To Round Up or Not to Round Up--What Books are Being Talked About in Milwaukee Media?

For the last month or so, I spent Friday or Saturday combing through television, film, and radio hits for books in the Milwaukee area, plus some of the key Wisconsin Public Radio shows with good Milwaukee penetration.

As I was keeping track of the posts, I also noticed that these posts were not among our most popular for hits (unlike, say, the regular bestseller and new and noteworthy posts) and were not being liked on Facebook, which really is our best indications of what people want. So there you have it--hard to do, hard to sell, nobody interested. Why am I doing this?

So I skipped last week and then told one of my friends, a semi-regular reader of the blog, and he said, "That's my favorite feature." Oh, come on! So how could I revamp this to make it work? For one thing, it doesn't have to be so regular. And of course, I can just do the books that I think will be of interest to our customers.

The Shepherd Express Book Preview was for Steven Pinker at Boswell on Friday, author of A Sense of Style. They also mentioned the Books and Company event for Lorna Landvik's Best to Laugh, on Wednesday, October 15.

Also reviewed:
--Three capsule reviews of books on the Mideast
--Eric Beaumont's review of Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, by David Ritz
--David Luhrssen reviews Max Egremont's Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew.

Here are some of the Lake Effect guests of late:
--Monday, September 29, Betsy Woodman, author of Emeralds Included
--Tuesday, September 30, Jerome Klinkowitz, author of Frank Lloyd Wright and His Manner of Thought
-- Thursday, October 2, Ray Pamatmat, playwright of the current rep production of After All the Terrible Things I do, currently playing at the Milwaukee Rep's Steimke Theatre. It's set in a bookstore!
--Monday, October 6, what I think is a reairing of Andy Mozima's Quality Snacks short story collection.
--Tuesday, Ocrober 7, Janet Halfmann, a South Milwaukee writer who has penned 40 kids' books. Her newest is Animal Teachers.
--Wednesday, October 8, Brian Benson, author of Going Somewhere.

In Dial/Urban Milwaukee, Will Stotts, Jr's book of the week is Joshua Ferris's To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. 

In OnMilwaukee.com, Bobby Tanzilo profiles Mark Warhus, whose e-reader only novel is Temporary Saints.  
 
Kathleen Dunn guests:
--Monday, October 6, Nancy Pearl offers ten book recommendations. A few of the recommendations are here. Note if you pledge, you can get the whole list!
a. Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher
b. The Soul of Viktor Tronko, by David Quammen (Pearl is publishing this herself in her Booklust imprint for her website partner)
c. Drinking: A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp (Boswellian Anne loves this too.)
d. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (her book club pick)
-Tuesday, October 7, Jon Katz, author of Saving Simon: How a Rescue Donkey Taught Me the Meaning of Compassion 

Here are a couple of Joy Cardin interviews on WPR:
--Monday, September 29, Gail Sheehy, author of Daring: My Passages
--Thursday, October 2, Diane Ackerman, author of A World Shaped by Us

And I should also note that Larry Meiller talked to Michael Largo, author of The Big Bad Book of Botany, on Friday, October 3.

 If you like this feature, show it by either liking it on Facebook or forwarding it to your friends to increase the number of hits.

New Releases from Marilynne Robison, Jane Smiley, Colm Tóibín, Atul Gawande, and Walter Isaacson.

Last night we were just talking about novel cycles that look at events from multiple perspectives. There's Robertson Davies Deptford Trilogy, and Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy, which we coincidentally discussed at book club last night. Now there's Marilynne Robinson's Lila (FSG), which I assume we'll be calling the Gilead Trilogy (or maybe quartet!). This is also the year for learning books we thought were not connected (David Mitchell's work) is, and Lila which follows the wife of Reverend Ames, the protagonist of Gilead. Ron Charles in The Washington Post wrote: "These three exquisite books constitute a trilogy on spiritual redemption unlike anything else in American literature. (Our Puritan forefathers wrote and worried plenty about salvation, but they had no use for novels.) In a way that few novelists have attempted and at which fewer have succeeded, Robinson writes about Christian ministers and faith and even theology, and yet her books demand no orthodoxy except a willingness to think deeply about the inscrutable problem of being."

Gilead won the National Book Circle Award while Home was awarded the Orange (now the Baileys Women's) Prize. What honors will they bestow on her newest? One can only imagine.

It is definitely a day for Iowa, as just like Robinson, Jane Smiley's newest, the first in a planned trilogy, is set in Iowa, this time following a farming family in the early twentieth century. Each chapter in Some Luck is set during a month in 1920, chronicling Rosanna and Water Langdon and their five children.

In both her NPR profile and this recent story by Charles McGrath in The New York Times, Smiley made mention of her desire to tackle writing in just about every conceivable genre. Here's the tally: "She has so far published an epic (The Greenlanders), a detective story (Duplicate Keys), a tragedy (A Thousand Acres), probably her most famous book, which retells the King Lear story and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992), a comedy (Moo) and a romance (The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton), not to mention a racetrack novel (Horse Heaven) and one that recycles Boccaccio’s Decameron (Ten Days in the Hills). Her new book is the first volume of a trilogy — one of the few forms left for her to tackle — and in characteristic, workmanlike fashion, she has already completed the two other volumes, which will probably follow in the spring and next fall." I'm still waiting for her fantasy novel.

Beth Kephart in The Chicago Tribune has a few more details in her review. 100 chapters over three books, all published about six months apart. She calls the concept "audaciously delicious" and notes that "each characters steals our heart." And Kevin Nance in USA Today observes: "The odd and perhaps miraculous thing about this almost ridiculously grandiose undertaking is how intimate it feels and, page by page, how little it announces itself as a masterpiece in the making."

And of course both books were featured on Sunday's Journal Sentinel book page. 

Another novel that has had breathless anticipation is Nora Webster, the new work from Colm Tóibín. Set in the 1970s, the story follows an Irish widow and her four children, who, as the publisher says, is "navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope." Robert McCrum writes in The (UK) Guardian: "Nora Webster is an Irish love story and a love letter to Irish readers from one of Ireland’s contemporary masters. But it skilfully transcends its source material in a way that will probably recommend it to a much wider audience." Here's Tóibïn (pronounced TOE-bean, now I finally know) interviewed by Brenda Cronin in The Wall Street Journal. He notes that "Nora Webster isn't autobiographical, but rather a combination of fiction and 'other things that are absolutely down to the smallest detail what happened.'"

I've decided to break the sometimes artificial wall between fiction and nonfiction this week. After all, many nonfiction titles turn out to have things that are not quite true, and many novels have details taken from real life. But mostly I wanted to mention Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Metropolitan), which has already gotten a few pre-release holds. The author of The Checklist has written almost a response to Katy Butler's Knocking on Heaven's Door, as it looks at how medicine can do a good job with end-of-life issues. Abigail Zuger in The New York Times Book Review writes that "this book is an acknowledgment that serenity and well-being actually cannot be dished up cafeteria-style — and that sometimes the only sure way to gain control is first to relinquish it, whether to a bad disease, a dying patient or the constraints of a finite life span."

And finally there is Walter Isaacson's The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (Simon and Schuster). One assumes this grew out of Isaacson's research on his Steve Jobs book--I can only imagine Isaacson saying "There's just too much good stuff here!" It's the story of the history of the computer and the internet, told through the "the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page." Who knew that one of the innovators was Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. John Homans in Bloomberg Business Week writes: " Isaacson’s nose is pressed to the glass of this drama—a necessary journalistic role—and, sharing their joy, he captures the primal satisfaction of solving problems together and changing the world."

By October, so many books are screaming for your attention, don't they?

Events This Week! The Green Sheet at Shorewood Community Room Tonight, Dan Maguire Tomorrow, Jim Winship Wednesday, Color Purple Preview and Steven Pinker Friday, and Jennifer Holland Sunday.

Monday, October 6, 7 pm, at Shorewood Community Room, 3930 N. Murray Ave. 53211:
Genevieve McBride and Stephen R. Byers, authors of Dear Mrs. Griggs’: Women Pour Out Their Hearts from the Heartland.

This event is presented by the Shorewood Historical Society, co-sponsored by the Friends of the Shorewood Public Library and the Shorewood Woman's Club.

Please join us for an evening event in the Village Center Meeting Room at Shorewood Public Library, located at 3920 North Murray Avenue in Shorewood, featuring local authors Genevieve G. McBride and Stephen R. Byers as they discuss and sign copies of Dear Mrs. Griggs’: Women Pour Out Their Hearts from the Heartland, their latest collaborative history about legendary and beloved Midwestern advice columnist Ione Quinby Griggs. This event is co-sponsored by the Shorewood Historical Society, the Friends of Shorewood Public Library, and the Shorewood Women’s Club.

Before "Dear Abby" or "Ann Landers," an advice columnist beloved as "Dear Mrs. Griggs" already had dispensed wisdom to millions of readers, mainly women, for decades. Indeed, Ione Quinby Griggs became legendary, as she set a record for longevity of more than half a century in the "advice industry," because she colluded with her readers in the column, empowering them to set the agenda of their page, the back page of the newspaper. The result often foreshadowed front-page news, as their collaborative effort created a forerunner of modern social media, for a more "sociable media." A form of community forum, the column provides a literal mother lode for research into her readers’ letters on their daily lives and everyday concerns, in their own and often colorful words. The result is a unique social history of a region, a class, and a gender rarely represented in histories.

Tuesday, October 7, 7 pm, at Boswell: Marquette Professor Daniel Maguire, author of Christianity Without God: Moving Beyond the Dogmas and Retrieving the Epic Moral Narrative.

Please join us for an enlightening evening with Marquette Professor of Ethics and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Christian Ethics, Daniel Maguire, as he discusses and signs copies of his latest treatise on Christianity and ethics, Christianity Without God: Moving Beyond the Dogmas and Retrieving the Epic Moral Narrative.

In Christianity Without God, Daniel C. Maguire rejects the three fundamental dogmas of Christian faith—belief in a personal god, the divinity of Jesus, and the afterlife. Maguire illustrates a powerful poetic moral message communicated in the Bible and suggests how it can be applied in a global ethic to issues such as economics, politics, and ecology, with the hope of healing a planet sinking under the effects of ungrateful mismanagement by the human race. A distinguished professor of religion at Marquette University, Maguire recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Christian Ethics. In Christianity Without God, he seeks not to have the best or the last word on the subject, but one that can join the conversation and speak to the urgent need for change.

“With immense learning and considerable charm, Daniel Maguire evokes a Christianity freed from dogma, literalism, self-righteousness, and terror. Believers and skeptics alike can delight in what's left: poetry, morality, a sense of awe and wonder. In a word, humanity.” —Katha Pollitt, author of The Mind-Body Problem: Poems

Wednesday, October 8, 7 pm, at Boswell: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Professor Jim Winship, author of Coming of Age in El Salvador.

We’re happy to welcome Peace Corps volunteer, Fulbright Scholar, and Professor of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Jim Winship, as he discusses and his book, Coming of Age in El Salvador, which gathers first-person accounts and research into a unique text revealing the challenges and rewards of growing up in a small, globalized Central American country. This event is co-sponsored by the UWM Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Coming of age, becoming an adult, can be difficult in any time and place. This book is about youth and young adults who live simultaneously in a globalized world and a small Central American country with great beauty and strong family connections, yet with significant problems and too few opportunities. Through first-person accounts of young Salvadorans, his own research and the work of others, Dr. Jim Winship shows the context and challenges in which young Salvadorans struggle to reach their aspirations.

“I highly recommend people interested in El Salvador to read this book. It is a fresh and interesting perspective of what it means to live in El Salvador. Living in a country where many of the conversations about youth only relate to violence, Dr. Winship has been able to capture a collage of key stories that will give the reader a more holistic idea of our youth.” —Eva Rodriguez Bellegarrigue, President, Transformando Conflictos Partners El Salvador

Friday, October 10, 2 pm, at Boswell: Cast Members of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater discuss and perform a song from The Color Purple

Members of the cast of The Color Purple will join us to discuss the musical based on Alice Walker’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel as well as to perform a song from the production. The Color Purple is running at Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Quadracci Powerhouse now through November 2.

Following the success of last year’s Ragtime, Mark Clements and his creative team reunite at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre to bring you the hit musical based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. This glorious musical saga, spanning four decades, tells the unforgettable story of a woman who finds the strength to triumph over adversity and discover her own unique voice in the world. With a joyous Grammy-nominated score featuring jazz, ragtime, gospel, and blues, The Color Purple captures the hearts of young and old, and reminds us that “it only takes a grain of love to make a mighty tree.”

Friday, October 10, 7 pm, at Boswell: Steven Pinker, author of The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

You may know Steven Pinker as a psychology professor at Harvard, as well as one of the foremost writers on matters of the brain. What you might now know is he is also a longtime style manual enthusiast, and chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary. For his presentation on The Sense of Style, Pinker will discuss the corruption of the English language, the intentional obfuscation of bad writing, kids these days, and other issues raised in his cheerful, practical, and entertaining usage guide.

Pinker argues that complaints about the decline of language go at least as far back as the invention of the printing press. Every generation believes that the kids today are degrading the language and taking civilization down with it. So we can’t blame social media or texting. Rather than moaning about the decline of the language, carping over pet peeves, or recycling spurious edicts from the rulebooks of a century ago, Pinker believes we can apply insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. For example, contrary to Strunk an; White’s instruction in The Elements of Style to change passive verbs to active ones, linguistic research has shown that the passive construction has a number of indispensable functions because of the way it engages a reader’s attention and memory.

“This book is a graceful and clear smackdown to the notion that English is going to the proverbial dogs. Pinker has written the Strunk and White for a new century while continuing to discourage baseless notions such as that the old slogan should have been ‘Winston tastes good AS a cigarette should.’” —John McWhorter, author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

Sunday, October 12, 3 pm, at Boswell: Jennifer Holland, author of Unlikely Heroes: 37 Inspiring Stories of Courage and Heart from the Animal Kingdom.

The Wisconsin Humane Society and Boswell are proud to invite you to an inspiring event with Jennifer Holland, author of bestselling books Unlikely Friendships and Unlikely Loves, who will discuss her latest book, Unlikely Heroes: 37 Inspiring Stories of Courage and Heart from the Animal Kingdom. This event is co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Humane Society with 10% of each sale of Unlikely Heroes from this event donated to them.

In Unlikely Heroes, Jennifer Holland uncovers and celebrates yet another side of animals that we often think belongs primarily to people—heroism, that indefinable quality of going above and beyond, often for altruistic reasons, often at great personal risk. These 37 inspiring true tales show animals whose quick acts have saved lives, like the pod of dolphins who protected swimmers in New Zealand from a great white shark by forming a screen around them. There are stories of animals who simply and unselfishly give, like Rojo the llama, who shines his very special light of loving kindness on the elderly patients in an Oregon rehab center. And there are compelling stories of heroic resilience: like Naki'o, the abandoned puppy who lost all four paws to frostbite but found the grit not only to overcome that terrible hardship but to reclaim the joy of life—that's him, smiling on the cover of the book.

Coming Next Week:

Tuesday, October 14, 6:30 pm :
Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, author and illustrator of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, with opening musical act Fox and Branch.

Wednesday, October 15, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Deborah Crombie, author of To Dwell in Darkness.

Deconstructing the Boswell Bestseller List, Week Ending October 4, 2014 (Well, more like listing with tidbits and links).

Hardcover Fiction:
1. North of the Tension Line, by J.F. Riordan
2. A Sudden Light, by Garth Stein
3. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
4. The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell
5. The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
6. The Zone of Interest, by Martin Amis
7. The Stone Wife, by Peter Lovesey
8. The Children Act, by Ian McEwan
9. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
10. Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle

Our top two books are of course our two hardcover fiction events this week. Further down, The Stone Wife is the 14th Peter Diamond mystery and this one has a Chaucer theme. A large stone goes up for sale with the image recognized as Chaucer's Wife of Bath, but the highest bidder is killed, leaving the stone in Diamond's custody. Not only does he have to solve the crime, but he's got the additional worry of whether the stone is cursed. Here's more about the book on J. Kingston Pierce's profile in Kirkus Reviews.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Crazy is a Compliment, by Linda Rottenber
2. Not That Kind of Girl, by Lena Dunham
3. A Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker (event Friday 10/10 at Boswell)
4. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs
5. Quilts, by Elizabeth Warren
6. This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein
7. Another Side of Bob Dylan, by Victor Maymudes
8. How to Speak Brit, by Christopher J. Moore
9. Everything I need to Know I learned..., by Diane Muldrow
10. Killing Patton, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

Random House's very aggressive campaign for Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl looks like it was quite successful, judging from our first pop of sales. They were talking the book up as far back as Book Expo last spring, and her tour is the kind of multi-city high-profile undertaking that you see fewer and few celebrities doing. It's my feeling that adding a market like Iowa City to a tour takes a celeb memoir and gives it literary cachet. And don't forget, every actor and comedian has a book of essays out there, either published or in the pipeline, and it becomes harder and harder to stand out, but Random House's positioning really worked.

Here's Annalisa Quinn on the NPR website:"Another of the book's wonderful aspects is the way Dunham establishes herself within a tradition. She's sometimes accused of egotism (as far as I can tell, because she plays an egotist on TV), but here she acknowledges her literary heritage again and again, saying explicitly and implicitly that without a Nora, a Judy, a Gloria, and a Helen, there could be no Lena. She reminds us that we — the maladjusted girl children of the 80s and 90s — have a canon, too."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy
2. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
3. Saving Kandinsky, by Mary Basson
4. Still Life, by Louise Penny
5. This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper
6. The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
7. The Circle, by Dave Eggers
8. Everything Beautiful Began After, by Simon Van Booy
9. The Redeemer, by Jo Nesbo
10. The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith

You hear a lot about how what the Boswellians are reading, but even with a decent amount of taste, some books fall through the cracks. Sometimes its because we haven't gotten a read and other times we got a read but the bookseller didn't write anything up. The Lowland, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award last year, is about two brother who take very different paths, one staying home to become a political activist and the other emigrating to the United States. Lahiri was interviewed in The New Yorker by Cressida Leyshon, where she explains that this also could be known as her Rhode Island novel.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
2. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, by Larry Widen
3. Inner Dialogue in Daily Life, edited by Charles Eigen
4. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
5. How to Sit, by Thich Nhat Hanh
6. Christianity without God, by Daniel Maguire (event at Boswell Tuesday 10/7)
7. No Struggle, No Progress, by Howard Fuller
8. Will it Waffle?, by Daniel Shumski
9. One Pot, from Martha Stewart Living
10. Viruses, Plagues, and History, by Michael Oldstone

One book on this list that caught my eye on this list was Thich Nhat Hanh's How to Sit. There are a gajillion Thich Nhat Hanh books out there. One assumes that someone is always following him around with a recorder, sending out manuscripts each night. Coming soon, his complete recaps on Game of Thrones, season one! So it's interesting to me that his new book on sitting meditation hit our bestseller list off the impulse table--I double checked to see if they were individual and not bulk sales*, and they were. Erika Kulnys in the Shambhala Sun writes that "Thich Nhat Hanh offers us a fresh, accessible guide to sitting meditation, explaining both how to sit and why. It’s a dynamic introduction for those exploring meditation for the first time, and a hearkening back to the essentials for the experienced meditator."

Books for Kids:
1. Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld
2. Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld
3. The Odyssey, literary touchstone edition, by Homer
4. The Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
5. The Maze Runner, by James Dashner
6. Behemoth, by Scott Westerfeld
7. Minecraft Construction Handbook
8. Kate Walden Directs Night of the Zombie Chickens, by Julie Mata
9. Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld
10. Room on the Boom, by Julia Donaldson

There are a few moments you remember before a book completely explodes. Before the film version of The Maze Runner, we hosted Mr. Dashner for not one but two of the installments. You could tell right away that this was a series with strong momentum, but one never knows what the film is going to be like, and whether it's going to exceed expectations. It did, with stronger reviews than several other entries in the YA marketplace.

I'm particularly amused by this write up by Brid-Aine Parnell in the British technology website, The Register: "Well it’s another teen dystopia novel turned into a film – which is fast turning into a reason not to see a movie instead of a reason to see a movie as studio heads hope – but what’s this? No love triangle? No whining? Teenagers with a modicum of self-respect? A decent storyline? It’s all gone strangely right for the makers of The Maze Runner."

In the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews On Immunity: An Innoculation, by Eula Bliss. "Eula Biss'On Immunity: An Inoculation probes the vexing question of why many determined people oppose the vaccination of children and blame vaccines for autism and other conditions. It would fit snugly on a bookshelf between Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors and Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of all Maladies, both cited in its smart, slim text."

Also in the Journal Sentinel, Christi Clancy reviews Jane Smiley's Some Luck, coming out this Tuesday, October 7. She writes: "Smiley's ambitious book chronicling an Iowa farm family from 1920 through the 1950s — the first in a planned trilogy — is a long meditation on the little hard bits of things we encounter in our lives that shape our personal histories. We aren't defined solely by big events like births and deaths, friendships gained and lost, and passions thwarted and fulfilled, but also by small moments: making an angel food cake, almost falling into a well, wondering why we have to grow up, and experiencing 'the silent ecstasy' with which we give thanks when we run a finger along the perfect curve of a baby's ear."

The third home-grown review this week is another October 7 release, Marilynne Robinson's Lila. Reviewer Mike Fischer explains the set up: "Her name — and the title of Marilynne Robinson's glorious new novel — is Lila. We've met her before, because she'll grow up to marry the much older Reverend John Ames and bear him the child to which Ames pens the moving love song Robinson called Gilead (2004). Late in this new novel, it's Lila who suggests he write it, so that his son can remember him after he's gone. Robinson's third novel to be set in the fictionalized Iowa town of Gilead — there's also Home (2008) — Lila is a prequel to both, focusing on the period in the late 1940s during which Lila and Ames meet, marry and have a child."

And finally here's the interview with Lena Dunham by Associated Press reporter Alicia Rancilio for Not That Kind of Girl. Just a tease: "It is important to me to provide life lessons to others.... I don't think there is one person who is qualified to share their eternal wisdom and fix everybody up, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would disagree with all the choices I have made, but for me, it just makes me feel like all my mistakes might have some kind of use when I feel that I might be imparting some comfort or knowledge onto other young people."

*Originally read "salse", which might have been mistaken for "salsa."

Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier in Milwaukee, Plus Each Offers a YA Pick.

The good news for days when I inadvertently schedule five events in one day is that I'm physically incapable of handling them all. So first of all, a big thank you to Amie, who was our bookseller for Scott Westerfeld's first event at Homestead high school, and another thanks to Jannis, who was our bookseller for Westerfeld's public event at Shorewood Public Library. We had just about 100 attendees, which we're very happy with. Congrats to Shorewood Public Library!

While this was going on, I was the bookseller at Simon Van Booy's school event for The Illusion of Separateness and our bookseller coordinating Chuck Eigen's in-store event for Inner Dialogue in Daily Life. I think this crazed schedule really puts us in the shoes of our touring authors. I can't usually sit down at these things or I fall asleep.

The great thing was that I still got to see Scott Westerfeld's presentation, as I was the bookseller at his University School event. I'm in the middle of Afterworlds (yes, I've turned into one of those booksellers reading five books at once and finishing nothing) and enjoying it a lot, with that crazy juxtaposition of a realistic New York publishing world with the paranormal setting of Darcy's novel.

As Westerfeld was generally gearing up for performing (or in the act of performing), all of us got to get to know his spouse, Justine Larbalestier, a seasoned YA author in her own right, who has been publishing since 2005's Madness trilogy, starting with Magic or Madness? Looking at her work, you can see that she's a perfect fit for Soho Teen, who will be publishing her newest novel, Razorhurst, in March 2015. It's set in 1930s Sydney, featuring two very different teenage protagonists who find themselves up against the existing mob bosses, with their lives in the balance. Oh, and one can see ghosts.

Larbalestier is well-versed in YA culture, and has a lot to say on all aspects of it. After chatting with her for a bit, I asked her if she knew another of our favorite people who speaks so eloquently on the subject, Roxane Gay. Her response? "Only by Twitter, but I'd love to meet her!" I can only imagine the amazing synergy of Gay interviewing Larbalestier next March. Someone's got to make this happen.

With their crazy packed schedule, Westerfeld and Larbalestier still got time to come by the store and browse. Westerfeld picked up Jason Reynolds' When I Was the Greatest, which of course we're already in love with, having done schools and The Gentleman's Tour on the last book. Congrats to John Corey Whaley, by the way, who is longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People for Noggin. I was curious if he'd read Reynold's next book, Boy in the Black Suit, which I hear is a January 2015 release. I think it's set in a funeral home. Now we're both looking forward to it!

And for Labalestier, her pick was Love is the Drug, by Alaya Dawn Johnson, which coincidentally just came out the day before our events. Emily Bird, the daughter of research scientists, ends a party and winds up from a coma several days later, sure she was drugged. And this is somehow connected to a virulent flu that is currently killing people around the globe, and she teams up with a diplomat's son to find out what's going on. Johnson's books are a thriller/cyberpunk hybrid and still touch on the race and class issues that confront Bird, "an assimilated DC Black girl" who "tries to stay true to herself", as the astute reviewer Eliza Langhans wrote in School Library Journal.

Oh, and we still have some signed copies of Afterworlds too.

The New Book Club Flier is Here. We Ponder Selection, Contemplate Connection, Praise Perfection!

Our new book club flier is out! Alas, we took an extended spring break, which was particularly unfortunate as for at least several weeks there, Jane, Anne, and I were doing presentations almost every week. The good news is that I think we have a handle on what was working, though as always, I've included several books that are a bit of a reach. We've been pleasantly surprised in the past, so who knows?

I try to have a grouping of nonfiction titles, so in addition to Jane's pick of Knocking on Heaven's Door and Anne's of After Visiting Friends (we retired Shakespeare Saved my Life, after an amazing run of over 100 books sold--congrats again, Anne!), I decided to have a "history of publishing, part one and two" feature. I just think that Boris Kachka's Hothouse and Brad Stone's The Everything Store make great reading together, perhaps spread over two meetings. If you are a reader and want to know the past, present, and possible future of publishing, these books will make for great discussion.

I can't pass up an opportunity to push a few upcoming events. Of course we just hosted Simon Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness, knowing that not only was it just an amazing book, but it's one that you can read quickly when folks are reading during a month of outside activity, like December or early January. But we're also excited about the impending visit of Gabrielle Hamilton, whose new cookbook Prune will be the inspiration for an author dinner on November 17 at Bacchus. I think that folks who read Blood, Bones, and Butter will be even more inspired to see the author, and the James Beard Award doesn't hurt either. We don't have the pricing yet for the dinner, but you can call (414) 765-1166 for details.

Jane has been presenting Unmentionables and Instructions for a Heatwave at many talks, and those books have really made inroads. While Laurie Loewenstein's novel of a woman's suffrage speaker stuck in a small Illinois town came out in January, September has proven to be our best month of sales to date. And Anne and Jane (along with other booksellers) have made a great case for Hannah Kent's Burial Rites.

Our in-store lit group loved it too, with one notable exception, and that kept the conversation lively. We've sold well over 100 copies of the book, but we still feel we haven't maximized the book's potential. I'd say the same for The President's Hat. People just love the book, and it's perfect for tight months, but I still don't think the 200+ copies we've sold have completely penetrated the market.

Needless to say, my reading is very driven by events, and several authors made such a strong impact that they are still in my head, speaking. That's definitely been the case for Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. For Mel, Janice Clark made a great impact with The Rathbones and I thought this book could have a great book club discussion, mixing whaling, Homer, and Melville. It's actually on our shortlist to be the December In Store Lit Group discussion title.

One book that started off slowly but has picked up with each award nomination is Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. It started for us with Jane Hamilton's enthusiasm but the Pen/Faulker, Nebula, and Man Booker prize committees have certainly helped drive sales.

Brand new in paperback is Larry Watson's Let Him Go, a book that had great reads from Jason and Sharon, and has terrific book club potential. In fact, a whole Milwaukee-area village is reading him. Watson's newest is the Elm Grove Reads title, and he's appearing at the Sunset Playhouse on October 22. Tickets are $5 and are available at the Elm Grove Library, and likely at the door as well.

In addition to our several in-store book clubs, we work with over fifty book clubs in the area, displaying their upcoming selection and making them available to their members. Registered book clubs get a 10% discount on their scheduled selection and that book also qualifies for Boswell Benefits, as long as the book is full-trade discount (meaning print-on-demand, nonreturnable, short discount titles from places like CreateSpace do not qualify, unless the author has placed books with us on consignment.

If you love our book club service, here are two key ways that you can make sure that you've made it easy for your members to choose to read a physical book bought from your favorite bookstore.

a. If you can't map out your selections for the year, why not pick your selections two months in advance instead of one. That's what we do for our in-store clubs. It allows us to source the books more profitably from the publisher, and allows members with different time constraints to read ahead when necessary. For folks who live farther from their favorite bookstore (wherever that is, but in this case, we're referencing Boswell), they can buy two selections in one trip.

b. Consider keeping your selections to trade paperbacks. It's my mathematical formula that when library users plus ebook users plus online shoppers outweigh traditional bookstore purchasers in a book club, the selections start tilting to hardcover. I love readers wherever they buy their books from, but note that keeping the selections to paperback gives the bookstore a fighting chance.

If you'd like to have us do a presentation for your book club at the store, we are available to groups of 8-15 on weekday afternoons. Contact me to set something up. Needless to say, we understand that not everyone in the club will buy their books from us, but try not to forget that we are a for-profit bookstore, and we'd hope for your support in exchange for this service.

Here's the complete list. You can also download our pdf, or pick up a copy of our pastel yellow flier in the store.

After Visiting Friends, by Michael Hainey
Blood Bones and Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton
The Everything Store, by Jeff Stone
The Girls of Atomic City, by Denise Kiernan
Hothouse, by Boris Kachka
Knocking on Heaven's Door, by Katy Butler
Longbourn, by Jo Baker
The Rathbones, by Janice Clark The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer
Unmentionables, by Laurie Loewenstein
The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy
TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann
We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler
Fin and Lady, by Cathleen Schine
Enon, by Paul Harding
Let Him Go, by Larry Watson
Someone, by Alice McDermott
Instructions for a Heatwave, by Maggie O'Farrell
Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra
The President's Hat, by Antoine Laurain
An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay
Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

Browse these books online at our website.

What is it with Whitish Covers, Plain Typeface, and Little Icons? Is Everyone Now Malcolm Gladwell, Even Novelists?

Several weeks ago I mentioned this longstanding cover trend where you have a plain white jacket with a small icon on it. The typeface is generally clean and points to serious personal development, often with business applications. Examples were Malcolm Gladwell's titles, Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, and most recently Daniel Levitin's The Organized Mind. Sticklers will note this book is actually cream, not white.

What is so fascinating about this is that both bookstores and websites are driven crazy by white covers. They get dirty. They blend into the background. They smudge. They get lost in my blog, because I use a clean white background. And when everybody does them (and everybody does), they don't pop off the shelf either.

But apparently publishers must feel that their siren song is so powerful that it's worth the returns, or maybe the mass merchants like them. We noted that it's not just business and psychology books that hone to this popular design. A bookseller pointed out the new William Davis book, Wheat Belly Total Health, the Milwaukee diet phenom, and no, I still haven't met him. WebMD reviewed the book, and it's interesting to note that Dr. Davis likes many of the trendy grains, such as flax, chia, and quinoa. He likes flax the best of the three. note that Grain Brain, another book chasing this trend, has a similar look. A mix of black and red type is the only distinguishing mark.


But then another bookseller noticed that it's hard to spot the difference between a self-help book and Paulo Coehlo's Adultery. Now some might argue that Coehlo is a novelist whose books are read like self-help, and that might be the reason why Knopf is doing pretty well with the new releases, hitting high on the national bestseller lists. Normally you'd try to distinguish a white-with-icon book by doing a stylized typeface, perhaps a script, which nobody would ever mistake for nonfiction. But Coehlo's book gives no indicators that it's fiction at all. Were this self-help, is it arguing for or against adultery? I think "for", but it might suggest you be open about the relationships. So much for attempting to judge a book by its cover.

The Knopf/Doubleday group of Random House seems to be particularly fascinated by this design concept. The recently released Before, During, After could easily be mistaken for a white jacket, though in fact it has what is either a shadow or an ombre effect in the coloration. Hombre's been pretty hot in fashion for the last few years; I'm hoping that the publishers will jump on another trend and start doing jackets with fringe.  The author of Peace (a novel a number of Schwartz booksellers got behind and sold very well in hardcover) has written the story of an artist and Episcopal priest who fall in love, despite age differences, but the relationship is shaken by both world and personal events, and well, the "after" part does not go very well.

Similarly, Ian McEwan's The Children Act is another variation in cream (which honestly, reads white in a lot of our materials), while Dear Committee Members would completely fit the bill if the type wasn't partially mustard type. Mustard! That's crazy talk; the recommended color is black, and only red is an acceptable variation. And I know you're all thinking, what about B.J. Novak's One More Thing? Yes, it follows the white trend, but it uses a handwriting font (or handwriting, who knows the difference?) and has no icon.

And then, everywhere I looked, I saw white covers with little icons and self-helpy type. Did Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes qualify? Why was this book white and not black or red? And what of Christos Tsiolkas's Barracuda? I suppose the little wave lines disqualify it, but why did Crown work in white instead of the blue and blue-green of the British and Australian publishers?

Somebody is pushing publishers towards white covers, but I have no idea who it is? If not a retailer, is it a paid consultant? A secret organization? Let me know if you have any inside info.

New Releases from Martin Amis, Hillary Mantel, Marlon James, Lauren Oliver, and Neel Mukherjee (and of course Garth Stein).

Several books coming today have had heightened interest. One of them is The Zone of Interest (Knopf), the new novel from Martin Amis, which has gotten much better reviews than his previous release. FOB Dennis had me put one on hold for him last week. Yes, you can do that too! Publishers Weekly writes: "An absolute soul-crusher of a book, the brilliant latest from Amis is an astoundingly bleak love story, as it were, set in a German concentration camp, which Thomsen, one of the book’s three narrators, refers to as Kat Zet...the result is devastating." And Alan Taylor in The Herald (Scotland) writes "The Zone Of Interest may be his greatest book; it is that good. You want to put it down but you know you can't and you know that you shouldn't. It is inventive, awful, testing and, like Picasso's Guernica, incongruously beautiful. Would that Primo Levi were around to read it."

Similarly, Hilary Mantel's The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (Henry Holt) has readers abuzz. In her case, however, it is due to reviews, but to a conservative backlash in Great Britain. Now that I understand the politics better, I would suspect the backlash is specifically in England, but probably not Scotland. Here's Kelly Lawler's take in USA Today. Also The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Ms. Mantel. Ellen Gamerman noted that "though the pieces are unrelated, certain patterns appear. Deformed, ailing or dead children figure in four stories, three pieces feature women with mysterious or undiagnosed ailments and two tales touch on the dread of potent prescription drugs."

Riverhead hopes to make a splash with the new novel from Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings, which should arrive in the store around Thursday or Friday. It will be hard to say goodby to these Penguin soft Thursday landings. After the distribution consolidation, Penguin books will move to the Random House standard of Tuesdays for everything. His new book is inspired an attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. It's interesting that it comes at the same time as John Ridley's Jimi, another look at a pivotal moment in a prominent Black musician. Michiko Kakutani broke pub date with her New York Times review to set the tone for this "monumental work." She wrote in her September 21 review: "Brief History draws heavily upon White’s Catch a Fire and a 1991 article that he wrote for Spin magazine. But Mr. James, who was born in Kingston in 1970, is really interested in using both the facts and the speculation surrounding the murder attempt on Marley as a portal into Jamaican culture and politics. Marley (who is referred to here almost always as 'the Singer') becomes an almost peripheral figure in this novel, as the story focuses in on fictional versions of 'the people around him, the ones who come and go.'"

Out last week is Rooms  (Ecco), the first "adult" novel from Lauren Oliver, and it's a ghost story. A patriarch has died, the alienated family has come to claim their inheritance, but two invited guests are also on hand. Publishers Weekly's starred review notes: "Oliver makes vivid use of both dead and living characters—all of whom are trapped in the past and striving toward a happier existence—to narrate her intricate, suspenseful story." That said, I found more blogger write ups than traditional reviews when searching the web. It's not because it's a ghost story; many authors in the genre have found broad critcal acceptance, including such developing writers as Rebecca Makkai, let alone Sarah Waters, and Audre Niffenegger. Maybe it's a bias against young adult writers by critics, or perhaps they are just holding it for today's release of another ghost-story novel, Garth Stein's A Sudden Light (who will be at Boswell on Saturday, October 4, 7 pm).

Norton is trying to rush out Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others, which has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. They work on a pub date model, so usually an October 1 pub date would have the books on sale about a week or two ahead of time. The story is about the extended Ghosh family, all living on a floor of the patriarch's manse. It's the 1960s and things are not going well, with the various siblings and their in-laws fighting over the family business, while unrest brews around them. A. S. Byatt writes in The Guardian: "One of Mukherjee's great gifts is precisely his capacity to imagine the lives of others. He can move from inside one head to inside another in a conversation or conflict and take the reader with him. He isn't really an omniscient narrator, there is no authorial voice – just an imagination that is more than adequate to its task." Should come in any day!