Sunday, June 4, 2023

`Boswell bestsellers for the week ending June 3, 2023

`Boswell bestsellers for the week ending June 3, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Rogue Justice, by Stacey Abrams
2. Good Night Irene, by Luis Alberto Urrea (signed copies available)
3. Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
4. The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
5. Yellowface, by RF Kuang
6. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
7. The Guest, by Emma Kline
8. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J Ryan Stradal
9. Happy Place, by Emily Henry
10. Ink Blood Sister Scribe, by Emma Törsz

Emma Törsz's Ink Blood Sister Scribe is the new Good Morning America book club pick and has also received seven raves per BookMarks. One is from Carole E Barrowman in the Star Tribune (or as I have sometimes heard it called, the Strib): "In Törzs' cleverly imagined world, magic can be channeled through certain books. Some people can 'hear magic' resonating from their pages. Others, like Esther, cannot. She has other mad skills. These spellbound books can be activated when the pages 'greedily swallow' magical blood or when the books are inked using the enchanted blood of a scribe. These spells (absorbing in their descriptive detail) can create everything from small charms that turn water into wine or open up staircases in walls, to a serious bloodline spell which ensures that magical knowledge is 'passed down instead of being lost among a scattered, disconnected populace.' And in that spell lies the crux of the conspiracy at the story's core."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond
2. King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig
3. The Wager, by David Grann
4. The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin
5. Life in Five Senses, by Gretchen Rubin
6. Why Fathers Cry at Night by Kwame Alexander
7. Sonic Boom, by Rainn Wilson
8. Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, by Dorcas Chang-Tozun (Register for virtual June 6 event here)
9. Raw Dog, by Jamie Loftus
10. Sit in the Sun, by Jon M Sweeney

Kwame Alexander's Why Fathers Cry at Night is, per the publisher, a Memoir in Love Poems, Recipes, Letters, and Remembrances. Alexander was first known for his books for kids (this is book #38!), but his spot as NPR's poetry ambassador has probably broadened his audience further. No BookMarks representation, but the three advances I found (Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus) are somewhere in the rave-to-positive continuum. This round-up review in The Washington Post is also positive. The book is excerpted on CBS Sunday Morning - does that mean there is a segment today? Here's the link.

Paperback Fiction:
1. While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams
2. Rules of Engagement, by Stacey Abrams
3. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
4. Museum of Ordinary People, by Mike Gayle
5. Midcoast, by Adam White
6. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
7. The Employees, by Olga Ravin
8. A Court of Silver Flames V5, by Sarah J Maas
9. A Court of Wings and Ruin V3, by Sarah J Maas
10. Ithaca V1, by Claire North

Enough people took our advice on Mike Gayle's All the Lonely People and liked it enough (we sold 46 copies in both formats) for us to get a first week pop on The Museum of Ordinary People, which this time was published as a paperback original. I'm not going to lie - one of them was me because their was no print ARC. Booklist review: "Moving and heartwarming, this is a story about love and loss and holding onto the memories that make us who we are." The Kirkus review: "Cynics will find themselves rolling their eyes, but fans of uplifting-lit authors like Fredrik Backman will likely be suitably charmed." I guess I might not be a cynic after all - or maybe a book like this is just the thing for a cynic. To be discussed...

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin, by Kirstine Hansen (Register for June 9 Boswell event here)
2. Our Time Is Now, by Stacey Abrams
3. Quietly Hostile, by Samantha Irby
4. The Gardeners Guide to Prairie Plants, by Neil Diboll (Register for June 17 Boswell event here)
5. Walking Milwaukee, by Royal Bevvaxling and Molly Snyder
6. Happy-Go-Lucky, by David Sedaris
7. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
8. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund
9. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
10. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow

From Canadian indie Greystone Books comes the reprint of A Year in the Woods: Twelve Small Journeys Into Nature, from acclaimed Norwegian nature writer Torbjørn Ekelund.From the publisher: "Evoking Henry David Thoreau and the four-season structure of Walden, Ekelund writes about communing with nature by repeating a small, simple ritual and engaging in quiet reflection. At the start of the book, he hatches a plan: to leave the city after work one day per month, camp near the same tiny pond in the forest, and return to work the next day. He keeps this up for a year." All the reviews I have found are Canadian too, with The Vancouver Sun calling it "calm and charming" while the Toronto Star praises it as "a lovely little book."

Books for Kids:
1. Stacey's Remarkable Books, by Stacey Abrams
2. Happily Ever After V3: Once Upon Another Time, by James Riley
3. The Labors of Hercules Beal, by Gary D Schmidt
4. The Eyes and the Impossible, by Dave Eggers
5. Peekaboo Moon, by Camilla Reid, illustrations by Ingela Arrhenius
6. My Life as a Potato, by Ariane Costner
7. Gertie the Darling Duck of World War II, by Shari Swanson, illustrations by Renee Graef
8. Have You Seen My Invisble Dinosaur?, Helen Yoon
9. The Story of Ukraine, by Olena Kharchenko
10. Peekaboo Sun, by Camilla Reid, illustrations by Ingela Arrhenius

From the publisher of Have You Seen My Invisible Dinosaur?: "The creator of Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover), Off-Limits, and I’m a Unicorn brings her original whimsy to the tale of a child’s special friend who goes missing after a bath - or does he?" From Kirkus: "A simple yet charming premise wonderfully executed." From Booklist: "The clever premise is carried out with heaps of humor and cheer, and the mixed-media illustrations are expressive and comical, including delightful spreads that appear to be the child's crayoned diagrams. A sweetly satisfying story with lots of laughs." It's also one of our buyer picks.

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