Boswell bestsellers for the week ending January 25, 2020

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending January 25, 2020

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Everywhere You Don't Belong, by Gabriel Bump (event March 17, 7 pm, at Boswell)
2. The Wild One V5, by Nick Petrie
3. The Princess Bridge (two hardcover editions), by William Goldman, illustrated by Michael Manomivibul
4. Agency, by William Gibson
5. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
6. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
7. Olive Again, by Elizabeth Strout
8. Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
9. The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
10. The Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende

The official pub date for Everywhere You Don't Belong is February 4, but we checked on Edelweiss and there were already at least ten stores who had sold copies. Since it's not a hard on-sale, we figured we could start selling copies. In addition to our event with Bump, we're also bringing him to an area school. I am excited to note that I have the Indie Next Pick rec for the book, which is a February selection. You can read my rec by clicking on the title link.

One book that I expected to hit our list but did not was Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt. Here's a story from St. Louis Public Radio a local store's decision to cancel their event.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Whole30 Friends and Family, by Melissa Hartwig Urban
2. The Overground Railroad, by Candacy Taylor
3. Normal Sucks, by Jonathan Mooney
4. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker
5. The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom
6. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
7. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-2000, by David Luhrssen, Phil Naylor, Bruce Cole
8. Climbing My Mountain, by Sheldon B Lubar
9. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
10. Educated, by Tara Westover

It's felt like the last several hundred political books haven't made the pop that they were aiming for, but A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America, seems to have generated the biggest demand in months. All our remaining copies are on hold and we have plenty more special orders for our next shipment. Maggie Haberman and Nick Corasaniti look at what led to this breakout (it's got a similar story to Fire and Fury with a a Michael Bloomberg twist) in The New York Times.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
2. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
4. The Drifter V1, by Nick Petrie
5. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
6. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo
7. Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
8. Little Women (four paperback editions targeted to adults), by Louisa May Alcott
9. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbi Waxman
10. Far From the Maddening Crowd, by Thomas Hardy (the next Literary Journeys selection)

Who would have guessed that we'd sell even more copies of Cary Elwes's As You Wish than the last time he was at the Riverside. This time we had the bright idea to bring copies of The Princess Bride too (we stocked all but the rack-size paperback). Wouldn't this crowd have the book already? But we sold out of everything (which does mean we have no signed copies leftover of Elwes)

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. As You Wish, by Cary Elwes
2. Setting the Table, by Danny Meyer
3. Teach Like a Champion 2.0, by Doug Lemov
4. Where the Angels Lived, by Margaret McMullan
5. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson (two editions)
6. Whole30 Day by Day, by Melissa Hartwig (Urban)
7. God and Love on Route 80, by Stephen G Post
8. Why Religion, by Elaine Pagels
9. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, by Yossi Klein Halevi
10. When Bad Lands, by Alan K Anderson

It's nice to have a paperback nonfiction pop for Why Religion?: A Personal Story, from Elaine Pagels, notably because quick take offs in this category are few and far between. Pagels generally writes of theological theory and history (we hosted her for one of her previous books, and I was lucky enough to drive her around) but this book is more personal, looking at the death of her son and husband in one short period. Among her fans is Madeleine Albright, who wrote "Pagels has done it again, but more personally. The scholar's tale of loving, grieving, enduring, and searching will grab readers at the outset and never let them go. A memorable story unforgettably told." More from Tom Gjelten on the NPR website. And Kirkus Reviews notes: "A richly satisfying, Poirot-like ending for Johnson's inspired and inspiring teen sleuth."

Books for Kids:
1. The Hand on the Wall V3 Truly Devious, by Maureen Johnson
2. The House That Jane Built, by Tanya Lee Stone
3. Who Says Women Can't Be Computer Programmers?, by Tanya Lee Stone
4. Pass Go and Collect $200, by Tanya Lee Stone
5. Sandy's Circus, by Tanya Lee Stone
6. Jinxed, by Amy McCullough
7. Elizabeth Leads the Way, by Tanya Lee Stone
8. Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?, by Tanya Lee Stone
9. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
10. Here We Are, by Oliver Jeffers

Did we mention that Tanya Lee Stone visited an area school? In other news, it's great to see a lauded series for teens have such a great first-week pop. Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious series is capped by The Hand on the Wall, in which Stevie solves a big case at Ellingham Academy. Reviews and quotes are great, put Johnson's website and Kirkus Reivews, which often doesn't review subsequent titles in a series, praised "A richly satisfying, Poirot-like ending for Johnson’s inspired and inspiring teen sleuth."

Event round-up next!

Boswell bestseller report - week ending January 18, 2020

Here's what is selling at Boswell this week.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Wild One V5, by Nick Petrie
2. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
3. Olive Again, by Elizabeth Strout
4. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
5. The Boy, The Hose, the Fox, and the Mole, by Charlie Mackesy
6. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
7. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
8. The Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
9. Long Bright River, by Liz Moore
10. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, by Zora Neale Hurston

From the lost files of Zora Neale Hurston comes Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance, which includes eight stories available for the first time. From Jabari Asim in The New York Times Book Review: "Against the backdrop of Harlem Renaissance bigwigs calling for positive depictions of high-achieving Negroes, Hurston unpacked the lives of everyday black people doing everyday things. Add her matchless powers of observation, exemplary fidelity to idiomatic speech and irresistible engagement with folklore, and the outcome is a collection of value to more than Hurston completists. Any addition to her awe-inspiring oeuvre should be met with open arms."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Magical Language of Others, by EJ Koh
2. The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay
3. The Overground Railroad, by Candacy Taylor (event Mon Jan 20 - registration through today here)
4. The Body, by Bill Bryson
5. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-2000, by David Luhrssen, Phil Naylor, and Bruce Cole
6. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
7. Atomic Habits, by James Clear
8. After Net Neutrality, by Victor Pickard
9. Let's Be Weird Together, by Brooke Barker
10. Milk Street Cookbook, by Christopher Kimball

Our buyers have noted that Valentine's Day has become a children's holiday for books, but there's often an exception and 2020 seems to be the year of Let's Be Weird Together: A Book About Love. From the Sad Animal Facts Instagrammer comes this new book, which "is a book about weird couples and the tiny two-person universes they create. It’s about accidentally wearing the exact same outfit. It’s about made-up songs. It’s about your rules for the thermostat. It’s about breakfast rituals, and funny nicknames, and long hugs, and that voice you pretend the cat has." Exciting footnote - former Boswell visitor Scott Kelly holds the record for the longest long-distance relationship.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
2. Family Trust, by Kathy Wang (In-Store Lit Group Mon Feb 3, 7 pm)
3. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
4. The Drifter V1, by Nick Petrie (both editions)
5. A Lesser Love, by EJ Koh
6. Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo (In Store Lit Group Mon Mar 2 7 pm)
7. Salvaged, by Madeleine Roux (SciFi Book Club, Mon Feb 10, 7 pm)
8. Burning Bright V2, by Nick Petrie (mass and trade)
9. Little Bookshop on the Seine, by Rebecca Raisin
10. Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessy

Paris + Bookstore continues to be a winning combination at Boswell as The Little Bookshop on the Seine makes our top ten. This novel from Rebecca Raisin is about a bookshop owner who does a job switch, ionkly to find that her first impressions are less than romantic: "Her expectations cool faster than her caf au lait soon after she lands in the City of Light - she's a fish out of water in Paris. The customers are rude, her new coworkers suspicious and her relationship with Ridge has been reduced to a long-distance game of phone tag, leaving Sarah to wonder if he'll ever put her first over his busy career."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. As You Wish, by Cary Elwes
2. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, by Greta Thunberg
3. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
4. Democracy Without Journalism, by Victor Pickard
5. Getting Tough, by Julilly Kohler Hausmann
6. Misdemeanorland, by Issa Kohler Hausmann
7. The Club, by Leo Damrosch
8. The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz
9. Sapiens, by Uval Noah Harari
10. American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Wisconsin, by Charles Hagner (just added - event April 2 at Schlitz Audubon)

A quick conversion into paperback for Leo Damrosch's The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age pops the book onto the paperback list just about a month after the hardcover went as high as #23. To put things in perspective, were the hardcover to sell as many copies last week, it would be #2. Of the new book, Michael Dirda wrote in The Washington Post: "There are two classic questions beloved by both interviewers and readers: What 10 books would you choose to take along if marooned on a desert island? And what five people from history would you invite to an ideal dinner party? Many potential castaways would immediately grab James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, probably the most entertaining work of nonfiction in English literature. Interestingly enough, this greatest of all biographies also supplies a possible answer to the second question, but one that isn’t in the least fantastical." Yes, that Boswell.

Books for Kids:
1. Prisoner B-3087, by Alan Gratz
2. Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, by Judy Blume
3. Guts, by Raina Telgemeier
4. Peek a Who Too, by Elsa Mroziewicz
5. Children of Virtue and Vengeance V2, by Tomi Adeyemi
6. Endling the First V2, by Katherine Applegate
7. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
8. American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang (watch here for news next week!)
9. Black Canary Ignite, by Meg Cabot
10. Endling The Last V1, by Katherine Applegate

Is Black Canary Ignite the Black Canary from DC Comics? It is! From the publisher: "Thirteen-year-old Dinah Lance knows exactly what she wants, who she is, and where she's going. First, she'll win the battle of the bands with her two best friends, then she'll join the Gotham City Junior Police Academy so she can solve crimes just like her dad. Who knows, her rock-star group of friends may even save the world, but first they'll need to agree on a band name. When a mysterious figure keeps getting in the way of Dinah's goals and threatens her friends and family, she'll learn more about herself, her mother's secret past, and navigating the various power chords of life." Bustle adds: "Dinah Lance's story will be familiar to any woman or girl who has ever been told that she's too loud, brash, and disruptive for this world."

At the Journal Sentinel courtesy of USA Today, Mark Athitakis offers his take on the just-released Little Gods: "Meng Jin’s ambitious debut novel, Little Gods, opens amid the chaos of 1989’s Tiananmen Square crackdown. As a Beijing hospital braces for wounded protesters, a woman named Su Lan arrives to give birth to her daughter. In the recovery room, she asks the nurse some peculiar questions: 'Do you believe in time? Do you believe that the past is gone and the future does not exist?...Little Gods is built from familiar tropes: love amid violence, lost parents, secrets held by those closest to us. But Jin brings a fresh imagination to them, thoughtfully leveraging the language of physics without making the narrative cold or overladen."

Emuna Elon's House of Endless Waters is the subject of a review by Emily Gray Tedrowe, also from USA Today: "Set in Amsterdam, where a fictional famed Israeli writer named Yoel Blum grapples with family secrets and loss, Elon’s book takes readers deep into the sorrowful history of wartime Jewish residents, almost three-quarters of whom, like Anne Frank, were killed by the Nazis...Elon’s great power in The House on Endless Waters is to richly evoke both sides of the tragedy – Sonia’s lived experience of persecution as well as Blum’s later attempts to absorb horrors he can barely comprehend."

Last week we used the USA Today review to highlight Tarryn Fischer's The Wives. This week the review is in the Journal Sentinel's Life section, where lays out the premise - a woman living in a plural marriage in Seattle knows little about the other wives in Portland. Mary Cadden hooks us here: "Tt is here where the story truly takes off and this review must come to an end. To share more would be a disservice to the reader and the carefully calculated story the author has crafted."

Here's what sold at Boswell for the week ending January 11, 2020 - movie tie-ins, hold overs, book club picks, and yes, even some new releases

Here's what sold at Boswell for the week ending January 11, 2020.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid (second week at #1)
2. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
3. Olive Again, by Elizabeth Strout
4. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
5. The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner
6. The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead
7. The Envious Siblings, by Landis Blair
8. The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood
9. Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi
10. Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson

It doesn't feel like there's a 2019 fall sleeper that is going to breakout in 2020, but it's hard to get a word in edgewise when Where the Crawdads Sing is still dominating bestseller lists. There were a couple of high-profile indie-friendly releases on January 7 (Long Bright River by Liz Moore and Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano), but alas, we didn't get rec on either. Moore had a nice write-up in the Sunday New York Times while Napolitano is the current Barnes and Noble book club pick.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, by David Luhrssen, Phil Naylor, Bruce Cole (third week at #1)
2. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
4. Climbing My Mountain, by Sheldon Lubar
5. Ultimate Veg, by Jamie Oliver
6. Successful Aging, by Daniel J Levitin
7. Educated, by Tara Westover
8. Why We Can't Sleep, by Ada Calhoun
9. Whole Food Cooking Every Day, by Amy Chaplin
10. The Overground Railroad, by Candacy Taylor (event Mon Jan 20 at ABHM - register here)

New release! From the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, a multi-week Boswell bestseller, comes Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives. From Kirkus: ". Levitin seems to underestimate his skill as an educator, and he has written a lucid explanation of brain and body function. His longevity advice has plenty of competition, especially David Sinclair's Lifespan, but this book's breadth is impressive. Excellent popular science in the service of fending off aging."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo (In-Store Lit Group Mon Mar 2, 7 pm)
2. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (two Penguin Classics editions)
3. The Drifter V1, by Nick Petrie (two editions, event Mon Jan 13, 7 pm)
4. The Wives, by Tarryn Fisher
5. Family Trust, by Kathy Wang (In-Store Lit Group Mon Feb 3, 7 pm)
6. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
7. Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
8. Vintage 1954, by Antoine Laurain
9. Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
10. Sealed Off V18, by Barbara Ross

We had a nice pickup on sales for Vintage 1954 that continued into January. Although we're not #1 for reporting Indie sales for this one, we're a solid #2 and just broke the 100 book mark. Speaking of sales, we're closing in on 700 copies of The Drifter since its publication. Our event with Petrie for book #5 is tomorrow - we'll remind you about that in the next blog post.

Our buyer Jason thinks publishers have cooled on psychological suspense after flooding the market with titles, but books continue to break out. The Wives, a paperback original from Tarryn Fisher, popped off our new mystery case with her novel about a woman in a polygamous marriage who hasn't met her sister wives. As Mary Cadden notes in USA Today: "Fans of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl will revel in The Wives. In her latest novel, author Tarryn Fisher constructs not just an original story but an equally original plot twist." Up until now, Fisher's books look like they were being done by herself on publishing platforms. I had to look carefully because a few of the romance publishers are digital only and you use digital DIY if you want print copies, but I think even the digital ones were not from traditional publishers. Publishing is always looking for a breakout story like this.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo
2. Flight from the Reich, by Deborah Dwork
3. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, by Greta Thunberg
4. Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown
5. Just Mercy (two editions), by Bryan Stevenson
6. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
7. The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli
8. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
9. American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Wisconsin, by Chuck Hagner
10. Brick Through the Window, by Steven Nodine, Eric Beaumont, Clancy Carroll, David Luhrssen

The Order of Time had a December release, and while he equaled these sales totals over seven-day periods in that month, it's only now, when competition dries up, that he hit our top 10. This book, a May 2018 hardcover, heralds the arrival of a new Stephen Hawking, or so I'm told. He's gotten raves from New Scientist, Science, and Nature journals. And what does Philip Pullman have to say?: "We live in an age of wonderful science writing, and Carlo Rovelli’s new book, The Order of Time, is an example of the very best. Time is something we think we know about instinctively; here he shows how profoundly strange it really is."

Books for Kids:
1. Troublemaker for Justice, by Jacqueline Houtman
2. When We Were Alone, by David A Patterson
3. Fetch-22 V8, by Dav Pilkey
4. Little Woman Anna Bond cover, by Louisa May Alcott
5. Children of Blood and Bone V1, by Tomi Adeyemi
6. Lalani of the Distant Sea, by Erin Entrada Kelly
7. Princess in Black and the Bathtime Battle, by Shannon Hale
8. A Is for Activist, by Innosanto Nagara
9. Curious George I Love You board book, by HA Rey
10. Arnie the Donut, by Laurie Keller

Little Women hits our bestseller list for both adult and kids. The kids cover is from Anna Bond of Rifle paper, a very popular stationery-and-more brand that is, oddly enough,  really not targeted to children. We carry their cards and prints, but not their shoes. She's best known for her florals, which is probably why the series she illustrates is called Puffin in Bloom. Per Slate, Parasite won best film from the National Society of Film Critics, but Greta Gerwig received the Best Director nod for her film adaptation.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews the latest from Nick Petrie: "The Wild One is the darkest thriller yet in Whitefish Bay novelist Nick Petrie’s series starring Peter Ash, a Marine veteran of combat in Fallujah. But it also has a stunning fight scene that reminded me of Jackie Chan, the comic master of improvisational combat. Like so many Chan characters, Ash can and will use anything to fight a bad guy. And by anything, I mean anything anything. I don't want to spoil the scene, but when Petrie writes that Ash has 'the power of literature at his fingertips,' it's not a metaphor." Our event is Monday, January 13, 7 pm. You're definitely going to want to get your Nick Petrie ice scraper!

Douglass K Daniel reviews Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge, by Sheila Weller. He calls it "a compassionate portrait of a complex personality whose up-and-down life rivals the Hollywood travails of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland in its mixture of charisma."

I mentioned above that Liz Moore's Long Bright River was one of this week's high-profile debuts. Oline H Cogdill notes, in her Associated Press review, that the book is solid. Her take: "The complicated relationship of two estranged sisters who choose different life paths persuasively works as a metaphor for their old neighborhood that is in transition. Deftly plotted with strong, vivid characters, Liz Moore’s outstanding Long Bright River works as solid crime fiction and an intense family thriller."

From USA Today comes Morgan Hines talks to Chuck Palaniuk, whose new book is Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different. The scoop: "He has packaged the most important lessons he learned over the years and has communicated them in a way that others can digest easily. At the start of each new lesson, Palahniuk addresses readers with the words, 'If you were my student...' He shares wisdom on the writing process, and advice on how to add texture, hold authority, build tension – the list goes on."

Here's what's selling at Boswell for the week ending January 4, 2020 - one last week of Saturdays* before post-holiday sets in.

Here's what's selling at Boswell for the week ending January 4, 2020

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
2. The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
3. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
4. Circe, by Madeline Miller
5. Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjornsen and Moe, by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe, translated by Tiina Nunnally
6. Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi
7. The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner
8. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
9. The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
10. Full Throttle, by Joe Hill

It took until Saturday, but Such a Fun Age edged out The Starless Sea for the number one spot. I know that social media has been all over the book, and I think that it also helped that it was a very light release week, but we still had a lot of traffic between Christmas and New Year's Day. Reid's novel was actually scheduled for January 7 and was moved pretty late in the game. Was it for the Reese Witherspoon book club or perhaps it was shrewd date positioning. I heard that week is tough for publishers because the invoices sort of land between two years.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Martini Cocktail, by Robert Simonson
2. Milwaukee Rock and Roll, 1950-2000, by David Luhrssen, Phil Naylor, Bruce Cole
3. Climbing My Mountain, by Sheldon B Lubar
4. Blue Zones Kitchen, by Dan Buettner
5. Salt Fat Acid Heat, by Samin Nosrat
6. The Years That Matter Most, by Paul Tough
7. Quit Like a Woman, by Holly Whitaker
8. The Beautiful Ones, by Prince
9. The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power
10. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe

Political books in 2019 tended to pop and then quiet down quickly, but one book with legs is Samantha Powers's The Education of an Idealist, which has been on and off our top ten since its September release. I love that on the Book Marks program, which tabulates traditional reviewers from Rave to positive to mixed to pan, it listed several pans among the raves, but one of them was for the New Republic and the pull-out quote was "vivid and engaging prose." Imagine when that reviewer likes something! In any case, I mention the book not because it's in our top ten this week but because Power is mentioned in another top ten regular, The Yellow House. It was she who advised Sarah M Broom to go to Burundi to work.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
2. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
3. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbi Waxman
4. The Drifter V1 (two editions), by Nick Petrie (event at Boswell Mon Jan 13, 7 pm)
5. Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
6. Ohio, by Stephen Markley (probably too late to start for In-Store Lit Group on Jan 6!)
7. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris
8. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
9. The Librarian of Auschwitz Special Edition, by Antonio Iturbe
10. Red, White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

We've been selling Red, White and Royal Blue (I am bowing to the publisher and leaving out the Oxford comma, but ampersands play havoc with writing in HTML so I'm spelling out "and") steadily, out of both new releases, fiction, and Margaret's rec shelf, so I thought I'd see how we stack up against other stores. Sales at indies are nothing short of astounding, with many stores in the triple digits and one that went full quadruple. It's a romantic comedy that imagines the son of the President of the United States (a woman from Texas) falling in love with Prince Harry. Library Journal has this review from Milwaukee Public Library's Jessica Moore: "With a diverse cast of characters, quick-witted dialog, and a complicated relationship between two young people with the eyes of the world watching their every move, McQuiston's debut is an irresistible, hopeful, and sexy romantic comedy that considers real questions about personal and public responsibility."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, by Greta Thunberg
2. Better World Shopping Guide, sixth edition, edited by Ellis Jones
3. Paris 1919, by Margaret MacMillan
4. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
5. The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis
6. American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Wisconsin, by Charles Hagner
7. Leadership, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
8. Just Mercy (two editions), by Bryan Stevenson
9. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
10. Health Justice Now, by Timothy Faust

Large book clubs are driving sales of several titles this week. The award-winning Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, is being used by UWM's Osher continuing education program this winter. The Chicago Tribune wrote: "For anyone interested in knowing how historic mistakes can morph into later historic problems, this brilliant book is a must-read.”

One of our larger private book clubs is tackling Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership: In Turbulent Times. One thing to note is that books, particularly fiction, are known to transition from a text jacket in hardcover to one with an illustration in paperback. Washington Black is a particularly successful example of this. But going from an illustration in hardcover to text in paperback is so rare, but that's what Leadership did. The paperback jacket doesn't exactly look finished either, like they lost the rights to the painting at the last minute (or otherwise decided it was inappropriate) and never found a substitution.

Books for Kids:
1. Guts, by Raina Telgemeier
2. A to Z Menagerie, by Suzy Ultman
3. Fetch-22: Dog Man V8, by Dav Pilkey
4. The Toll V3, by Neal Shusterman
5. Greta's Story, by Valentina Camerini
6. The Crossover graphic novel, by Kwame Alexander/Dawud Anyabwile
7. Thunderhead V2, by Neal Shusterman
8. 365 Days of Wonder: Mr Browne's Precepts, by RJ Palacio
9. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
10. Bad Guys V1, by Aaron Blabey

It's not a secret that it's become very popular to turn traditional novels, particularly books for young readers, into graphic novels. Like adapting for film, the resulting books usually need to trim their text and sometimes plotlines, or the book would be 500+ pages. The Crossover is a fall 2019 release that has hit our top 10 several times. Illustrations are by Dawud Anyabwile, who previously completed a similar project for Walter Dean Myers's Monster. Here's a link to his original, Brotherman, which he put together with his brother Guy Sims.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Lynn Elbers of the Associated Press tackles Mo Rocca's Mobituaries. From the interview: " I think a lot of people confuse ‘past’ with ‘backward’ and, I’ll be transparent here, I’ve chosen to be generous with the past. I do think we need to cut the past some slack because the tendency is to disqualify people for their imperfections. I think that people are messy, and I really sought in this to embrace not only the messiness of people, but eras."

Jeff Rowe, also writing for Associated Press, reviews Heidi Blake's From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West. From the review: "Heidi Blake lays out a sturdy case that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a cold, treacherous thug who runs his country like a criminal cartel. But European and Asian leaders were so eager to welcome Russia into the family of free nations – and to buy Russian gas and oil – that they looked the other way as Putin consolidated his power and his opponents started turning up dead."

Barbara VanDenburgh writes for USA Today (through Gannett's Arizona Republic), and this week she has a round-up of new releases and what Kirkus says. The books are Lost Hills, by Lee Goldberg (he's visiting Boswell on Feb 5), Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid, The Wives, by Tarryn Fisher, Tiny Habits, by BJ Fogg, and Love Lettering, by Kate Clayborn. More here.

*I like to say that during the holiday break, post-Christmas is hardly like pre-Christmas in volume; it's more like a Saturday every day.