Boswell's Annotated Bestseller List for the Week Ending August 29, 2015

What an exciting week! Yesterday I inadvertently sent out our staff newsletter to our entire mailing list. Perhaps it's not a good idea to work on both at the same time. Fortunately our staff newsletters don't tend to be chastise-y but information driven, so we had a long list of booked events that haven't been posted, plus a whole mess of staff recs, including many going into 2016. it turned out to be quite a conversation driver, and a lot of folks liked looking at, as my friend John says, "how the sausage is made."

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny
2. Wind/Pinball, by Haruki Murakami
3. Days of Awe, by Lauren Fox (event at Shorewood Public Library, 9/15, 6:30 pm)
4. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
5. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
6. Kitchens of the Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal
7. X, by Sue Grafton
8. Secondhand Souls, by Christopher Moore (ticketed event 9/9, 7 pm)
9. Girl on a Train, by Paula Hawkins
10. Among the Ten Thousand Things, by Julia Pierpont

August 25 was definitely a mystery red letter day for releases with not just Louise Penny's latest, The Nature of the Beast, which have great recommendations from regular readers Sharon and Anne, but Sue Grafton's X, which is just two letters away from the end of the alphabet. At one time she said the series would be done with 26 installments, and she confirms in an interview with Mark Rubinstein in The Huffington Post that this is still the case. She also discusses how the series, like many, has moved from closed mysteries to open ones. The latter category is when you know who the villain is. I've always thought of that genre more as a thriller because I felt the whodunit was intrinsic to the genre, but of course, that's just one reader's opinion. I love the terms though and plan to use them a lot!

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Palm Springs Modern Living, by James Schnepf
2. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
3. The Grain Brain Cookbook, by David Perlmutter
4. The Last Love Song, by Tracy Daughterty
5. Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath
6. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
7. Brain Maker, by David Perlmutter
8. We're Still Here, Ya Bastards, by Roberta Brandes Gratz
9. How to Bake Pi, by Eugenia Cheng (event 9/19, 2 pm, at Boswell)
10. Rising Strong, by Brené Brown

Several folks were buzzing about the new biography of Joan Didion, The Last Love Song, including Dennis, our #1 store champion (if you've ever been a bookseller in Milwaukee, you know who he is). Ariel Gonzalez reviews the book for the Miami Herald: "Joseph Heller and Donald Barthelme, the subjects of Daugherty’s last two books, were no longer around when he dove into their pasts. Though she is getting on in years (she turns 81 in December), Didion still speaks — but not, alas, to Daugherty. She withheld her cooperation. Faced with a shut door, he instead exploited the accessibility of her printed words. Hence the problem. Heller and Barthelme rarely wrote about themselves; Didion did — quite a bit, in fact. Summary and quotes from those widely praised works saturate this biography. You may be tempted to bypass it and go straight to the primary sources, but then you will miss Daugherty’s exemplary criticism; his autopsying of the corpus is incisively professional, close reading done with enthusiasm." Carolyn Kellogg's review from the Los Angeles Times is reprinted in the Journal Sentinel this Sunday.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng (event 9/28 at Boswell, 7 pm)
2. Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum
3. Will's Music, by Obie Yadgar
4. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
5. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd
6. Euphoria, by Lily King
7. Nora Webster, by Colm Toíbín
8. Etta and Otto and Russell and James, by Emma Hooper
9. The Coincidence of Coconut Cake, by Amy E. Reichert (event 10/6 at East Library, 6:30 pm)
10. Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler

It's not too common that a traditional publisher sets a book in Milwaukee, so it's nice to see not one, but two books with local settings. Lauren Fox's Days of Awe is a bit soft focus Milwaukee, but The Coincidence of Coconut Cake screams Cream City, and in this case that stands for cream sauce, cream puff, and creme bruleee. It's the story of a critic who gives a small restauranteur a bad review, but this awkward beginning leads to romance. I guess you would call the book genre, but it's more romantic comedy. When you dig for reviews, you mostly get bloggers, not traditional media write ups. One thing I've learned is that many bloggers don't use their last names, which sort of changes the relationship between reviewer and reviewed. "Kathy" calls the book "a charming love story of misunderstandings, mistaken identity, and the power of food to bring two people together" while "Staircase Wit" found the book a bit improbable for her taste, but noted that "Lou is a delightful heroine, if a bit too good to be true, and her determined efforts to reveal the charming side of Milwaukee are very endearing and made me wish she had been my guide on my long ago trip when I had only a copy of Betsy in Spite of Herself and the Gen Con attendees to keep me company.* Ah, Gen Con.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Sex Myth, by Rachel Hills
2. 100 Things to Do in Milwaukee Before You Die, by Jennifer Posh (event at Boswell 9/1, 7 pm)
3. The Diary of a Teenage Girl, by Phoebe Glockner
4. Think Like a Freak, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
5. The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
6. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs
7. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
8. You Are a Badass, by Jen Sincero
9. The Secret Garden, by Johanna Basford
10. The Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook, by Mary Bergin

Being that Just Mercy is also being aggressively featured at Starbucks next door, I thought that would sort of deflate our sales, but demand is strong enough for that not to be the case. Just out in paperback, with Bryan Stevenson's interview repeated on Fresh Air, Rob Warden in The Washington Post wrote that "Stevenson, the visionary founder and executive director of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, surely has done as much as any other living American to vindicate the innocent and temper justice with mercy for the guilty — efforts that have brought him, among myriad honors, a MacArthur genius grant and honorary degrees from Yale, Penn and Georgetown."

Books for Kids:
1. The Day the Crayons Came Home, by Drew Daywalt, with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers
2. What Pet Should I Get, by Dr. Seuss
3. The Nutshell Library, by Maurice Sendak
4. Appleblossom the Possum, by Holly Goldberg Sloan
5. The Book of Dares for Lost Friends, by Jane Kelley
6. Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby
7. Malcollm Under the Stars, by W.H. Beck
8 Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures, by Maggie Stiefvater and Pearce Jackson
9. Auggie and Me: Three Wonder Stories, by R.J. Palacio
10. Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead

People are wondering about what begat Auggie and Me when author R.J. Palacio has said there would likely not be a sequel. Well it turns out that these are three collected short ebooks published for the first time in print, each one about a kid featured in the book Wonder. Publishers Weekly describes the book but doesn't quite review it and most of what else I found were bloggers. Hey, I'm a blogger--I can't wait to be quoted in someone else's newsletter. Unfortunately I did not read Auggie and Me so it won't be for that. I have however read The Day the Crayons Come Home and proclaim it "a technicolor sequel that rivals the Fast and Furious Franchise for nonstop action."

So what's likely to hit our bestseller lists next week? We turn to the Journal Sentinel book page where Mike Fischer reviews Jonathan Franzen's Purity, a likely our #1 hardcover fiction title for next week. He begins "Purity Tyler — heroine of the latest novel confirming that Jonathan Franzen is among this country's best living writers — goes by the nickname Pip. It's a nod to the hero of Dickens' Great Expectations — a novel that, like Purity itself, explores how we project our childish fantasies onto our children, making it harder for anyone to ever mature."

Reviewed by Jim Higgins is Kathleen Ernst's A Settler's Year: Pioneer Life Through the Seasons. Higgins notes that "In a time when the word immigrant is flung about in political discourse like a swear word, A Settler's Year is a gentle, visually engaging reminder that just a few generations ago, nearly all the people living in Wisconsin came from somewhere else — and made a new life here through hard work and the support of their neighbors."

September 1 is a huge release week, and the beginning of fall. And that's why Jim Higgins did a round up authors coming to the Milwaukee, area, including several Boswell-sponsored events. Perhaps the biggest might be John Gurda's Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, launching September 24 at the Grain Exchange. Gurda will be doing plenty of events around the metro area all fall to promote the book, including one at Boswell later in the season. Read all the highlights here.

A Field Guide to Boswell's Ticketed Events for Fall 2015.

We have no events this weekend, but tickets went on sale publicly for Rainn Wilson, which is being held at the Pabst Theater, the biggest venue we've ever worked with (or for sticklers, with which we've ever worked).

Here's the lay of the land, to quote Richard Ford, one of our featured titles.

Christopher Moore at Boswell on Wednesday, September 9, 7 pm, for Secondhand Souls. $29 includes all taxes and fees and the new book. The store is closed to the general public at 5:30 pm.

Brian Selznick at Alverno College's Pitman Theatre on Monday, October 12, 7 pm for The Marvels. This event is co-sponsored by Scholastic Book Fairs. $35 ticket includes taxes and all fees and the new book. Selznick is the acclaimed author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Richard Ford at Boswell on Thursday, October 15, 7 pm, for the paperback of Let Me Be Frank with You. Tickets are $16 and include all taxes and fees and the new paperback. The event is cosponsored by UWM's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Osher members can buy a specially priced ticket on their website. Boswell will close to the general public at 5:30 pm.

Graham Elliot at Bacchus on Friday, October 30, 6 pm, for Cooking Like a Master Chef: 100 Recipes to Make the Everyday Extraordinary. Tickets will include a copy of the book, a special dinner using recipes from the book, and wine. Call Bacchus to reserve your space, 414-765-1166.

Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor in conversation at Turner Hall Ballroom on Tuesday, November 10, 7 pm, for Welcome to Night Vale, the novel based on their acclaimed podcast. $22 is the base price for open seating, which includes the book. Taxes and fees are extra.

Rainn Wilson at the Pabst Theater on Thursday, November 12, 7 pm, for The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy. $26.50 is the base price for a reserved seat, which includes the book. Taxes and fees are extra.

We have at least one more ticketed signing that will be announced in September. Plus we are cosponsors of two ticketed events at the Lynden Sculpture Garden for the Women's Speaker Series, produced by Milwaukee Reads.
--P.S. Duffy for The Cartography of No Man's Land on Tuesday, September 29, 7 pm. $25 includes a copy for book, $20 for Lynden members.
--Renée Rosen for White Collar Girl on Monday, November 16, 7 pm. This event will feature a book club presentation from Jane Glaser and myself. Price to come.

In addition, we have several events with an admission charge that do not include a copy of the book.
--Jerry Apps at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center on Sunday, October 25, 2 pm, for Whispers and Shadows: A Naturalist's Memoir. $8 admission to the grounds includes the event. Free to Schlitz members.
--Timothy Whealon at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum on Thursday, November 19, 5 pm reception, 6 pm talk, for In Pursuit of Beauty: The Interiors of Timothy Whealon. Admission is $20, $15 for FOVT members.

This is in addition to our three ticketed events with Preorder Signing Priority:
--Katherine Applegate for Crenshaw at Boswell on Friday, September 25, 6:30 pm
--Jenny Lawson for Furiously Happy at Boswell on Tuesday, October 27, 6:30 pm
--Sarah Vowell for Lafayette in the Somewhat United States at the Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall on Saturday, October 31, 7 pm.

These three events are free, but preordered copies of the featured title will get you line letter in advance of the event date. Line letters will be given out in the order that special orders are taken. Folks who've been to Boswell events (or event Schwartz events) are well familiar with this concept. In particular, Lawson spends a lot of quality time with each attendee so a low line letter makes a big difference.

I know you're wondering whether all Boswell events are going to become ticketed. Absolutely not! We have an amazing lineup of free events where we rely on your kind and generous spirits to support the author, publisher, and Boswell with a book purchase. Among those folks coming to either Boswell or one of our partner venues is Adam Johnson, Chris Van Allsburg, Celeste Ng, Stuart Neville, Lincoln Purse, Jason Reynolds with Brendan Kiely, Gary Schmidt, Sarah Thornton, plus of course many of your favorite local and regional authors. Exciting, right?

Here are the authors listed, along with photo credits, when requested:
Rainn Wilson (Matt Hoyle)
Brian Selznick
Richard Ford
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (Kyle Makrauer)
Renée Rosen
Katherine Applegate
Jason Reynolds

I'm Reading My Way Through San Francisco, in Honor of Upcoming Christopher Moore Visit for Secondhand Souls.

We’ve been lucky enough to host Christopher Moore several times since we’ve been open and while I’m certainly not able to read every author’s book who visits (we’ll sometimes have more than 30 events a month, and I’m more of a five-book-per-month reader), I have been able to sneak at least one Moore book onto my pile per visit. And now he's coming back for Secondhand Souls on September 9 for a ticketed event. Ticket info here, book info here.

The problem of course has been that four three of our four events, the featured title has been a sequel, and that has left me with the dilemma, knowing it is almost impossible for me to read two books by an author in advance of an event, of whether to read the original title or jump right into the sequel. Fortunately my Moore reading started with Sacre Bleu, which was a stand-alone. I should offer a caveat—my Moore reading actually started with Coyote Blue years ago, but that was not in conjunction with an event.

For The Serpent of Venice, I decided to jump right in and read the sequel to Fool, much like I will often read the newest mystery by an author instead of starting from the beginning. Very Shakespearean and a lot of fun, but I did feel like I was missing something. And that’s why for our upcoming event for Secondhand Souls, I decided to go back and read A Dirty Job, especially because a customer recently told me it was her very favorite Christopher Moore title. I also believe it was also the book tour of Moore’s first visit to Milwaukee, back in 2006.

Do you know the setup? Charlie Asher runs his family’s second-hand store in San Francisco. His wife Rachel is pregnant with their first child. After a visit, Charlie happens to come back to the hospital room to bring her a CD and spots this mysterious and very tall African man dressed in green in the room, and when Charlie asks what he’s doing there, the guy is in shock because he’s not supposed to be visible. And well, Rachel has died due to childbirth complications.

And after that, things start to get weird, because Charlie slowly figures out that he is a death merchant, charged with taking the soul vessels of the dying and passing them on to their next recipients. And if that isn’t enough to contend with, he gets caught up in this plot by some Celtic death demons who want to take over the world. Oh, and his new daughter seems to be able to kill people by saying Kitty.

There’s about ten other twists and I don’t want to give anything away. Like all Christopher Moore novels, it’s one part quest, one part philosophical treatise and the rest is just nuts. One can say that there is sort of a Moore-esque hero. Certainly Lucien Lessard of Sacre Bleu and Charlie Asher have a lot in common—well meaning, a bit awkward, romantic, horny, and generally up for the challenge of what life may throw at them, even if that happens to be fighting evil. And the books are truly laugh out loud funny.

But there’s something else that makes A Dirty Job special; it’s a true love letter to Christopher Moore’s adopted home of San Francisco. Charlie Asher and his posse, his sister Jane, his daughter Sophie, employees Ray and Lily, fellow death merchant Minty Fresh, and so on, seem to find themselves all over the city, from the Mission to the Tenderloin, to the Castro and The Haight. And it turns out that the story is interconnected with Moore’s vampire novels, particularly You Suck and Bite Me.

Reading A Dirty Job got me thinking about great San Francisco novels – if someone was visiting the Bay Area, I’d definitely suggest reading this. But of course San Francisco is one of the most literary cities out there. Of course people have been reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series for over thirty years. And more recently, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore had a long run on the paperback bestseller lists. But what else is out there?

I wrote to Pete Mulvihill at Green Apple Books and asked him what they recommend, since I figure they get a lot of tourists, and he showed me this list from Buzzfeed. Of course! Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Dave Eggers are on the list, as is one of my favorite books of all time, Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. What a coincidence that two of the folks with books on the list, Michelle Tea and Ali Liebegott, actually appeared at Boswell some years ago.

One novel that Pete recommended that was not on the list was The Dead do not Improve, by Jay Caspian King. "Quirky and Fun," he told me. The Boston Globe called it "loopy, hilarious, neo-noir" while Milwaukee's own Crimespree Magazine praised it as "tragically hilarious and darkly uplifting."

I was wondering if there were other books out there. The Guardian list has The Golden Gate listed at #1, plus a few titles not on the other list.

And here’s another list that includes Amy Tan’s classic, The Joy Luck Club, plus another book that I read, Carter Beats the Devil. I didn’t remember the setting!

In The Wall Street Journal, Armistead Maupin recommended Andrew Sean Greer’s The Confessions of Max Tivoli. I am also a big fan of the also very Sf-y The Story of a Marriage. Did you know that his last novel, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, was meant to take place in San Francisco, but he changed the locale after getting a residency in New York. 

7x7 recently posted a list of 75 books about San Francisco. They obviously drew on the Buzzfeed list (or vice versa) as there is a lot of overlap in their top ten. But I was thrilled to see A Dirty Job finally listed, at #34. Was Oh, the Glory of it All on the list? Yes it was, but I'm focusing on fiction here. Telegraph Avenue? Check, though I might say that was more of an Oakland book. But what was Anne Tyler doing there with The Amateur Marriage? She set a book in a city besides Baltimore? I went back and looked at my copy and I would say that Haight-Ashbury is a bit player.

Instead, why didn’t they pick a novel or story collection by Alice Adams, whose novels were almost unanimously distinctively SF, with a small detour to the South, where Adams wrote several autobiographical novels. They are a very different kind of San Francisco that doesn’t generally get into these lists-Portrero Hill and the like. I was trying to come up with her most San Francisco-ish book, and I came up with Rich Rewards, the story of a New Yorker who flees to the Bay area to decorate a friends home and finds herself drawn into the lives of the friend’s friends. Oh, those Alex Katz jackets on the Penguin editions! And I can’t wait for Carol Sklenicka’s biography!

But all this is gravy. We’re talking about Christopher Moore’s San Francisco, where demons live in the sewers and Franken-squirrels are given orders from the Zen Center. Where used book and record, and cloth store owners are actually doing vital work collecting souls and redistributing them. And how dated is A Dirty Job? The dead show up in Charlie Asher’s notebook as if like magic. Now they’d show up on his phone or tablet, and it wouldn’t seem like magic at all.

One more thing about A Dirty Job. Underneath the craziness, it’s a heartfelt book about dealing with death. Through it all, characters are confronting the end of the lives of themselves and those around them, and it’s actually got some beautiful and yes, zenlike meditations on the subject. And if your dream is to inhabit a Franken-squirrel, that’s also an option.

Oh, and want to know if the new book, Secondhand Souls(just out on August 25), lives up to its predecessor? We’ve gotten a great read from Boswellian Conrad Silverberg, who writes: “You wake up in the wee hours of the night with the last few chapters you read still rolling around in your head. Compelled, you leave the comforts of your bed and seek a comfortable spot to read just a little bit more. Upon finishing, you kill the lights, and make your way back to bed in total darkness. You've done this before. You know the way. But, what's this? In your hand the book is glowing! The title and the silly little deathshead toddler are shining in the dark! More macabre DayGlo humor from Moore!”

You can't see all the skeletons in the display window, due to the glare. As we were putting this together, I customer complained, "Isn't it too early for a Halloween display?" but we assured him that we just had all the skeletons because the featured book was about a death merchant.  "Oh, OK, was his reply."

Got a San Francisco book suggestion? Comment here! And see you at our event for Christopher Moore on Wednesday, September 9, 7 pm. $29 ticket gets you admission and a signed copy of the book. There’s a gift card option on the day of the event. And you can buy your tickets on the Brown Paper Tickets site.

Monday Event Post: Obie Yadgar on Tuesday, Rachel Hills Wednesday, James Schnepf Thursday, plus Jennifer Posh next Tuesday.

Here's what's going on at Boswell this week.

Tuesday, August 25, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Obie Yadgar author of Will's Music.

In his junior year and barely able to speak English, Obie Yadgar told himself he would become a novelist. After a tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army combat correspondent, he drifted into radio, starting as a jazz program host in San Diego, before moving into adult contemporary in upstate New York, then onto St. Louis for jazz, big bands and classical, and finally settling in Milwaukee for his classical music career.

Obie Yadgar's second novel, Will's Music, is the story of Will Baskin, a 34-year-old deejay trying to make sense of his life. Recently divorced and playing classical music on his radio program, Will is a magnet for extraordinary characters who call him at the studio. The eccentric personalities he encounters on and off the air provide him with laughs, as well as deep insights, as he meanders day by day. That is, until the enchanting and fiery Mariette drifts into his life, sending his world into an emotional spin. Mariette has baggage of her own, but perhaps she can reignite the passion that Will has ignored. Find out if these two lost souls can overcome each other’s struggles and rediscover love.

David Luhrssen, Arts and Entertainment Editor of the Shepherd Express calls Will’s Music “A story of crossroads and transformation,” saying “Obie Yadgar has written a knowing, insider’s story of the business of radio and the dizzying spin of romance.”

Wednesday, August 26, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Rachel Hills, author of The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Realities and Fantasy.

Rachel Hills is an Australian journalist living in New York City whose work has been published widely both in print and online, in publications including Vogue, NYMag.com, Cosmopolitan and The Atlantic. Her blog, Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, has more than 100,000 subscribers.

In her new book, The Sex Myth, Hills mixes equal parts social commentary, pop culture, and powerful personal anecdotes from people across the English-speaking world, The Sex Myth exposes the invisible norms and unspoken assumptions that shape the way we think about sex today.

Rebecca Traistor, author of Big Girls Don't Cry, writes that  “Rachel Hills has written a bracing and brave interrogation of contemporary assumptions about sex—how and with whom and why we have it, and what it means if we don’t. Here is a fresh voice and a welcome perspective, cutting through attitudes that are supposed to be progressive and liberating, but can too often oppress and stifle us just as effectively as older taboos.”

In addition to our event, Rachel Hills will be in conversation with a representative from NARAL Wisconson at People's Books on Friday, August 28, 6 pm. People's Books is located at 804 E. Center St.

Thursday, August 27, 7 pm, at Boswell
James Schnepf, author of Palm Springs Modern Living.
This event is cosponsored by the Friends of the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum.

James Schnepf is a location photographer with an emphasis on people. He has photographed for a long list of America’s leading corporations and publications, and these assignments have taken him to all parts of the world. He's based in Cedarburg, Wisconsin and California's Coachella Valley.

In his new book, Palm Springs Modern Living, Schnepf offers captivating photos and stories, that showcases the unparalleled collection of Midcentury Modern architecture found in the iconic resort city of Palm Springs, California.

More than fifty modernists, artists, builders, and architects were interviewed, including such luminaries as Donald Wexler, William Krisel, and Hugh Kaptur, and their stories and anecdotes provide a perfect complement to Schnepf’s vivid photography. Together, they manage to bring Palm Springs to life in a way that most volumes of architectural photos could never hope to achieve.

Next week:
Tuesday, September 1, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Jennifer Posh, author of 100 Things to Do in Milwaukee Before You Die.

Blogger, freelancer, lead copywriter at VISIT Milwaukee, and local author, Jennifer Posh, is coming to Boswell for an exciting evening talk and signing of her latest, 100 Things to Do in Milwaukee Before You Die, an insider’s perspective on everything about the city’s most famous attractions, from brewery tours to lively lakefront festivals—there’s something for everyone to enjoy!

Brew City, Cream City, the City of Festivals...whatever name you know it by, Milwaukee is a vibrant city where warm Midwestern charm meets a hearty industrial spirit. Posh gives you the insider’s perspective on everything from the city’s most famous attractions to favorite hangouts that only the locals know about. From iconic local fun like brewery tours to a rapidly expanding fine dining scene locavores will love, and from family-friendly museums and lively lakefront festivals to the world’s most secret bar and fabulous fine arts, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. So bring your family, your friends, or just yourself to enjoy this city on the lake.

The Boswell Annotated Bestsellers for the Week Ending August 22, 2015.

It is indeed the summer of fiction. Based on my normal cutoffs, hardcover fiction is the strongest of the five bestseller areas this week.

Hardcover Fiction:
1 Music for Wartime, by Rebecca Makkai
2. The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George
3. Killing Pretty, by Richard Kadrey
4. Days of Awe, by Lauren Fox
5. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
6. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
7. The Making of Zombie Wars, by Aleksandar Hemon
8. Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain
9. Barbara the Slut and Other People, by Lauren Holmes
10. Bream Gives me Hiccups, by Jesse Eisenberg
11. Armada, by Ernie Cline
12. Kitchens of the Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal
13. The Fishbowl, by Bradley Somer
14. The Dust that Falls from Dreams, by Louis De Bernieres
15. The Cartel, by Don Winslow

While it's got a pub date of September 8, hence the lack of mainstream reviews, Bream Gives me Hiccups, the new collection from Jesse Eisenberg, rolled into our store this week, and unlike the larger distribution channels, there's no timeline on when we should put the books out. The title comes from a series of stories Eisenberg wrote for McSweeneys, about a nine-year-old restaurant reviewer that reminds me a bit of Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse or perhaps a more even-keeled Simon Rich. But this is just one part of the new collection. Expect to see some strong reviews, being that the author is a well-known actor with not one but two major film projects out. Publishers Weekly calls the stories "charming, deftly written, and laugh-out-loud funny."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
3. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
4. Brain Maker, by David Perlmutter
5. Let Me Tell You, by Shirley Jackson
6. The Road to Character, by David Brooks
7. How to Bake Pi, by Eugenia Cheng (Event at Boswell Sat Sep 19, 2 pm)
8. H is for Hawk, by Helen MacDonald
9. In Defense of a Liberal Education, by Fareed Zakaria
10. Milwaukee Then and Now, by Sandra Ackerman

This is how much fiction was on the list. When I saw that Shirley Jackson's previously uncollected works, Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings, was shelved in fiction but also included essays, I moved it to nonfiction for this week's besteller list. Don't worry Jason; I didn't change it in our inventory system. On the work of Jackson, who died at the age of 48, Paul Theroux writes in The New York Times: "Jackson remains one of the great practitioners of the literature of the darker impulses and (in a term she uses in Hill House) 'the underside of life.' The texture of her two major novels tends to lushness and formality, more verbal foliage, while her stories are plain-spoken and persuasive for their apparent ­directness."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Martian, by Andy Weir
2. Perfidia, by James Ellroy
3. The Coincidence of Coconut Cake, by Amy E. Reichert (event Tue Oct 6, 6:30, at East Library)
4. Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler
5. The Stone Mattress, by Margaret Atwood
6. Crooked River, by Valerie Geary
7. Euphoria, by Lily King
8. The Boston Girl, by Anita Diamant
9. Boy Snow Bird, by Helen Oyeyemi (in-store lit group Mon Oct 5, 7 pm)
10. Talk, by Linda Rosenkrantz

It is nice to see that a staff rec can really make a difference. Without any local connection or an author visit, our sales of Valerie Geary's Crooked River ties for sales at indie bookstores on the Above the Treeline inventory program. Boswellian Conrad Silverberg writes "Every few years, some pompous windbag comes along and informs us that the novel is dead; that there are no new things to say and no new ways to say them. They fail to remember that novels are simply storytelling. They fail to remember that the true test of the novel's worth is not the originality of its form or the uniqueness of its expression, but the strength, beauty and compelling attraction of its tale. Crooked River delivers. Valerie Geary is the real deal." The story is of two young girls in rural Oregon who find a dead body in a nearby river.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Our Final Melody, by Marian L. Freund
2. Equal Before the Law, by Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen
3. The Secret Lives of the Supreme Court, by Robert Schrakenberg
4. The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
5. The Enchanted Forest, by Johanna Basford
6. One Man's Wilderness, by Sam Keith
7. The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon
8. Teacher Wars, by Dana Goldstein
9. North Point Historic Districts, by Shirley du Fresne McArthur
10. The War That Ended Peace, by Margaret Macmillan

Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession is out in paperback and being that this is a hot-button topic for a lot of our customers, we had a nice sales pop. Claudia Wallis noted in The New York Times Book Review: "Dana Goldstein traces the numerous trends that have shaped “the most controversial profession in America.” Along the way, she demonstrates that almost every idea for reforming education over the past 25 years has been tried before — and failed to make a meaningful difference."

Books for Kids:
1. The Day the Crayons Came Home, by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers
2. What Pet Should I Get, by Dr. Seuss
3. Go to School, Little Monster, by Hellen Ketterman, with illustrations by Bonnie Leick
4. The Nutshell Library, by Maurice Sendak
5. Appleblossom the Possum, by Holly Goldberg Sloan
6. Auggie and Me: Three Wonder Stories, by R.J. Palacio
7. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews
8. The Last Ever After: Volume 3 of the School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani
9. Bumble Ardy, by Maurice Sendak
10. Imaginary, by A.F. Harrold

The sequel to The Day the Crayons Quit has just come back and most agree that it is a worthy follow up. Boswellian Jen Steele writes: "One day Duncan receives a stack of postcards. It seems Duncan has neglected some of his crayons and they've sent him postcards from all kinds of surprising places. These forgotten crayons have wound up under a couch, left by a swimming pool, down in the basement or in the clutches of Duncan's younger brother. Read The Day the Crayons Came Home to find out if Maroon Crayon, Neon Red Crayon, Esteban and the rest of the pack ever get rescued. Another awesome book from Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers!"

So what's on the docket for next week's bestsellers? Perhaps the Journal Sentinel book section will have some influence. Jim Higgins reviews new books from John Scalzi and Ian Rankin. The End of All Things, Higgins writes: "Scalzi extends his Old Man's War series with a compulsively readable four-part novel that ought to appeal to fans of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and other space operas.

For Ian Rankin's The Beat Goes on: The Complete Rebus Stories, Higgins writes "Rankin has fun with Detective Inspector John Rebus of Edinburgh, one of the great literary crime solvers of our time. The brooding Rebus of the dark novels never completely disappears — the character study 'Sunday' shows us the veteran detective wrestling with his conscience over killing a cornered drug dealer. But Rankin exposes other facets of this music-loving, pint-imbibing crazy diamond. One criminal is undone by Rebus' recognition of a Hockney print on the wall. In The Dean Curse, the DI scoffs at Dashiell Hammett's novel The Dain Curse, but soon finds himself in a confusing tangle of his own. In 'Trip Trap,' Rebus uses an incorrect crossword puzzle answer to prove a nasty old fellow was pushed down the stairs."

Mike Fischer reviews The Automobile Club of Egypt. He writes "Automobile Club unfolds in the post-World War II years preceding another upheaval: the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that overthrew King Farouk and ended Britain's occupation. The Club of Al Aswany's title — part DMV and part exclusive preserve for the foreigners owning most of the country's cars — embodies everything that made Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution necessary." He's not crazy about the characterizations, but notes that "what's ultimately most interesting about the 1940s Egypt presented in this novel is its insights regarding Egypt today"

On the retirement of Sonia Monzano, who played Maria on Sesame Street for 44 years, Erin Kogler reviews Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. She writes that "Manzano's book is a sincere, thought-provoking coming-of-age story about a girl growing up in turbulent times and in a home filled with chaos, violence, poverty, but also love."

Cooking is to Math as Math is to Logic as Logic is to Rules, as Everything is to Reading: A Blog Post About The Mathematical and Storytelling Skills of Eugenia Cheng, Her Visit on September 19, and The Particular Delight of Novels About Math.

I am glad to say that after a several year hiatus, I am back on track of reading at least one math book per year. Last year got me back in the groove with Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. It was both enlightening and mind stretching, using aspects of everyday life to illuminate real problems. It was, as I called it, the Freakonomics of math.

So this year, I was reviewing lists of books and noticed that How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics had several things going for it. The book had an intriguing quote from Ellenberg himself: "Eugenia Cheng's charming new book embeds math in a casing of wry, homespun metaphors: math is like vegan brownies, math is like a subway map, math is like a messy desk. Cheng is at home with math the way you're at home with brownies, maths, and desks, and by the end of How to Bake Pi, you might be too."

The book even used the same color cover of How Not to Be Wrong, but I should note that when Ellenberg went into paperback, they Malcolm Gladwelled the cover, making it the stark white of that distinctive genre which I can't exactly describe but you know it when you see it. Maybe it's because that aqua blue is now being associated with comic literary novels such as Where'd You Go, Bernadette? and The Vacationers. But as you can see at right, it's also easier to read online, especially in reduced size, with the high contrast and larger subtitle.

How to Bake Pi really uses recipes as a jumping off point into general mathematical theory, and then later on, into Cheng's special interest of category theory, which is often known as the mathematics of mathematics. I love the way Cheng's mind works with these recipes, looking for how to substitute, how to generalize, and the way she takes apart recipes to see exactly why they work. I love the idea of comparing external thinking to internal thinking by comparing shopping to make a particular meal and finding interesting ingredients and then figuring out what to do with them.

I'm going to be completely frank here; lay people will sometimes get slightly lost, but Cheng's teaching method will quickly get you back on track. She has an uncanny way of explaining difficult concepts (a testament to her teaching skills, I would think) and brings in lots of anecdotes, not just from the recipes, but from her daily life in London and Chicago, the two places she's made home. Online shopping, tube station routes and prices, running marathons--they all become part of the math class, much the way my Swedish number theory teacher used to like to talk about soccer. (Cheng photo credit Round Turner Photography)

I think that both lay and professional mathematicians will love this book, with a special plug for math teachers at the high school and college level. This is the kind of book that says, "I will make you less afraid of math" and then does a good job at following through on that promise.

So we were trying to come up with a way to promote the How to Bake Pi event, being that Cheng had agreed to come up Boswell in Milwaukee to speak on Saturday, September 19, 2 pm, and I thought we should do some sort of interesting display. If you've heard me long-windedly discuss book display theory, my pet peeve is displays where we simply pull books out of a section that you could have found yourself if you browsed the section. You've got to bring together books that the browser wouldn't normally find.

Since Cheng did such a good job at telling stories, I thought, why not feature math fiction? I knew that we could come up with several titles without even doing research. Stuart Rojstaczer's The Mathematician's Shiva, which I also read last year, is more interested in mathematicians than math, but it's a fine book, having won Best First Novel from the National Jewish Book Awards.

And then there was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, which has seen a recent increase in sales because of its new status as a hit Broadway show. Not all mathematicians love the book, but just the chapter headings alone made the book memorable for me. This led to me noticing that there are two levels of math books, one with mathematicians sort of as general academics, and a higher level of novel that actually uses math in the story.

Todd immediately thought of John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, the story of a two guys who take a road trip when one, a former prodigy, has had enough of being dumped and tries to come up with a mathematical theory of love. Did I describe that right?

Jim Higgins at the Journal Sentinel reminded me of The Housekeeper and the Professor, the novel of the mathematician who has lost his short-term memory after an accident, who starts tutoring a young boy he nicknames Root. It was one of our first sleeper hits at Boswell after we opened in 2009.

Of course my first mathematical fiction love was Flatland, the classic novel by Edward Abbott. Let me just say, when I was in junior high, it pretty much blew my mind. At the time, I had no idea it was a parody of Victorian society. See how math and real life intersect? There's also a sequel called Sphereland, which I'm not sure I read.

I almost included Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, but I wasn't sure if Digitopolis played enough of a role in the story. But I was wrong. According to Wikipedia, the British edition has a recipe for subtraction stew! I mean what could be more appropriate for the blog. And another Norton Juster book absolutely made the list, The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. It's the story of a line that has a thing for a dot, who in turn is charmed by a squiggle.

Another book I enjoyed reading was The Solitude of Prime Numbers. The author, Paolo Giordano, was a scientist, but the mathematical premise is that the characters, like prime numbers, never quite come together. They is always something between them, much like 11 and 13.

Here are some more books with mathematicians as the heroes:

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. No surprise that Stephenson would be dabbling in mathematical theory.

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Yes, one of the protagonists is a math student. See, you're not afraid of math after all.

Contact, by Carl Sagan. Sagan's most popular novel, which we shelve in science fiction, is about the quest for alien life, and features a mathematician, though of course an astronomer is truly the star of the story.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. The late author even wrote a math book, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. You know the story, about a movie so entertaining you can't do anything else, and how it affects a halfway house and a tennis academy. But did you know there's an extended mathematical proof in the story. I actually have read only one David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System, which of course was I think was an advance reader, and I had no idea who this fellow was. I just remember liking that it was set in Cleveland. I think I should start each year with a great task like reading Infinite Jest, but my plan to read Middlemarch fell flat, so these pronouncements can't be trusted. (Thanks early reader for catching the misplaced article!)

The list continued--Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd, The Eight, by Katherine Neville, several novels by Thomas Pynchon but most notably Gravity's Rainbow, but then when I was chatting to someone in the know (Professor Ellenberg, it turned out, whose own novel, The Grasshopper King, is not about a mathematician but a poet), he clued me into this exhaustive list of math novels. Visitors rate their books both on their quality and their mathiness. Compiled by Alex Kasten at the College of Charleston, the list is obsessive and exhaustive and cannot be improved upon. OK, it can be improved in one way--his link to purchase button.

Speaking of which, we have a copy in stock of every book I have linked to, at least at the time of posting. If we're out of stock, we should have one back in shortly. If you follow the link in 2022, I cannot guarantee anything.

So there you are, a recipe for numerical and nutritional happiness. Consider making olive oil plum cake, baked Alaska, or raw chocolate cookies, and think about the mathematical concepts behind the recipe. Read a good math novel. And then come hear Eugenia Cheng discuss How to Bake Pi on Saturday, September 19, 2 pm at Boswell.

Back to School with the Little Monster, or Your Bear, or Your Penguin, or Your Dad...A Picture Book Roundup.

While we're always trying to come up with interesting display tables, like "eighty-something is the new thirty-something" that was just highlighted (and thanks for all the additional suggestions, by the way!), there are certain displays that pretty much obligatory. You'll be hard pressed to find a bookstore without tables Mother's and Father's Day, Valentine's, and Halloween, for example, and if you have separate displays for kids' books, add to that the back to school season.

There are so many books published into this subgenre, but much like holiday books, they have a short window of about two months of sale, unless the book is so great that it transcends the genre. But while there's plenty of new books that come out each year, if a book has a strong sale, we bring it back the next year. So for example, last year we hosted Deborah Diesen and Dan Hanna for The Pout-Pout Fish Goes to School, and it's back this year. The story, a follow up to The Pout-Pout Fish, has a very nice read-aloud chant that becomes almost a chorus in Pout-Pout Fish's story song about the first day of school.

Rebecca Ashdown's Bob and Flo is not just the first book about these adorable penguins, but the author/illustrator's debut as well. In this story, Flo goes to school with her new bow and a bucket of fish for lunch. She meets Bob, who likes her bucket. I mean, he really likes her bucket! And the first day is filled with different uses for the bucket, until Bob gets stuck and Flo has to save the day. And guess what she uses?

I asked our kids' buyer Amie what books I should include and she told me she's a fan of Dad's First Day, by Mike Wohnoutka. The story about a dad's worries when his son Oliver goes off the school for the first day. He procrastinates, hides, and has a panic attack. The teacher gently removes him from the class, but he can't stop thinking about whether Oliver is ready for school. He goes back to spy on him and realizes Oliver's ready, so he's ready too. It's sweet, and I think the author/illustrator did a particularly nice job with Dad's receding hairline. I wanted to go to his barber (seriously, the guy who cut my hair just moved to Portland, Oregon.)

Boswellian Phoebe is also a fan. She writes: "I especially like when the teacher carries the dad out crying when it's time for him to separate from Oliver because it's a scene that plays out the opposite way so often with the teacher holding the student while the parent leaves. Children and parents alike will enjoy this adorable story with cute illustrations and a great ending!"

Another thing I've noticed is that many back-to-school books cross genres with another kids' favorite, the alphabet book and the counting book. I'm right in the middle of Eugenia Cheng's How to Bake Pi, where she notes that knowing how to recite the numbers as a child often has nothing to do with knowing how to count; to a kid, it's just another poem they've memorized (yes, I'm doing that third person plural thing again) and similarly, knowing the alphabet doesn't mean you can read or spell, but nevertheless it feels like an accomplishment and is generally followed by reading and spelling, so why mess with a good thing. I love the Cheng book, and I think math teachers would find it particularly interesting.

ABC, School's For Me, is a book by Susan B. Katz with illustrations by Lynn Munsinger. The school day plays out for little bears, with each activity beginning with a different letter. I'm always interested in Q, X, and Z, and those little bears outsmart the alphabet by playing Duck, Duck, Goose (quack!) and their xylophones at music time. There's a little rhymin' action going on as well. Katz won a Moonbeam Gold Award for Best Picture Book of 2012 while Munsinger has illustrated books by Helen Lester and Laura Numeroff.

Another book that Amie suggested was Elise Parsley's If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don't!, by Elise Parlsey. Yes, little Magnolia thought that bringing an alligator to show and tell was a good thing, but really, it isn't. Alligators cause a lot of trouble and it's not just about eating other little kids; it's about throwing paper airplanes and playing with gum, and eating not just their own lunch but yours too. No, it's a lot of trouble. And since Wisconsin is one of those states that has loose laws on exotic pets (we learned this when a lion was said to be loose on the northwest side of the city), it could happen!

I am trying to decide if Amie particularly likes this book because she could imagine her daughter bringing an alligator to school. I can think of a number of young visitors to Boswell who would find the idea delightful, so this book is a very good warning to them.

And of course there's Helen Lester's Go to School, Little Monster, with illustrations by Bonnie Leick. In it, Little Monster meets his teacher Mr. Drool, and finds a friend in Fang, his neighbor. At recess they ride dragons and for lunch, they eat worms and octopus arms and bat wings. It really all goes quite well, with Lester's rhymes and Leick's creepily cute illustrations. L.M is at top left on the blog. Our thanks to Bonnie Leick for letting us use this image.

Oh, and it wouldn't be a back-to-school season without some gear. We've got a nice selection of backpacks, lunch bags, bento boxes, and water bottles from Sugarbooger.

Celebrate back to school with us. Bonnie Leick, a Milwaukee-based artist, will be at Boswell on Saturday, August 22, at 2 pm. We'll have a story time, a little monster coloring, and then you can get your Go to School, Little Monster book signed. Best of all, Leick will draw a picture in your book as well. That's the bonus of hosting artists!