Sunday, August 26, 2018

Boswell bestseller bonanza for the week ending August 25, 2018

Boswell bestseller bonanza for the week ending August 25, 2018.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The President Is Missing, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
2. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
3. Ohio, by Stephen Markley
4. The Other Woman, by Daniel Silva
5. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
6. Circe, by Madeline Miller
7. The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn
8. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
9. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
10. Desolation Mountain, by William Kent Krueger (event at Boswell Sat Sep 29, 3 pm)

Ohio is in the spotlight, as it's the setting for not just Celeste Ng's perennial bestseller Little Fires Everywhere but also Stephen Markley's first novel, which is touted by Boswell's Chris Lee: "Ohio is a portrait of incredible depth that tells the truth of a generation doomed from the start but still swinging for the fences as they run out the strings of their wrecked lives." Jeff Baker in The Seattle Times calls Ohio "a big novel about what happened after 9/11, the initial euphoria and the long depression that grips us still."

Hardcover Fiction:
1. How the Right Lost Its Mind, by Charles J. Sykes
2. Misdemeanorland, by Issa Kohler-Hausmann
3. Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, by John Gurda
4. Unhinged, by Omarosa Manigault-Newman
5. Educated, by Tara Westover
6. The Fall of Wisconsin, by Dan Kaufman
7. The Chapo Guide to Revolution, by Chapo Trap House
8. Atlas Obscura, by Dylan Thuras et al (Register here for Greenfield Library event, Tue 9/18, 6:30 pm)
9. The Tangled Tree, by David Quammen
10. From the Corner of the Oval Office, by Beck Dorey-Stein

We're definitely cosponsoring an event with Issa Koehler-Hausmann for Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing, as part of the Frank Zeidler Annual Lecture. The date is now likely to be Monday, October 8 and the new location will be announced shortly. Sam Roberts in The New York Times noted that some of her findings can be provocative such as: "Most police practices are intended to reduce violence and social harm, Ms. Kohler-Hausmann acknowledges, and, indeed, the chief beneficiaries have been residents of poor and minority neighborhoods where crime is disproportionately high."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Girl Waits with Gun V1, by Amy Stewart
2. Lady Cop Makes Trouble V2, by Amy Stewart
3. Miss Kopp's Midnight Confession V3, by Amy Stewart
4. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
5. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
6. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
7. Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
8. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney
9. Galahad's Fool, by Bishop and Fuller
10. Edge of the Known Bus Line, by James Gapinski (event at Boswell Thu 8/30, 7 pm)

My reading percentage of the top 10 jumped 10% in the last 24 hours as I closed the book on Sing, Unburied, Sing. We'll be discussing it Mon at 7 at Boswell for the In-Store-Lit Group. October's selection is The Essex Serpent, November's is Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, and December brings us #7, Hotel Silence. You can bet I'll be watching this PBS Newshour video where Ward answers readers questions for the program's book club.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Children Save Yourselves, by Ronald J. Berger
2. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein
3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
4. Call Them by Their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit
5. The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, by Thomas H. Fehring
6. Little Walks, Big Adventures, by Erin Burh
7. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
8. A Year in the Wilderness, by Amy and Dave Freeman
9. The Pigeon Tunnel, by John LeCarre
10. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises from Rebecca Solnit has a staff rec from Conrad Silverberg, who says: "Let's face it, sometimes we need someone to point out that the arguments that lie ahead are not to be made couched in disinterested rhetoric, and that our opinions can be conveyed effectively with passionate insistence and not, was we might otherwise be inclined, through reptilian disinterest. This is precisely what is needed to face our possibly grim future with eyes wide open." Solnit recently was featured in the By the Book column of The New York Times.

Books for Kids:
1. Illegal (paperback), by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano (Register for this event on Thu 9/13, 6:30 pm, here)
2. Illegal (hardcover), by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano
3. How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens, by Paul Noth
4. Rough Patch, by Brian Lies
5. Old Hat, by Emily Gravett
6. Bear and Hare Go Fishing, by Emily Gravett
7. The Field, by Baptiste Paul, with illustrations by Jacqueline Alcantara
8. Magical Love Box, by Mary Reinhart, with illustrations by Shawn McCann
9. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
10. Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

Brian Lies's Rough Patch is featured on the Fall 2018 Indie Next Kids List and it has a rec from Boswell's Jen Steele: "Evan has lost his faithful companion and nothing can help ease his pain, not even the garden where Evan and his dog enjoyed most of their time together. But something extraordinary is happening in that neglected garden. Something that will help ease Evan's pain. Rough Patch is a thoughtful and impressive picture book about friendship and loss. Brian Lies gives us a picture book that will pull at the heartstrings!"

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins highlight 17 books to look out for this fall. Read more about each book in this seasonal roundup.
--Ball Lightning, by Cixin Liu
--The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, by Maxwell King
--Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, by Mark Leibovich
--Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military, by Neil de-Grasse Tyson and Avis Lang
--The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, by Joanne B. Freeman
--A Lakeside Companion, by Ted J. Rulseh
--The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman
--Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan
--The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century, by Deborah Blum
--Transcription, by Kate Atkinson
--A Spark of Light, by Jodi Picoult (Tickets for our Sun 10/21 event here)
--Virgil Wander, by Leif Enger (Register for this free event on Wed 10/17 here)
--Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
--Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon
--The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
--Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life, by Jane Sherron De Hart
--Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce, by Colm Tóibín

And from USA Today, Mary Cadden discusses how Shari Lapena's An Unwanted Guest is an update of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

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