Monday Event Post--Timothy Corrigan, Gabrielle Zevin, John Corey Whaley, Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely, Christopher Moore, and next week, Garrison Keillor.

Monday, April 28 7 pm, at Villa Terrace, 2220 N. Terrace Ave.:
Timothy Corrigan, author of An Invitation to Chateau Du Grand-Luce: Decorating a Great French Country House

If decorating your house leaves you flustered, imagine what restoring a chateau in France might be like. Acclaimed designer Timothy Corrigan does this in An Invitation to Chateau Do Grand-Luce, and his work is nothing short of majestic (as is the book). Per the Los Angeles Times: "The 250-year-old chateau is a national landmark, and Corrigan's renovation was strictly overseen by the preservation-minded historical agency Les Architectes des Batiments de France. What's striking about the book isn't just the fantasy-come-true of owning a French chateau, but also the way the designer channeled his childhood in Los Angeles and made certain that, for the interiors, California casual trumped European grandeur."

Timothy Corrigan’s work is showcased in some of the world’s most extraordinary properties with clients including European and Middle Eastern royalty, Hollywood celebrities and corporate leaders. With offices in both Los Angeles and Paris, his distinctive design philosophy of comfortable elegance in architecture, restoration and interiors has been featured on television and in such prestigious publications as: Elle Decor, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. Corrigan has been named one of the world’s top 100 architects and designers by Architectural Digest for the past nine years, and one of the World’s Top 40 Interior Designers by The Robb Report.

What better place to host Corrigan than the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, located near Boswell at 2220 N. Terrace Avenue. Admission to the event is $5 and of course, Hannah will be there with books for purchase.

also on Monday, April 28, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

Join us for a talk and reading with Gabrielle Zevin, whose novel encapsulates what makes a fifth anniversary worth celebrating. I feel silly writing this up yet again, so I will just show you a pile of books waiting to be signed.

Tuesday, April 29, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Floyd Skloot, author of Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir

One March morning, writer Floyd Skloot was inexplicably struck by an attack of unrelenting vertigo that ended 138 days later as suddenly as it had begun. With body and world askew, everything familiar had transformed. Nothing was ever still. Revertigo is Skloot’s account of that unceasingly vertiginous period, told in an inspired and appropriately off-kilter form. This intimate memoir—tenuous, shifting, sometimes humorous—demonstrates Skloot’s considerable literary skill honed as an award-winning essayist, memoirist, novelist, and poet.

Named by Poets and Writers as one of “50 of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World,” award-winning essayist, memoirist, novelist, and poet Floyd Skloot shares in his latest, Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir what author Ron Slate calls: “A sophisticated yet highly entertaining example of how memoir should serve us.”

From The Washington Post column from Floyd Skloot: "Vertigo — the feeling that you or your surroundings are spinning — is a symptom, not a disease. You don’t get a diagnosis of vertigo; instead, you present with vertigo, a hallmark of balance dysfunction. Or with dizziness, a more generalized term referring to a range of off-kilter sensations including wooziness, faintness, unsteadiness, spatial disorientation, a feeling akin to swooning. It happens to almost everyone: too much to drink or standing too close to the edge of a roof or working out too hard or getting up too fast." Read the rest of the story here.

Wednesday, April 30, 7 pm, at Boswell:
The Gentleman's Tour, featuring John Corey Whaley, author of Noggin, Jason Reynolds, author of When I Was the Greatest, and Brendan Kiely, author of The Gospel of Winter.

Boswell Book Company is proud to present a pizza party event for kids ages 14 to 84 with The Gentleman’s Tour featuring authors Jason Reynolds, John Corey Whaley, and Brendan Kiely. Sharing themes of teenagers facing difficult decisions as they find their footing in a challenging world, these three authors will each read from and sign copies of their latest novels and field questions from the audience.

Bowellian Mel Morrow just finished reading Jason Reynolds and had this to say: "The block is kind of boring for fifteen-year-old Allen 'Ali' Brooks until two brothers move in next door: suddenly his stoop in Bed-Stuy is full of freestyle rap, comic book art, and really loud curse words. See, Needles-—the oldest of the brothers—has Tourette's syndrome. Embarrassed of his brother, Noodles learns the hard way what it means to have someone’s back after the three boys find themselves in a heap of trouble with the local heavies. Ali’s Mom, Doris, and his little sister, Jazz, can’t bail them out. The only person they can turn to is Ali’s estranged father, but Ali doesn’t want to ruin his father’s chances to move back in with the family. Faced with difficult decisions, Ali has to think fast and grow up faster if he wants to keep himself, his family, and his friends intact. With tones of House Party, Jason Reynolds’s debut novel, When I Was the Greatest, is a well-written and easy to read slice of life novel that is tense and tender."

More on our Facebook event page. If you are planning to come, please register for this event!

Thursday, May 1, 7 pm, at Boswell:
A ticketed event with Christopher Moore, author of The Serpent of Venice. $28 includes the book, taxes, and all fees. Visit Brown Paper Tickets for details.

Get ready for a night of raucous hilarity with one of the most entertaining authors you'll ever meet as Christopher Moore returns to Milwaukee to present The Serpent of Venice, his latest novel and the sequel to Fool. The Serpent of Venice is another satirical take on the Bard of Avon starring everybody's favorite fool, Pocket of Dog Snogging, in a glorious and farcical mashup of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe.

I've been writing a lot about Christopher Moore's event. Is the book hilarious? Yes. Is there a commemorative bookmark? You know it! Will Theatre Gigante be doing an adapted reading of chapter one before the main attraction? Absolutely.

Theatre Gigante's upcoming production of Midsummer in Midwinter opens May 7.

Monday, May 5, 7 pm, at the UWM Union Ballroom, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.:
A ticketed event for Garrison Keillor, author of The Keillor Reader. $30 gets you admission and a signed copy of The Keillor Reader. Presented by UWM Bookstore and Boswell Book Company with media sponsors Wisconsin Public Radio and 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee Public Radio.Visit Brown Paper Tickets for event details.

Kevin Nance just talked to Keillor in the Chicago Tribune. Here's a short excerpt.

Q: Whose idea was it to have a "reader" anthology of your work? I think of that as something that comes out posthumously, or in some cases when a writer's reputation is in a bit of a trough and needs resurrecting. Neither of those conditions applies to you, obviously.

A: Mmm-hmm. Well, it's an old tradition, and Viking, my publisher, I think did some of the early readers, which I loved when I was in high school. They were called The Portable Steinbeck, The Portable Faulkner, The Portable Hemingway. I particularly loved The Portable Steinbeck. There it was in one volume, and it gave you a little bit of all of his stuff —The Red Pony, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat and this and that. I found it to be a great introduction to Steinbeck, who I liked a lot back then. So the reader anthology may have slipped into the "posthumous" cemetery, but I don't think it belongs there. It's a way for a writer to sort of rearrange his stuff, and to take a corrective look back, which is not easy to do. It's not as much fun as you think it will be when they ask you to do it, because you find that a lot of stuff just doesn't, you know, survive. Humor has a shorter shelf life, I guess."

Hope to see you at one of our events!