A Trip to New York for the Gift Show, a Walk Around Brooklyn, Including a Visit to Two Bookstores.

Some people think bookstore owners should go on vacations, but this summer, the only way I could convince myself to leave Milwaukee was by attending a gift show. Most of the good ones are in June or July, but that was really tough to pull off, as our event schedule was packed. I started checking around, and it turned out that the NYNOW show (formerly the New York International Gift Fair, the merger of two separate shows) had a pretty good reputation. In addition, it was pretty easy to get to, it was cooler than Las Vegas (my other option) and I could meet up with my sister Claudia after a trip visit to my mom in Massachusetts.

Pictured: the slate sidewalks of Brooklyn. Is this common anywhere else? I'm sure many New Yorkers take these for granted, but step back and take a long look. They are just beautiful.

From Massachusetts, we decided to drive to New Haven and take the train in. I know this is a bit of an aside regarding the core subjects of a bookstore blog, but we were simply overwhelmed by college students (and apparently, some post-college students who still worked at their schools, or so we gathered from overhearing their conversations). They were all dressed to party, mostly preppy, and just about every kid was carrying a six pack and drinking. When the conductor didn't bat an eye, we looked up the regulations and sure enough, it is perfectly legal to drink on the Metro North trains. Some of you probably read the ode to the bar car that recently closed in The New York Times. Our only question was...was it legal to drink on the train if you're not 21? Nobody was carded by the conductors. Maybe it's not their job.

So we thought they were all going into New York, but every last person in this standing room party on wheels got off at Stamford. I don't use the word "literally" literally, but it is called for in this case--well over 100 kids. A little more research and the only thing we could come up with was a Beach Boys concert. Really? Kids today...

Surprisingly enough, the train filled up again with a whole nother horde of kids, all just about five years older. They were very different--well dressed, quiet, and juggling paperwork and several electronic devices. Yes, this is the famous reverse commute of the Millennials that everyone is talking about. Twenty-something had jobs in the Stamford corridor and were commuting back to Manhattan and Brooklyn where the action is (and maybe living at the Ex Lax Building, as pictured). But why didn't they want to go to the Beach Boys concert?

As an aside, among this crowd, I didn't see a single physical book, but I saw many tablets and e-readers. But once we were riding around on the subway, we almost never saw an e-reader. I saw tons of Millennials riding the trains and they were all reading books. They were dressed in yet a third style, more like what I would see around my home neighborhood of Bay View, and they were much more likely to be showing their individually, perhaps with a tattoo (or a hundred) but often in other ways. I don't know what to make of this data? The way to not conform is to read physical books? If this is true, I like it.

Before the gift show started, Claudia and I spent a day together in the Lower East Side, where her husband's extended family grew up. Here's a shot of Katz's Deli, where my father used to stop by for a little wurst, as he called it. It's no longer in the Katz family, though if you want to visit a Katz-owned business, go to Mystery One in Milwaukee. I went to my favorite donut store on the planet, Doughnut Plant (sorry Top Pot, Voodoo, and the rest--until you do a carrot cake donut that oozes cream cheese frosting that's been infused to the center, there's really no competition), and Kossar's Bialies. We had a retro-modern meal at Russ and Daughters Cafe (enjoyed the fish chowder best), and a particularly delicious evening at Cafe Katja, where we argued about whether the cuisine was Austrian, Hungarian, or Austro-Hungarian. I particularly loved the cabbage salad, the beet salad (I sort of mooshed them together), and the spaetzle entree.

Because my sister hasn't explored Brooklyn much, I insisted we take a pilgrimage to the County of Kings, and hit up a couple of bookstores. In Park Slope, we stopped by Community Bookstore, which I hadn't visited in years. The bustling neighborhood was home to a couple of my friends post-college, and I've periodically gone back to visit, most notably with my parents years ago when we went to see my brother-in-law who was pictured in an exhibit about Jews in China. The store is long and narrow, and aims to be a true general bookstore in a compact space. Both booksellers were friendly in a way that New York booksellers used to not be, and I welcome the evolution. A sink indicated they might do food events, but I didn't ask. And outside was a small peaceful garden with a water feature. I wound up buying Claudia a copy of Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. I know she'll love it.

Both my sisters read like crazy over the summer--I'm quite jealous. I gave Claudia a copy of the forthcoming David Liss novel, as I hadn't been able to find a taker among our booksellers. She said that she couldn't put down The Day of Atonement (on sale 9/23), a historical thriller set during Portugal's Inquisition. It reads like James Clavell, which sounds amazing.

Our next stop was Greenlight Bookstore. Unfortunately I sent us in the wrong direction down Atlantic Avenue, through the Arabic neighborhood, which reminded Claudia of the delicious dried fruit she had on an earlier trip (much earlier). In a way, this was fortuitous, as it led us to Betty Bakery in Boerum Hill, where we bought an assortment of palmiers, linzers, and rugelach. We savored them slowly for the rest of the weekend.

A turnaround led us back to the Barclays Center and to the Fort Greene neighborhood. That Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush intersection is a nightmare and needs to be addressed by urban planners. I felt like I was crossing a freeway on ramp in New Jersey. Pedestrians were definitely lower life forms than cars here. I thought former Mayor Bloomberg wasn't supposed to let that happen?

Usually when I visit I don't get to say hello to both owners, Jessica and Rebecca, but there they were. We browsed for a while, and then talked shop, about our favorite greeting cards and how the event series was going. The Barclays Center has not really disrupted the neighborhood as much as feared, and there's even been some spinoff business. Holy moly, at this time, there are still tickets to their David Mitchell event at St. Josephs's College. Buy your tix now--what an amazing opportunity--$30 including the book. I should note that I love this store to pieces. 

I had a mission here, to buy Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong, and was thrilled they had it. It turned out this purchase was also fortuitous, as even with a last minute reorder, we sold our last copy on hand the evening of Professor Ellenberg's event (for booksellers who are interested in this things, we had a 40% purchase rate for a free event on a book that was several months old, which is very high for a large event). Had I waited to buy my book at Boswell, I couldn't have gotten  my book signed, as I would have given up my copy to the customer who wanted one.What a great event, by the way, and I'm really enjoying reading the book--it's perfect for a math major who doesn't remember any math at all. Limit, what's a limit?

The show turned out to be great! Instead of the rep groups that usually represent lines at the Chicago shows, in many cases the vendors themselves showed. So I got to see our old friends who run Saturn Press (they visited Boswell years ago) and the designer behind Girl of All Work. I've already bought six lines--three brand new vendors, and three others that had new product at the show, and I have several other lines I'm excited about. I was particularly happy to see all the new Polish wooden boxes from M. Cornell--without a new catalog or website, the shows are the only way to pick up new product. Our customers love these boxes, and I'm thrilled that we'll have a whole bunch of new designs come September.

And what did I read during all this? That's for the next post.

New and Noteworthy--Life in Tehran, Organizing Data, Living Without Data, Life After Wrongful Incarceration, and Life with Recipes. How's That for a Whirlwind Tour?

Fresh in the stores this week is Daniel J. Levitin's The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload (Dutton). A professor of pyschology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill, the author of This is Your Brain on Music argues for more organization in the face of "the modern world's flood of details" and backs up that claim with neuroscience research. Christopher Chabris in The Wall Street Journal notes: "Mr. Levitin devotes several meaty chapters to specific domains—including domestic matters, social connections and time management—in which we tend to fall short of what is needed for peace of mind and productivity. He also considers how to teach younger people to cope with the information-rich environment they will grow up in. Throughout, he mixes anecdote and science, first-person narrative and tips for successful living." Who couldn't use this?

Fellow Canadian Michael Harris has a different reaction to technology. He wants folks to not just organize, but be aware of what we give up when we embrace technology. The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection argues that "amid all the changes, the most interesting is the one that future generations will find hardest to grasp. That is the end of absence--the loss of lack." Of course that does ignore the possiblity of post-apocalyptic scenarios such as the one in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven (more on that to come, including a cool event with the author and the Soulstice Theatre) but I am being sidetracked. Lisa Zeldner in The Washington Post writes that "His far-ranging research provides a wealth of thought-provoking statistics and details, and The End of Absence has a kinetic energy well-matched to our jumpy attention spans."

British-Iranian journalist Ramita Navai chronicles life in contemporary Iran in City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran. You know of course that the British edition, even if it has the same title, does not have a serial comma. It seems, however, that the author bio is lifted straight from the UK, as it references Channel 4, which is rather meaningless in the US, and notes that the author was a reporter for the Times, but it's likely the Times of London, or whatever one calls it now, along with a stint at PBS. Her premise is that to live in modern-day Iran, you have to lie, and her profiles an aging socialite, a woman filing for divorce, a former assassin turned government worker. Since the official pub date is September 2 (Perseus publishers use pub dates, not on-sale dates), most of the reviews are from the UK, but there are plenty, including Azadeh Moaveni's in The Financial Times (which is probably are best-selling newspaper, at least on Saturdays). The reviewer calls the book "Fast-paced and saturated with detail, each chapter describes a Tehrani whose life the treacherous, glittering city has disfigured in some way. A street prostitute rises to become a fashionable call girl and porn star whose best clients are a judge and a cleric." Read more here.

You can tell that the fall books haven't geared up quite yet because we're still displaying a book in new and noteworthy from early July, even though it has failed to get traction. It caught Jason's attention, so it seems worthy to still give it a shout out. Getting Life: An Innocent Man's 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace (Simon and Schuster) is the story of Michael Morton, who was accused of killing his wife in 1986 and sent to prison, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence 25 years later. As the publisher notes, the evidence had been collected days after the murder, but was never tested. The book got some good attention, including this report on CBS News. Perhaps it's that this is so common that it no longer seems compelling enough for a book, or perhaps that it tips into true crime instead of social justice, and that genre tends to be driven by region and by horror. Jesse Sublett in the Austin Chronicle champions the book: "Even for readers who may feel practically jaded about stories of injustice in Texas – even those who followed this case closely in the press – could do themselves a favor by picking Michael Morton's new memoir, Getting Life. It is extremely well-written, insightful, infuriating, and, in places, quite funny."

Perhaps we should end on a lighter note. Kathleen Flinn's newest memoir is Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family (Viking). I'm of course slightly confused as the author's bio notes that she divides her time between Seattle and Florida, but I guess the roots of the family are in a family farm in Michigan. Like her popular memoir of going to culinary school, the book is combination of stories and recipes. Kirkus Reviews called Flinn's memoir "a warm, poingant treat." Flinn's website has lots of tidbits--read more there.

Math or Baseball (or Maybe Both?) Dan Epstein in Convesation with Mitch Teich Tonight (August 18) and Jordan Ellenberg Tomorrow (August 19), Both at 7 and Both at Boswell.

In 1976, I was a sophomore in high school. I didn't exactly know what I was doing with myself, but I was pretty sure it involved math. I took advanced classes. I volunteered in the math office. But most of all, I joined the math team. It wasn't until later that I was co-captain of the team, spending much time being coached by our teachers, so that we could compete in the all-city competitions. While we had nothing so much as funding, we did raise money to buy team jackets by selling bagels to students during breaks. The whole thing sounds a bit surreal, doesn't it?

Aside from this strange set of competitions, I did not participate in team sports. Though my friends had some athletic ability and participated in tennis and that New York specialty, handball, I was not only a klutz, but had this terrible fear of both losing and winning. You would think that this would have hurt me in math competitions, but I never quite understood who I was competing against, so I never felt the anxiety that I had on a baseball diamond or tennis court. I played tennis for years, but I cracked under any amount of psychological pressure. I was clearly the son of my father, who preferred to volley over keeping score.

Our school was not the sportiest, so to speak. We had a baseball team that played in the city championships (at Yankee Stadium, not the less prestigious Shea), but did no football. Our principal thought it was too dangerous, and in that, he was kind of prescient. Because the school was named after Benjamin Cardozo, the first Jewish Supreme Court justice (this is Queens in the 1970s--did I mention that?), the boys' teams were called the Judges. In a bit of sexism that reflects the times, the girls' teams were called the Judgettes. I'm hoping they were later renamed the Judges.

Our two events this week are a book about baseball in the 1970s (tonight) and a book about math (tomorrow). I don't know about you, but all my high school anxiety has come rushing back. It didn't stop me, however from using this time to read another upcoming event book, a novel called The Mathematician's Shiva, by Stuart Rojstaczer. It's about climatologist who returns home to Madison for his mother's funeral. She was rock star in the math world, but was bitter that she never won the Field medal. She would have waited a long time--the first Field medal went to a woman just last week, coincidentally. Maryam Mirzakahani is a professor at Stanford. While Professor Mirzhakhani is not visiting Boswell, Stuart Rojstaczer, he with the fictional mother who was overlooked for the honor, is on Wednesday, September 10, 7 pm, and it's co-sponsored by Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies.

Tonight, August 18, also 7 pm, is our conversation between Dan Epstein (above left), author of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, and Mitch Teich of WUWM's Lake Effect. While Epstein was researching his last book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass, he realized that he had a ton of material on baseball, and it turned out that 1976 was a signature moment, in the midst of owner promotions gone beserko, and just before the rise in free agency, a big power change in the game.

Or maybe it was the Bicentennial festivities that led to the craziness. William Hageman writes in the Chicago Tribune: "In a perfect storm of baseball, patriotism and promotion run amok, the festivities included a Paul Revere impersonator on horseback who galloped into the stadium and handed a baseball to a man wearing a spacesuit and rocket belt. He, in turn, took off 150 feet into the air, circled the field and landed on the pitcher's mound, where he was met by Phillies' Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, who had just emerged from a baseball-shaped float. Roberts then threw out the ceremonial first pitch. That's hoopla, fans."

Thanks to the Shepherd Express for making it the featured Book Preview.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 19, we're pleased to welcome Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. Yes, he's a  math professor who has also studied creative writing. He even has a novel, The Grasshopper King, which was published by Coffee House Press.

Ellenberg has gotten a lot of attention for the book, including a review by Manil Suri (another creative writer slash mathematician) in The Washington Post and an interview with Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. And we can't forget about Jim Higgins' profile in the Journal Sentinel? Is he responsible for the "multiply" pun or can we thank the copy editor? I thought it was a fine pun myself.

I was hoping to read How Not to Be Wrong on this buying trip (I'm at a gift show for a few days) but alas, I am still reading Charles Montgomery's Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design. It really seemed the perfect book to read while in New York (our good customer Tom recommended it) and since I have a shelf of urban planning and history books that hasn't been added to in years, I decided I needed a treat. That said, I haven't added to my shelf of math books in years either. I'm hoping that the plane ride tomorrow isn't delayed; I have to get back and help with the Epstein event! But if things go wrong, at least I can prepare better for the Ellenberg event.

So that's this week's lineup. The only person I can think of who'd be more excited was Larry, my high school classmate who was co-captain of both the math and baseball teams. Do you think that there's anyone else in America who can make a claim like that?

Math, Maps, and Letters of Recommendation, Plus Our Biggest Non-Event Sale This Year in Hardcover Fiction--Thanks, Murakami! All in Our Bestseller Blog (and Journal Sentinel Round Up--Barrowman is Back!).

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami
2. Remains of Innocence, by J.A. Jance
3. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
4. After the Fire, by J.A. Jance
5. The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman

Well, I guess you know it's fall when you have your best hardcover fiction non-event sale of the year. Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage is close to double the sales of our previous record holder and only short of the first week's sale of 1Q84 by five copies. On one hand, the world is a different place from 2011, but on the other, that was considered a particularly important Murakami book, and while the reviews are great, this one seems to be positioned on the quieter side. This review from Pasha Malla in the Toronto Globe and Mail is definitely on the mean side, however--it's "his dullest book to date."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg (event 11/19 at Boswell)
2. How Jesus Became God, by Bart D. Ehrman
3. Building a Better Teacher, by Elizabeth Green
4. Great Maps, by Jerry Brotton
5. Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty

Since we focus below on  Jordan Ellenberg How Not to be Wrong when we get to the Journal Sentinel book page, let's look at Jerry Brotton's Great Maps. Like many categories that are perceived to be dying in the book world, sometimes the titles just have to be positioned differently. Dictionaries may be a tough sell (though there was a great pop on the new edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary below) but word books still have a market. And though we don't sell atlases like we once did, a good map book can have a surprisingly strong sale. This is a look at 55 maps through the ages, including background info and graphic close-up images.

Paperback (not hardcover) Fiction:
1. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
2. The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy (event 9/30, at Boswell)
3. The Circle, by Dave Eggers
4. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
5. The Hour of the Hunter, by J.A. Jance

One of the things thats always interesting about mystery events is wondering what book the audience is going to gravitate to. Of course the new book, Remains of Innocence was in hardcover, and there are still signed copies available. And After the Fire was Jance's personal hand-sell, a poetic memoir. But the book that many of the fans had overlooked and wanted was The Hour of the Hunter, the first installment of the Brendan Walker series. Folks were saying it's a good recommendation for Tony Hillerman fans. It's the only book of many, many, many different Jance titles that we could have had more of.

Paperback Nonficiton:
1. Scoop, by Jeff Miller
2. The Merriam Webster Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
3. The War that Ended Peace, by Margaret MacMillan
4. Bed Feminist, by Roxane Gay
5. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris

Just out in paperback is Margaret MacMillan's The War that Ended Peace, from the author of Paris 1919. William Anthony Hay in his Wall Street Journal review notes that "the author questions the charge that German leaders deliberately started the war but argues that they effectively chose war by giving Austria unconditional support and by sticking with a plan of operations that made escalation inevitable."

Books for Kids:
1. Isla and the Happily Ever After, by Stephanie Perkins
2. Emperor Pickletine Rides the Bus, by Tom Angleberger (event 9/14, 3 pm, at Boswell)
3. Return of the Star Padawan, by Jeffrey Brown
4. The Giver, by Lois Lowry (various Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editions)
5. The Giver, by Lois Lowry (various Penguin Random House editions)

Not one but two Star Wars inspired kids' series are on this week's bestseller list. As I've noted previously, we'll see how loose they'll be with the license now that it's controlled by Disney? My guess? Not loose at all. The big news this week was Isla and the Happily Ever After's pop in sales--we had a nice promotional giveaway to go with purchase, and it doesn't hurt that Rainbow Rowell is a big fan, writing “Stephanie Perkins’s characters fall in love the way we all want to, in real time and for good."

Carole E. Barrowman returns with her roundup of mysteries and thrillers. From earlier in the spring is Terry Hayes' I am Pilgrim. She writes: "Set in the world of post 9-11 espionage, and I was impressed with the confidence of Hayes' narrative voice and the complexity in his plotting."
n the Journal Sentinel,

The Mulholland imprint of Hachette continues to have some of the most exciting genre smashing releases around. Barrowman recommends Marc Guggenheim's Overwatch--yes, we're definitely playing catch up. Just a smidge of the recommendation: "Overwatch is two parts spy story, one part legal thriller with a twist of paranoid, a splash of crazy, stirred in a cinematic narrative that charges to its conclusion. In fact, a third of the way in Alex Garnett, the main character, is involved in a car crash that's one of the most exciting I've read in a thriller."

A July release that has engaged Barrowman is Dwayne Alexander Smith's Forty Acres. She writes: "On the surface this is a skillful re-imagining of John Grisham's "The Firm," but because Smith has made race an integral part of his narrative and its themes, he's elevated the book to a more layered read. I can't wait to read what this young writer does next." Here's also the PW review.

We're hosting Chelsea Cain on Tuesday, September 16 for a free event at Boswell and it's great to hear that Barrowman is excited about Cain's new series which starts with One Kick. From Barrowman: "Kick Lannigan is an avenging angel with tons of attitude and just as much angst. A victim of abduction in her early childhood, Kick's now in her 20s and her emotions are still so raw 'she has to put them in a box in a jumble.' But she has mad skills (many of them illegal) and loyal friends (many of them criminals)." It's said to be a little less violent than her other series, by the way.

She's also a fan of the ebook-only The Fear in Her Eyes, but alas, this one isn't even print on demand, even short discount, even nonreturnable. Them's the breaks!

Fortunately there is still a print edition of Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members, the novel in letters of recommendation that releases on August 19 and for which we have an event on August 26, 7 pm. Higgins writes: "If Fitger wrote only sarcastic letters, that would be one thing, but in this short tome a man appears between the zingers. His persistent pleas in support of his defunded graduate student, which grow increasingly desperate, may come from too strong an identification with said student, but nonetheless humanize the professor. And how can we, apatosauri ourselves, not rally behind this writer, as venal and self-serving as he is, who can stand for literary culture in this indifferent milieu? (Though we're a bit puzzled that the name of the enemy here is Econ; wouldn't one of the STEM departments be more logical today?)"

I wondered about that as well. Economics is the enemy? Not STEM? But I happened to be spending the weekend with my sister Claudia, who is a college professor in the humanities, albeit Chinese, whose fortunes have risen over the past few decades. I asked her about economics, and she told me they are still favored children at many universities. For one thing, students still want to major in it, especially in liberal arts schools that don't have business majors. And for another thing, many of the professors use the leverage of being in demand for alternative employment, something that is tougher for the humanities to pull off.

Who said August isn't a great month to see an author? This Tuesday we're hosting Jordan Ellenberg (our #1 nonfiction bestseller is How Not to be Wrong) and Jim Higgins spoke to the author, a mathematics professor at UW-Madison. One alluring excerpt: "'Math is like an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength,' Ellenberg writes in How Not to Be Wrong. Early in the book, he offers an excellent example — how mathematician Abraham Wald figured out the best way to armor American military planes during World War II. (Sorry, you have to read the book for that one.)"

A Literary Walk Though This Week's Milwaukee Media Shout Outs--Lake Effect, Wisconsin Public Radio, Shepherd Express, Urban Milwaukee, and now Morning Blend.

This week in the Shepherd Express, the featured review is for Death by Hitchcock, an Edwina Goodman mystery by Elissa Grodin. Here's what Dave Luhrssen has to say: "Alfred Hitchcock might have appreciated the story line: a beautiful film student is found murdered on opening night of a Hitchcock film festival, with the time of death coinciding with the screening of Spellbound. Although one might expect a campus sleuth to emerge from the English department (perhaps a lecturer specializing in Arthur Conan Doyle?), a physics professor rises to the occasion in Elissa Grodin’s mystery novel, Death by Hitchcock." Alas, the book is on a conract publishing, print-on-demand platform, at least through our wholesaler Ingram, meaning you can buy the book from us, but it's pay-in-advance, nonreturnable. The author, by the way, is the spouse of Charles Grodin. Here's a Huffington Post piece on her first book.

The Book Preview this week is for Dan Epstein's Stars and Strikes: Baseball in the Bicentennial Summer of 76. Jenni Herrick writes: "This engrossing narrative follows the 1976 baseball season month by month, highlighting the great accomplishments of young athletes throughout the league, while also weaving in the tumultuous happenings of the wider world. Examples of contemporary culture are woven deftly throughout the book. Each chapter features a popular song from that year and societal trends are recounted with wit, humor and well-researched detail." Dan Epstein is in conversation with Mitch Teich of WUWM's Lake Effect on Monday, August 18, 7 pm, at Boswell.

On the Dial/Urban Milwaukee website, Will Stotts, Jr. recommends Midnight in Europe, by Alan Furst. "A master story teller spins tales that transport us through space and time. This kind of escapist fare is perfectly suited for summertime. And there is no better writer of this type of book than spymaster Alan Furst...Furst masterfully weaves a web of deceit and double-dealing. Just when you think you have figured out the various plots and predicaments, everything is reversed."

Lake Effect has several great authors featured this week. On Tuesday, there's a double feature. First Michio Kaku talked with Bonnie North for his recent book (and Boswell event), The Future of the Mind.

And then June Melby talked to Lake Effect about My Family and Other Hazards when she was in town for events with Boswell and Books and Company. If that link isn't fixed, you can find it on the complete program link above.

On Wednesday, Marquette professor Julia Azari talked to Mitch Teich about the recent primaries. She's appearing at Boswell with Kathleen Rooney on Tuesday, September 2, 7 pm, for her book Delivering the People's Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate, as part of our "Politics in Fact and Fiction" program.

Jon Kolb, Whitefish Bay author of The Summer of Rain, also spoke to Mitch Teich on Wednesday. He talks about "what makes a good mystery for him, and what initially drew him to the genre."

On Friday, Lake Effect spoke to Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer, who together have written a number of nature-friendly books, including We Love Nature!, The Kids' Outdoor Aventure Book, and the forthcoming The Truth About Nature. Together they talk about "five great summer family activities you can do without leaving your backyard."

On Wisconsin Public Radio, Joy Cardin talked to Ben Arment, author of Dream Year: Make the Leap from a Job You Hate to a Life You Love. Their pitch: "Do you hate your current job, but harbor a secret dream that you know would make you happy? Joy Cardin talks to a guest who says the fear of failure is less important than the fear of never accomplishing your dreams, and he offers practical advice on how to turn passion into a way to learn a living."

On Wednesday, Joy spoke with José Angel N., who chronicled his life as an undocumented immigrant in his memoir, Illegal. From the website: "The two talk about his experiences and perspectives on the lives of the undocumented." From the Kirkus review: "When he crossed the Mexican-American border as a teenager, he had only a ninth-grade education, and he did not speak English. In Chicago, where he had relatives and got work as a dishwasher, he learned English, earned a high school equivalency diploma and went on to major in philosophy in college and earn a master's degree in Latin-American literature. N. writes movingly of growing up in Guadalajara, of the family there he cannot visit, of his estrangement from the Latino community in Chicago, and of the personal humiliations he experienced and the deceptions he practiced to keep his well-paid, white-collar job. He could not let his co-workers discover that he lacked legal documentation of citizenship, that he could not vote or travel. Eventually, his fake social security number cost him his job, and by the end of the book, he has become a stay-at-home father dependent on his American wife. "

From Friday: "Weird Al Yankovic’s new song, Word Crimes, is resonating with linguists and grammar police for poking fun at bad syntax, poor writing and improper English. Joy Cardin and word wizard Richard Lederer discuss their biggest language pet peeves and invite you to weigh in with your most annoying word crimes." Richad Lederer's newest is American Trivia Quiz Book. Weird Al's newest book is My Teacher and Me.

On Larry Meiller's Monday program, he spoke to Amela Slayton Loftus, author of Sustainable Homebrewing: An All-Organic Approach to Crafting Great Beer. Make beer that's delicious and also great for the environment, WPR says. Loftus is cofounder of Seven Bridges Cooperative, the country’s only cooperatively owned, certified organic homebrew supply store.

On Kathleen Dunn's program, they did a segment based on the Morning Edition report about how Milwaukee schools were adding back art, music, and gym, because it seemed to help with attendance and increased student achievement in other areas. The guests included Teri Sullivan from Arts @ Large and James Catterall, a UCLA researcher who contract published Doing Well by Doing Good in 2009. Interestingly enough, Kluge is a Milwaukee Public School that does a great job with our author visits.

On Thursday, Kathleen speaks with two of the world’s leading interdisciplinary environmental scientists (Paul Ehrlich and Michael Charles Tobias) to get their unguarded and realistic perspective on the most pressing environmental issues of our day. Together, they’ve penned; Hope on Earth: A Conversation – a book that provides an informal and thought-provoking conversation between the two. Paul R. Ehrlich and Michael Charles Tobias are her guests.

Yes, in this case I count the Madison programming too, as the show airs in Milwaukee and they are Milwaukee friendly, meaning they will mention a Milwaukee event if its happening (or Green Bay or Stevens Point or Eau Claire, if they know about it). On Monday, Rob Ferrett and Veronica Rueckert spoke with Dr. Jack Stern, whose Ending Back Pain is recently released. He offers five steps to coping with this endemic problem, including living a healthy back-friendly life, and working with a professional.

Also on Monday, Central Time spoke to Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, authors of The Real Cost of Fracking: How America's Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food. Needless to say, they're against it. Per WPR, "fracking is damaging our health, our pets' health, and the safety of our livestock."

Tuesday brings us Kiddie Cocktails, a collection of non-alcoholic drinks wrapped in a pop-culture esthetic. Remember the Shirley Temple, the Cotton Candy, the Bahama Mama, and Cactus Juice. Stuart Sandler is an Eau Claire-based author and designer, who has created more than 500 typefaces. What troubled him about the mocktail book is that that he saw all these non-alcoholic drink books but none of them captured the nostalgia. Make sure you have fun glassware, a shaker, and a Hawthorne strainer.

Eau Claire librarian Caroline Akervik has written White Pine: My Year as a Lumberjack and a River Rat, which is published on a print-on-demand platform, meaning bookstores are probably not going to be able to stock it except on consignment from the author, but we've now got it indexed in our system. From the publication: "After Sevy Anderson's father breaks his leg in a sawmill accident, the fourteen-year-old must take his place with the rough and tumble lumberjacks and river rats who harvest the white pine forests of Wisconsin."

Jumping to Thursday, Aaron Hurst speaks to Central Time about his book, The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World. Is it because Millennials think differently or is it because many of the traditional job paths are gone? The book, alas, is coded nonreturnable, so they are not looking for stocking on bookstore shelves. That said, we're happy to order it for you, but it's under pre-payment and nonreturnable terms, alas.

This week I'm adding the WTMJ television (TMJ4)Morning Blend to the roundup. Why not? It takes me forever to get this out, so why not make it harder? It's just that I noticed that they do separate out their segments for links and they cover a decent number of authors on their show. The first is Laurel Bragstad and her novel In the Comfort of Shadows, which came out last year from the local Orange Hat. It's the story of a woman searching for her birth parents, who befriends an elderly bachelor father. He's not dad, but his diaries offer clues. Our source is print-on-demand, nonreturnable, short discount, but we know if there was more demand for the book, we could source it locally. We'll see what happens.

That's all there was this week, but at least now I can sleep nights. What else am I missing?

Wednesday Jacket Changes in Paperback--Amy Grace Lord, Scott Turow, Fannie Flagg, Tash Aw, Simon Van Booy, Jayne Anne Phillips.

Today I am highlighting a few recent paperback reprints. Some changed a lot, while others not much at all. I have a tendency to go on a high horse about paperback changes for no reason, so I had to remind myself that many jackets stay pretty much the same, and others change for a perfectly good reason.

 Here, for example, is The Affairs of Others, by Amy Grace Lord. The book received a Lambda Literary Award nomination for debut fiction, but I must admit that some awards have so many categories that I just bleep out everything after best novel and best nonfiction work, or the equivalent. It's the story of a young widow who used the insurance money to buy a small apartment building in Brooklyn, only problems with several tenants threaten to envelope her in their messiness.

The book was reviewed everywhere, and got an A- from Entertainment Weekly, which I event subscribe to in hard copy, and yes. Jess Walter called The Affairs of Others "a wonderful novel, beautifully written and sensuous, rich with emotion and psychological truth. Amy Grace Loyd's prose hums with desire as she creates a Brooklyn walk-up that comes alive with the yearning of its tenants and moves them toward an unforgettable ending--suspenseful, erotic, and ultimately hopeful." The only change to the jacket in paperback was the addition of some quotes in the stylistic window panes.

I'm always interested in changing art for paperback. It's my assumption that if the book moves to another imprint within the publishing house with a different art director, the cover will likely change. If the book is a huge success, it's less likely to change in paperback, though a very simple type cover has more pressure to call out on a new release table. And then again, if the book is a huge failure, the next step up from not releasing at all in paperback (happens more often than you'd think in the modern age) is sending it out with the same cover--why put the effort into a revamp. This is why I think there was something to be said for selling paperback rights, but on the downside, it led to the practice of not listing an author's previous works in the paperback edition, unless it was published by the same house (whereas in a hardcover, you tend to always list the previous works).

I have found that Hachette is one of those houses who changes a paperback jacket when they have reason to, but seem more likely to hold onto an idea that they like. The jackets for Identical, the recent novel from Scott Turow, are also pretty much identical. This is a thriller about twin brother's in fictional Kindle County (a now ironically named place, considering that Amazon is likely suppressing its sales in the name of negotiation, but this Yoknapatawpha was coined many books ago in Turow's literary universe), one a politician and the other an ex-con, and this is where one of you makes a cheap joke. I guess that the publisher decided that the book did well enough and the image conveyed the message. My one complaint is the quote on the paperback: "Turow is always a pleasure to read" from The Washington Post.  Why bother with such a milquetoast recommendation?

I'll tell you what I miss. Remember when a successful hardcover would be followed up by a paperback, always a mass market, with multiple jacket designs. I don't know what the world record is, but four wasn't unusual. Often it was just a different color. Honestly the last trade paperback I can remember with multiple jackets was No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July's wonderful short story collection from way back in 2007 (with the paperback out in 2008). Can you remember anything more recent?

This Fannie Flagg paperback for The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion reminds me of this, as they kept the cover image and layout, but changed the background cover from blue to red. Why do this? Are they thinking people would be confused otherwise, even though there's a price difference and, not to be too obvious, but a paperback jacket. But they kept the Norman Rockwell-ish art, which says "we know who this customer is and we're not messing with it." If someone came into Boswell jazzed about Fannie Flagg, I might recommend Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes, from Betsy Woodman, whom we're hosting on Friday, September 12, and we're experimenting with a daytime event too.

Once again, I'm not sure how I feel about the use of The New York Times quote, "Fannie Flagg is a born storyteller." Publishers do two things that drive me crazy about quotes. First of all, they never include the author of the quote, just the newspaper or magazine it came from. I find this really strange, because at the same time, they really push us to acknowledge the photographer in author photos--doesn't it seem that acknowledging the writer to be the equivalent courtesy? And the other thing that drives me crazy is they don't ever mention what book was being reviewed. This quote could be for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which came out in 1987. Heck, it could be from one of her appearances on Match Game '75. She was charming in both, honestly.

The new novel, Five Star Billionaire  had a type treatment in hardcover, a publisher (the Random House division of Penguin Random House) that does like to switch up paperbacks, and enough momentum to invest in attracting a new audience.  In addition to being long-listed for the Man Booker, it made several best-of-the-year lists, including one on NPR. It's likely recommended by a person at NPR and not the network itself (see above), but this isnt' worth chasing down. It was also on my sister Claudia's best-of list for last year, and since I'm currently visiting her at the moment, it made sense to feature this titlle. I think the jacket is great, with a hip Shanghai-at-night vibe, don't you think?

Pico Iyer gave the book a strong review in Time magazine (currently not linkable to my knowledge, these things change weekly) who wrote "As Aw orchestrates the overlapping of his lost souls, the story comes to acquire the mirrored complexity of its setting. No one knows who anyone is—not even themselves—and when one character reveals himself as a (real) celebrity, he’s taken to be the most shameless fake of all. And because Aw’s polyphonic structure shows us every character as they look to themselves, and as they’re seen by others, we teeter at every moment on the gap between reality and appearance." Now there's a quote to put on a jacket, right?

Here are the hardcover and paperback jackets for The Illusion of Separateness. I suspect the publisher had a bit of trouble with this one. I was pretty sure the jacket wouldn't make the transformation t paperback, and honestly, I wasn't wedded to it, plus that aqua color is currently associated with summer comedies like Where'd You Go, Bernadette? and The Vacationers. The image and type on the cover do not say comedy, and much as I think it is a bit cliched, the child-on-the-beach image conveys that Little Bee sort of vibe, without the silhouette, which still hasn't gone away as a design trope.

We can't talk about paperback reprints without talking about the transformation of

There was a transitional cover that Sharon and I saw, and I think we agree that the final jacket is better, but I'm not sure who the woman is (the blind curator? I'm sure Sharon will know) and I'm not sure it conveys the sense of wonder that comes with reading this rather magical story. Yeah, that's a not-so-subtle way of saying Van Booy is coming on September 30. I'm looking forward to re-reading the book again for our book club discussion on August 25. And here's Jessica Lasko's Wall Street Journal review if you need a little more persuasion.

And finally, here's Jayne Anne Phillips' Quiet Dell, a historical novel about a real predator from the 1930s who prayed upon widows, first stealing their savings after which he killed them. The story follows Asta Eicherand her children, lured in to this terrible trap, but it also follows a journalist who covered the story, a fictional character named Emily Thornhill, who covered the story for the Chicago Herald Tribune. Mark Lawson in the (UK) Guardian called this "an absorbing and captivating retelling of the birth of one force for good – female empowerment – and of another progressvely destructive trend: scandalous and disproportionate reporting of crime."

In this case, I can see why the changes were made in this jacket for the paperback. That hardcover image is trying to convey the historical origins of the story, but it does a better job of just seeming creepy. Are these the dead victims, gathered together as ghosts, floating in West Virginia? The paperback jacket's empty swing conveys the creepiness in a more straightforward way--we know what we're getting into.  That hardcover image isn't just creepy; it's a bit bizarre as well.

New and Noteworthy Tuesday--Haruki Murakami, Ellen Cooney, Martha Woodruff, Lan Cao, and David Shafer.

A bunch of stores took Knopf's advice and offered midnight release parties for Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and since we are hot on translation, I'll note that Philip Gabriel did the honors here. Patty Smith reviewed the book on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. She writes: "Tsukuru Tazaki’s unfathomable anguish seems to contain every color of the rainbow. The colorless color of death. He pictures his heart stopping but does not take his life, as no method of suicide corresponds with his “pure and intense feelings” for death. He survives the terrible disaffection but carries profound invisible scars. Precise without, desperate within; plagued by graphic sexual dreams, aspects of astral projection, nameless guilt and confusion. A strange fellow even unto himself, tangled up and colorless."

Boswellian Conrad Silverberg weighs in: "Here is yet another magnificent work from the pen of the great Japanese novelist. Less soaring and magical than 1Q84? To be sure. Less epic and tortured than The Wind Up Bird Chronicle? Yes. But this is every bit the equal of Norwegian Wood or Kafka by the Shore, and that's saying a lot. This settles nicely into a body of work that will inevitably lead to a Nobel Prize for literature in the not too distant future. And, yes, I said much the same thing about Marias, and I'll stick with that too. For these are the towering literary giants of our time, and their new works are to be awaited impatiently, welcomed warmly and relished with quiet intensity, for they are works of genius."

It was 31 years ago that Houghton Mifflin published Ellen Cooney's Small-Town Girl and now, with several stops along the way at Putnam, Pantheon, and Coffee House (among others), the author returns (to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)with The Mountain Top School for Dogs and Other Second Chances. It's about a dog training school called Sanctuary, which saves not just dogs but people too. The publisher has checked off all the popular dog novels, starting with Carolyn Parkhurst and W. Bruce Cameron and making sure that Garth Stein is there too. Gail Godwin writes "Is there such a thing as a Rescue Book? Well, there is now. This is a miracle of a book."

Here's a nice interview with the author in the Portland Press Herald. Joan Silverman notes: "Although this is Cooney’s ninth novel, its arrival comes with more than the usual trepidation. No, the dogs don’t narrate the story, as has been the fashion with some canine chronicles. But the book was three years in the making, with no guarantees of any kind. Cooney feared it would be difficult to find a publisher for a title that defied neat categorization."

In Martha Woodroof's Small Blessings (St. Martin's), a college professor's wife dies in a car accident, just as he learns that he is a father, the product of an affair in his past. The boy arrives with a change of clothes and a backpack full of cash. Margot Livesey writes that “In Small Blessings, Woodroof displays a lovely gift for inventive plot turns and glittering moments. The novel brims with life and complexity and characters who never stop surprising themselves, and each other. This is a delightful and splendidly intelligent comedy.”

Sounds like it has elements of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, especially when it turns out that Putnam takes an interest in the manager of the college bookstore. Here's Woodroof's site, where she talks about her freelance reporting for NPR.

I love that Library Journal's write up for Lan Cao's The Lotus and the Storm notes that the Monkey Bridge (1997) was so good that even Michiko Kakutani liked it. The new book tells of a Vietnamese family from the War up to the present day. Publishers Weekly's reviewer was not a fan of the structure, but person assigned to review it for Kirkus deemed it star worthy, noting that "the author returns to the conflict that shaped her own destiny before she was airlifted from her native Saigon to live in Virginia." Could this really be her first novel in 17 years? If you want to see the author, it looks like she'll be at Women and Children First on November 12.

And finally, it's only been out a week, but sales have popped on David Shafer's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Mulholland/Hachette),most likely due to Dwight Garner nominating it as the book of the summer in The New York Times. He writes describes it "a paranoid, sarcastic and clattering pop thriller that reads as if it were torn from the damp pages of Glenn Greenwald’s fever journal. It’s about a multinational cabal that plans to subjugate humanity by privatizing all information." He compares it to Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Neal Stephenson and more. Patty Rhule in USA Today also gives it a thumbs up.

Do you think this book is edited by Josh Kendall? That's what I'm placing my bets on (actually I'm not sure if there is another acquiring editor for Mulholland), and the only real surprise is why I don't have a rec from our buyer Jason yet. We're currently out of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, but hope to get more in stock shortly. Please have us hold a copy for you.

Monday Event Post: J.A. Jance at the Milwuakee Public Library Loos Room on Tuesday, August 12, 6:30, Plus Jeff MIller at Purple Door, in Conversation with Mitch Teich of WUWM's Lake Effect, Also on Tuesday, August 12, but at 7 pm.

You know it is August when we only have two events in a week. Alas, they are both on the same day. First up is the great J.A. Jance, who is coming to the Loos Room of Milwaukee Public Library’s Centennial Hall, located at 733 North Eighth Street, and the starting time is 6:30 pm. The appearance is for her new Joanna Brady novel, Remains of Innocence. It starts in Massachusetts, where a woman cleaning out her mom’s old house finds a fortune in cash, and continues when a friend of Brady is found dead in a limestone cavern.

Some mystery writers have more than one series going at once, but Jance juggles three. In addition to Sherriff Brady, there’s Seattle homicide detective J.P. Beaumont, former television journalist turned Arizona-based sleuth Allison Reynolds, and Brendan Walker, a retired homicide detective whose cases often feature Native American themes. Regarding her newest Brady mystery, Publishers Weekly reports that “as the dual story lines crisscross and the body count mounts, Jance hits her stride with a suspenseful plot that will keep readers flipping pages until the surprising, if overly convoluted finale.” Sorry, PW, it ain’t fun if there isn’t a little complication.

The library would love you to register for this event at (414) 286-3011.

Then at 7 pm, Jeff Miller, the author of Scoop: Notes from a Small Ice Cream Shop, is in conversation with Mitch Teich of WUWM’s Lake Effect, all at Purple Door Ice Cream, 205 S. Second Street, in Walker’s Point. Of the book, Rosemary Herbert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes: Readers will be glad Miller did not turn back. In a volume destined to be the summer read of the year for Hayward townies and summer folk, as well as anyone who’s dreamed of making a daring life change, he serves up a good-humored (editor’s note: get it?) account of the pair’s transformation of West’s Hayward Dairy into a crowd-pleasing emporium of ice cream and the mansion into the fabulously decorated, acclaimed bed and breakfast called McCormick House Inn.”

Of the event, I can only say that the Purple Door space is not that large, and there aren’t that many chairs, so we’re likely to fill up quickly. But honestly, how can you not at least try to have an ice cream memoir in an ice cream parlor. I can't say what exactly will be in their dipping cabinet on Tuesday, but right now, some of the featured flavors are absinthe, whiskey, garam masala, basil, ginger (I had this over the weekend) and cream cheese, as well as more traditional offerings, such as chocolate, vanilla, mint chip, and banana peanut butter. Yes, when you're talking about basil ice cream, banana peanut butter sounds positively retro.

Next Monday, August 18, we rejoin Mitch Teich back at Boswell for another event co-sponsored by WUWM and Lake Effect. This time Mr. Teich will be in conversation with Dan Epstein, author of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76. Chris Vognar in The Dallas Morning News reports that the book “spotlights arguably the craziest year in a decade of Major League looniness. Maverick owners Bill Beeck and Ted Turner upset the old guard with a torrent of promotions to distract their lousy teams…Free agency was about to change the league’s economics forever, shifting the balance of power from owners to players. Hair was long. Punk was rocking. Disco was thumping.” Epstein devotes a chapter to each month of the year.

And here's a great interview with Dan Epstein in Sporting News, conducted by Justin McGuire. He really gets to the vital importance of the year. "SN: I was delighted to see The Bad News Bears, my favorite baseball movie, featured prominently in the book. Why do think the film is an important part of the story of baseball in 1976? DE: The Bad News Bears is really the quintessential '70s baseball film: the lead character is a bum, the kids all swear like sailors (or actually, real kids), feminism and mistrust of authority play major roles in the story, and the ending is neither particularly happy nor uplifting. While it was perhaps just coincidental that the film came out at the start of the 1976 season, it really did seem to tap into the same scrappy, rebellious vibe that was coursing through the game in ‘76."

If that isn’t enough for you, just wait till September. Your head will spin!