New to the rec shelf: Everybody Lies, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Here's the thing about podcasts. I find that I really like the ones that double as NPR shows, but don't like the ones that are just people talking about a particular subject. I'm not sure if it's a lack of structure or what, but even when I like the person hosting the podcast, I quickly get bored by the chatter. Why is this ironic? Because that's pretty much me when I go on a radio show to talk about books.

One show/podcast that I often like listening to is Freaknomics Radio. Inspired by the book (and it's spinoffs, I guess), it's hosted by the co-author Stephen Dubner, with the occasional contribution of economist Stephen Levitt. Sometimes the show hits right on the nose of what I'm thinking, like its episode that investigated why there are so many mattress stores. There's an epilogue to that story - Mattress Firm, who fattened up and bought a bunch of competitors, which is why there are multiple locations on both Highway 100 and Miller Park Way, itself sold off to a South African Company. Don't forget, venture capital generally means exit strategy.

Another episode that I really enjoyed featured Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who uses Google searches to uncover when and how people lie, as well as answers to all sorts of weird questions, such as when do most people form their s political affiliations. The interview was connected to the release of his book, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are. I think I was affected by an advance review that called the book depressing. A lot of the media focus has been on how Stephens-Davidowitz's data analysis showed that we continue to be more racist that we admit in public, or even in surveys. There's also a lot of sex data.

But more than the negative data, I was most fascinated about their analysis of Obama's post-terrorism attack speeches, and how curiosity about prominent Muslims in American history, sports, military, and architecture let to less anti-Muslim searches and more curious searches to learn more about the positive impact of Muslims, which I didn't find depressing, but inspiring*. As I've learned from other psychology books, there are people who only react to carrots, not sticks, which was, by the way, tied into another piece of Stephens-Davidowitz's data about the effect on prisons to harden instead of reforming criminals.

The truth is that Everybody Lies, when it is not tackling the heavy duty subjects, can be quite entertaining. The author has a sparkling, often-self-deprecating wit, such that I wouldn't just recommend this book to folks who like data driven economics and behavioral psychology books, but also someone who's a fan of Larry Davidson. Where did that come from? I loved the author trying to figure out why he loves the Mets but his brother does not. I appreciated the comfort of knowing that Facebook data may reveal a lot about our behavior as well, but it's not true that all our friends are smart, more sophisticated, wealthier, and worst of all, happier than we are.

And while he bursted my bubble that money doesn't buy happiness - lottery winners, in general, do wind up happier - he gave me solid advice on what to do if a neighbor wins the lottery. Move away, fast, or you'll buy your way into bankruptcy trying to keep up.

Stephens-Davidowitz (photo credit Jim Hauser) had a stint at Google, after starting his data research during his schooling.  Now he's writing op-eds for The New York Times and speaking professionally. Since I'd like to hear him and I think it's a long way off to another book that might involve a tour, I'm hoping someone who has a big budgeted speaking engagement series will sign him up and we can sell books. It's a win-win-win.

*The truth is that if you read these kinds of books, you learn that some people are good, some people are bad, but most people are in the middle, and can go either way. Cheating is bad, but apparently cheating on taxes is not so bad for most people, at least in private. Something that nudges (yes, I was a fan of the book Nudge) folks to go in a positive direction is pretty great.

In-Store Lit Group Update: What We've Been Reading: In the Time of the Butteflies, The Little Red Chairs, Homegoing

It's been a while since we had a book club blog. It's like any habit - when you slip up, it's hard to get back into the routine. Here's what we've been reading since I left off.

In April, the book club tied into the Milwaukee Public Library Big Read. The selction was Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, a historical novel about a group of sisters who have become remembered in the Dominican Republic for their defiance of the longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo. This fictionalized version of Las Mariposas tries to hew pretty close to the historical record, and Alvarez is said to have interviewed the suriviving sister for the book. 

Of late, I've been less interested in creative storytelling, so I think I wasn't so much of a fan of the one sister who only got to tell her story through journal entries. It's sort of the way I now look at a novel and when I see it's told in second person plural, I've been putting it back on the shelf. I'm sure I'll come back, but right now, I tend to be cranky. "This book has too much dialogue!" That book has too much description!" I'm beginning to remember one of my long-ago customers who couldn't read a book that was in first person singular. 

What did the in-store lit group think? Responses were generally quite positive, but In the Time of the Butteflies is a hard book to criticize because the book and the history are so connected. If you don't like it, does that mean you are pro-dictatorship? 

Of course I had to go look at the complete list of NEA Big Read titles to see how many I read. I can check off 12 out of 28 which doesn't seem too bad. I guess you can imagine that once an author is on the list, it's much less likely that they'll come to Boswell, as their time is bid up by grant-driven appearances. I'm personally anxiously awaiting the completion of Luis Alberto Urrea's next novel, The House of Broken Angels. I just spotted it show up our advance title list, currently set for March 18, 2018.

Our May In-Store Lit Group read was Edna O'Brien's The Little Red Chairs. I am embarrassed to say I have never before read Edna O'Brien, and I was intrigued to notice that reviews for O'Brien's most recent novel was her best reviewed in a decade, despite now being in her eighties, when many writers are not at their peak.

I'm sure you know the setup. It starts as a sweet Irish village novel. A mysterious man comes to town, a positive psychology guru, and he charms everyone, most notably Fidelman, who comes under his sway physically as well as psychologically. Well, he turns out to be a charlatan, but more than that, he's a Serbian war criminal, and when his his disguise is uncovered, he's sent back to be tried at the Hague. And it gets worse, as some of his former colleagues who now consider him a traitor take revenge on him via Fidelma.

It's a story that changes tone several times as the story progresses, and this through some folks off. Despite my enthusiasm, the book had a mixed reception, but you can't discount the phenomenal reviews (here's Joyce Carol Oates in The New York Times Book Review and James Wood in The New Yorker) or the fact that a solid minority of my fellow readers loved it as well. 

Apparently Ms. O'Brien isn't done yet. With Pat Strachan now at Catapult (she brought O'Brien over to Little, Brown from FSG), her newest novel is making the rounds of publishers. 

I don't know much about how our June discussion went because I was working at the Riverside Theater, being the night of our event with Sheryl Sandberg in conversation with Jane Hamilton. But I do know a lot about the novel, Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, one of my favorite novels of last year. I'm always on the fence about whether to have the In-Store Lit Group read something I've already read. My rule of thumb is to do this when we're tieing into an author event, but in this case, I wanted to give an extra push to a book that should get as much book club love as it can.

This book's plot is not a secret. Two half sisters in Ghana's destinies diverge when one is sold into slavery and sent to America, while the other stays behind in Ghana and is married off to a British commander. Married is in quotes. Here is Isabel Wilkerson in The New York Times Book Review and Ron Charles in The Washington Post with their enthusiastic reviews, though I should note Laura Miller wasn't as much of a fan in The New Yorker. I liked the episodic quality of the book and the warmth of the characters. I thought it was an different take on slavery, told in an episodic fashion that could have felt like connected stories, but didn't. 

Here are our upcoming meetings.

On Monday, July 10, 7 pm, we're talking about Simon Van Booy's Father's Day. Nice reviews and three great reads from fellow Boswellians - Jane, Anne, and Sharon. It's about a young man who is probably not a great candidate to take on raising his niece after her parents die. The group read The Illusion of Separateness in conjunction with Van Booy's visit to Boswell. I'm excited to note that we have sold over 400 copies of Illusion! Please note we're meeting the same day as the Science Fiction Book Club. They'll be in the front of the bookstore and we'll be in the back.

Monday, August 7, 7 pm will be the time for Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. I decided summer is the time to read a thriller and Hawley, who has written a number of novels previously but hasn't broken out before, is probably best known as the screenwriter of the Fargo television series. Before the Fall was not only a New York Times bestseller, it won the Edgar Award for best novel. 

I'm still trying to figure out what we'll be reading in September, but hope to have the title picked by Friday!

Boswell Summer Reading on Lake Effect with Mitch Teich

Today was my day to talk about summer reading with Mitch Teich on WUWM's Lake Effect. Here's a link to our conversation. And now a little on how I chose the titles.

I decided that to qualify, the books had to be published between May 1 and August 1, and I had to have read them. Sometimes I do recommend books I haven't read, but I'm always clear about that, and indicate who on staff has read it or what customers are saying about it that makes me feel comfortable offering it as a suggestion.

Of course keeping a list to books I've read can sometimes be problematic. My reading is often event driven, but don't worry, a few books in that category qualified for the list. But because we don't do as many events over the summer, I have tended to read ahead to fall 2017 and even winter 2018. When it comes to books you like, the earlier the better. Did I mention its only 275 days until Liam Callanan's Paris by the Book comes out?

If there's a theme to this list, it's that even booksellers take recommendations. I wanted to have one great kids rec, so after listening to our HarperCollins rep Jenny Sheridan present Laurel Snyder's Orphan Island at a bookseller meeting and then again at our educator night, it moved to the top of my list. But it was hearing our kids buyer Amie talk about it on the last Boswell-featured Lake Effect book segment that convinced me to read it. So of course that means that we squandered a slot with a book we already mentioned. The truth is that I'll  probably bring it up again. It's about nine kids on an island. They don't know why they are there but they know how they got there - every year a boat brings a new arrival and per custom, the Elder (oldest kid) must get in the boat and sail off. The new elder, Jinny, is upset by losing her closest friend. She doesn't really want to have to teach then newbie the ropes and she doesn't really want to read. I call it Lost for kids. Despite all the questions, or maybe because of it, it's really quite satisfying.

One interesting twist of 2017 is that our trade buyer Jason was on the Indies Introduce nominating panel. I did this one season and discovered some great books, including Burial Rites, The Rosie Project, and The President's Hat. So while Jason always reads a lot, this season he read well outside his comfort zone and found a few surprised. One of his favorites was The Long Haul, by Finn Murphy, the memoir of a trucker who specializes in high-end moves. Such an interesting voices, that not only offers stories, but helpings of philosophy and sociological commentary. Long-haul movers are the low folks on the totem pole for truckers; Murphy rarely sat at the counter at a truck stop. They don't have a great rep with the general public either, but The Long Haul could change that.

Bookselling This Week featured an interview of Finn Murphy by Jason! Here Jason asks about any blunders that might have cut short Murphy's career: "An advantage of being a long-haul driver is that I work alone. I am what John McPhee called 'the admiral of my fleet of one.' That means most of my really heinous mistakes weren’t/aren’t observed by my superiors. I was summoned to the North American Van Lines mover school early on in order to improve my quality score. They called the class 'Cargo Handling,' and it was a week-long intensive taught by retired award-winning drivers. I wasn’t given the option to refuse. In a warehouse in Indiana, North American had a two-story frame house mockup set up with all sorts of furniture and stairways with twists and turns. We moved furniture all day under the steely eyed veterans and received correction on how not to ding walls or break things."

You already know that Lonesome Lies Before Us has been my top book for spring, though with a June 6 release date, some might say that it's actually a summer book, speaking meteorologically. What an amazing event we had with Don Lee and Will Johson and I'm only sad that I couldn't convince more people that this was going to be the special event that it was. One high school teacher told me it was one of the best conversations she'd heard about writing, music, and creativity. That was high praise because she goes to a lot of events. If you haven't read the post where I wax on about Lee, read it now.

Recently Lee was interviewed by Jeff Vasishta in Interview.  There are at least five passages I'd love to quote, but I'm particularly interested in how diverse writers can sometimes be boxed in by the burder of expecting to focus on their cultural identity: "Yes, the faces are becoming more diverse, but pretty slowly. Likewise, I think writers of color still get trapped in an ethnic literature box in terms of what's expected of them, i.e., always having to write about the immigrant experience or discrimination or the old country or whatnot. That's partly why in this novel, I did something quietly subversive: I have a bunch of Asian, Latino, and African Americans as characters, but I never identify anyone by race. Hopefully in another generation or two, things will change."

Have I mentioned that Allegra Goodman does the same thing in The Chalk Artist? After writing a lot about Jewish culture, the only indicator that anyone might possibly be Jewish is a mention that one of the characters is named Lazar.

Speaking of writers I love, Tom Perrotta's new novel, Mrs. Fletcher is his first from Scribner, after a run at St. Martin's. It's about a family coping with changes in the world of sexual politics, from the perspective of a divorced mom and her son. I would say this novel, coming August 1, is more of a back-to-school novel, as it's about both of them going to school and finding that life is very different. I've read every novel and story collection of Perrotta's (with the odd exception of The Leftovers), but only got to meet the author with this book, as he was the featured author at a dinner I went to at a bookseller conference. I contemplated bringing one of my old books to get signed, but I got cold feet. Plus my suitcase was pretty full.

It should be announced any second that I have the Indie Next Pick quote for Mrs. Fletcher, which you can read on our item page of our website. If you want to see Perrotta, he's coming fairly close, to Andersons in Naperville, on Monday, August 7. Alas, I'll be at Boswell leading our in-store lit group. We're doing a thriller for the summer, Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. Had we been hosting Mr. Perrotta on a nearby date, I would guess we would have been reading The Leftovers.

One author we are lucky enough to host is Adriana Trigiani, who is coming back to the Milwaukee area for  a ticketed event featuring Kiss Carlo, her brand-new New York Times bestselling novel. We just did a post on Trigiani's multiple visits to the area, due to her friendship with long-time bookseller Jane Glaser. Jane mentioned to me that not only did Picardy Shoe Parlor get mentioned in one of Trigiani's books, so did the Pabst Mansion. Kiss Carlo is a great summer read, a family saga, Shakespearean comedy, Italian American cultural story, and romance all rolled into one. And hey, the Fresno Bee lists it as one of its top five most requested titles.

This was my first Trigiani, and I can see how fans can get wrapped up in this world. But the truth is that part of the package is Trigiani herself, which is why I have to do another plug for our joint event with Books and Company at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts on Wednesday, July 12, 7 pm. Tickets are $32.00 and you get a copy of Kiss Carlo too. You can bring older books to get signed, and yes, Trigiani will do photos.

On a very different note, I decided that I was short of some timely nonfiction, so at the last minute, I picked up and read Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Life. I'd read both Bad Feminist and An Untamed State, but I was remiss on getting to her newest, despite at least one well-known author egging me on to get my hands on this "amazing achievement." And Gay delivers a stunner, considering that this book was very hard for her to write. It was actually scheduled for last summer.

Gay chronicles how her life was changed by a rape when she was 12. This led to a lifetime of eating and dieting.Gay's gotten praise for her telling it like it is about the way we treat fat people, but flack from some quarters about not being happy with her body the way it is. It can be hard to be honest, but that intimacy and honesty are one of the triumphs of Hunger.

And for those who hope for some of the fun side of Gay, it's there too, at least a bit. She loves her some Ina Garten!

Finally, I looked at my list and saw I was truant on having a mystery or thriller on the list. I just finished Attica Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird, but that doesn't come out until September. So once again, I turned to Jason for advice and he suggested The Readymade Thief, another book on the Indies Introduce list for me, and this one has already had multiple reads from Boswell booksellers, let alone booksellers around the country. Yes, Augustus Rose's novel is his first, but what attention it's getting.

It's about a teenage girl who, thanks to her propensity to shoplift, is pulled into a vast conspiracy involving the philosophy of none other than Marcel Duchamp (the "readymade" in the title refers to Duchamp's readymade artpieces. Like Adriana Trigiani's Kiss Carlo, the story's setting is very Philadelphia, which was interesting to me, because despite its size, Philadelphia is rarely the focus of fiction compared to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, or even Detroit. And its art connections reminded me not just of another famous puzzler, The DaVinci Code, but also The Improbability of Love, which despite having more of a romance element, does for Watteau what The Readymade Thief does for Duchamp. It makes you want to know more!

The Readymade Thief to me has a different feel, more like those summer specualtive thrillers that seem to always become movie projects. I got the feeling, from who was reading it, that fans of Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, for example, would like this. And yes, Jason's quote is what they are using for Indies Introduce. Here it is.

“Lee is a 17-year-old girl who has gotten into a bit of trouble. Not that she is innocent, or completely guilty either. She runs with the wrong crowd, steals something that is not hers, and now she is on the run with nobody to turn to. Rose takes readers into the underbelly of Philadelphia, the sections that people have abandoned, to solve the mystery Lee has fallen into, which has to do with the famous artist Duchamp. Rose melds together information and story methods with amazing skill, drawing on secret societies, hacking, art theft, conspiracies, drugs, and so much more. This plot moves; it does not slow down until it reaches the conclusion, which will have you gasping for breath. Such a brilliant journey.” (Jason Kennedy on The Readymade Thief)

Like many thrillers, there are some dangling threads afterwards - what exactly is going to happen to all those zombie-like teens roaming the streets? But obviously someone who thinks about these things is maybe not in the right frame of mind; it would be like watching Wonder Woman for the continuity errors.

Want to hear more? Tune into Lake Effect.

Pogo sticking our way through Boswell's annotated bestseller lists for the week ending July 1, 2017

Here's what's been hopping out the door at Boswell.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Testimony, by Scott Turow
2. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
3. The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz
4. The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
5. The Force, by Don Winslow
6. Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins
7. Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
8. Anything Is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout
9. The Little French Bistro, by Nina George
10. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, by Matthew Sullivan

Geoff Shandler's Custom House imprint has a big hit right out of the box with The Essex Serpent, the novel by Sarah Perry. A Cost Book Award finalist, it was also named the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year. It's the story of a 19th century widow who heads to Essex with her young son and nanny, who becomes intrigued by the tale of a legedary creature roaming the marshes, recently returned, having taken the life of a young man. Jennifer Senior in The New York Times called it: "wonderfully dense and serenely self-assured. I found it so transporting that 48 hours after completing it, I was still resentful to be back home." I am a fan of several of her fiction recommendations, and am now feeling bad that I haven't read it.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Hunger, by Roxane Gay
2. The Soul of Vietnam, by Lawrence D'Attilio
3. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie
4. Theft by Finding, by David Sedaris
5. Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
6. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken
7. Churchill and Orwell, by Thomas E. Ricks
8. Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance
9. The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
10. Dream Hoarders, by Richard V. Reeves

I finally read Hunger for a summer reading program that's airing on Lake Effect next week, but I don't think I can take credit for the sales pop. I'm thinking it might be the recent New Yorker profile from Doreen St. Félix. She notes: "Gay, who rejects the ideal of '(th)inner woman' while also wishing that she could herself be smaller, has drawn the ire of fat-acceptance advocates, who presumably wish that Gay were a less equivocal role model. In Hunger, she writes candidly of her position, returning to the theme of contradictions: 'I have been accused of being full of self-loathing and being fat-phobic. There is truth to the former accusation and I reject the latter.'"

Paperback Fiction:
1. Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue
2. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
3. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
4. Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly
5. The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah
6. News of the World, by Paulette Jiles
7. Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur
8. The Portrait, by Antoine Laurain
9. A Girl Called Sidney: The Coldest Place, by Courtney Yasmineh
10. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Oprah's latest book club pick kicks in with a nice first week sale for Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers, even at Boswell. Publishing insiders often play "guess the title," which is released to us small fry accounts with blinders. That said, one curious soul noticed that just as the Oprah book was scheduled for 6/26 (Monday), The paperback release of BTD was pushed back from 6/27 to 2018. One should also note that the novel, about a young Cameroonian immigrant couple in New York, recently was awarded the PEN Faulker award. As Ms. Winfrey notes in her video, "It's got everything!"

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Becoming Wise, by Krista Tippett
2. Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus, by Stefanie Chambers
3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
4. Live and Let Live, by Evelyn M. Perry (event 7/17 at Boswell with Mitch Teich)
5. No Is Not Enough, by Naomi Klein
6. Launch, by John Spencer
7. One Pan and Done, by Molly Gilbert
8. Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
9. The Beast Side, by D. Watkins
10. How to Bake Pi, by Eugenia Cheng

A local book club is reading Krista Tippett's Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living, which came out in paperback earlier this year. Her public radio program On Being airs on Milwaukee Public Radio twice on Sundays, at 6 am and 8 pm. Did you know the project manager of the show grew up in Milwaukee? The New York Times profile from Anand Giridhaaradas noted that the show works to see "whether people can talk across apparently unscalable walls. In a new book, Becoming Wise, she mines her interviews on theology, neuroscience and everything in between to reflect on the prospects for such wall-scaling in a divided age." This was written in April 2016 so it appears there's more scaling to do.

Books for Kids:
1. A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, by Mackenzi Lee
2. A Study in Charlotte, by Brittany Cavallaro
3. Posted, by John David Anderson
4. Amina's Voice, by Hena Khan
5. Funny Girl, by Betsy Bird
6. To Catch a Cheat V2, by Varian Johnson
7. Flying Lessons and Other Stories, edited by Ellen Oh
8. Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell
9. Ghost, by Jason Reynolds
10. The Great Greene Heist V1, by Varian Johnson

For those who have been wondering when the next book in the Track series is coming, the follow up to Ghost (making another appearance on our bestseller list) is due on August 29 and being that it's called Patina. It focuses on Patina (no surprise), also known as Patty, who with her sister, were started a "fancy shmancy" school and no longer live with their mom, who has The Sugar. I haven't read it yet, but you know I will, especially because there's a chance Mr. Reynolds will be coming back to Milwaukee for this book. Meanwhile,

The Journal Sentinel TapBook page is back this week and the lead review is Jim Higgins taking on The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, from Edwidge Danticat. He writes: "The Haitian-American novelist's succinct book is the 13th in a long-running series published by Graywolf Press exploring issues in literary writing. But the way she engages her subject makes this a book almost everyone can appreciate. While Danticat analyzes death scenes and writers' reflections on mortal moments from Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston to Albert Camus and Haruki Murakami, her mother's life and death ground her book."

In the print edition, you can read Katherine A. Powers's take on The Essex Serpent, originally from Newsday. The news from Powers: "These psychological insights combined with a sense of the substance and feeling of late 19th-century ideas in bloom - make this a fine novel, both historical and otherwise."

You can also check out Joseph Peschel's review of The Jane Austen Project, a debut novel from Kathleeen Flynn, originally published in the Raleigh News and Observer. His observation: "Flynn's story is an appealing speculation about Austen's life through the eyes of Rachel, a neo-modern woman who is subjected to 19th-century circumstances."

Cover Story: Edgy unromantic YA palettes, the stylized floral on black, the unfinished authentic white jacket, and more.

We had a wonderful evening with Mackenzi Lee and Brittany Cavallaro yesterday. Cavallaro is a former Milwaukeean (a UWM grad student) who's appeared at Boswell both for her poetry and her first YA novel, A Study in Charlotte. Her second Charlotte Holmes novel is The Last of August, with another to come. Mackenzi Lee is also promoting her second novel, the just released The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, the #1 Indie Next Kids Pick for summer 2017 and getting lots of buzz. It too has a sequel coming. We have signed copies on both hardcovers.

As Cavallaro is a avid reader and bookstore junkie and Cavallaro is all that and a bookseller two (at Trident, in Boston), I came to ask them if they observed that their book jackets almost match. guess it's not that surprising. They are targeting the same age range, and they probably have the same art direct, since both are published by Katherine Tegen books. And I guess the publisher was looking for something that poppped, and didn't want the pinks and purples that might signify more of a romance. So for each book they went with an off-black (one has a blue tint, the other green), an acid turquoise accent color illustrating iconic images, and a secondary color of red or yellow.

As I know that Bri is friends with Chloe Benjamin from Madison, I brought out The Immortalists galley (on sale January 9, 2018) and oohed and ahhed over how beautiful it was. But then I noted that her novel plays into another trend, ultra bright botanicals on a black background. Now I read The Immortalists with no jacket image, but I am immediately attracted to it a book I'd want to read, and I think these images speak to our customers. I don't know why. They skew female, for sure, but somehow they seem in the sweet spot between commercial and literary. That makes sense for an acclaimed literary (and also middle grade) writer like Maile Meloy, who's new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed, ventures into psychological suspense territory. And The Chalk Artist plays on the book's title a bit, but veers away from the breakout chalk artist Valerie McKeehan, whose work, though I think is beautiful, might be too sweet and commecial a tone. Read my review of Allegra Goodman's novel on our webpage, and Sharon's got a recommendation for Meloy.

For Alison Amend's Enchanted Islands, they wisely kept the same image and just changed the typeface. I was still sitting around with a hardcover, because I still want to read it. The book seems to say I'm reviewable in a way that images of women staring off into the disantace seems to say, I'm practicing for the chain store's new release table. No real judgment here, just observation. And the thing is, if the flowers were more realistic, or on a field of white or wood grain or a pastel, you'd get a completely different vibe, targeting a much older female customer. I think the black gives it more of an edge.

Here's another trend I've noticed. It's what I call the unfinished canvas. I'm noticing a lot of black and white images that almost look like sketches. Sometimes there's a hint of color, but there's in general, there's a purposeful underdoneness. I first noticed it on Don Lee's Lonesome Lies Before Us, because I obsessed about everything about this wonderful novel. I read a manuscript, with no jacket image, and then I got a galley and wondered if this was the final image. And it was. And I've gotten several compliments from customers on the book's jacket. It's raw and authentic. I consider it a funny book, but this jacket plays down the funny, unlike by beloved bushel of Brussels sprouts on Wrack and Ruin's hardcover. I was glad to know that Lee prefers the sprouts to the elephant on the paperback, which could have ridden the Brussels wave we just lived through.

And then I started looking at several other books that were doing this treatment, from Roxane Gay's Hunger (which I just finished) to Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to Sherman Alexie's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (not pictured but you can see for yourself) and authenticity and rawness I think are two adjectives these books are striving for. Works for literary novels and memoirs. While white is popular background color for many other genres, most notably business and self-help, those Gladwell-esque jackets have images that are smaller, more carefully delineated and cleaner, and pop with color. You would never mistake the two cover trends. Of the four, I think Hunger jacket is a bit of a crossover, indicating that it's an authentic memoir that might also speak to the human potential market. Click to our web pages to see reviews for Gay and Lee's new books.

I was surprised that they chose this technique for Rosencrans Baldwin's The Last Kid Left, being that it's being positioned as a literary mystery, that might have more crossover, but I think MCD (an imprint of FSG) is holding onto their literary creds by sending the jacket in this direction. I think it will work with a more commercial book, but probably one by a musician or actor who wants the book to say, take me seriously!

Here's another cover trend that speaks to me. It's the handwritten lettering around a quirky image on the field of a bright cover. I just spotted Hap and Hazard and the End of the World, by Diane DeSanders, a first novel by a writer in her seventies that just got a nice write up in Publishers Weekly, and it reminded me of The Awkward Age, by Francesca Segal. I think a little sleuthing would turn up some more examples. This is definitely saying quirk. I can imagine Issa Rae's The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl having this sort of cover treatment. To me, it looks nice and fresh until I see it a lot and it becomes iconic, and well, not so fresh, like the Swastika that used to be part of every spy thriller for decades, or the aqua backqround on a cover that in the last few years has come to signify funny.

Now you know yet another way that booksellers pass their time. And no, it's really not just me.

The evolution of Milwaukee's love affair with Adriana Trigiani (who will be at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts on July 12, 7 pm)

Boswellian Jane Glaser and I have shared a lot over the years. We first started working together when I was the manager of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop in Mequon. But one thing we've never really shared was an event with Adriana Trigiani. She may have come when I was working at Schwartz, but back then I was buying, and didn't attend as many events, particularly the ones in Mequon and Brookfield, being that they pretty much required a car.

Jane first read about Trigiani in 2001, where she was featured in a St. Mary's College of Notre Dame alumni magazine, where '81 Trigiani offered to talk to reading groups about Big Stone Gap (published in 2000) and Big Cherry Holler (from 2001). Through the Saint Mary's College office, Jane (I'm sure you've figured out that she's also an alum) wrote and told her about the active Schwartz Bookshop book club program that she ran.

And she responded. I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing this was by traditional letter. I remember doing this myself with several authors. If you were lucky, you'd get a postcard back about six months later.

Adriana (I'm using her first name here because she and Jane have a longstanding bookseller-author friendship) first came to Milwaukee in 2003 for the novel Lucia Lucia. It started with a group of 30 people and grew to over 150 in 2009. That was for the novel Very Valentine. Her note to Jane: "We're planning the tour now and how could I ever skip my beloved Harry's." In the book, she mentioned Mequon's Picardy Shoe Parlor. Jane tells me it's on page 123.

Jane noted that in 2005, Trigiani was interviewed by Bill Goldstein* in Publishers Weekly. You can read the whole interview here. The focus is on the rise of book clubs at bookstores. They were working on the publication of the novel Rococo. You'll definitely want to go back and read this article. In addition to the Adriana love, Glaser tells the now legendary story about how her store went on to sell a ton of copies of Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden.

Her last visit to Milwaukee was at Mequon's Next Chapter Bookshop on April 24, 2012. The featured title was The Shoemaker's Wife. As Adriana and Jane were planning this event, Jane wrote and told Trigiani that one of her favorite sales was to a retiree who bought The Shoemaker's Wife, Lucia Lucia, Rococo, and Queen of the Big Time to give to former patients, loving how Trigiani's characters "persevere to work out their lives with steadfastness and a good outlook."

Rudy Cotolo profiled Trigiani in 2013 for The Supreme Macaroni Company in Publishers Weekly. We both love this excerpt: "On tour, Trigiani has developed an act that she says is closer to stand-up comedy than to straightforward reading. 'I’m here to serve my readers; I’m not in this for any other reason.' She describes herself as overly optimistic. 'I don’t like any art form barraged in violence or hurt,' she says. And she’s 'crazy' about her readers, most of whom are female. 'I see them in their complexities, these women; I see how a book from me is an escape, and my role as a storyteller is to lift these readers out of something sometimes, or to turn the mirror on them.' She wants her readers to 'have fun, connect, laugh, and cry together,' she says."

And now it's 2017 and time for her Boswell debut. This joint event from Boswell Book Company and Oconomowoc's Books and Company on July 12 at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts will be her sixth visit to the Milwaukee area. Tickets are $32 and include a copy of Kiss Carlo.

Here's what Jane says about Trigiani's newest, Kiss Carlo: "Set against the post-World-War-II streets of South Philadelphia, a mountaintop village in Italy and the golden age of New York television, this is a story that celebrates the expansive life of one Italian-American family. As branches of the Palazzini family are involved in a decades old feud over their cab driving business, ironically it is the orphaned cousin Nicky Castone who brings about a reconciliation. While he drives a cab by day, Nicky begins to fulfill his dream of becoming an actor by volunteering at the struggling Borelli Theatre in the evening and there he meets the love of his life. From page one, readers will engage in this vibrantly drawn heartwarming epic story of family and friendship, love and forgiveness and ultimately dreams fulfilled. Perfect choice for summer reading!"

I also read Trigiani, but it was my very first time. I was a little daunted by the 500+ pages (Jane noted that this is a little longer than the average Adriana novel) but the story truly rushed by. Trigiani brings such joy to the Italian American experience. Even if the family's are fighting, they do so with gusto. I'm sure we all wish we had a Nicky who could bring everybody together. Here's another link to tickets.

*Coincidentally, Bill Goldstein is coming to Boswell for his first work of nonfiction, The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature.

Event alert: Stefanie Chambers, Courtney Yasmineh, Lawrence D'Attilio, plus YA favorites Brittany Cavallaro and Mackenzi Lee

The authors are coming, the authors are coming! Also pizza.

Monday, June 26, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Stefanie Chambers, author of Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus: Immigrant Incorporation in New Destinations.

In the early 1990s, Somali refugees arrived in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Later in the decade, an additional influx of immigrants arrived in Columbus, Ohio. These refugees found low-skill jobs in warehouses and food processing plants and struggled as social “outsiders,” often facing discrimination based on their religious traditions, dress, and the misconception that they are terrorists. The immigrant youth also lacked access to quality educational opportunities.

Stefanie Chambers provides a cogent analysis of these refugees in Midwestern cities where new immigrant communities are growing. Her comparative study uses qualitative and quantitative data to assess the political, economic, and social variations between these urban areas. Chambers examines how culture and history influenced the incorporation of Somali immigrants in the U.S. and recommends policy changes that can advance rather than impede incorporation.

Stefanie Chambers is the Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban Education.

Tuesday, June 27, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Courtney Yasmineh, author of A Girl Called Sidney: The Coldest Place.

After first spiriting her mother away and then running away herself to the family’s remote Northwoods cabin in Minnesota, Sidney challenges herself to survive alone and find her voice over the course of a brutal winter.

The narrative takes the reader on a dark and moody ride back and forth in both time and place, between Chicago and a tiny rural town. Getting inside Sidney’s head as she tries to make sense of a cast of characters – family, hangers-on, and old and new friends – the novel examines the roots of their dysfunction while Sidney plots the future and works to make real her pursuit of music.

Appealing to readers of women rocker bios and contemporary fiction of the heartland the story back to a distinct time and looks with a fresh perspective on the experiences of a young woman that will resonate with many adults.

Courtney Yasmineh is a rock musician and singer-songwriter. She has several albums and thousands of road-gig miles to her credit. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Wednesday, June 28, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Lawrence D’Attilio, author of The Soul of Vietnam: Photographs and Stories.

The book’s images mitigate the decadent ideas many people have about Vietnam. Today it is less a place of rice fields, disenfranchised peasants, and backwards economics. It also is not a country of overwhelming social conditioning determined by a paternalistic government. It helps to know it is the world’s thirteenth largest population and among the fastest expanding economies. It is endless beautiful sand beaches, very high mountains, a greatly expanded middle class, and a culture that beckons you to go there and stay for a long time.

Each image in the book is a contribution to a fresh understanding of Vietnam. The five-fold increase in population since 1975 can be considered one of history’s greatest human accomplishments.

Lawrence ‘Larry’ D’Attilio obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Louisville. Larry has taught photography since 1971 and currently teaches one on one and at workshops he organizes in the U.S and Vietnam.

Thursday, June 29, 7 pm, at Boswell:
YA Pizza Party with Mackenzi Lee, author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and Brittany Cavallaro, author of The Last of August.

It's a YA pizza party featuring two authors and Pizza Man Pizza. In addition to pizza, we'll be offering a free YA galley to each attendee. We'll let you choose a second galley if you buy a book from one of our authors and you'll get a third if you buy a book from each author:

About The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue:

Henry "Monty" Montague doesn't care that his roguish passions are far from suitable for the gentleman he was born to be. But as Monty embarks on his grand tour of Europe, his quests for pleasure and vice are in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family's estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is a hilarious and swashbuckling stand-alone teen historical fiction novel.

About The Last of August:

In the follow up to the acclaimed A Study in Charlotte, Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are in a chase across Europe to untangle a web of shocking truths about the Holmes and Moriarty families. So begins a dangerous race through the gritty underground scene in Berlin and glittering art houses in Prague, where Holmes and Watson discover a complicated case that may change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other.

Mackenzi Lee holds a BA in History and a MFA from Simmons College in writing for children and young adults. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Crixeo, and The Newport Review. Her debut novel, The Monstrous Thing, won the PEN-New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award. She is also a bookseller at Trident in Boston.

Brittany Cavallaro is a poet, fiction writer, and old-school Sherlockian. She is the author of the poetry collection Girl-King and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She earned her BA in literature from Middlebury College and her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You may know her from her days at the PhD program of UWM's Creative Writing Program. After this, we're talking a Summerfest break. We'll be back with programming in mid-July.

Now in Boswell-vision, the annotated bestsellers for the week ending June 24, 2017

The Boswell bestsellers brought to you through Boswell-vision.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Murder in Saint Germain, by Cara Black
2. The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz
3. Here and Gone, by Haylen Beck (Stuart Neville)
4. Camino Island, by John Grisham
5. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
6. Testimony, by Scott Turow (ticketed event today at JCC, 2 pm. Walkups available)
7. Force, by Don Winslow
8. The Silent Corner, by Dean Koontz
9. The Little Paris Bistro, by Nina George
10. Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami

Don Winslow may have picked up extra buzz for his newest, The Force, by taking out a full page ad in The New York Times criticizing the government's war on drugs. John Wilkens of the San Diego Union-Tribune, profiled area resident Winslow: "Winslow, 63, has spent almost 20 years researching and writing about drugs — America’s appetite for them, the Mexican cartels that torture and kill each other to control distribution, the police on both sides of the border who try to stem the tide or corruptly become part of the flow. His books The Power of the Dog and The Cartel are violent, searing and critically acclaimed epics about the cost and futility of the war" Wilkens explained that the newest ties into this as well: "Winslow is currently on a tour promoting his newest book, The Force, which came out Tuesday. It’s about the leader of an elite New York Police Department unit caught up in corruption while fighting the influx of drugs and guns to the city."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken
2. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie
3. Theft by Finding, by David Sedaris
4. Hunger, by Roxane Gay and Adam Grant
5. Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg
6. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
7. Janesville, by Amy Goldstein
8. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson
9. Milwaukee City of Neighborhoods, by John Gurda
10. Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance (on Megyn Kelly tonight on NBC)

For the second week in a row, a review from Jim Higgins presaged a strong showing on our bestseller list the following week (and it was nice to see when I clicked on the Toledo Blade story, it was the Higgins review). There's more about Sherman Alexie's long-awaited memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. At his local paper, Claudia Rowe in The Seattle Times writes: "There is a guileless, everything-but-the-kitchen sink quality to these pages that sometimes feels as if we are leafing through Alexie’s private notebooks. We see Alexie as a boy, born brutally poor on the Spokane Indian Reservation to parents so desperate, they sometimes sold their blood for food money." Interesting that the book came out the same month as the Sedaris diaries, from the same publisher too.

I always have a sense of accomplishment when I've read a good amount of books on a list. My best showing is usually on paperback fiction (and indeed I read six of this week's ten) but this week I also had a nice showing on hardcover nonfiction, with a completion score of five out of ten. My nonfiction paperback score is not bad either (four) but let's not talk about hardcover fiction.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Portrait, by Antoine Laurain
2. Lilac Girls, by Marth Hall Kelly
3. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
4. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
5. Murder in the Marais, by Cara Black
6. My Favorite Thing is Monsters, by Emil Ferris
7. Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett
8. Burning Bright, by Nick Petrie
9. Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes
10. My Name Is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout

It may be an older title, but that hasn't stopped fans from picking up just-released-in-the-United-States Antoine Laurain's latest, The Portrait, once again translated by Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce. His very first novel is about a man who sees a painting and realizes he looks just like the person in this heirloom work. So he purchases it, hiding it in his apartment, but weirdly enough, nobody else can see the resemblance. Is there something going on? Yes, there is! Wilda Williams in Library Journal called it a "delightful literary soufflee." OK, she also said "slight," but honestly, were you expecting Pynchon? I kind of love the Goodreads page as many of the reviews are not in English. Use the translate function! And also note that we once again have an assortment of Antoine Laurain books in French.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Preservation, by Christina Ward
2. Hot Pants in Hollywood, by Susan Silver
3. Borchert Field, by Bob Buege
4. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
5. Seinfeldia, by Jennifer Keisha Armstrong
6. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, by Samantha Irby
7. North Point Historic Districts, by Shirley DuFresne McArthur
8. Live and Let Live, by Evelyn Perry
9. Wisconsin Literary Luminaries, by Jim Higgins
10. Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, by Thomas H. Fehring

We have a big fan of Samantha Irby's New York Times bestselling We Are Never Meeting in Real Life in Sharon, who wrote "This is not the book for your Aunt Joan if she is put off by profanity or descriptive sexual detail. I found it hilarious as well as touching." We hosted Ms. Irby for her last collection, Meaty, back when she still lived in Evanston, and we've heard that Meaty will also be reissued by Vintage, her new publisher. Sharon's in great company, as other big fans include Roxane Gay, Rainbow Rowell, and Lindy West.

Books for Kids:
1. The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors, by Drew Daywalt with illustrations by Adam Rex
2. Amina's Voice, by Hena Khan
3. Ghost, by Jason Reynolds
4. Playbook, by Kwame Alexander
5. Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes, by Rick Riordan 6. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
7. Dog Man Unleashed, by Dav Pilkey
8. Dragons Love Tacos 2 The Sequel, by Adam Rubin with illustrations by Daniel Salmieri
9. Be True to Me, by Adele Griffin
10. Real Friends, by Shannon Hale

When we inquired at the publisher why Hena Khan's first novel, Amina's Voice, took place in Milwaukee, we learned that Khan has not lived here but her husband's family does. Khan got a very nice writeup in her local paper, The Washington Post, with Mary Quattlebaum noting that "the novel, about a Pakistani American Muslim sixth-grader who struggles to stay true to her family’s culture while fitting in at school, is the first title in a new imprint, Salaam Reads, from Simon and Schuster. The imprint, whose name means “peace” in Arabic, focuses on stories featuring Muslim characters." Khan also wrote It's Ramadan, Curious George, which hit our bestseller list last year.

This year the Journal Sentinel takes its annual Summerfest book break, but Jim Higgins still has a review for Afterland, a new collection of poems from Mai Der Vang. He writes: "Growing up in a Hmong family that practiced shamanism accustomed Mai Der Vang to seeing things in both a literal and figurative way at the same time. She brings that experience with overlapping realities to Afterland, a collection of poems about the Hmong experience, from 17th-century China through the secret war in Laos and ultimately to resettlement as refugees in the United States. It won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets in 2016."