 7 pm, spring poetry night at Boswell:
Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
with opening reader Paul Scot August.
Our FOB (friend of Boswell) Paul Scot August brought Brimhall to our attention, and August, a fine poet in his own right, who while so far sans book, is getting his poems published in some fine journals, seemed like the perfect opener.
FromPublishers Weekly: "Battlefields, childbeds, forests of wolves and hanged men, pious sailors, mysterious saints, “a warship, disarmed in the desert, waiting for the flood”: all these figures, characters and scenarios populate the busy, evocative, Barnard Prize–winning second outing from Brimhall (Rookery), whose brief, highly colored poems evoke a universe part Dylan Thomas, part saint’s legend and part Tolkien."
Paul Scot August also has a wonderful blog called "Poetry Saved My Life" which includes essays, reviews, and interviews. I like that most of our author photos are happy this week. Sometimes authors like to appear grumpy.
Saturday, June 8, 2 pm, at Boswell:
Denise Kiernan, author of The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II .
What a week! You are always asking for daytime events. Denise Kiernan is a great presenter, and what a topic.
From Shelf Awareness:
"Created in the fall of 1942, Oak Ridge, Tenn., the secret city--also known as "Site X"--housed the factories where uranium for the first atomic bombs was enriched. Young women traveled from around the country to fill the jobs at Oak Ridge--more than 75,000 at the factories' peak. Denise Kiernan's The Girls of Atomic City is a glimpse into the strange experience of working on a project whose nature was kept from them." Read the rest of the review here.
Our own Halley Pucker weighs in (pictured is Kiernan, not Pucker):
"A must read for histroy buffs, Kiernan tells the story of women sent to Tennesse knowing only one thing - that they were helping out their country. Unbeknownst to them was that their work was helping the United States develop atomic weaponry. The book is a great look at the importance of women during war time, and reads like a novel that the reader won't want to set down."
Here's another great trailer. Note to Simon and Schuster folks. I like these!
Coming attractions!
Monday, June 10, 7 pm, at Boswell:
R. Clifton Spargo, author of the novel Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
From the publisher: In 1939 Scott's living in Hollywood, a virulent alcoholic and deeply in debt. Despite his relationship with gossip columnist Sheila Graham, he remains fiercely loyal to Zelda, his soulmate and muse. In an attempt to fuse together their fractured marriage, he arranges a trip to Cuba, where, after a disastrous first night in Havana, the couple runs off to a beach resort outside the city. But even in paradise, Scott and Zelda cannot escape the dangerous intensity of their relationship.
Clifton Spargo taught at Marquette for 15 years and now lives in Chicago. Whether you love Spargo or Fitzgerald, this should be a fun evening.
Our rec from Jane Glaser:
"Little biographical information exists about the 1939 vacation Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald took to Cuba in an effort to recapture the tenderness they felt for each other during the dazzling years of the Jazz Age. R. Clifton Spargo convincingly imagines this curious chapter in the marriage of one of the most fascinating couples of the 20th century with a fictional portrayal of the effects of the insanity and alcoholism that would, alternately, separate and reconcile the Fitzgeralds, but would keep them ultimately tied to each other until Scott's death in 1940. Written in descriptive prose that mirrors the elegant writing style of F. Scott Fitzgerald himself. I highly recommend this captivating story to readers who enjoyed Paula McClain's The Paris Wife and Nancy Horan's Loving Frank"
Please don't come to me and tell me you're bored. Boswell has enough to keep you busy this week. And I get to rest on Wednesday!
Hardcover fiction:
1. And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
2. Inferno, by Dan Brown
3. Black Country, by Alex Grecian
4. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra.
5. Jewelweed, by David Rhodes (event at Boswell Thursday, June 6)
There's no question that Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth) is one of the best reviewed titles of the past few months, and the bookseller enthusiasm is equally high; it's a recent #1 Indie Next pick, for May. I had an interesting conversation at the show about how to better highlight a #1 pick's status, and Mel, who has been making our shelf-talkers, is now putting this on the card.
Some of the great stories about the book include this great profile from Charles McGrath in The New York Times. A fascinating tidbit: " While in Chechnya, though, Mr. Marra discovered that he had made a factual error in the book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , which was published this month: The first escalator there was not installed until 2007, when it became a sort of tourist attraction. So Mr. Marra had to do some escalator-elimination in the final draft."
Hardcover nonfiction:
1. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris
2. The Undwinding, by George Packer
3. The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon
4. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg
5. The Drunken Botanist, by Amy Stewart
It wasn't just David Sedaris titles (dominating the hardcover nonfiction list and well represented elsewhere) that popped during our event last week. Mr. Sedaris, while not having a book in advance he was going to hard sell (the one that first comes to mind is Jincy Willett's Winner of the National Book Award, but I happened to check up what was the book on his last theater tour, and it turns out to be Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower), but he spotted that we had a decent collection of Aleksandar Hemon'sThe Book of My Lives, and sold it out with a rather passionate recommendation. Did I mention I want to be in David Sedaris's book club?
Our big pop in nonfiction as George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which follows several folks as they try to navigate the ups and especially the downs of a changed economic model. As Dwight Garner notes in his New York Times review, many of these pieces were shorter works, originally published in The New Yorker, and is impressed by the way that "these pieces, freshly shuffled and assembled, have speed and power to burn,"
Paperback fiction:
1. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller (event at Boswell Wednesday, June 19)
2. Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
3. Warming Up, by Mary Reed Hutchings
4. The Yard, by Alex Grecian
5. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This list has the two events I missed during my trip, evenings with Mary Reed Hutchings and Alex Grecian. We're also coming up on our event with Peter Heller with Ethan Rutherford. You'll be glad to know we've gone back to press on our amazing poster forThe Dog Starsevent. It's just $2 to purchase. We're almost ready for Nick Berg's newest poster, for Chuck Klosterman's I Wear the Black Hat, who is visiting on Thursday, July 18 (my apologies for the double error on that--I've been doing the convention on not enough sleep!)
Paperback nonfiction:
1. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
2. Quiet, by Susan Cain
3. When You are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
4. Naked, by David Sedaris
5. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
If we had an audio bestseller list, I'd have my best #1 (excluding bulk sales) since we've opened. It's not a shocker that the audio for Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls was popular at our event. The real question is why we didn't sell a single audio at his theater event a couple a years ago. Not one! I'm not sure what the difference is between the audience. That said, I'm glad Susan Cain and Cheryl Strayed got a word in edgewise. Then I got curious as to what was the origin of that phrase, so I spent a little time looking at that.
Books for kids:
1. Lovabye Dragon, by Barbara Joosse, with illustrations by Randy Cecil
2. Ride Fly Guy, Ride: Fly Guy #11, by Tedd Arnold
3. A Graduation Girl: Junie B. Jones #17, by Barbara Park
4. The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani
5. Mary Nohl: A Lifetime in Art, by Barbara Manger and Janine Smith
Lovabye Dragon, Barbara Joosse's newest book continues to be a powerhouse, blowing away sales of everything that's come out since we've opened, though it still has a little catching up to do to hit classic status of Mama Do You Love Me. I am also particularly pleased to see Soman Chainani's The School for Good and Evilon our list. I met Chainani again at BEA and he is incredibly chraming. I can only imagine him captivating school kids and we're going to make a good effort to host him for book #2 in the trilogy that has two girls attending the category, one to be a heroine and the other to be a villain, only it seems that their admission records seem to have been switched. It's A score from Tara Fowler at Entertainment Weeklypraises Chainani's "whip-smart debut, guaranteed to make any little girl think twice about wanting to be a princess."
And yes, the movie rights have been sold.
From the Journal Sentinel book section:
Mike Fischer is on the same page we are when it comes to Colum McCann's TransAtlantic (Random House). "The stories told in TransAtlantic combine tight, intensely lyrical writing — much of it presented in a close, third-person voice that is shot through with cultural and historical references — and a nearly epic scope involving events unfolding over three different centuries." The book goes on sale tomorrow.
And how about this for a recommendation from Jim Higgins regarding the new novel from Lauren Beukes? "The Shining Girls(Mulholland) is one of the most thrilling and accomplished novels of the season, a genre-blending tale of good vs. evil with plenty of pace and, in its portraits of some of the murderer's victims, a surprising heft." Also on sale tomorrow.
Believe it or not, this is my 28th Book Expo slash American Booksellers Association convention. It would have been my 30th, but I skipped two, the two times I transitioned jobs, in 1986 and 2009. In some ways the world is a very different place.
a. The makeup of the booths is very different. Lots of tech companies, for example, and of course a consolidation of large publishers, though many were already owned by corporate entities. There were booths for Crown, Dutton, Putnam, Harcourt, Doubleday/Dell, Scribner/Atheneum/Macmillan (and if I went back a little further, those last two would be a little separated out), Ecco (albeit a tiny one), Schocken, Ten Speed, and if I had the patience, a list another page long.
I would like to say that there are more gift vendors, for example, but I think there have been earlier attempts to add these vendors to the show, and honestly, they come and go. I'm not sure where the show is in competing on a world stage as a rights fair. I'm pretty sure it is still secondary to Frankfurt and Bologna, and still might have secondary cache as a general show compared to the London Book Fair. But these are quick and unfounded observations. Who knows?
b. Even I don't carry around the heavy book with all the listings. Sadly that is mostly because there is one no more. I loaded the app, but I was disappointed the BEA did not offer the ABA programming there. Hope that is fixed next time. It wasn't like it was several years ago when a lot of the publishers tried to stop offering printed galleys and offered us e-galleys. It didn't work, but I have to say, there are now a lot of booksellers (though hardly all) who would read them.
c. Speaking of change, the makeup of the bookselling world has changed too. Of course I no longer see Borders badges on the floor, or B. Dalton, Walden, Crown, Tower, or the other regional operations, like Kroch's and Brenatano's, Olssson's, Encore, Lauriat's, and so forth. Heck, I think at an early show I had a conversation with someone from Taylors, a regional group of stores (I had to say chain in these cases, when the store so clearly operated like an independent) in the Dallas area.
I love this quote that this blogger found from the early 1990s that was reprinted in theDallas Observer:"We believe in the full-price value of the books we sell. We are not like other companies who focus on bestsellers and are not able to find the books on the shelf when they need them. We want the books to be there, and we want our employees to be experts in our customers need." I think this probably could have been phrased better, but it was tough then, as we had trouble controlling the conversation.
d. I think the ABA has a clearer marketing plan for independent booksellers to differentiate themselves from other channels. I think in the old days, they had to spend a lot more time running the convention.
That said, a lot of things have stayed the same.
a. There are still parties. The parties used to be over the top, and now they are generally just a restaurant and some snacks, in one case, twenty different variations on bread, but they are still parties. The big difference is that it is rare to budget a party for one book. In most cases, the publisher brings a whole mess of authors. And for the several I went to, it's not easy to meet the authors, though I did have a nice conversation with Dagmara Dominczyk, author of The Lullaby of Polish Girls (Spiegel and Grau), which is coming out Tuesday.
If anyone is reading this from ABA, you are having problems with your cover feeds on our website. Just saying.
I actually went to the Open Road party to say hello to Adam Langer, one of my favorite authors, who has a new novel called The Salinger Contractcoming out this fall. Open Road was going to be an ebook only operation, but now has a print component, which is not just pod (print on demand) but (at least supposedly) traditional printing as well. I'm excited to see that stock has come into the warehouse at Ingram (their distribution partner) for the Barbara Pym titles.
b. There are still booths. I actually saw a slight shift back to meetings on the floor from off-the-floor meeting areas this year. Last year I got so frustrated that I couldn't have accidental interactions with publishers that I went to heavy scheduling. In the end, it actually worked out ok, as I didn't leave the show area at all during all three days, giving me time to walk most of the aisles. I still got to have on-the-spot book talks with smaller but still important to us vendors, like Graywolf.
The booths are smaller, sometimes dramatically so for publishers who have meeting space elsewhere. Macmillan has little more than an information stand. And a lot of publishers don't even have books on the floor. But as I said before, in most cases the experiement with the disappearing galley has reversed itself.
c. The floors are still crowded with luggage carts. I noticed last year that the did a particularly good job of keeping them off the floor. There must have been a rule that you couldn't bring them the first day, as by the second I was tripping over them. One woman brought her kid in a stroller, got to the floor, made the kid walk, and stuffed her stroller with books. I know this woman! She's the one who insisted that the Mary Higgins Clark novel she bought from me twenty years ago was for her elementary school class and demanded the teacher discount.
d. Everybody else is always selling something to you (either directly or indirectly) and I must admit, I am always trying to sell the store, especially for events. Now I try to be more subtle than some, but that's because I have the luxury of having what is viewed as a good program. But I have learned that sometimes one disappointing event can trip you up with a publisher, which is why I try to take nothing for granted.
e. There are just a ton of new interesting books out there; it just makes your head spin. I had so many interesting conversations with folks in all aspects of publishing, not just authors and sales managers and publicists, but editors and directors, and distributors too. At one dinner, I had a fascinating time with the legendary editor Jonathan Segal. We not only discussed some of his upcoming titles (one of his authors is doing research in Wisconsin as we speak for a very exciting book), but the increase in interest we're likely to see for the Robert Reich'sAftershockas the new documentary film based on the book, "Inequality for All" rolls out in theaters.
Books driving documentaries and vice versa seems to be a theme this year. In just a few weeks we're seeing the opening of Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars in Milwaukee, and one of the highly anticipated books this fall is a combination book/documenary release of a book about J.D. Salinger. Here's the piece in The New York Times. The book is called The Private War of J.D. Salinger. You can preorder it from us now, you know. Just ask link, order, and ask for in-store pickup. It's just like calling.
f. The show is still a place to start spreading buzz. I ran into editor David Ebershoff and he started telling me about Jennifer Dubois's new novel,Cartwheel. You may remember that we just read A Partial History of Lost Causes for our in-store book club. They are crashing the book onto the fall list, something Mr. Ebershoff says he really hasn't done before. It's a very different kind of book, timely and exciting. Since the web page on our site doesn't say what the hook is, I'll leave it out here as well, but it's fascinating.
g. You can still gush over an author. Usually this involves standing in line for an hour, which honestly, I just don't have time for, but whether your taste runs to Doris Kearns Goodwin (her new work of nonfiction is The Bully Pulpit) or Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane comes out June 18th), you can go full-on groupie. My gush was Alice McDermott, whose long-awaited novel, Someone, comes out in September. That's the kind of guy I am.
h. Books can be made at the show. I did my part by giving a rousing 45 seconds or so (I think I went over) for Antoine Laurain's The President's Hat. It's the kind of book that just about any indie bookseller can get behind and sell a ton of copies. I'll be talking about it more in the month's to come. It is part of the "Indies Introduce" program, formerly "Celebrate with Indies", formerly "Daniel, will you read a whole bunch of books for this committee?"
g. Crazy little things can capture the imagination of the show. The prized object was clearly the animal balloons (I saw a dog, cat, and pig, so there must be more) that have little paper legs that look like they are walking. You lead them on a leash. I think we can sell them. Every time I went to the booth, the line was really long. Thank you to my model Courtney!
I also liked the Mad Libs removable stickers in the bathroom.
h. Unlike some years, the mood is generally optimistic. I don't know what category to put that in.
D: Did I tell you to read Queen of the Air?
D: What did you love about the book? I mean what did you like about it? Or did you love it? 
M: Terribly sad! It’s also awesome how beloved she is. She’s the kind of celebrity was different. She was everyone’s darling.
D: But of course way less than the owners. 
D: Oh that horrible situation with her Mom contracted out to that awful man!
M: And Leitzel had this beauty and the beast complex. What losers she married!
D: This book has everything, doesn’t it?
