Julie Orringer in The Writer, Boswell in The Wall Street Journal, Ten Writers in the Best-of Feature of The New York Times.

1. To all the publishers who wonder whether it is worth it to send authors on tour, one of the benefits of touring literary authors is that the press often keeps on coming, not just in advance but afterwards too. In the October issue of The Writer, Sarah Lange profiled Julie Orringer on her writing technique. This interview was conducted last April when Orringer visited Boswell for The Invisible Bridge. This, plus seeing it on Lake Forest Bookstore's bestseller list, reminded me that the book was no longer on our trade paperback tables up front. Maybe that's just what we need to jumpstart trade paperback fiction. Subscribe to The Writer here, or you can read the article here (this is updated--I originally thought you could only read it with a subscription, but you can get a login for free).

2. Speaking of updating displays (and we were, regarding putting Orringer back on one), Jason put together our best books of the year, per The New York Times Book Review.

The list for fiction:
11/22/63, by Stephen King
The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
Swamplandia, by Karen Russell
The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

And here is the nonfiction:
Arguably, by Christopher Hitchens
The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown
Malcolm X, by Manning Marable
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
A World on Fire, by Amanda Foreman

3. Finally, I mentioned this on Facebook, but who can resist some nice press. The Wall Street Journal did a piece on the changing nature of author events, and we were one of the soure stores, who discussed our attempts to maximize talking and if not minimize, than shrink down the amount of reading done.

Some stores are doing conversations, and others ask for no reading at all. There is a tendency for some fiction writers, in particular, to want to not speak at all and only read. It's my thought that speaking is more interesting to attendees and just to be a little mercantile here, sells more books.