Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 25, 2023

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 25, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
2. Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano
3. Fourth Wing V1, by Rebecca Yarros
4. The Narrow Road Between Desires, by Patrick Rothfuss
5. Iron Flame V2, by Rebecca Yarros
6. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J Ryan Stradal
7. The Future, by Naomi Alderman
8. North Woods, by Daniel Mason
9. What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama
10. The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
11. The Secret Book of Flora Lea, by Patti Callahan Henry
12. Absolution, by Alice McDermott
13. Day, by Michael Cunningham
14. Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
15. Murder Your Employer, by Rupert Holmes

It's likely that being named book of the year by Amazon and Barnes and Noble is giving a sales bump to The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store for independents too. It was also just named to the top ten-best by The Washington Post, as was North Woods. 

But let's also give a shout out to The Future, the follow-up to The Power, which was popular with a number of Boswellians. For The Future, our buyer Jason notes: "If the heads of those (social media) platforms don’t have the best intentions for the world in their ethos, then the world is truly doomed." From Ilana Masad in the Los Angeles Times: "It harbors a stubborn sense of optimism, theorizing that if only people of conscience helmed the richest and most powerful companies, they might be able to steer the ship of humanity to safety."

Last week I gave a shout out to The Door-to-Door Bookstore, a big-hearted, book-related, novel in translation. This week another title hits the list, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library. Michiko Aoyama's book is translated from Japanese by Alison Watts, who gets a rare translation credit on the book jacket. It's about a librarian who gives life-changing book recommendations. For a bookseller or even most book readers, this premise never gets cold!

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl
2. While You Were Out, by Meg Kissinger
3. The Wager, by David Grann
4. Why We Love Baseball, by Joe Posnanski
5. A Very Chinese Cookbook, by Kevin Pang and Jeffrey Pang (Boswell event November 28)
6. World Within a Song, by Jeff Tweedy
7. Wisconsin Supper Clubs 2E, by Ron Faiola (Boswell event November 30)
8. Prequel, by Rachel Maddow
9. The Mysteries, by Bill Watterson and Jon Kascht
10. My Name Is Barbara, by Barbra Streisand

One doesn't always think about promoting baseball books in fall/holiday season, but hey, that's when people buy books. So for a title like Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, the publisher hoped for a bit of promotion around the World Series (the book came out in September), which could position the book for later gift giving. The good news is that BookMarks shows only raves - three of them! The bad news is that they are all from trades: Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. 

Breaking news: I found The Wall Street Journal review from Ben Yagoda that wasn't indexed by BookMarks: "Not everybody loves baseball and I imagine the minutiae and panegyrics herein will be boring or puzzling to those who don’t. But if you were that kid who felt a surge of gladness when Baseball Digest turned up in the mailbox, and if the game has continued to hold a place in your heart, well, I’ve got just the book for you."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Twilight Falls V4, by Juneau Black
2. The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa
3. A Death in Door County V1, by Annelise Ryan (Boswell event 12/14)
4. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
5. Shady Hollow V1, by Juneau Black
6. A Court of Thorns and Roses V1, by Sarah J Maas
7. The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler
8. The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
9. Signal Fires, by Dani Shapiro
10. Hedge, by Jane Delury (Lit Group 12/4, Virtual Event 1/17)

Several authors have hot releases coming in 2024. We already started seeing preorders for Sarah J Maas's House of Flame and Shadows, volume 3 in the Crescent series and booksellers have been talking about The Fury, the new book (out January 16) from Alex Michaelides. But being that both that The Silent Patient and A Court of Thorn and Roses are still in our top 10, both authors are still have readers to entice.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. An Immense World, by Ed Yong
2. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, by Nick Offerman
3. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund
4. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
5. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
6. All About Love, by bell hooks
7. Murdle V2, by GT Karber
8. Lyrics, by Paul McCarthy
9. Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin, by Kristine Hansen
10. Endurance, by Alfred Lansing

The Murdle (volume 1 and volume 2 - the next one is due April 2024) series reminds me of the Dell Logic Puzzles that are still in the variety puzzle magazines that sometimes pop up at Boswell. You get a bunch of clues about how to match people to occupations and their favorite pies or something like that and there is an accompanying grid to help figure things out. My mother would buy these pocket editions at the grocery store and we would use tracing paper so we could both try to solve them*. Many of the Murdle puzzles have such grids, though I'm told (by Jason, who loves them) that they come with a better story.

Books for Kids:
1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid V18: No Brainer, by Jeff Kinney
2. Murtagh V5, by Christopher Paolini
3. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh, by Mo Willems
4. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins
5. Bluey: Hooray It's Christmas, by who know who?
6. The Skull, by Jon Klassen
7. Red and Green, by Lois Ehlert
8. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
9. How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?, by Mac Barnett, illustrations by Jon Klassen
10. Wombat, by Phiip Bunting

I would like to dedicate this space to my hand-selling of Wombat (two presentations last week that showed up this week's holiday lists) but I have to give a shout out to Jon Klassen, who has two new books in our top ten, his middle grade The Skull and his illustrated collaboration with Mac Barnett for How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? Kirkus on the latter: "For all that it leans heavily on absurdity, this book exhibits some serious heart. In the market for an understated Christmas classic? Behold! A Christmas miracle!"

*And no, the idea that we would buy two copies never came up.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 18, 2023

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 18, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. A Very Inconvenient Scandal, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
2. Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (Tickets for December 6 event)
3. Iron Flame V2, by Rebecca Yarros
4. System Collapse V8, by Martha Wells
5. Swimming with Ghosts, by Michelle Brafman
6. Fourth Wing V1, by Rebecca Yarros
7. The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
8. The Door-to-Door Bookstore, by Carsten Henn. translated by Melody Shaw
9. The Secret Book of Flora Lea, by Patti Callahan Henry (Register for November 21 virtual event)
10. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
11. The Narrow Road Between Desires, by Patrick Rothfuss
12. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J Ryan Stradal

Jason generally has a quirky-sweet story as one of his holiday picks, slotted on the back cover of our holiday newsletter. The books can be varied, but one thing they almost always have in common is that they are books in translation. Japanese, French, and at least once, Icelandic. Carsten Henn's The Door-to-Door Bookstore is a German bestseller, and is about an older man whose job hand-delivering books to customers is complicated by the interest of a young girl. Also his job is in peril. No BookMarks posting yet, but Der Spiegel's reviewer called it "The feel-good novel for all book lovers," while Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung  (it's a newspaper) called it "a warm-hearted story without kitsch with lovingly described protagonists. The right book for a dark rainy day, which immediately becomes a little brighter when you read it."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Wisconsin Field to Fork, by Lori Fredrich
2. The Messy Truth, by Alli Webb
3. Misfit, by Gary Gulman
4. It's Not You, It's Capitalism, by Malaika Jabali
5. Teaching the Invisible Race, by Tony DelaRosa
6. The Globemakers, by Peter Bellerby
7. While You Were Out, by Meg Kissinger
8. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl (Register for November 20 virtual event)
9. How to Know a Person, by David Brooks
10. The Wager, by David Grann
11. The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel
12. Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond

I did two book talks today - it's a nice way to figure out what hand-selling works and what falls flat. One book that is working is The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft, by Peter Bellerby, a Tim rec that is also featured in our holiday gift guide. We generally do very well with map books and this is a different take - one person's attempt to make a handmade globe. From Publishers Weekly: "While this sometimes reads as an extended advertisement for the author's business, readers will be fascinated by Bellerby's reverential and sometimes existential musings , which are enriched by stunning photos of the globemaking process. It's a fascinating deep dive into an arcane art."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Tandem, by Andy Mozina
2. The Neorealist in Winter, by Salvatore Pane
3. Twilight Falls V4, by Juneau Black
4. Ex-Wife, by Ursula Parrott
5. The Good Son, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
6. Last Summer on State Street, by Toya Wolfe
7. Dearborn, by Ghassan Zeineddine
8. The Deep End of the Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard
9. The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman
10. The Whalebone Theatre, by Joanna Quinn

One suspects the massive sales at some stores for Ex-Wife might be from McNally Jackson, who are also the publisher of McNally Editions. But I am proud to say we are the #1 store in both the Great Lakes and Midwest regions for Edelweiss. Ursula Parrott's first novel was brought to my attention with the biography Becoming the Ex-Wife, and it comes with a swell backstory that helps sell the book. For a republication, McNally Editions did a spectacular job on press, with seven BookMarks reviews, including three raves and three positives. But perhaps the publisher says it best: "An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929, Ex-Wife is the story of a divorce and its aftermath that scandalized the Jazz Age - and still resonates today."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
3. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, by Nick Offerman
4. Jews in the Garden, by Judy Rakowsky
5. Kodachrome Milwaukee, by Adam Levin
6. How We Live Is How We Die, by Pema Chödrön

Sadly, I supersized the hardcover lists because the books in the teens were outselling the bottom half of our paperback nonfiction list by more than two-to-one. I probably should have brought copies of Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Likes to Walk Outside with us to the Pabst last weekend - I only learned after the fact that Nick Offerman's latest chronicles a journey to Glacier National Park with Jeff Tweedy.

Books for Kids:
1. Death's Door, by Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Renée Graef
2. Mine, by Candace Fleming, illustrations by Eric Rohmann
3. Oh No, by Candace Fleming, illustrations by Eric Rohmann
4. Red and Green, by Lois Ehlert
5. The Eyes and the Impossible (McSweeney's edition), by Dave Eggers
6. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh, by Mo Willems
7. Chalice of the Gods V6, by Rick Riordan
8. Dasher Can't Wait for Christmas, by Matt Tavares
9. Dogtown, by Katherine Applegate and Gennifer Choldenko
10. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats

Guess what holiday is coming? Topping the Christmas titles is Lois Ehlert's posthumous Red & Green, a classic Ehlert-style take on The Night Before Christmas. Booklist called it "A playful picture book that offers a familiar Christmas story and striking, distinctive art." The Milwaukee Art Museum is celebrating Ehlert with a series of story times and a talk that already happened. I'm sure most of you knew about it. More here.

Boswell bestsellers for Tweedolini week (November 5-11, 2023)

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 11, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Iron Flame V2, by Rebecca Yarros
2. Fourth Wing V1 special edition, by Rebecca Yarros
3. Absolution, by Alice McDermott
4. Wellness, by Nathan Hill
5. Fractal Noise V2, by Christoper Paolini
6. Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt
7. Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus
8. Recipes for Murder, by Karen Pierce
9. Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
10. Holly, by Stephen King

Rebecca Yarros's decision to pivot from romance to fantasy, or rather to the hybrid romantasy, was apparently the best decision since Rick Riordan pivoted from adult mysteries to middle-grade fiction. I suspect we'll see some news write-ups of Iron Flame's first week numbers. Congrats to the Red Tower imprint of Entangled.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. World Within a Song, by Jeff Tweedy
2. Infertilities, edited by Elizabeth Horn and Maria Novotny
3. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl (Register for virtual event November 20)
4. The Last Supper Club, by Matthew Batt
5. Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, by Curtis Chin
6. How to Write One Song, by Jeff Tweedy
7. Wisconsin Field to Fork, by Lori Fredrich
8. Activate Your Heroic Potential, by Brian Johnson
9. Prequel, by Rachel Maddow
10. Hidden Potential, by Adam Grant

Speaking of breakouts, Margaret Renkl's latest book, The Comfort of Crows, is also going crazy, and much as I'd like to say it's due to our upcoming virtual event with Urban Ecology Center, this appears to be a nationwide phenomenon. I don't know if the new incarnation of Spiegel & Grau has hit the national bestseller lists before, but they will now.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Twilight Falls V4, by Juneau Black
2. The Deluge, by Stephen Markley
3. Tandem, by Andy Mozina (Register for November 15 Boswell event)
4. Bookshops and Bonedust, by Travis Baldree
5. Hedge, by Jane Delury
6. Shady Hollow V1, by Juneau Black
7. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, by Christopher Paolini
8. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
9. A Court of Thorn and Roses V1, by Sarah J Maas
10. A Visit, by Shirley Jackson, illustrations by Seth

Take two of our big events from last week, Christopher Paolini's Murtagh and Juneau Black's Twilight Falls, cross 'em, and you might come up with Travis Baldree's Bookshops and Bonedust, often termed a cozy fantasy. From Kirkus: " As a prequel (to Legends and Lattes), it can stand alone, but will certainly satisfy fans as well. Warm and wonderful."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. A Crowded Hour, by Kevin Abing
2. Let's Go So We Can Get Back, by Jeff Tweedy
3. A Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros
4. The Storyteller, by Dave Grohl
5. How We Live Is How We Die, by Pema Chodron
6. Butts: A Backstory, by Heather Radke
7. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund 

8. 111 Places in Milwaukee You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
9. Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
10. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann

I was curious where we stood on sales of our perennial paperback sellers, A Philosophy of Walking and A Year in the Woods, being that they are probably great pairings for The Comfort of Crows. It turns out we're #3 for one book on Edelweiss's inventory sharing system (Woods), and #5 for the other (Walking). According to my publishing source, anytime we're in the top 30, we're punching above our grade level, but when it's not about a major rec or event or regional interest, it's just that other stores are ignoring these indie-publisher books' potential.

Books for Kids:
1. Murtagh V5, by Christopher Paolini
2. Mine, by Candace Fleming, illustrations by Eric Rohmann
3. Oh No, by Candace Fleming, illustrations by Eric Rohmann
4. Eragon: The Illustrated Edition, by Christopher Paolini, illustrated by Sidharth Chatruverdi
5. Every Day's a Holiday, by Stef Wade, illustrations by Husna Aghinya
6. Minerva Keen's Detective Club, by James Patterson and Keir Graff
7. Eragon V1, by Christopher Paolini
8. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh, by Mo Willems
9. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins
10. No Brainer V18, by Jeff Kinney

Aside from one big event (Paolini - we still have signed copies of Murtagh) and three school visits (Fleming/Rohman, Stef Wade, Keir Graff), the biggest trend was how many holiday books we sold this week, led by Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh. School Library Journal called the latest by Willems " A good choice for a Santa-centric and Christmas-specific collection."

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 4, 2023

Boswell bestsellers, week ending November 4, 2023

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Midnight Is the Darkest Hour, by Ashley Winstead
2. The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff
3. Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
4. Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (Tickets for December 6 theater event)
5. Absolution, by Alice McDermott
6. Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward
7. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
8. When I'm Dead V3, by Hannah Morrissey
9. Foster, by Claire Keegan
10. Armor of Light V5, by Ken Follett

Absolution is the latest from one of my fave authors, Alice McDermott - her first novel in six years. Its release brings back memories of selling books with my late colleagues Anne, Elly, and Beverly, whose love for McDermott goes back to the days of At Weddings and Wakes; it was one of those novels that the Book Nook sold like crazy.

From Jennifer Egan's New York Times review: "Although she opens with an epigraph from The Quiet American, Graham Greene’s 1955 indictment of catastrophic American blundering in post-colonial Vietnam, McDermott asserts her revisionist focus in the novel’s third sentence: 'You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.' She then delves into the lives and activities of the blunderers’ wives during the last era in American life in which being a husband’s 'helpmeet' was widely seen as a worthy fulfillment of feminine ambition." Bookmarks round-up yields five raves and a positive.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Surely You Can't Be Serious, by David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abra
2. While You Were Out, by Meg Kissinger
3. Being Henry, by Henry Winkler
4. The Woman in Me, by Britney Spears
5. How to Know a Person, by David Brooks
6. Remember Love, by Cleo Wade
7. Start Here, by Sohla El-Waylly
8. Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, by Curtis Chin (Registration for November 5 event - that's today) 

9. Democracy Awakening, by Heather Cox Richardson
10. The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl (Register for November 20 virtual event)

It is unusual for Macmillan to distribute the top three titles on any of our lists, and even more so that two of the three come from the same division Celadon. In addition to our steady sales of While Your Were Out, we have our first week of sales for Henry Winkler's Being Henry. No, I don't know why the publisher skipped Milwaukee as a tour stop. No, I don't know if any of these other cities have Fonzie statues in their downtown. Thank you for calling.

Four positives on BookMarks. From Mark Kennedy at Associated Press: "Winkler’s 245-page book charts his course chronologically from the Fonz to Barry - and the frustrating fallow periods in between - painting a portrait of a man trying to overcome a bitter, loveless childhood and a disability that made reading impossibly hard and simply trying to become a better man."

Paperback Fiction:
1. A Dish Best Served Hot, by Natalie Caña
2. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
3. Trust, by Hernan Diaz
4. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab
5. The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa
6. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett
7. A Proposal They Can't Refuse, by Natalie Caña
8. The Boyfriend Candidate, by Ashley Winstead
9. The Genesis of Misery, by Neon Yang
10. Circe, by Madeline Miller

We had a nice event with Natalie Caña for her second novel, A Dish Best Served Hot. Many people think she is from Chicago because her series is set in the historically Puerto Rican Humboldt Park neighborhood, but that's partly because Milwaukee doesn't have such a neighborhood, with the community first centered on the Lower East Side, then Riverwest, then the South Side. That said, the community center in the novel is based on Milwaukee's UCC.

From Kirkus: "The latest in Caña's Vega Family Love Stories series is full of all of the dynamics that made A Proposal They Can't Refuse so irresistible, from a comedic cast of supporting characters to an emphasis on the importance of community. Saint and Lola's relationship is explored through both past and present timelines, emphasizing just how deep their history runs and providing an illuminating comparison between the people they were before and the ones who are much better equipped to pick up where they left off. A vibrant second-chance love story about repairing community and romantic connection."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
2. The Switch, by Jason Puskar
3. An Immense World, by Ed Yong
4. The Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen
5. How We Live Is How We Die, by Pema Chödrön
6. The Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros
7. Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, by Nick Offerman
8. The Grandest Stage by Tyler Kepner
9. A Year in the Woods, by Torbjorn Ekelund
10. All About Love by bell hooks

Jason Puskar, author of The Switch: An Off and on History of Digital Humans is Professor of English at UWM. A blurb from Mark Goble: "In this deeply ambitious and sophisticated book, Jason Puskar invites us to think more seriously about what happens almost every time we touch one of our devices and turn it on or swipe or click. From the technologies at our fingertips to the vastly larger networks of politics and language that they operate and represent, The Switch provides a fascinating cultural history of how we have made the modern world, and been remade in turn, by the simplest of human actions and the connections they enable."

Books for Kids
1. The Hour of Need, by Ralph Shayne, illustrations by Tatiana Goldberg
2. Let Me Finish, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Isabel Roxas
3. Minerva Keene's Detective Club, by James Patterson and Keir Graff
4. Lift, by Minh Lê, illustrations by Dan Santat
5. Curses Are the Worst V1, by Elizabeth Eulberg
6. Zombie Wedding Crashers V2, by Elizabeth Eulberg
7. Real to Me, by Minh Lê, illustrated by Raissa Figueroa
8. Tiny Mansion, by Keir Graff
9. You Are Here: Connecting Flights, by Ellen Oh
10. No Brainer V18, by Jeff Kinney

Minh Lê was recently in town doing an area school visit. Her most recent picture book is Real to Me, which was featured on the May/June Indie Next List. From Kirkus: "The imaginary-friend trope gets turned on its head. Told mostly in first person, this story follows a large furry green creature and a small Black girl who are engaged in a series of adventures...Together the two laugh and play, are brave together, and get in trouble. Others say that the friend is imaginary, but our narrator isn't so sure. And then, one day, the friend is unexpectedly gone. Now it becomes clear that the narrator wasn't the girl but the newly morose and lonely monster."