1. Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry
2. James, by Percival Everett
3. Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones
4. Dream Count, Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
5. The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore
6. We'll Prescribe You a Cat, by Syou Ishida
7. Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt (MPL May 8 event)
8. Big Chief, by Jon Hickey (Boswell April 30 event)
9. Wedding People, by Alison Espach
10. Wide Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
Dream Count is Chimananda Ngozi Adichie's first novel since 2013's Americanah and was a #1 bestseller in the UK. It's been out since March 4. The tally on BookMarks is rather mixed - seven raves, two positives, a mixed, and two pans, the last of which you generally only see when there is some sort of backlash to the writer. One of the raves is from Ron Charles in The Washington Post: "Adichie is back to fiction with “Dream Count,” a rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. The story jets between America and Nigeria while rotating, section by section, through the experiences of four Black women. Moving through a comedy of manners and a hall of horrors, their stories overlap and intersect in ways that suggest the vast matrix of the African diaspora."
1. Food for Thought, by Alton Brown
2. Accidentally on Purpose, by Kristen Kish
3. Prism, by Laura Day
4. Desperately Seeking Something, by Susan Seidelman
5. The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt
6. The World Is Your Office, by Prithwiraj Choudhury
7. Everything Is Tuberculosis, by John Green
8. Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
9. Medicine River, by Mary Annette Pember (Boswell May 1 event)
10. Notes to John, by Joan Didion
Notes to John is a posthumous collection of essays - its BookMarks score is one rave, ten positive, two mixed and a pan, which I thought would, like the Adichie pans, critique the author herself, but no this one is saying that the new collection, which were summaries of psychiatric sessions, have none of the style of Didion's best work. The rave, from Publishers Weekly: "More than mere notes, Didion’s fly-on-the-wall reports recap the therapy sessions word-for-word, offering an unvarnished look into the personal life and psychology of the oft-enigmatic writer. "
1. I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman
2. Funny Story, by Emily Henry
3. Unworthy, by Agustina Bazterrica
4. Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
5. The Paris Novel, by Ruth Reichl
6. Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett
7. The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
8. Martyr, by Kaveh Akbar
9. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J Ryan Stradal
10. Strange Pictures, by Uketsu
It's the first week of sale for The Paris Novel the second novel from Ruth Reichl. It was an Indie Next pick in hardcover. From a profile in Eater, on Reichl's first Paris visit: "Eating Joël Robuchon’s food for the first time and literally thinking, I’ve never had food like this before. We had French restaurants in the United States, but we didn’t have anything of that caliber here. And it was really exciting. I remember the first bite of food at Jamin, Robuchon’s first restaurant. I thought, this wasn’t made by human hands. The technique was so impressive."
1. Wisconsin Idols, by Dean Robbins
2. No Straight Road Takes You There, by Rebecca Solnit
3. On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
4. Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond
5. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
6. A Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros
7. While You Were Out, by Meg Kissinger
8. Bad Feminist anniversary edition, by Roxane Gay
9. A Book of Noises, by Caspar Henderson
10. Mutual Aid, by Dean Spade
Independent Bookstore Day was good for a lot of titles. Almost all or week's sales for I Who Have Never Known Men came on Saturday, as was the case for Rebecca Solnit's No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, which officially publishes on May 13, but that's pub date, not laydown. The Kirkus was very enthusiastic, calling it "A buoyant, historically astute appreciation of political persistence." The Publishers Weekly appeared to find it repetitive in its thesis. Oh well. From my perspective, I applaud a white-on-yellow jacket.
1. My Return to the Walter Boys, by Ali Novak
2. Sunrise on the Reaping V5, by Suzanne Collins
3. The Deadliest Spider, by Eleanor Spicer Rice, illustrated by Max Temescu
4. The Deadliest Cat, by Eleanor Spicer Rice, illustrated by Max Temescu
5. Peekaboo Dog, by Camilla Reid, illustrated by Ingela P Arrhenius
6. My Life with the Walter Boys, by Ali Novak
7. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Renée Graef
8. Paper Hearts, by Ali Novak
9. Saying Goodbye to My Best Friend Teddy, by Maureen McNally
10. Giving Good, by Aaron Boyd
Ali Novak appeared at Boswell on Friday for My Return to the Walter Boys. Eleanor Spicer Rice had a virtual school visit to make up for school visits cancelled by a snow day - she was here but the kids were home. And a local program for kids books picked up a few new titles among their backlist, like
