Boswell bestsellers,for the week ending Feb 8, 2020

Here are the Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 8, 2020

1. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
2. The Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende
3. Best Kept Secrets, by Tracey S Phillips (event)
4. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
5. The Wild One, by Nick Petrie
6. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, by Michael Zapata (event at Boswell 2/27, 7 pm)
7. The Resisters, by Gish Jen
8. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
9. The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead
10. Lost Hills, by Lee Goldberg (also in paperback)

Here's the setup for The Resisters - in a future time, the haves (the Netted) live on high ground while the have-nots (the Surplus) are on swampland or living in water. To a family of have-nots is born a child with a powerful arm for baseball. Our friend Carole Horne at Harvard Bookstore said "I don’t know how a book can be so devastating yet so miraculously wonderful at the same time," while another prominent bookseller, Ann Patchett, called Gish Jen's latest novel,"palpably loving, smart, funny, and desperately unsettling."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Three Seconds in Munich, by David A.F. Sweet (event)
2. A Very Stable Genius, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning
3. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, by Ilan Stavans
4. From Here to Financial Happiness, by Jonathan Clements
5. The Making of Milwaukee, by John Gurda
6. Dining In, by Alison Roman
7. Nothing Fancy, by Alison Roman
8. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
9. Catch and Kill, by Ronan Farrow
10. The Body, by Bill Bryson

Great to see a sales pop for indie Restless books, whose new linguistic anthology, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, has an official rave from Kirkus: which note that its entries show how 'Yiddish is so deeply woven into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today.'" Lithub has excerpted an essay from Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Girl Woman Other, by Bernardine Evaristo (In-Store Lit Group 3/2, 7 pm, at Boswell)
2. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
3. Morning Will Come, by Billy Lombardo (event)
4. The Drifter, by Nick Petrie
5. Lost Hills, by Lee Goldberg
6. Abigail, by Magda Szabo
7. The Story of a Goat, by Perumal Murugan (In-Store Lit Group 4/6, 7 pm, at Boswell)
8. Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman
9. The Ambassador's Daughter, by Pam Jenoff
10. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris

Magda Szabo's novels from New York Review of Books Classics continue to pop after the breakout success of The Door. Abigail is a coming-of-age story set in Hungary, originally published in 1970. Our publisher contact tells us this is her most popular work in Hungary and concerns a spoiled wealthy teenager is sent to boarding school with no warning. It has its own Wikipedia page. Despite its appearance as a television series and a musical, it has never before been translated into English. Thanks, Len (Rix)!

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
2. Fading Ads of Milwaukee, by Adam Levin (event at Boswell Fri 2/21, 7 pm)
3. Just Kids, by Patti Smith (UWM course)
4. Seasonal Associate, by Heike Geissler (UWM course)
5. 111 Places in Milwaukee You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
6. White Fragility, by Robin D'Angelo
7. Riverwest, by Tom Tolan
8. Fibershed, by Rebecca Burress
9. Spinoza's Ethics, by Benedictus De Spinoza, translated by George Elliot
10. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (just hit the NYT bestseller list)

Princeton University Press just released an authoritative edition of Spinoza's Ethics. Translated by the novelist George Elliot, this edition was edited by Claire Carlisle. Philip David calls it "valuable to readers of George Eliot as well as students of Spinoza."

Books for Kids:
1. The Friendship Yarn, by Lisa Moser, illustrated by Oliga Demidova (schools)
2. Monster in the Backback, by Lisa Moser, With illustrations by Noah Z Jones
3. Squirrel's Fun Day, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Valeri Gorbachev
4. Prisoner B-3087, by Alan Gratz
5. Squirrel's World, by Lisa Moser, with illustrations by Valeri Gorbachev
6. Stories from Bug Garden, by Lisa Moser, with illlustrations by Gwen Millward
7. Guts, by Raina Telegemeier
8. Unteachables, by Gordon Korman
9. Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever, by Aarbon Blabey
10. The Velocity of Being, by Maria Popoova

The Bad Guys are just the worst! And now in The Bad Guys in the Baddest Day Ever, they, well, after much research, I have no idea. Here are some great Good Reads reviews: "Funny and cute" and "Made me laugh out loud." Here are some bad ones: "Stupid, but boys love them" and "I wouldn't recommend starting with this."

From the Journal Sentinel:

Felecia Wellington Radel in from USA Today reviews the graphic adaptation of Parable of the Sower: "In 1993, science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler released Parable of the Sower, a novel that told of a future where people suffered the consequences of these same situations. Recently, four years shy of when Butler’s dystopian tale takes place, the Parable of the Sower, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings, brings that world to life."

Jennifer Forker reviews a new anthology from Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman for Associated Press: "The essays in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases may be brief, but each packs a mighty wallop. Brief is the name of the game for drawing readers into a compendium that holds this much heft. For in these pages are works of immense importance, covering landmark U.S. cases, primarily before the Supreme Court, that were argued or supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Edited by authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the book commemorates the ACLU’s 100th anniversary."

Set in a farm manor turned makeshift hospital in 1969 Laos, Paul Yoon's latest, Run Me to Earth, is reviewed by Kendal Weaver in Associated Press: "The house is an eerie, exhausting place where the teens hold each other to survive – sleeping, as one says, 'like young animals in a den... He calmly builds memorable scenes even when events turn violent."