1. David Ebershoff stopped by while visiting in Milwaukee. We had a copy of The 19th Wife for him to sign--I would have brought in more if I knew he was coming but a delightful surprise has its benefits too, and I walked him around the store like a proud mother hen. I was pleased to note that we've had a nice sale on the paperback of The 19th Wife. I made Mr. Ebershoff look at his number on the computer system (it was 66. I'm sure there are plenty of stores that have done better, but I assure you this is quite respectable).
Oh, he also took some photos of his author's books on the front table. Gary Shteyngart will be pleased to know he had very good positioning.
2. Last night's event with Oliver Pötzsch (alt 246 if you're wondering how to make the special o) was so wonderful. Our numbers were actually above my projection for our event in celebration of the publication of The Hangman's Daughter (it's a Pennie's pick at Costco, by the way, and though they are serious competition for any bookstore, Ms. Ianniciello has a good eye for fiction and I take her recs seriously) and of course, you never know how charming an author is going to be until it happens. In this case, very, very, very charming. Sadly, the family executioning sword was stolen from a museum in the 1970s. Pötzsch was a little curious by my request that he read in German, and was pleasantly surprised that more than half the attendees understood the language.
So this afternoon, I was selling a Milwaukee guidebook to a customer and asked him where he was from. And guess what, he was visiting from Germany. He didn't feel bad that he'd missed the event; he'd hardly come to the United States to hear authors read in German. That said, if he'd known about it, he probably would have come, just for the coincidence of the thing.
3. Oh, and a wonderful customer told me she'd decided to take an apartment a block away when she moved to town just so she could be close to the bookstore. OK, I got a little teary about that one.
4. To the right is me as an avatar from the Phineas and Ferb website. Here's where you can go to make your own.
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