Boswell bestsellers for the week ending June 20, 2020

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending June 20, 2020

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
2. The Second Home, by Christina Clancy
3. A Burning, by Megha Majumdar
4. The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. Deacon King Kong, by James McBride
6. American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins
7. The Paris Hours, by Alex George
8. The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes
9. Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars., by Joyce Carol Oates (register here for June 22, 7 pm event)
10. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich

Oprah's Book Club selected Deacon King Kong as her 85th book club selection and the fifth since her new partnership with Apple. Per O: The Oprah Magazine, James McBride's latest is "set in a Brooklyn housing project in 1969 much like the one where the author grew up" and "features a cast of characters who struggle to keep their heads above water amid poverty, loss, racial tensions, and crime - yet they always have one another’s backs, and what could have turned tragic instead turns into a tale of resilience, hope, and humanity."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X Kendi
2. Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F Saad
3. Cookbook Politics, by Kennan Ferguson
4. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. I'm Still Here, by Austin Channing Brown
6. Milwaukee Brewers at 50, by Adam McCalvy
7. Falastin, by Sami Tamimi
8. The Hardest Job in the World, by John Dickerson
9. Turning 50, by Tom Haudricourt
10. Spirit Run, by Noe Alvarez

I don't think anybody expected that we'd be celebrating the Milwaukee Brewers 50th anniversary without a baseball season, but it hasn't started yet. Will it be shortened and regional? Concentrated in Southern California? I have no clue. That said, it's Father's Day and there are two commemorative titles in our top ten, Adam McCalvy's Milwaukee Brewers at 50 and Turning 50: The Brewers Celebrate a Half-Century in Milwaukee. Haudricourt's is signed, and I'm sure one day you'll be able to get McCalvy's signed as well. You can still order a sidewalk pickup copy between 11 and 5 pm today.

Paperback Fiction:
1. American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
2. There There, by Tommy Orange
3. Hot Comb, by Ebony Flowers
4. Sing Unburied Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
5. Circe, by Madeline Miller
6. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
7. A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
8. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
9. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
10. The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

While Hot Combs's Ebony Flowers now lives in Denver, she pursued her doctorate at UW-Madison. Of her 2019 work, Publisher Weekly writes: "Flowers's exploration of black women's relationships to their hair is rich with both sorrow and celebration as it champions black womanhood and family ties. In a series of comics vignettes, Flowers journeys through a first salon trip, a long-running case of trauma-generated trichotillomania (obsessive hair-pulling), and the collision of pain and piety that is a beloved matriarch's funeral." Note - the collection is a mix of stories and memoir so it could have also gone in nonfiction.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo
2. Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X Kendi
3. So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
4. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle ALexander
5. The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin
6. Shameless, by Nadia Bolz Weber
7. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, by Beverly Daniel Tatum
8. Searching for Zion, by Emily Raboteau
9. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
10. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein

Originally published in 1997 and updated in 2017, Beverly Daniel Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race. As noted, "Tatum presents strong evidence that straight talk about our racial identities - whatever they may be - is essential if we are serious about facilitating communication across racial and ethnic divides." The author is President Emerita of Spelman College and in 2014 received the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology, the highest honor presented by the American Psychological Association.

Books for Kids:
1. You Matter, by Christian Robinson
2. Stamped, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi
3. Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X Kendi
4. This Book Is Anti Racist, by Tiffany Jewell
5. All Are Welcome, by Alexandra Penfold, with illustrations by Suzanne Kaufman
6. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins
7. The Day You Begin, by Jacqueline Woodson, with illustrations by Rafael Lopez
8. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak
9. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
10. Just Mercy: Adapted for Young Adults, by Bryan Stephenson

The National Book Award-winner Ibram X Kendi's latest is Antiracist Baby a "new board book that empowers parents and children to uproot racism in our society and in ourselves." Demand is so strong for this title, and the message so transcends the board book genre, that Kokila is also producing the book as a picture book. This format should dramatically increase the places where this book is sold and get it to slightly older kids who have passed the board book years. Here's the link to the format for older readers - it is publishing on July 14.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews the latest from Katherine Addison. He notes: In The Angel of the Crows, Madison novelist Katherine Addison remixes the Baker Street duo (that's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson) in an alternate - history fantasy with an even weirder London where supernatural entities jostle with hansom cab drivers and Lestrade. Addison has called it a 'kitchen sink' novel, and she has put nearly everything in here: angels, fallen angels, vampires, werewolves, hellhounds, human carrion eaters, witches, ghosts and airships." You can register here for our Zoom event on June 30 with Addison in conversation with Jim Higgins. The novel goes on sale June 23, this coming Tuesday.