A Book Fair at St. John's on the Lake.

My first year of Boswell I was like a madman doing offsites, which is particularly surprising as I did not own a car. I did a number of conferences where I would sell five or so books, and eventually realized that this was not helping anybody.

And then I did a holiday book fair at Eastcastle and it turned out to be a huge hit, so I quickly booked similar events at the Milwaukee Catholic Home and St. John's on the Lake. For various reasons, my outings to the first two venues fell away (perhaps because we are so close that many of the folks can walk over to Boswell, and we'll also deliver for free the same day) but I've kept up periodic visits to St. John's.

Even then, about half the folks who browse the tables of adult books, kids books, boxed cards, and calendars, will come up to the store, but there are some who don't get out as much. I had a particularly nice customer of 96 who had a lot of good bookish stories. I brought Hannah along to help, which allowed me to zip back to Boswell and pick up some more special requests. And best of all, one attendee's special order had just arrived in time for me to bring it back.

What was the hot book? We sold several copies of Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and Hannah told me we could have sold several more copies of Lois Ehlert's new book, Mice. Ehlert's new book is based on Rose Fyleman's classic poem. And after reading the book, I am convinced that mice are rather nice indeed.