More on Darryl McDaniels, coming to Boswell on Saturday, August 27, 7 pm, for "Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide."

I can't stop thinking about Darryl McDaniels and his book, Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide. I picked up the book because he's coming to Boswell on Saturday, August 27, 7 pm (the event is free, but you must purchase a book to get in the signing line) but the book resonated with me in a number of different ways.

For one thing, Mr. McDaniels grew up only about five miles from me, in Hollis Queens. When I would very occasionally walk home from the subway train, would walk down Hillside Avenue, not really too far from his house. Some of the Black kids I went to school with lived in Hollis and nearby St. Albans. So while McDaniels himself went to Catholic school, I probably had classes with some of his neighbors - I'm a bit older than him, but not by much.

As a New Yorker who was still living in New York, when Run-D.M.C. broke out, songs like "Sucker M.C.'s" and "It's Like That" were ubiquitous on the radio, even if you weren't particularly focused on hip hop. I tended to listen all over the dial. You probably won't be surprised to find out in the early 1980s, I would continuously move the radio dial and count how many times I heard each song, and then tabulate the numbers each week, sitting at a folding card table in a studio apartment in Queens with a very good few of the famous Elmhurst tanks. I would call this the New York Radio Frequency Chart. I do wish I could find that folder with all the little charts I compiled. See, there were plenty of time sucks before the internet.

I've been trying to do some outreach to help the event along. Our friends at Cope Services has agreed to spread the word. Their helpline in Ozaukee County helps folks all over the Southeast Wisconsin area. I've lost folks to suicide over the years (including at least one coworker and more than one customer) and I know how important these hotlines can be.We also know that our friends at Community Advocates are on the case. Please check out the work of both these fine organizations.

After reading Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, I understood that adoption is also a cause near and dear to McDaniels' heart. His story about how he learned he was adopted and came to love both his his adopted and birth family is quite touching, almost as much as how he came to fall in love with Sarah McLachlan's Angel. I literally teared up, and I had to dig out my CD of Surfacing so I could play the song. My favorite Sarah McLachlan song continues to be "Possession."

Alas, I was more of a wimpy DC fan instead of Marvel, and even my Batman reading focused on the less dark stories of the late sixties and early seventies. I particularly liked the Legion of Super Heroes and the weirder the power, the better. Rest in peace, Ferro Lad, the boy who could sort of do nothing! And thank you Wikipedia for the story behind Ferro Lad, who was meant to be the first Black Legionnaire.

So thanks to Darryl McDaniels for writing this and appearing. And thanks to Darrell Dawsey, who helped McDaniels get the book written. And thanks to Amistad Press, who let us host a public event in conjunction with a private fundraiser Mr. McDaniels is doing in town. Thank you to Cope Services and Community Advocates to getting the word out. And if you come to our event on Saturday, August 27, 7 pm, I'll thank you too.

Events this week: Beverly Little Thunder, Jack Mitchell in conversation with Kathleen Dunn, Wayne Pacelle

Here's what's going on at Boswell this week:

Wednesday, August 17, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Wayne Pacelle, author of The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals. Pacelle will be introduced by Anne Reed, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Humane Society.

During his more than twenty years with The Humane Society of the United States, including a decade as president and CEO, Wayne Pacelle has played a leading role in transforming the organization, the nation’s largest animal protection charity, into a dynamic public force and voice for all animals. He was named an Executive of the Year by NonProfit Times in 2005 for his leadership in responding to the Hurricane Katrina crisis. A graduate of Yale University, he is also author of The Bond.

Here are some recommendations for Pacelle's The Humane Economy.

"Essential reading for anyone interested in animal welfare. This fabulous book reveals the inside story of how the fight against human cruelty to animals is gradually being won. A fascinating, highly readable, and remarkably comprehensive book." --Jane Goodall

"A critically important read for anyone who cares about business succes or animals -- or, like so many of us, both." --Jack Welch, founder of the Jack Welch Management Institute"

"The Humane Economy is a brilliant book that celebrates the truth: our economic wellbeing is inextricably linked to the wellbeing of animals. This book is an important moral and pragmatic blueprint for humane, enlightened prosperity for all." --U.S. Senator Cory Booker

Here's Caroline Abels profiling Wayne Pacelle in Civil Eats.

Thursday, August 18, 7.00 pm, at Boswell:
Jack Mitchell, author of Wisconsin on the Air: 100 Years of Public Broadcasting in the State That Invented It, in conversation with Kathleen Dunn of Wisconsin Public Radio. This event is cosponsored by Wisconsin Public Radio.

Jack Mitchell, PhD, led Wisconsin Public Radio from 1976 till 1997, initiating the transition from educational radio to WPR. Mitchell was the first employee of National Public Radio, where he was instrumental in developing the groundbreaking newsmagazine All Things Considered. He received the two highest honors in public radio: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Edward R. Murrow Award and the Edward Elson National Public Radio Distinguished Service Award. Mitchell joined the faculty of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1998. He is the author of Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio.

Mitchell will be in conversation with Kathleen Dunn for this event, cosponsored by Wisconsin Public Radio. Dunn’s first job in radio was at a small station in North Carolina. Then after 18 years at Milwaukee’s WTMJ, she came to Wisconsin Public Radio in 1993. Dunn has a deep interest in the news of the day, world affairs, arts and culture.

From Isthmus, here's a review of the book From Bill Lueders: "Mitchell, a still-active UW-Madison journalism professor emeritus, headed WPR from 1976 to 1997. He brings an insider’s knowledge and true believer’s passion to the tale of how public broadcasting in Wisconsin has struggled to provide quality programming within a maelstrom of reactive public officials, alternatively devoted and volatile audiences and an alphabet soup (WHA, WPR, WPT, PBS, etc.) of interconnected but not always cooperative entities."

Friday, August 19, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Beverly Little Thunder, author of One Bead at a Time

Beverly Little Thunder, Lakota Elder, and women's activist, is a member of the Standing Rock Lakota Band from North Dakota. When she was forced to leave her Spiritual community because she was a lesbian, Beverly founded the Women's Sundance over 20 years ago to continue teaching the traditions and ceremonies of her heritage, including sweat lodge, talking circles, vision quests, and spiritual counseling.

From Sarya Pinto, author of Vatolandia and Pinol: Poems: "One Bead at a Time is a timely testimonial of the indomitable character and expansive vision necessary to break deeply set patterns of intergenerational intersectional oppression in one's personal and communal life. The capacity to transform tragedy into possibility, sadness into joy, and social exclusion into an invitation for belonging is perhaps the most powerful tool humanity has at its disposal during these critical times. Let this groundbreaking contribution inspire all of us to work together to reconstitute the circle of life."

Here's Paul Masterson's "My LGBT POV" column in the recent Shepherd Express, where he discusses Beverly Little Thunder's journey to create a Women's-only Sundance.

What's showing up on the Boswell annotated bestseller lists for the week ending August 13, 2016?

Here's what sold at Boswell this week.


Hardcover Fiction:
1. Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
2. Heroes of the Frontier, by Dave Eggers
3. Black Widow, by Daniel Silva
4. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
5. The Devils of Cardona, by Matthew Carr
6. Night of the Animals, by Bill Broun
7. War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans
8. Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
9. Miss Jane, by Brad Watson
10. Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson

Connie Ogle writes in the Miami Herald that "The calendar year hasn’t even slipped into September, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is already being talked about as the book of the year (and that’s with a slew of big books heading our way in the fall, including works from Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer..." She went on to note that Mr. Foer will be appearing in Miami for his new novel, Here I Am which Boswellian Chris has read and several other booksellers are in the middle of...it's long.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Fail U, by Charles J. Sykes
2. Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round, by Ron Faiola
3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond (appearing at Mercy Housing fundraiser 11/2)
4. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato (appearing at WWIBC lunch 12/2)
5. America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook (Jack Bishop at Boswell Thu 11/20, 7 pm)
6. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
7. Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, by John Gurda
8. Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
9. John Bascom and the Origins of the Wisconsin Idea, by J. David Hoeveler (event Wed 9/7, 7 pm)

The hardcover bestseller list is driven by both today and tomorrow's events, I guess. Here's more information on the WWIBC lunch with Sanford D'Amato on December 2. Tickets are $65 for this event. And for Matthew Desmond's talk at the Live in Hope Reception on November 2, visit the Mercy Housing website. Tickets for that fundraiser are $50. Desmond will also be appearing in Madison. We'll be at both events, selling Good Stock and Evicted, respectively.

Paperback Fiction:
1. A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
2. My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante
3. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
4. The Only Ones, by Carola Dibbell (the next SF group book club selection)
5. The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen
6. The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie
7. Sister Carrie Penguin Classic edition, by Theodore Dreiser (in store lit group Florentine presentation, October 3, 7 pm)
8. The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George
9. She Weeps Each Time You're Born, by Quan Barry (in store lit group, Tues 9/6, 7 pm)
10. The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman

I think we'll be adding Alice Hoffman's The Marriage of Opposites to our fall book club presentations. It's a historical novel about Camille Pissarro's mother. After a number of historicals, From Wendy Smith in The Washington Post: "Like her most recent novels, this story is grounded in historical events and assiduous research, but Hoffman goes a step beyond The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things by taking real-life figures as her protagonists. Staying close to the known facts about the artist Camille Pissarro and his parents, she forcefully imagines their interior lives and surrounds them with a full-bodied supporting cast of characters." I read that Hoffman's next novel, Faithful, out November 1, is a throwback contemporary.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Going for Wisconsin Gold, by Jessie Garcia
2. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
3. You Are a Badass, by Jen Sincero
4. One Bead at a Time, by Beverly Little Thunder (Event Fri 8/19, 7 pm)
5. Fast and Easy Five Ingredient Recipes, by Philia Kelnhofer
6. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow
7. America's Test Kitchen Kitchen Hacks
8. Rebel Yell, by S.C. Gwynne
9. My Life with the Green and Gold, by Jessie Garcia
10. Cream City Chronicles, by John Gurda

After a sleeper hit turned monster breakout from Running Press, Jen Sincero has moved to Viking, following up You Are a Badass with You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth. Yes, you can preorder it. Per the publisher, Sincero looks at "how powerful thoughts shape our income potential and the ways in which our bank accounts are mirrors for our bugaboos about money." It's slightly different positioning for this former rock drummer and sex advice columnist, as you can see in this Carolyn Kellogg profile in the Los Angeles Times.

Books for Kids:
1. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2, by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
2. The Hollow Earth V1, by John and Carole E. Barrowman
3. The Bone Quill V2, by John and Carole E. Barrowman
4. The Book of Beasts V3, by John and Carole E. Barrowman
5. Stories from Bug Garden, by Lisa Moser with illustrations by Gwen Millward (event Sun 8/28, 2 pm, at Boswell)
6. I Am a Bunny, by Ole Risom and Richard Scarry
7. Julia's House for Lost Creatures, by Ben Hatke (event at Cudahy Library, Tuesday 10/4, 6:30 pm)
8. The School for Good and Evil Ever Never Handbook, by Soman Chainani
9. Alan's Big Scary Teeth, by Peter Jarvis
10. The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown

Several of Boswellian Barb's favorites got hand-sold onto this week's bestseller list. Adam Rubin, whose Dragons Love Tacos has been a huge hit, reviewed The Wild Robot in The New York Times Book Review. He wrote: "These are just a few purely hypothetical examples, but the sad truth for ­picture-book authors is, if we want the word people to accept us as one of their own, we eventually have to write a book that doesn’t need pictures. So congratulations to Peter Brown, who, with his middle-grade debut, a novel called The Wild Robot, has firmly planted his flag in the middle of the word person/­picture person Venn diagram. We’re all very happy for him and not jealous at all."

Featured in the Tap Books page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a review of Ghost Talkers, the new novel from Mary Robinette Kowal that has been passing from bookseller to bookseller - so far both Anne McMahon and I have read it. She's coming with Ada Palmer on Wednesday, August 31, 7 pm, for a mini SF con.

Higgins has a lot to say about the Ghost Talkers: "Just as Connie Willis salutes the resilience of Brits in her fiction about England during World War II, Kowal pays similar tribute in this novel through her depiction of grandmotherly Mrs. Richardson and invalided Lt. Plumber, 'unsighted' normal humans who serve as grounds to anchor the Spirit Corps mediums to this world.

"Through Stuyvesant, Kowal also takes on, at times pugnaciously, the classism, sexism and racism of the British Army brass of that time period. The commanding officer won't acknowledge Helen Jackson's leadership of the mediums because she is black. Stuyvesant herself is discounted because she is a woman. A brave soldier is relegated to transportation duty because he is Indian. Each of these will play a vital role in facing the German treachery."

Also in the print edition are Connie Ogle's review of Truly Madly Guilty, originally in the Miami Herald, and a profile of Amber Tozer, author of Sober Stick Figure, by Mary Ann Gwinn, originally appearing in the Seattle Times.

What did the book club think of "The Sympathizer"?

When the in-store lit group tackles a book like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, it's a little harder to write about whether the book is good or not. It's already received what is said to be the most important literary prize in the United States, the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. If you don't know this award, this is the adult equivalent of the Caldecott and Newbery, awarded to adult works. It is only a bit more confusing because there is also a British Carnegie Medal for children's books from the British Library Association.

The story? The unnamed narrator, whom you can refer to as Captain, or do as I do, and call every unnamed narrator in books that I read "N", is in South Vietnam before the country is to fall to the North. His two closest friends are Man and Bo. Man plans to stay behind, but Bo is leaving with his wife and child. The United States has done very little to prepare the country, and instead is planning to airlift out Americans and a some South Vietnamese allies. The problem? Most of the South Vietnamese are not going to make it. And let's just say the airlift doesn't go well.

The Vietnamese are resettled in the United States, and from there the novel becomes an immigrant story, of restaurants and liquor stores, and failed expectations of what life would be like in the States. With the General, the Captain is continuing the fight of the South, defending the immigrant community against traitors and with vague plans to go back and fight. But there's a twist - the Captain is a also Viet Cong spy sending information back to Vietnam.

The Captain himself works at a university, having lived in the United States previously. He is more educated, and thus more aware of the slights against Asians he witnesses. He particularly notes this when he gets a gig being the Vietnamese consultant for a film being shot called The Hamlet by The Auteur, who has effectively rewritten the war narrative to make America the victor. To me, this subplot of the book seemed like a major digression, but I get why it's there - it's got some of the best satire in the book.

After that interlude, life for the Captain gets more complicate when he's sent back on mission by the General. And I'm not giving anything away by saying that the story is told as a confession. Many reviewers have noted that very few works speak to the Vietnamese participation and experience in the Vietnam War but Nguyen (as an aside, here's a discussion on the name's pronunciation) has said that what he meant to do was talk about the Vietnamese war and aftermath to a fellow Vietnamese person.

So what did the book club think? Everyone agreed it was an important a book, with a few folks really loving it, and others finding it difficult, but still saying they were glad they read it. Or in many cases, still reading it. I probably should have flipped our July and August selections around. Because we delayed our July meeting by a week, due to the July 4th holiday, we had five weeks to read A Spool of Blue Thread and only three to read The Sympathizer (UK version at right). A number of attendees mentioned they felt like they were reading nonfiction rather than a novel, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it slowed them down. All in all, it turned out to be a very good discussion and I would highly recommend that book clubs include The Sympathizer in their schedule. And hey, even mystery book clubs can read this - The Sympathizer won the Edgar award for best first novel.

One suggestion I would make to book clubs taking this on is a little contrary to my usual advice, which is read the book, and then do the research. If you are a club that generally does adventurous and challenging reads, by all means go into The Sympathizer blind. And in fact, if you do adventurous, challenging reads, you probably have a lot of the background you need to tackle the book. But if your club tends towards the tame, if you read for plot, or if your club often doesn't finish, I highly recommend reading the background material first, such as this profile in The New York Times with David Streitfeld, or perhaps his Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.

Reading The Sympathizer also made me want to read the author's nonfiction book, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Doing a casual search, it seems like the book didn't get as much review attention as I would have expected, but it had this nice write up in The New Yorker: "In thematically arranged chapters—on remembrance, forgetting, and spectacle—he produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form 'the identity of war' in Vietnam, 'a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s people.'"

If you continue to be interested in the Vietnam War legacy, as we are, you might want to pick up Quan Barry's She Weeps Each Time You're Born. We'll be discussing that on Tuesday, September 6, 7 pm, a day late due to the Labor Day holiday. And you also might want to read Robert Olen Butler's Perfume River, just out from Atlantic Monthly Press. Butler won the Pulitzer in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. His new novel is from Viet Thanh Nguyen's editor at Grove Atlantic, Peter Blackstock. Butler will be at Boswell on Tuesday, October 4, 7 pm, in conversation with Cardinal Stritch's David Riordan.

Two other books I have read that might be of interest are The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong, and Catfish and Mandala, by Andrew X. Pham.

Our October book club selection is Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, which we are carrying in both Penguin Classic and Signet Classic editons. On Monday, October 3, 7 pm, we'll be meeting along with some of the Florentine crew, which is world-premiering a new Sister Carrie Opera on October 7 and 9.

Events this week: Ron Faiola with Kyle Cherek, Jessie Garcia at Shorewood Public Library, Charles J. Sykes, MPTV Sound Safari Activity Time

Here's what's going on at Boswell this week:

Monday, August 8, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Ron Faiola, author of Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round, in conversation with Kyle Cherek, host of Wisconsin Foodie

As you page through Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round, your first inclination is to take a few days off and visit some. As you keep reading, those days turn to weeks. From Gib's on the Lake in Kewaunee, which makes its own pasta and uses locally sourced cheese curds for its poutine, to the Edgewater in Jefferson, which has its own organic produce and chicken, and yes, you can buy their eggs if you bring in your own egg carton. Now not all of you might take to the 80 ounce prime rib at Carlson's Rustic Ridge at Castle Rock Lake, but it's good to know that the salad bar is so popular, it's a popular item to order all by itself.

We figured that Ron Faiola closed the book on supper clubs when he created his popular documentary and previous tie-in book, but his new release covers 50 additional clubs from across the Badger State, documenting some of the most exceptional and long-lived restaurants that embrace the decades-old supper club tradition. These are largely family-owned establishments that believe in old-fashioned hospitality, slow-paced dining, and good scratch cooking.

Milwaukee-based Ron Faiola is an author and filmmaker who has produced and directed numerous critically acclaimed documentaries. He is the president and founder of Push Button Gadget Inc., which has been specializing in audio visual and business theater production for nearly 20 years.

Kyle Cherek is host of the Emmy-nominated television show Wisconsin Foodie, currently filming its ninth season on PBS and broadcasting primetime to over 8.2 million households. He sees the Midwest as a font of history, craftsmanship, and artisanal dispositions; all of which are continually pushing national culinary and sustainability trends forward. Kyle has made regular appearances on The Travel Channel and Food Network, and is a frequent media contributor to NPR, CBS, and NBC. His video web series, Chef Talk with Kyle Cherek, features candid, forthright, and often amusing conversations with some of America’s most engaging chefs.0

Wednesday, August 10, 6:30 pm, at the Shorewood Public Library, 3920 N Murray Ave:
Jessie Garcia, author of Going for Wisconsin Gold: Stories of Our State Olympians

The Olympics are in full swing and while its hard to turn away from your screen, why not take a couple of hours from your schedule to hear author and sportscaster Jessie Garcia talk about Wisconsin's Olympic heritage? Since pioneering hurdler Alvin Kraenzlein got his start here in the 1890s, the Badger State has nurtured, trained, or schooled more than 400 Olympic athletes in a vast array of sports. Wisconsin’s varied landscape and climate accommodate serious athletes whether they compete on ice, on snow, in the water, or land. No matter how an athlete comes to Wisconsin, the state becomes part of his or her Olympic story.

Jim Higgins writes about Going for Wisconsin Gold in the Journal Sentinel: "Garcia said she tried to tell each athlete's story in three parts: their childhood and development, their Olympic competition and experience in detail, and their life post-Olympics. While she writes with an amiable voice, Garcia keeps it real here: Not everyone wins a gold medal, and many athletes face painful struggles on or off the field."

Award winning sportscaster Jessie Garcia has been covering Wisconsin athletes and Olympians since 1992, first at WISCTV in Madison and then at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. Garcia was one of the first women in the country to host an NFL coach’s show and served as the Green Bay Packers’ sideline reporter. Garcia’s work has also appeared on Milwaukee Public Radio and in several newspapers and magazines. A Madison native, she teaches journalism at two universities in Milwaukee, and is the author of two previous books, My Life with the Green and Gold and No Stone Unturned.

Boswell will be at the Shorewood Public Library selling Jessie Garcia's books.

Thursday, August 11, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Charles J. Sykes, author of Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education

This is the first in our series of events highlighting higher ed and the Wisconsin Idea. Upcoming programs include Jack Mitchell in conversation with Kathleen Dunn for Wisconsin on the Air on August 17, 7 pm, J. David Hoeveler talking about John Bascom and the Origins of the Wisconsin Idea on Wednesday, September 7, 7 pm, both at Boswell, and Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, cosponsored by Wisconsin Hope Lab, at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall, 733 N Eight St, Thursday, September 22, 6:30 pm.

The cost of a college degree has increased by 1,125% since 1978 - four times the rate of inflation. Total student debt is $1.3 trillion. Many private universities charge tuitions ranging from $60-70,000 per year. Nearly 2/3 of all college students must borrow to study, and the average student graduates with more than $30,000 in debt. 53% of college graduates under 25 years old are unemployed or underemployed (working part-time or in low-paying jobs that do not require college degrees). Professors - remember them? - rarely teach undergraduates at many major universities. 76% of all university classes are taught by part-time, untenured faculty. Sykes's new book Fail U. looks at these trends, as well as his take on current trends in university culture, and asks, "Is it worth it?"

About the Author: Charles J. Sykes is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host at WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today and is a contributor to MSNBC. He is the author of seven previous books including A Nation of Victims, Dumbing Down Our Kids, and Profscam.

Sunday, August 14, 2:00 pm, at Boswell:
Journey on a Sound Safari, a kids activity time with Milwaukee Public Television

Help the children in your life bridge the summer learning gap. Join MPTV and Boswell Books on a Sound Safari Adventure on August 14, 2 pm at Boswell Books. Pick up your summer reading chart at Boswell Books,  keep track of your summer reading, and then celebrate your success with an afternoon of adventure. The event is free and open to the public. Best for ages 4 to 8. The highlight of this program will be a Sound Safari. MPTV’s Julie will play a series of sound effects and kids guess what the sounds are. We’ll talk about places and the sounds we hear there and how sound is different in different places. The forest doesn’t sound like a swimming pool! Together we'll make a sound-effect rainstorm, and then we’ll discuss how when you read, you have to imagine the sounds in the books. And that’s how reading inspires our imagination!

Boswell annotated bestsellers for the week ending August 6, 2016

Books for Kids:
1. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2, by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
2. Author's Odyssey V5, by Chris Colfer
3. Hogwarts Classics, by J.K. Rowling
4. Where the Wild Things Are, 25th anniversary edition, by Maurice Sendak
5. The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt, with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers
6. Zen Socks, by Jon J. Muth
7. Oh, the Places You'll Go!, by Dr. Seuss
8. At the Same Moment Around the World, by Clotilde Perrin
9. Magic Treehouse: Night of the Dragon V55, by Mary Pope Osborne
10. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling

Needless to say, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 and 2 captures the lion's share of sales on this week's bestseller list, so with that in place, I listed books for kids first. There was a tiny bit of Potter spinoff this week but publishers seem to be publishing more for the fall film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The trailer is now out for the November 18 release. If you missed the Michiko Kakutano review in The New York Times, it was quite good.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
2. Heroes of the Frontier, by Dave Eggers
3. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
4. The Girls, by Emma Cline
5. The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware
6. Black Widow, by Daniel Silva
7. Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters
8. Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
9. Jonathan Unleashed, by Meg Rosoff
10. Good As Gone, by Amy Gentry

Well, it feels like Underground Railroad is going to bigger than Oprah's last pick, Cynthia Bond's Ruby, which had some Boswell love but never quite took off. Of the newest, Ron Charles wrote in The Washington Post: "Far and away the most anticipated literary novel of the year, The Underground Railroad marks a new triumph for Whitehead. Since his first novel, The Intuitionist, the MacArthur “genius” has nimbly explored America’s racial consciousness — and more — with an exhilarating blend of comedy, history, horror and speculative fiction."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. American Heiress, by Jeffrey Toobin
2. Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, by John Gurda
3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
4. Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman
5. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
6. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck, by Sarah Knight
7. Women in Science, by Rachel Ignotosky
8. Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round, by Ron Faiola (event 8/8, 7 pm, at Boswell, with Kyle Cherek)
9. White Trash, by Nancy Isenberg
10. Grit, by Angela Duckworth

Last week's review in the Journal Sentinel for American Heiress heralded great sales for Toobin's newest: "What results is a terrifically detailed recounting of the Hearst case and its aftermath. But American Heiress is more than that. In telling this story, Toobin also opens a window on the surrealism of the '70s in a way that makes it all of a piece — and, in some instances, a harbinger of the future." Expect to see a high debut on national bestseller lists. Further down, White Trash has had a nice run nationally. Isenberg discussed the myth of class mobility on All Things Considered with Ari Shaprio.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Butterfly Net, by Susan Damgard O'Brien
2. A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler
3. Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser (Penguin Classic)
4. Kitchens of the Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal
5. The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen
6. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
7. Purity, by Jonathan Franzen
8. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald
9. She Weeps Each Time You're Born, by Quan Barry
10. The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma

You can tell it's in-store lit group discussion week, as we had nice pops for September's She Weeps Each Time You're Born and October's Sister Carrie. Our last two selections, both strong national bestsellers, continue their run of sales. And being that Kitchens of the Great Midwest celebrates high and low Midwest cuisine, it seems natural to have interviewed him for his take on State Fair Food for Minnesota Monthly: "While Stradal calls corn dogs “the Federalist Papers of all stick-based cuisine,” the author said that his go-to fair item is 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer. This year, he is looking forward to trying the new Minnesota Corn Dog and the new SPAM products. " Hey, what's the Wisconsin equivalent of Spam cuisine?

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening, by Carol Wall
2. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
3. Dog Medicine, by Julie Barton
4. We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimananda Ngozie Adichie
5. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow
6. Dead Wake, by Erik Larson
7. Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan
8. Night, by Elie Wiesel
9. Happy Felsch, by Thomas Rathkamp
10. Going for Wisconsin Gold, by Jessie Garcia (event 8/10, 6:30 pm, at Shorewood Library)

It's nice to see several books having post-event sales pops, including Blair Braverman's Welcome to the Godddamn Ice Cube in hardcover nonfiction and Julie Barton's Dog Medicine in paperback. One of the ways I gauge how successful an event was by the percentage of people attending purchasing the book, and Barton's talk had one of the higher percentages I've seen for an event that had no local component. We have two recs on the book, from Sharon and Kellie, and here's a nice profile from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. One thing that the story emphasized was Barton's upbringing that was filled with sibling abuse, not as much talked about as spousal or parental abuse but nonetheless landing her in an emergency room. And there's a shout out to her new canine friend: "You may not bring the kind of dog medicine I’m used to ... but I am slowly learning that even you bring important medicine. Thank you for napping near my desk as I wrote much of this story. I know you were working some kind of magic. You’re a good boy. I love you. Walk time?"

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Duane Dudek profiles Wisconsin on the Air, the new history of Wisconsin Public Radio from Jack Mitchell. He writes: "When what became known as WHA first went on the air in 1917, its earliest transmissions in Morse code 'consisted of weather reports around the noon hour so farmers could listen during their midday dinners,' Mitchell writes. Maybe this explains TV and radio’s obsession with weather today. But the real roots of public radio in the state, Mitchell writes, in his book published by Wisconsin Historical Society Press, are in the Wisconsin Idea, the 'public service philosophy' that considered radio 'an instrument of democratic change' and distinguishes the University of Wisconsin-Madison 'from its peers and the state from its neighbors.'" Don't forget that Mitchell will appear with Kathleen Dunn at Boswell on Thursday, August 18, 7 pm.

Also from the Journal Sentinel, a review from Mike Fischer covers Dave Eggers's Heroes of the Frontier, his new novel about a woman on the lam in Alaska with her two kids. His take: "Keep your eyes on the page, reader, rather than rolling them; Eggers is not giving us yet another treacle-filled account of how we should live for our kids, be defined by our kids, or describe our life's purpose through our kids. Eggers dares to offer still more: two extraordinarily textured and credible portraits of young children — rare, in American literature — coupled with a trenchant, spot-on account of how hard parenting can be. Why parents need to take time for themselves, away from their kids. And why, for all that, those same kids can help us to a better view of who we and America might be."

A second local review on the TapBooks page, Jim Higgins reviews The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jessmyn Ward. He explains: "ovelist Jesmyn Ward edited this collection of essays and a few poems, which describes the sorrow and unease of being black in America in the time of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Sandra Bland, making it a natural companion to Men We Reaped, Ward's memoir of five men close to her who died violent, untimely deaths. The new book's title, of course, pays homage to James Baldwin's 1963 classic The Fire Next Time. Ward and her fellow writers treat Baldwin as a revered old uncle: a voice of experience, a link to history and, occasionally, an elder to be argued with."

There's also a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two review from Marion Winik, originally published in Newsday. Winik tries to speak to the Potter fans who were sated with volume 7 and those who wanted more. She notes: "With a 'Time-Turner' as a key prop, Cursed Child travels fluidly through Potter history, revisiting dramatic moments from the saga. It begins right where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ended — at the train station, with a middle-aged Harry and Ginny sending their son, Albus, off to Hogwarts. Rowling introduced a child for Draco Malfoy, a boy named Scorpius."

Also from Newsday, Kate Tutle reviews Gerri Hirshey's biography of Helen Gurley Borwn, Not Pretty Enough. Tuttle observes: "Hirshey, a veteran observer of the cultural scene, argues effectively for Brown’s enduring influence, not only in the world of magazine publishing, but in the way women live and talk about their lives. Her own writing sometimes slips into the same kind of breathless frivolity her subject was known for — readers may yearn for fewer girlish exclamations and winking wordplay. Still, the book, like its subject, can be surprisingly thought-provoking, and even at its lightest, it’s vivid, funny and terrifically entertaining."

Earlier in the week there was a profile of Jessie Garcia and her new book, Going for the Wisconsin Gold. Jim Higgins writes: "During the 22 years she reported for Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV (Channel 4), Garcia interviewed Olympians before, during and after the games. Counting this summer's contingent, more than 450 athletes with Wisconsin connections have competed in at least one Olympics, she said." Garcia will be at the Shorewood Public Library on Wednesday, August 10, 6:30 pm.

The new orchid event calendar is here. Several events were added to August and there were two changes--Jack Mitchell and Kathleen Dunn are at Boswell on Thursday, August 18, 7 pm.

What do the powers that be have against pastel orange? The peach shade used to be one of the colors we could order from Clark Grahics for printing, but several years ago it was discontinued. I'm sort of bummed because it was one of our original three colors for our staff rec shelf talkers, and thus has a special place in my heart.

As a second choice, we went with orchid for our brand new August-September event calendar. These printed event listings are quite popular; we usually give away about 1000 a month, and that number goes up in spring and fall, when our event schedule increases.

I'm always anxious to start giving them out, so I asked Clark to call us when the calendars were printed, but not folded, and I went down to pick up some for us to fold ourselves.

Two events featured on the front cover had changes since they were in the July calendar. The date for Jack Mitchell's Wisconsin on the Air, in conversation with Kathleen Dunn, cosponsored by Wisconsin Public Radio, is now Thursday, August 18, 7 p;m. It was originally scheduled for another day but that day didn't work. We changed about 800 calendars by hand but there were a few early ones that got through.

Several other August events did not make the solar yellow flier, including Beverly Little Thunder, Wayne Pacelle, Charles J. Sykes, Michail Takach, and Run-D.M.C. If you like a printed calendar, that's your cue to come in and pick up the orchid calendar. My suspicion is that this will not happen for September because we were already much more heavily booked up.

The other change from the solar yellow calendar is our event with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong for Seinfeldia. We kept the day but changed format and location. Still on Monday, September 12, still at 7 pm, but now ticketed at The Soup House. Each admission comes with a bowl of soup. Advance tickets are $5 ($6.17 with fee), at Brown Paper Tickets. We may have $6 at-the-door tickets available the night of the event, but it will depend on how many folks pre-register.

I'm a huge fan of The Soup House! It should be noted that I have been eating the Friday chicken tika masala soup as I wrote this post!

Connect the books - from Mary Robinette Kowal to Viet Thanh Nguyen to Dav Pilkey to Darryl DMC McDaniels

One of the interesting games I play in my head is something that can be called "Connect the books." You look at any two books you read in a row and try to figure out how the two books are connected. Now of course this can sometimes be done on purpose, of course, but it's more interesting when you have no idea what the connections are beforehand.

For example, recently I read the new book from Mary Robinette Kowal. Ghost Talkers, the first in a new series. Kowal continues to smash genre. Her previous novel blended fantasy and Jane Austen style regency, while her newest is set in World War one, and is part fantasy, part historical mystery. The setup is that the attempt to discredit spiritualism by Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle was a ruse, to throw off the continent from investigating spiritualism further. In fact, the British have been secretly using mediums to contact dead soldiers in battle, using them as spies. Ginger Stuyversant, one of the mediums who contacts the dead in barracks, has a disturbing visit when a soldier who reports in after having been murdered in Allied Powers territory. It turns out there's a traitor in the Spirit Corps.

After reading the book, I decided that while fantasy tends to trump mystery in genre shelving, the book would be appealing to readers of authors like Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs, so I offered a copy to Anne, to see what she thought. She's already started it and while she noted it was kind of offbeat, she's still reading it.

So one of the things I should note about Ghost Talkers is that Ginger talks to her fiance Ben, a intelligence soldier, using a book cipher. And since the next book I picked up was Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, and that's also a book about spies, I should have not been surprised that those characters also used a book cypher. And it's also a book that was hardly positioned as genre, that nevertheless won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. I'll be writing more about Nguyen's first novel when I do my book club writeup post.

From there, I should have started Perfume River (pub date 9/6, preorder here), by Robert Olen Butler. After all, we're hosting Mr. Butler at Boswell on October 4, 7 pm, with Mr. Butler now in conversation with Cardinal Stritch University's David Riordan. Mr. Butler has stood out as one of the few prominent writers to try to see the Vietnam war through Vietnamese eyes in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. In addition, Perfume River and The Sympathizer have the same editor, Peter Blackstock.

But alas, it was not to be and instead, I read Dog Man (on sale 8/30, preorder here), the new comic book (I feel funny calling it a graphic novel) from Dav Pilkey (who is also coming to Milwaukee, a Boswell cosponsored event with Greenfield Public Library and the Greenfield schools at the Greenfield Performing Arts Center on Monday, October 24, 6:30 pm), and I would say the two books have very little except that they are both crime novels. Dog Man is one of the comics created by George and Harold, the two boys who also created Captain Underpants. He's half man, half dog, and he's fighting with Petey the criminal cat, as well as Evil Mayor. I am sure there are more villains afoot too. It's hard to say who the villains are in The Sympathizer, so that's something they don't have in common.

From there, I read Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, by Darryl DMC McDaniels, one of the three original members of the legendary rap group, Run-D.M.C. He talks about his bouts with depression, and how he's dealt with the blows. There's an earlier memoir called King of Rock, that's now out of print, focuses more on the music. But the new book doesn't really focus on the highs so much as the lows, such as how DMC and Run quickly became estranged after finding success, and how Jam Master Jay, who had DMC's back, died in 2002, murdered in his own Queens studio.

Now what the heck does this have to do with Dav Pilkey? It turns out that like George and Harold, Darryl was a complete comic book nerd growing up. He was obsessed with the Marvel Heroes, but was also okay with Batman. And he sold his comic book collection to raise money for turntables, only his older brother Alfred got possession of them and wouldn't let him use them. You might not know Alfred's hip hop successes, as he went to work for Con Edison. But then McDaniels started his own comic book, Yes, DMC also stands for "Darryl Makes Comics." Here's a link to their website.

Darryl DMC McDaniels will be speaking at Boswell on Saturday, August 27, 7 pm for Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide. The event is free - signing restrictions may apply.

Now I'm starting Nicholas Petrie's next novel, Burning Bright, coming next January. I'm wondering how it might connect to McDaniels' memoir. I already know it doesn't take place in Queens.