What did the book club think of Zadie Smith's "Swing Time"?

This month the In-Store Lit Group discussed Zadie Smith's Swing Time. I've been eyeing the hardcover sitting on my shelf at home and it started entering the "use it or lose it" zone. I don't know why, but I have a track record of reading every other Zadie Smith novel (White Teeth and On Beauty but not The Autograph Man and NW).

Two girls grow up in the same neighborhood. Both are biracial. Both enroll in dance class. As the publisher says, one has talent, the other has ideas. Tracey focuses on her art, but Narrator (which is what I call the people in unnamed first-person novels) is driven to bigger things by her mom, who may be an immigrant from the Carribean, but has an intuitive idea about how to appear palatable to the upper classes, while at the same time shunning striving altogether.

But N (that's short for Narrator) doesn't follow the great path of a social justice warrior. She gets a job at YTV (substitute M) and then as one of four personal assistants for Aimee, a wunderkind entertainment phenomenon. She sings, she dances, she acts! She understands people. And boy, does she appropriate. 

So Aimee has this plan to open this school for girls in Africa (Gambia). But does that mean working with a government that isn't always top notch in human rights? And what does that do to the boys who are not given the chance? When I read fiction, I kind of like books that ask questions rather than answer them, and boy does Swing Time have that in spades (a phrase which, as you know, comes from Bridge, as spades are the highest suit). 

I've said in the past that every writer has a series of plotlines they have to check off. Have I written my affair book? My historical novel? And one novel that seems to be particularly important for women writers (less so men, but Shotgun Lovesongs comes to mind) is the friendship novel. I always think of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye as the ultimate friendship novel, but I've read many others.

The question that G. asked in the group was, were these women even friends? Were they frenemies? Would they grow closer after the book ended or was that ending scene really the end. As one person in the group noted, the end of Swing Time might be the beginning of Swing Time.

L. liked the book and like many of us, was taken with a recurring theme in the stories we discuss, the passing of information, culture, and psychology from parent to child. The mother-daughter dynamic reminded her of another book we recently read, Nicole Dennis-Benn's Here Comes the Sun. Each mother was, in her own way, imposing expectations on their children.

Jamaica also connects the novels of Zadie Smith and Nicole Dennis-Benn. In fact, I was reading this book at the Walker's Point Anodyne and one of the baristas started talking to me about Swing Time and I wanted to tell him to read Here Comes the Sun but I got cold feet. But I might go back and suggest it. M. was reminded of another book about Africa, The Poisonwood Bible. Absolutely!

In the end, the group was split, like a beat up bell curve (with the higher peak among the likers). I think the biggest complaint was that it dragged a bit (a variation of it was too long). In this way, it reminded me of The Sympathizers in that the part that could possibly be excised (the filming of the Apocalypse Now equivalent movie) was so good that how could you leave it out?

In the same way, some of the best bits of Swing Time are the historical asides, when Narrator looks at old films, revisiting racism, blackface, and the super talented singers and dancers of color who are now forgotten. A number of us turned to the internet to view clips referenced in the book. How could you not want to know more about Jeni LeGon? Here she is for the number Swing Is Here to Stay (from the film Ali Baba Goes to Town) which is analyzed in the novel. 

Folks who love Smith's critical asides are in for a treat, by the way, because her new nonfiction collection, Feel Free release February 6, 2018.

As I've said before, much of my reading is contextual. The books I read influence the future books I read, at least until I forget about the prior books. So I was influenced, in the reading of Swing Time, by two previous novels I'd read, Nicole Krauss's Forest Dark and Andrew Sean Greer's Less.

All three books fall loosely into the category of autofiction. Krauss used a character named Nicole. Greer used a character name Arthur, and to me, that's close enough, being that so many customers call me David. And Smith, she used a nameless narrator. But there are clues. While Smith was not a dancer, she did sing. And the area she grew up matches. And I think the time periods match. As many authors say to us, we are all of our fictional creations and we are none of them.

But there's another clue that there's a component to this book that makes the character a Zadie Smith in another multiverse (thank goodness for comics, so there's a shorthand for this sort of thing). Remember when Narrator needs a place to stay in New York and winds up with Darryl and Richard, two writers "in their late fifties, a couple, one white and one black"?

Anyone who closely reads the acknowledgements (like I always, always do) can figure out these are a real couple who are Zadie Smith's friends. They are not historical people being used like Abe in Lincoln in the Bardo. That's a little Easter egg that Smith is playing with us. It's her and of course it's completely not her. 

If I had any caveat, really, it was while Smith could speak critically about dance, I don't think her writing quite captured the emotional experience of dancing. I love when books about art and music and theater do that. I'm not saying it's an easy thing - the closest it got I think was the last scene. But I'm just going to say that when I read Lonesome Lies Before Us, I was completely there with Yadin Park in his creative space.

We wound up having an excellent conversation about Swing Time.   And now what's up next for the In-Store Lit Group?

Tuesday (note the day), January 2, 7 pm:

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Never Let Me Go

Monday, February 5,  pm:

Chloe Benjamin, author of The Anatomy of Dreams

Benjamin's fabulous second novel, The Immortalists, releases January 9!

1 + 1 = 3: Reading Nicole Krauss" "Forest Dark" and Andrew Sean Greer's "Less."

I don't know what part of my brain obsesses over counting things, but I've long liked to know "how many" there have been of things that people normally don't count. I spoke several years ago about The New York Times Book Review bestseller game that I used to play with my colleague Nancy that tested our reading. You'd get 4 points for a front page review (though the review had to start on the front page, not just be mentioned), 3 points for a full review inside the pages, 2 points for an in short description or full page ad, and 1 point for any other ad or a bestseller appearance. I'd bring it into the 21st century by limiting the number of bestseller points to one per book (as a book can show up on the physical and ebook list), allow 3 points for a profile that's not a review but focused on that book, and a point of a book was mentioned in an essay that didn't happen to be about that particular book. 

I don't know how you play this if you read the Book Review online, because everything is not discretely arranged with boundaries. Features may pop up different days, and I think some are online only, making it difficult to determine exactly where a review belongs. Another advantage for print, albeit one that's relatively meaningless.

Another game I have started playing over the past few years is to count how many books in the 100 NYT notable list I have read. Since I started playing, my numbers have gone downhill. But this can be a good opportunity to step back and fill in a few gaps. Several of these notable books wind up being read the following year, either for book club selections or if the author visits in paperback. My goal, completely arbitrary, is to get to double digits. But it's harder than you think, because many of the nonfiction categories are not of interest to me, whereas other nonfiction categories in which I do read don't seem to qualify, and instead get ticked off in essays. It's almost as if the Times is not just saying what books are best, but first decide that writing about certain subjects is intrinsically better than writing about others. Imagine that!

The nice thing is that this year, I did much better in nonfiction than I normally do, partly because I was following my what-to-read-after-Eviction path. And that led me to prioritize a few books like Nomadland that I might not have gotten too. And with that nonfiction boost, I got to nine books. Well when you get to nine and you see double digits in the distance, there's a little extra adrenalin boost that comes out. That led me to read two more books that had been on my bookshelf since their release (actually since the advance reading copies were distributed) in succession. And that led me to my next game, which is.

Why does it always seem like when you read two books in succession, more often than not, you start seeing parallels that nobody else seems to notice? First I read Forest Dark, the fourth novel from Nicole Krauss. And then I thought, how can I not read Andrew Sean Greer's Less, with it showing up on the top ten of the Washington Post? That one I got 50 pages into as a galley, after Lee Boudreaux (really!) pitched me at a Hachette bookseller meeting. And I don't know what happened, but I said, "Not right now" and moved on to something else. Perhaps it was an upcoming event that had a reading deadline. I didn't have a deadline.

1. First and only visit to Boswell for their previous book. This would not mean anything to anyone else, but both Nicole Krauss and Andrew Sean Greer came to Boswell for their previous novels, Great House and The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. In both cases, I also read their previous-to-that novels, The History of Love and The Story of a Marriage, as did Nancy, our marketing director at Schwartz, who did a particularly good job jump-starting bookstore-wide handselling for A History of Love. I have noticed that competition for literary authors has gotten tougher since Boswell has opened. There are a lot of book festivals out there right now. Wisconsin alone has at least a half dozen. 

2. Quest. Nicole Krauss's novel, Forest Dark, runs, like The History of Love, on two tracks. Up first is Jules Epstein, a sixty something lawyer and philanthropist, divorced and restless. He is convinced by (no, he's skeptical but goes along with) a rabbi who is gathering a reunion of descendants of David. He heads to Tel Aviv and this leads him to another unusual opportunity. At the same time, there is Nicole, a woman struggling with an impending divorce who, on a trip to the Tel Aviv Hilton, is confronted by a gentleman who claims that Kafka didn't die young, he emigrated to Palestine, and Nicole has to tell his story.*

As for Andrew Sean Greer's Less, the story is of Arthur Less, who, upon being abandoned by his younger lover Freddy for another man, decides to skip their wedding, and book an around the world tour, paid for by speaking engagements, award ceremonies, and teaching gigs, plus one vacation camel ride in the desert. As he deals with major (his publisher passed on his most recent book) and minor (he's supposed to appear in costume to talk to a science fiction writer and he doesn't have a costume) setbacks, he has to figure out what to do with his life. And maybe he can rework that book so that somebody wants to buy it. 

So on the surface, you can see that both Forest Dark and Less are both crazy quest novels.

3. Humor. Less is clearly a comedy and reviews have painted the book as one of the funniest books of the season. I felt that in many cases, Greer's novel was being pitted against Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher, as they were both comic novels that came out in the summer.  I thought they were running neck and neck, but Less made the top ten of The Washington Post, as well as The New York Times 100 notable, whereas Mrs. Fletcher did not. But Mrs. Fletcher seemingly also lost to Matthew Klam's Who Is Rich?, which I didn't even know was in the running (but I'm sure is great)*. And I can't even have this conversation without talking about Lonesome Lies Before Us, because Don Lee's book couldn't hit the 100 because The New York Times didn't review it, despite raves from The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune.  As I mentioned to Peter Edelman at an event this week, the review hole keeps shrinking. It's like we're in a science fiction movie.

Forest Dark doesn't wear its humor on its sleeve, but compared to the mournful Great House it certainly has its humorous moments. And then I thought about how crazy the plot twists were in the story. Krauss doesn't write for laughs, but there's a lot of zaniness here, despite the somber tone. I'm all about the funny-sad, so kudos to Krauss for that.

4. Autofiction (not my term). Krauss has a character named Nicole whose life mirrors the author's own. And one can definitely see this book as author (Nicole) in search of subject (Jules). Several critics noticed the parallels to Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am, which I wound up not reading. Both had couples in deteriorating marriages and both sent their characters to Israel for answers. Read a few reviews and you can see more parallels. I can't imagine they were discussing this with each other. But that's sort of like reading The History of Love and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close together. It's almost like they were companion novels with their overlapping themes, but to my knowledge, they weren't working together or even sharing material. 

So Andrew Sean Greer's book is not about a person named Andrew Sean Greer, but there's a precedent for substituting a person whose name begins with the same first letter. Could Andrew = Arthur? I wouldn't be having this meditation if the protagonist was named Xavier. Like Krauss's novel, Less is about a writer in search of a subject. In this case, he has a book, only it's not working. And while I don't know the details of Greer's own life, one should note that his last novel's protagonist was a woman (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells) and the one preceding that featuring a Black man (Story of a Marriage). And having met Mr. Greer, I would say that the ebullient humor that runs through Less is much more in the spirit of Mr. Greer.

5. Canon. Since identity is a crazy popular subject for fiction nowadays, the author protagonists of both novels struggle for where they fit in their respective literary canons. At one point, Arthur Less is scolded for being a bad gay (OK, now I'm convinced he's a stand-in for Andrew Sean Greer), and is told to basically write different books. He's even called out at an award ceremony because in his first book, the protagonist returns to his wife. "But it's The Odyssey" appears to have no sway on that particular critic. So what of Less? I just heard from two friends who finished the book, a former bookseller colleague and a college friend, and both were enthusiastic. It's like the golden age of gay fiction of the 80s is back, and now everyone can read it. But of course I wonder for Greer, where does that leave him for his next book? 

Krauss's Nicole, on the other hand, is beloved by Israelis, and I think that stands in for Jews in general. She's stopped by a woman in the supermarket who praises her for her work and to keep doing what she's doing. Oh good, only the fate of the Jewish people depend on your writing. It strikes me that being accepted or shunned by the National Board of Identity comes with its own special problems. And I think that this might be a reason why Great House and Forest Dark do not seem to command that same sort of emotional connection that The History of Love does. There's something very satisfying that the two tracks in History connect together, but I well understand that there's something soft in that as well. It's almost like the author vowed, after the reception she had for History, "No hearts will be warmed in the writing of my books!" 

In a way, it's sort of like a bookstore being slammed for not being academic enough, and also not doing a good enough job with genre. You can't be everything to everyone, but that doesn't stop people from complaining.

I am convinced that the Forest Dark and Less were more interesting to me by reading them together. I'm now reading Zadie Smith's Swing Time. I'm not sure how it ties into either of these books, but it probably does. 

*Yes, it's all a competition isn't it? But of course Boswell didn't make the semifinals for the latest best bookstore list

What did the In-Store Lit Group think of Elizabeth J. Church's "The Atomic Weight of Love"?

I was saying to Jane that when I do book club talks, so many folks ask for historical novels. I've done my best to get a few more on my radar, and this month's In-Store Lit Group selection kept that in mind.

Los Alamos looms large in our collective imaginations. It's where scientists developed the Atomic bomb, which might have ended World War II in the Pacific, but it was with devastating consequences that resonate today, as more countries have atomic weapons in their arsenal. This month our In-Store Lit Group discussed The Atomic Weight of Love, a novel about the women (and one in particular) behind the men at Los Alamos. The novel was a #1 Indie Next Pick in hardcover

Elizabeth J. Church's novel focuses on Meridian Wallace, a young woman from Greensberg, Pennsylvania*, whose mother, widowed young, works hard scrubbing toilets, so that Meri can attend the University of Chicago. She starts dating Jerry Bloom, a fellow student, and also turns the head of Alden Whetstone, a professor. Both are likely to present problems to Meri's education - Jerry will probably be called to the front (it is World War II, after all), while Alden has his secret project in New Mexico.

I'm not giving much away by revealing Meri's decision; most of the story does take place in New Mexico. It's a place where the husbands work and the wives, many of whom are stifled academics like Meri, garden and decorate and volunteer and attend book club. And most of all, they raise children. But Meri doesn't have children. And Alden becomes more absorbed in his work and less interested in Meri, except when it comes to serving his needs.

Meri, however, finds an outlet in observing crows, returning to her interest in ornithology. And there she finds a fellow observer, a younger academic who is something a free spirit. OK, I'll say it because it is the 1960s; he's a hippie.

The Atomic Weight of Love reminds me of a bit of the feminist self-actualization novels of the 1970s from Marilyn French and Marge Piercy, of women finding themselves after being stifled by the lack of choices. Like these classic novels, there's an awakening of consciousness as the years go by. But Meri has a little more trouble making a definitive choice than some previous heroines, which led to some heated discussion.

The novel's chapters are framed by bird observations, with "a parliament of owls" followed by a brief description. And birds play an important part in the book, so it is not surprising that the book was recommended to me by my friend Nancy at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. If you like birds, this book will have extra resonance for you.

Church is said to have been inspired by her own family for the story. Her father was a research chemist in Los Alamos. And she wondered what options there could have been for the women who settled in town with their husbands.

Reading and discussing Elizabeth Church's novel led to several surprises. Reaction to the story was varied, but it was harder to predict than I expected who would take to the book. Several of the male attendees were big fans, which I did not expect from a novel where the villain (if you think there is one) was Alden. But it's possible that I read the story with certain expectations - a number of the readers had more sympathy for Alden than I expected.

Being that we had several women in the group who had made similar decisions as Meri (as well as one nuclear chemist), the conversation turned out to be quite lively. Oh, the parenting issue alone! It just goes to show that some of the best conversations arise when there's a difference of opinion about a book.

Church has moved from Algonquin to Random House for her next book, All the Beautiful Girls, which releases March 6, 2018. It's about a woman who also transforms her identity, but instead of going from academic to housewife, she becomes a Las Vegas dancer.

More links here so you can do a little less key word searching:
--New York Times review
--Santa Fe New Mexican review
--Minneapolis Star Tribune review
--Book Browse interview
--American Booksellers Association interview

And now for a few answers to questions that historical fiction fans are sure to ask. Did Church do research for this book? Yes. Is Meridian based on a specific person? Not to my knowledge.

Here are our next three In-Store Lit Group discussions.

On Monday, December 4, 7 pm, we're reading Zadie Smith's Swing Time, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

On Tuesday, January 2, 7 pm (Boswell closes at 5 pm on New Year's Day), we're reading newly minted Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

On Monday, February 5, 7 pm, we're reading Chloe Benjamin's The Anatomy of Dreams, a novel with speculative thriller elements about lucid dreaming, which won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. We're so excited about Benjamin's second novel, The Immortalists, which publishes January 9, 2018 and Benjamin visits Boswell on January 18, 7 pm. That's a lot of dates, so pay attention.

*Digression alert: years ago I read a nonfiction book partly set in Greensberg, Pennsylvania called The Malling of America. It's out of print but I  found the Kirkus Review. I am fascinated that the author reissued it 17 years after its original publication through Xlibris.

Our second foam core poster auction-sale to raise money for disaster relief in Puerto Rico

We're doing another poster auction this weekend, from today (Small Business Saturday) through Tuesday (which is Giving Tuesday). Publishers periodically provide us with these blow-up book jackets and advertisements to promote new releases and upcoming events, and though we use many of them to decorate Boswell, we just can't showcase them all.

We get numerous requests from customers about their availability so in September, we decided to raise money for a charity to benefit Hurricane Harvey rebuilding by auctioning them off. It was successful enough that we're doing it again, this time raising money for Unidos, the fund from the Hispanic Federation offering help to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Here's how it works. If you decide you're interested in a poster, we'll place a bid for you for whatever amount you want. There's no minimum. After Tuesday, the high bidder will be contacted. You'll have up to a week to pick up the poster. After that, we'll contact the second highest bidder. Because you're making a purchase from us, there is tax on your purchase so factor that into the equation. And then we'll donate the entire amount (except for the tax, which we give to the government) to Unidos.

We wound up donating over $700 to the Greater Houston Foundation. This time we've offered up 77 foam core posters and three cardboard standees for purchase. Several of them are signed. Several of the authors already have posters displayed that we're already keeping. Here's the complete list:

1. A Family Affair, by ReShonda Tate Billingsley
2. A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler
3. Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes
4. Blueberry Muffin Murder, by Joanne Fluke (signed)
5. Brave Enough, by Cheryl Strayed
6. Building Stories, by Chris Ware
7. Celebrate, by Lauren Conrad
8. Children Playing Before a Statue, by David Sedaris (signed)
9. Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff
10. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, by Haruki Murakami
11. Countdown, by Alan Weisman
12. Crenshaw, by Katherine Applegate
13. Dog Man, by Dav Pilkey (stand)
14. Dragons Love Tacos 2, by Adam Rubin
15. Fallout, by Sara Paretsky
16. Family Furnishings, by Alice Munro
17. Gumption, by Nick Offerman
18. Hellhound on His Trail, by Hampton Sides
19. Here We Are, by Kelly Jensen (edited)
20. Heroes and Heretics, by Thomas Cahill
21. Hold Me, by Sally Mann
22. House of Unexpected Sisters, by Alexander McCall Smith (dupe)
23. How to Set a Fire and Why, by Jesse Ball
24. Hungry Heart, by Jennifer Weiner
25. I Regret Nothing, by Jen Lancaster
26. I Wear the Black Hat, by Chuck Klosterman
27. Inferno , by Dan Brown
28. Just Fly Away, by Andrew McCarthy
29. Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren
30. Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, by Emma Straub
31. Let Me Be Frank with You, by Richard Ford
32. Let's Pretend this Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson
33. Love Dishonor Marry, by David Rakoff
34. Mighty Jack, by Ben Hatke
35. Missoula, by Jon Krakauer
36. Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule, by Jennifer Chiaverini
37. On the Move, by Oliver Sacks
38. One Summer, by Bill Bryson
39. Prudence, by David Treuer
40. Raising Cubby, by John Elder Robison
41. Secrets of Eden, by Chris Bohjalian
42. Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson
43. Testimony, by Scott Turow
44. The 3D Body Revolution, by Donald Driver
45. The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell
46. The Circle, by Dave Eggers
47. The Double, by George Pelecanos
48. The Drifter, by Nick Petrie
49. The Dust that Falls from Dream, by Louis de Bernieres
50. The Future of the Mind, by Michio Kaku
51. The Girl in the Spider's Web, by David Lagercrantz
52. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
53. The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica
54. The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood
55. The Inferno, by Javier Marias
56. The King Is Always Above the People, by Daniel Alarcón
57. The Lake Shore Limited, by Sue Miller
58. The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan
59. The Marvels, by Brian Selznick
60. The Muralist, by B.A. Shapiro
61. The Nix, by Nathan Hill
62. The Perfect Stranger, by Megan Miranda
63. The Romanovs, by Simon Sebag Montefiore
64. The Serpent of Venice, by Christopher Moore
65. The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo
66. The Soul Thief, by Charles Baxter
67. The Spellmans Strike Again, by Lisa Lutz
68. The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami
69. The Summer's End, by Mary Alice Monroe
70. The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin/Beth Ann Fennelly
71. The Valley of Amazement, by Amy Tan
72. The Yard, by Alex Grecian
73. Tigerman, by Nick Harkaway
74. To Dwell in Darkness, by Deborah Crombie
75. Trash, by Dorothy Allison (signed)
76. Two if By Sea, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
77. Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell
78. Villa Incognito, by Tom Robbins (signed)
79. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander
80. You Are Here, by Chris Hadfield
81. You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem (signed)

No mailouts, alas. And of course, you can always donate directly without buying a poster. Here's a link to Unidos Disaster Relief and Recovery Program to Support Puerto Rico.

Thanksgiving means a lot of things to people, but to me, it's about friends and family, which is why I'm talking about "Cold Clay" and "The Story of Arthur Truluv."

I haven't done a Thanksgiving post in a number of years, and what's more, I haven't done a non-Sunday or Monday post in a couple of weeks. But the nice thing about Thanksgiving for me is it's a chance to slow down for a moment and wait, mostly because our house is too messy to host relatives. I swept a few rooms this morning and to me, that's a victory.

As I wait for us to leave to visit family in Illinois, I've finally had time to read for a bit. I just finished reading our bookseller Sharon's second mystery, written under the pen name Juneau Black along with former bookseller Jocelyn. Cold Clay returns to the village of Shady Hollow, where Vera Vixen, ace reporter (and fox), finds herself in the midst of another case when the bones of a missing resident turn up in a nearby orchard. Could it be that Julia Elkin (a moose), the wife of beloved coffee house proprietor Joe of Joe's Mug, never made it out of town when she left a decade ago? And will Vera ever get to work on the story, what with her boss D.W. (a skunk) pressuring her to focus her attentions on the new etiquette school in town, run by Octavia Grey (a very elegant mink)? Bookseller Lenore (a raven) helps out a bit as does police officer Orville (a bear), though that second relationship is more like half flirtation, half competition to solve the case. Second time is just as charming for this cozy series with a anthropomorphic twist and a good dose of humor. When Octavia asks if Vera is interested in dance class, I'm guessing you already know the only dance that our ace reporter claims proficiency in.

The Shady Hollow folk often find that friends can fill in well when family leaves you wanting. And that's one of the themes that runs through Elizabeth Berg's latest novel, The Story of Arthur Truluv. That's not really Arthur's last name - it's just the nickname that teenage Maddy gives him when they start meeting in the cemetery. Arthur is there for his daily visits to his recently deceased wife Nola. Maddy's struggling with her own loss, of her mom, and well, but she's also come to the cemetery to escape bullying in class. And her dad, well, he just doesn't understand (with thanks to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince for explaining this to me in detail some years ago). And she's got a thing for Anderson, an older guy who's been courting her.

Arthur is often pestered by his next door neighbor Lucille, who is a bit intrusive, but that annoying habit is offset by her delicious baking. And of course maybe she just needs company too. And then she finds love, in an old high school sweetheart who comes back into her life. But things happen. And of course, Arthur, Maddy, and Lucille are meant to be together. They are hardly perfect people (well, Arthur comes close) but they are good and kind people and they need each other. This story is one of those books I like about readymade family, but it's also about real family too.

The lessons of The Story of Arthur Truluv are more subtle than so many novels being touted this year. I'm so grateful for so many of these wonderful books, being lauded at prize time and sure to be in best-of-the-year roundups. But there's room in the world for this kind of book too, which with very few changes in details (mostly about the food), could be about characters of any numbers of races and ethnicities. Love and family are universal!

I haven't read enough of Elizabeth Berg's canon to know where this fits, but even before I read it, I thought that this might be her Ove (as in A Man Called Ove) book and having read it, I think that was fair. It's not French and there's less philosophy and design theory, but I was also reminded a bit of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. And there's no bookstore, but I was reminded of any number of beloved bookstore novels as well. If someone asks me for another book like The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and they want to move past the obvious (How to Find Love in a  Bookstore, which, needless to say, I still have to read), Arthur's a good candidate. We all know that there are only so many plots and if you ask me the "do the best we can and make the best of the time we have" might just be my favorite.

The thing that is also great about working with Elizabeth Berg is that she's not just a great writer, she's also an avid reader. We've got a great selection of Elizabeth Berg's recommended titles in the store, including Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl, and Kate Southwood's Evensong. You might remember that Southwood was in Milwaukee earlier this year for an event - we even work with Berg on events. We've hosted a number of great authors before or after her Writing Matters program in Oak Park. There's a workshop coming up in January.**

After a few very successful ticketed events with Ms. Berg (at the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library Literary Lunch and the Lynden Sculpture Garden Women's Speaker series), we're going with a free event this time, the closest we are coming to a holiday party. When I discussed the idea of having some refreshments, I turned immediately to my friends at Beans and Barley. I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the holiday cookies, and if you've ever had them, I'm sure you've been anxiously awaiting them as well.

We decided to pair up with Beans, who is cosponsoring this event, and we'll have an assortment of their cookies (and wanna bet you'll go back and buy another box or tray for your holiday party), as well as our very favorite dessert, the poppyseed cake, which comes in loaf or layer, but we serve as mini cupcakes. Honestly, I'm a chocolate person in general, but this cake it's killer butter cream frosting is out of this world. We serve it at our first fall sales rep presentation (sorry, that one's closed to the public) and I start getting inquiries from booksellers as soon as the date is announced: "Are we getting the poppyseed* cake?" and if I know what's good for me, we are.

I know you are probably thinking of the Thanksgiving feast you are about to eat, or just ate, or perhaps ate weeks ago. But also think about Friday, December 8, when we'll be hosting Elizabeth Berg at Boswell (the refreshments come from Beans but the event is at the bookstore) at 7 pm for The Story of Arthur Truluv. Yes, I'm trying to up the incentive with the treats, but I know that in the end, a wonderful evening with Berg is the main event; cookies and cake are, as we well know, the dessert.

*I fretted over whether poppyseed is one or two words. In the end, I bowed to the Beans and Barley catering menu. I'd hold onto this menu, because they do a fabulous job. And yes, Boswell is closed today but we're back to regular hours tomorrow. We'd extend them, but they already seem pretty long to me.

**After you read The Story of Arthur Truluv, your mouth will be watering. So it's no surprise that one of Berg's picks is a cookbook called Beat This, from Ann Hodgman. Lucille would approve.

Event alert: Steve Wallace of Omanhene, discussing Obroni and the Chocolate Factory, Tuesday, November 21, 7 pm, at Boswell

Tuesday, November 21, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Steven Wallace, author of Obroni and the Chocolate Factory: An Unlikely Story of Globalization and Ghana's First Gourmet Chocolate Bar, in conversation with Jody Hirsh, Judaic Education Director of the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, as part of the Tapestry arts series.

From WUWM's Lake Effect: "Just over a quarter-century ago, Milwaukee native Steve Wallace started Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company. It is not one of the huge players on the scene, nor is it a small boutique that makes truffles. Its greater significance is that it makes chocolate bars in the African nation of Ghana, where the cocoa beans are grown.

"The 26-year journey has not always been easy or straightforward, and in fact started with a journey Wallace took to Ghana as a high school exchange student. He chronicles that and the path that led to the creation of his chocolate company in a memoir, called Obroni and the Chocolate Factory: An Unlikely Story of Globalization and Ghana's First Gourmet Chocolate Bar." Listen to the whole interview here.

Here's my recommendation: "A high school trip to Ghana is the inspiration for a business venture years later. Instead of selling raw cocoa ingredients to foreign brokers, Ghana, through Wallace, could take advantage of the untapped market for single-origin, high-quality chocolate. With his knowledge of law (one previous career) and wholesale distribution (in tee shirts, an old family business), and a passion for the product, Wallace cobbles together a plan. Are there numerous setbacks along the way? One bad-tasting sample after another should answer that question. And in a country where 85% of jobs are through the government, do the Ghanaians even know what to make of this strange man and his dreams? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But despite these setbacks, Obroni and the Chocolate Factory is an inspiring story about bringing a new product to market through creativity, drive, and learning to collaborate in spite of cultural differences." (Daniel Goldin)

About the Author: Native Wisconsinite Steven Wallace is the founder and CEO of the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, the first company to sustain exports of premium chocolate manufactured entirely in Africa, and credited with producing the world's first single-origin chocolate bar in 1994.

And yes, we're now selling Omanhene chocolate bars at Boswell.

Murder and Mayhem this Saturday, plus a preview event with Stephen Mack Jones and Danny Gardner Friday at Boswell

This Saturday, November 4, is the annual Murder and Mayhem conference at the Irish Cultural Center near the Marquette University campus downtown.The program features panels, interviews, and signings with these authors: James R Benn, Lou Berney, Chelsea Cain (pictured), Susanna Calkins, Reed Farrel Coleman (also pictured), Lori Rader-Day, Danny Gardner, Shaun Harris, Rob Hart, Matthew Fitzsimmons, Linda Joffe Hull, Stephen Mack Jones, Dave Krugler, SW Lauden, Kristen Lepionka, Bill Loehfelm, Nick Petrie, Thomas Pluck, Bryon Quertermous, Nathan Singer, F. Paul Wilson, and Lili Wright.

Who's out at the last minute: though on the guest list, we just learned we will not be seeing Sean Chercover. And one never really knows until the day of the event. Last year, one of our attendees had a flight cancellation.

Who's in, as of the latest update: Blake Crouch, Jamie Freveletti, Marcus Sakey

Here's the schedule of panels and interviews. Each panel tends to have four to six participants.
9 am: Violence in a Violent World
10 am: Worst. Panel. Ever.
11 am: Nick Petrie’s Mother is in the Audience
1 pm: F Paul Wilson interviewed by Nathan Singer
2 pm: What’s It All About?
3 pm: Chelsea Cain interviewed by Ruth Jordan
4 pm: Wondrous Woman of Crime Fiction

Register here! Tickets are $42.95 (including the ticketing fee) for a full day of thrills.

And of course on Friday, November 3, we're hosting a Murder and Mayhem preview event with Stephen Mack Jones, author of August Snow and Danny Gardner, author of A Negro and an Ofay.

Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, an award-winning playwright, and a recipient of the prestigious Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. He was born in Lansing, Michigan, and currently lives in Farmington Hills, outside of Detroit. He worked in advertising and marketing communications for a number of years before turning to fiction.

In his debut, August Snow, the son of an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother grows up in the city's Mexicantown and joins the police force only to be forced out by corrupt officials and officers. It's not long before he's summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estate, home of business magnate Eleanor Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank, which he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide – dragging Snow into a rat’s nest of deception and danger.

Joining him will be debut author Danny Gardner. From his beginnings as a young stand-up comedian, Gardner has enjoyed careers as an actor, director, and screenwriter. He is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee for his creative non-fiction piece Forever. His first short fiction piece, Labor Day, appeared in Beat to a Pulp, and his flash fiction has been featured in Out of the Gutter and on Noir On The Air. Gardner is a proud member of the Mystery Writers of America and the International Thriller Writers.

The novel A Negro and an Ofay takes place in 1952. After a year on the run, disgraced Chicago Police Officer Elliot Caprice wakes up in a jailhouse in St. Louis. Friends from his hometown secure his release and he returns to find the family farm in foreclosure and the man who raised him dying in a flophouse. Desperate for money, he accepts a straight job as a process server and eventually crosses paths with a powerful family from Chicago's North Shore. A captain of industry is dead, the key to his estate disappeared with the chauffeur, and soon Elliot is in up to his neck. The mixed-race son of Illinois farm country must return to the Windy City with the Chicago Police on his heels and the Syndicate at his throat. Good thing he's had a lifetime of playing both sides against the middle.

It's been a good year for mysteries, especially in Milwaukee, the setting for Nick Petrie's debut novel, The Drifter, which has now been a finalist for six prizes, and is the winner of the International Thriller Writers Best Debut Novel. We'll have copies of The Drifter and Burning Bright at the show, and you'll probably hear a little about his next novel, Light It Up, which releases next January. I feel like this could be the one that breaks him big!


Hope to see you on Friday or Saturday.

What did the book club think of Population 485 - an excuse to write about Michael Perry and his new Montaigne in Barn Boots (on sale November 7)

I make decisions on what books we read for our In-Store Lit Group in all sorts of ways. Sometimes we have an event coming up with that author. Sometimes it's a book that I feel is missing from my literary vocabulary, and often that is because so many people have told me to read it. It could be spotted on the new paperback table or the awards case. And of course some books are suggested by our regulars. Our October selection was a combination of reasons, but a stray comment from an author/critic sealed the deal. 

I hadn't started reading Michael Perry until we opened Boswell. Before that, whatever advance reading copies we'd get would be enthusiastically scooped up by his fans on staff. And because we generally were hosting him at one of our stores, a spare extra would go to that store, in the hopes that we'd pick up another read or two from a bookseller who could then help sell the book and the event.

And once Boswell opened, one of those booksellers became me. Our first event with Perry was for Coop, which came out in 2009, only weeks after we opened. Perry appeared at Boswell as well as Next Chapter and Oconomowoc's Books & Company. Because Schwartz had never placed Perry at an "urban" store (I hate air quotes, but here they feel appropriate, because any New Yorker would look at Downer Avenue and laugh at the notion of urban. It looks more suburban than most towns half an hour outside city limits), we set up 35 chairs with the hopes that we'd have 50 attendees.

When we wound up with 165 people, we learned several things:
--People will drive pretty far to see Michael Perry
--We can add a lot of chairs very quickly
--Urban schmurban.

I have a rule. While I can't read every book for every event, if an author's event is successful and returns to Boswell, I will do everything I can to read their book as long as my reading it actually helps sell the event. In other words, if it's clear I'm not liking it, it's better off for me to stop and say I haven't read it.

So it was in 2012 that I read Visiting Tom. At that time, we still had an art wall and the acclaimed photographers J. Shimon and the late J. Lindemann, who had worked with Perry in the past, curated a selection of photographs to make a mini gallery space. I read Visiting Tom and fell in love with Perry's storytelling voice, love of language, and sense of humor.

Then I read The Jesus Cow and it became one of my favorite novels of the year. We had a particularly wonderful event that had Perry in conversation with fellow writer Dean Bakopoulos. And there've been other events too, like bringing Perry into schools for his kids book, The Scavenger, and selling books at several area libraries that hosted Perry.

As I grew to become a Perry-phile, something nagged at me. We hosted Jim Higgins for his spring book, Wisconsin Literary Luminaries and Perry was one of his chosen writers to feature. And Higgins noted that while Perry has created a great Wisconsin-packed body of work, Population 485 was still his book that stood above the others.

With Higgins words ringing through my ears, it was easy - the In-Store Lit Group would read Population 485. Like many, no, most of Perry's works, it's a memoir divided into a series of essays. In this case, Perry discusses his early work as an EMT and later as a volunteer fire fighter. Each chapter has a through line of one incident, jumping off in a hundred different ways to both complete the narrative and tickle us with delightful asides. Think of it as a tree - the branches can't' survive without the trunk, but it's the branches that give the tree its character.

I would say the group split bell curve style, with a more pronounced hump on the positive side. Most of us liked it. Some were lukewarm, while others would say they really, really liked it. Su., who couldn't attend, wrote me a note saying this was the second time she read the book and she couldn't imagine there was a person who wouldn't like it. So of course A. didn't, and wrote out many pages of notes explaining why. And then there was M., who knew she'd love the book as soon as she heard A. was having problems with it (and they are good friends, and wouldn't the world be a better place if more people who disagreed went to book club together and talked it out).

We had two folks who brought personal experiences to the reading. G's father was a fireman while J. has been an EMT. They said the stories were quite realistic and brought back a lot of memories. D. was reminded of growing up in Nebraska and compared Perry's writing to Ben Logan's The Land Remembers. I haven't thought about that book in a long time, since we used to get the books from Northword Press (anybody remember Loon Magic?)

And then there was Sa. I had no idea what she'd say when she started speaking. And then she said she wouldn't have read Perry, but she did for the Group, and completely fell in love with his voice and after we met, she went on to buy more of his books. And that's all I needed.

That's the thing about Michael Perry. Make assumptions about who he is and he will confound you. And Perry takes that to the next level on his newest book, Montaigne in Barn Boots, which comes out November 7. The book is a meditation on Michel de Montaigne's work, with each chapter being an exploration of a different aspect of Montaigne's writings, spun through the lens of Perry. Much like Montaigne, he takes the philosophical and makes it personal. Perry has never been afraid to talk about mortality, reaching back to Population 485. You can't be an EMT or volunteer fire fighter without being aware of the fragility of life.

It's such a great work, reminding me a lot of perhaps my favorite essayist, Phillip Lopate. When I first read Lopate as part of my "I love everything that Ann Patty at Poseidon Press publishes" phase of my life, I had the same reaction as Sa. I dropped everything I read one Lopate after another, whether he was writing about being a new York public school teacher, feeling lost in Houston, or shaving. That's from memory - did he really write about shaving? Lopate is probably best known for editing The Art of the Essay, but if you want to know the book that turned me on to Lopate, it was Against Joie de Vivre.

Montaigne in Barn Boots gave me that same exhilaration, much as Montaigne's essays have done for generations of readers. You're already primed to love Montaigne, because his work is an important part of Amor Towles's runaway bestseller, A Gentleman in Moscow. Now that I've read Population 485, I don't know whether to tackle the essays themselves (800 pages of Penguin Classic, can I handle this?) or Sarah Bakewell's How to Live. We'll see how this goes. I also expect to one day catch up on several more of Michael Perry's books. I keep my reading list (only the books I finish) on the blog, so you can keep track.*

Important dates to know!

Tuesday, November 14, 7 pm, at Boswell: Michael Perry discusses Montaigne in Barn Boots. He'll also be at Books & Company on Wednesday, November 15. I really can't say enough about how good this book is and I shouldn't have to convince you that Michael Perry is a joy in person.

Monday, November 6, 7 pm, at Boswell: The In-Store Lit Group discusses The Atomic Weight of Love, by Elizabeth J. Church. This selection was suggested to me by our friend and voracious reader Nancy at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center.

Monday, December 4, 7 pm, at Boswell: The In-Store Lit Group discusses Zadie Smith's Swing Time. I seem to be on an every other book cycle with Smith for reading purposes.

 *I should note that Mr. Perry has spoken highly of Boswell in the past, most notably in Milwaukee Magazine, so you may consider this logrolling.

Korean American writers: musing on Min Jin Lee, Don Lee, Patricia Park, Samuel Park, and one other author I can't remember!

Back when I lived in Queens, one of my father's favorite walks was down Northern Boulevard, all the way from Bell Boulevard, near where we lived, to Main Street, where he would have lunch at one of the many Chinese restaurants. I accompanied him on his walk many times, and one of the things we enjoyed was the changing cultural influences as we moved through the borough. It was a long time since our neighborhood had been heavily Jewish, but there still was a delicatessen on 73rd Avenue which had particularly good potato knishes. Along the way were pockets of Irish, African Americans (despite most Black people living on the south side of Queens, there was a long-established black community just off Northern Boulevard), Greeks, Chinese, and Koreans. By the time our walks ended, that Korean community had expanded, and that's one of the reasons I am enjoying Re Jane, the novel from Patricia Park which came out in 2015. Much of its setting is along the very strip of Northern Boulevard that I used to share with my Dad.

After having a good reading summer, I've been stuck, spending long periods of time reading books I can't finish, and in some cases, can barely start. I knew I needed something that one of my fellow booksellers (Jane) calls light with a bite, and when I saw Park's novel while shelving another book, I picked it up. A contemporary take on Jane Eyre set in Brooklyn and Queens? I think I can do this! I want to sit down and not come up for air for 100 pages. This intoxicating feeling was hammered home to me yesterday when I was speaking to one of the families at the event for Katherine Rundell's The Explorer last night. First Charlie read it, and then his dad got a hold of it, and didn't stop reading for three hours. As Liz Lemon often said in 30Rock, I want to go to there.

There are nobody of reasons why Korean American literature is on my mind. For one thing, tensions with North Korea are at an all-time high. I wonder what it's like to live in South Korea right now. I'm reminded of what my Jewish friends have told me about their relatives who live in Israel, or our former Lebanese customer (he's coming back for an event at Boswell when his novel is published, and it will be) when he visits family in Beirut. But is it that different from living in the prospect of (or the wake of) hurricanes or earthquakes or gang violence? You go on with your life.

But my focus in this post is not on Korean writers in South (or North) Korea. I'm interested in the Korean American experience - how it's parallels the stories of other groups and how it's different. But sometimes, like in this year's Pachinko, the story is not set in the United States, but living here probably affects the narrative.

I'm always thinking about events, and as you know, we're cosponsoring a ticketed event with Min Jin Lee for Pachinko on Thursday evening at the Lynden Sculpture Garden*. Pachinko was just longlisted for the National Book Awards, plus our recent author (and old friend) Bill Goldstein raved about it at his talk for The World Broke in Two. Plus fellow bookseller Jen just told me that the novel is going in her top five for the year, meaning even if it doesn't win the National Book Award (I'm well aware it's a long long long shot) we'll be featuring the novel through the end of the year. If you like historical novels and maybe don't want to read the 34th one set in World War II Europe, maybe you should consider this, a multi-generational saga about Koreans living in Japan. Here's Anita Felicelli's review in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Jen told me that as soon as she finished Pachinko, she knew it would be in her top five and had she not picked it, it might have been in mine. Instead, I went with another recent novel I've written about before, Lonesome Lies Before Us, by Don Lee. It's the novel I can't stop thinking about this year, and being that it focuses in on both cultural identity and class, it should be at the forefront of way more people's consciousnesses. I think that part of the reason it's not is because it takes on identity by not writing about it - almost all the characters are brown, black, or yellow, but nowhere are there any physical descriptions. I'm guessing a lot of folks interested in this sort of thing want to be more, well, direct. And of course there's a place for those books. But there's also a place for this one.

I think I wrote this once before but Don Lee and Allegra Goodman would be great in conversation together, as I think Goodman was trying something similar with her most recent novel, The Chalk Artist. 

But come on, how can you not love a failed alt country singer who blames his weight, his stage fright, and his hearing loss, but not the implied fact that he's Korean? Both my sisters read the book, and while they both liked it a lot, one called it terribly sad. But it's funny too. And I like sad-funny a lot. I think it's the two best emotions to put together in a book. I think most people prefer scary and romantic, but maybe not together. If you've not read this blog before, catch up with Lloyd Sachs's review of Lonesome Lies Before Us in the Chicago Tribune.

Speaking of sad, I keep thinking about another Korean American writer who told me about the second book he was working on when he visited us twice for his first (twice). Samuel Park taught at Columbia College in Chicago and recently passed away. He told me this story about a glamorous Korean actress, and as I remember, the story kind of had a high-drama noir vibe to it. We still have a copy of his first novel, This Burns My Heart on our shelves, and I think you should read it.

Did you know that there's at least one novel about the Milwaukee Korean community and it came out from a major publisher? I read it but here's the thing. I don't remember the author or title. But if I did, I'd mention it now. I think it came out from Dutton and might have been published about twelve years ago. Any ideas? (Editor's note: our friend Jason, who I think worked at Penguin at the time, came up with the answer. It's In Full Bloom, by Caroline Hwang.)

So maybe see you Thursday night, but before I get to work today, i'm going to spend a little more time reading Re Jane. And then I'm going to try to figure out a good place to get sweet potato noodles, a delicacy I haven't had since Seoul restaurant ended their lunch buffet several years ago.

*There's a second daytime event on the UWM campus for Min Jin Lee, focusing on students.

Bestseller blog: what's selling at Boswell? (week ending 9/23/17)

Here's what Boswell has been selling this week.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, by David Lagercrantz
2. A Legacy of Spies, by John Le Carre
3. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
4. Forest Dark, by Nicole Krauss
5. Sing, Unburied Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
6. The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott
7. A Column of Fire, by Ken Follett
8. Y Is for Yesterday, by Sue Grafton
9. The Golden House, by Salman Rushdie
10. Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

Alice McDermott's new novel is The Ninth Hour. Here's what Sarah Begley said about the book in Time: "Not much happens to the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, the stars of Alice McDermott's new novel The Ninth Hour - they live to serve others. But plenty has happened to those in their care." She's goes on to call it a "story with the simple grace of a votive candle in a dark church." Read the rest of the review.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. It Takes Two, by Jonathan Scott and Drew Scott
2. The 3D Body Revolution, by Donald Driver
3. The Happpiness Prayer, by Evan Moffic
4. The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Marta McDowell
5. What Happened, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
6. A Self-Made Woman, by Denise Chanterelle DuBois
7. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
8. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
9. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
10. Killing England, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

Here's what we learned from selling It Takes Two at the Riverside from Jonathan and Drew Scott. The show is Property Brothers, but Jonathan and Drew are the Scott Brothers. We had a fun time and enjoyed chatting with the fans. The VIPs were especially thrilled.

Here's an interesting column from Caitlin Flanagan in Vulture about how HGTV promulgates house flipping and another bubble in the making. Please note that the Scotts are not flippers; Flanagan just notes their popular diamond-in-the-rough transformations are what many people like about the flip shows and helped lead to them dominating the HGTV lineup. For me, I sort of miss the early Suzanne Whang House Hunters, to say nothing of Design on a Dime and Decorating Cents.

We didn't get to do the Scott autographing, but we had a similar giddy experience working one of the signings for Donald Driver's new book, The 3D Body Revolution. I'd ask a random person who'd just gone through the signing-and-photo line, "Are you a changed person?" and each person would chime "Yes!" very enthusiastically. We have signed copies available.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Moonbath, by Yanick Lahens
2. The Iliad, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles
3. Karolina's Twins, by Ronald H. Balson (event 10/24 at Chai Point, 3 pm, at Boswell, 7 pm)
4. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
5. Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry
6. The Atomic Weight of Love, by Elizabeth J. Church
7. Arrows of Light, by Andrea Potos
8. In Grace's Time, by Kathie Giorgio (event 9/25, 7 pm, at Boswell)
9. Chronicle of the Murdered House, by Lucio Cardoso
10. Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly

Last year's Best First Novel Edgar Award, Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry, has had well over a year of strong sales and continued to make regular appearances in our top ten. Elizabeth Brundage wrote in The New York Times: "I was expecting a knockoff of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train or another rendition of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Ever since those books’ phenomenal success, any new novel that is at all similar greedily begs comparison. Indeed, Under the Harrow contains similarities that will undoubtedly attract readers — but underneath its hard-driving, page-turning, compulsively readable narrative is a striking, original."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Stop Anxiety from Stopping You, by Helen Odessky
2. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
3. Easy Italian Step-by-Step, from McGraw Hill
4. Cream City Chronicles, by John Gurda
5. Horsemen of the Trumpcalypse, by John Nichols (event 9/27, 7 pm, at Boswell)
6. A Little History of Religion, by Richard Holloway
7. Run, Hide, Repeat, by Pauline Dakin
8. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
9. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
10. I Hear She's a Real Bitch, by Jen Agg

Just out is Pauline Dakin's Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, which is unusual in that it's a Viking paperback original. I'm not a buyer so I don't see every book that comes out, but I haven't noticed a Viking paperback in a long time. This CBC journalist and Halifax professor has written "a memoir of a childhood steeped in unexplained fear and menace. Gripping and suspenseful, it moves from Dakin’s uneasy acceptance of her family’s dire situation to bewildered anger at a cruel charade. As she revisits her past, Dakin uncovers the human capacity for betrayal, manipulation, and deception—-and the power of love to forgive. As compelling and twisted as a thriller, Run Hide Repeat is an unforgettable portrait of a family threatened by those closest to them."

Picture Books and Board Books for Kids:
1. Little i, by Michael Hall
2. Big Machines, by Sherri Duskey Rinker with illustrations by John Rocco
3. Wherever You Go, by Pat Zietlow Miller, with illustrations by Eliza Wheeler
4. The Quickest Kid in Clarksville, by Pat Zietlow Miller, with illustrations by Frank Morrison
5. Pomegranate Witch, by Denise Doyen, with illusrations by Eliza Wheeler
6. Frankencrayon, by Michael Hall
7. Wolfie the Bunny, by Ame Dyckman, with illusrations by Zachariah Ohora
8. Little Poems for Tiny Ears, by Lin Oliver with illustrations by Tomie DePaola
9. John Ronald's Dragons, by Caroline McAlister, with illustrations by Eliza Wheeler
10. The Great Pasta Escape, by Miranda Paul, with illustrations by Javier Joaquin

Last weekend we sold books at the SCBWI. You can tell that one of the featured speakers was illustrator Eliza Wheeler, including Pat Zietlow Miller's Wherever You Go and Denise Doyen's The Pomegranate Witch. Also featured was local writer Pat Zietlow Miller. Here's an interview with Miller by Colleen Riordan in the SCBWI-Wisconsin newsletter.

Of The Pomegranate Witch, which is also featured on our Halloween table, Publishers Weekly writes in its starred review: "Working in ink and watercolor, Wheeler contrasts the rich red of the pomegranates with washes of pale, sickly green, saturating the pages with a sense of otherworldly magic."

Chapter Books through Young Adult
1. Fantastic Frame: Danger! Tiger Crossing, by Lin Oliver
2. Guitar Notes, by Mary Amato
3. Fantastic Frame: Splat! Another Messy Sunday, by Lin Oliver
4. Here's Hank: Bookmarks Are People Too, by Henry Winkler
5. Waking in Time, by Angie Stanton
6. Native People of Wisconsin, by Patty Loew
7. Odin's Promise, by Sandy Brehl
8. Sol Ray Man and the Freaky Flood, by Jane Kelley
9. Mari's Hope, by Sandy Brehl
10. Octo Man and the Headless Monster, by Jane Kelley

Another speaker at SCBWI-Wisconsin, has both picture books and chapter books featured on our bestseller list. The first two entries in the Fantastic Frame series are featured. The Booklist review notes that Danger! Tiger Crossing notes that "Oliver bases this new series on an unusual, promising premise: an ornate magic picture frame that sucks bystanders into any painting it holds...Kallis' color scenes of bug-eyed children add bright notes of comedy and terror, and an afterword about Rousseau's life and art rounds off the breathlessly paced adventure with a dash of arts education. More adventures follow in a copublished sequel, Splat! Another Messy Sunday."

On the TapBooks page of the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews Fred Hersch's Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life in and out of Jazz. Higgins notes: "Writing this memoir, too, has been a way for Hersch to weave the strands of his life together and to accept himself more fully. Hersch spent nearly two months in a coma in 2008, brought on by AIDS-related dementia. In the ICU, when his partner Scott asked Hersch's doctor about his condition, the doctor replied, in a case like this, 'good things happen slowly,' then added, 'but bad things happen fast.'"

Other reviews to check out in the print edition:

1. Laurie Hertzel, originally in the Star Tribune, reviews A Disappearance in Damascus: "It's a pity that Deborah Campbell's new book has such a Nancy Drew-like title, because it is actually a serious, riveting work about a part of the world that too many of us know too little about."

2. Marion Winik, originally in Newsday, reviews our top ten bestseller, Celeste Ng's latest: "While Everything I Never Told You focused intensely and single-mindedly on solving the mystery of a teenage death within a context of gender and racial stereotyping, Little Fires Everywhere has more pages, more characters, and more themes, among them affluence, conformism, and their discontents: cross racial adoption and the rights of biological parents, and what artists have to offer the rest of us."