A Little More Book Expo--To Farm or to Forage? That is the Question.

About seven years ago, I filled my calendar at the Book Expo convention with meetings. I had a great sense of accomplishment beforehand, but at the end of the event, I had this nagging irritation that I hadn't really covered the floor effectively, that I spent too much time looking at things I would see with my reps, and no sense of finding that hidden gems that I might not discover day to day in the bookstore.

So I get to the end of the show and I find that the convention, for most serious booksellers, has moved to continuous meetings throughout the show. In some ways, it's beneficial for both bookseller and publisher--each gets a sense of making the show worthwhile. But nowadays, the show floor is small enough to hit everything much faster. There are more aisles to skip--the booths highlighting foreign countries for rights sales is hardly useful for us.

And while most traditional publishers have much smaller booths, many of which simply function as styling stages, and many smaller publishers seem to be gone, there are other publishers which shall not be named for whom booths will simply not affect our sales. And I'm not even really talking about A. here, but B. and E. and H. And there are aisles and aisles of digital too, and my feeling is that Boswell will do whatever the ABA recommends.

Every so often I would come across a signing line that wasn't a two hour wait. And there were some booths that were still staffed with folks who wanted to talk about books. Workman's family of publishers were still using the show the old-fashioned way, and we spent a lot of time looking at Algonquin and Artisan and the distributed Black Dog and Leventhal, and Workman itself. Of course, they were also one of the few publishers that asked to sit down and go over titles, becasue they are particularly happy about how our events are going (that's a shout out to you, our customers, because part of the equation means you are showing up at them) and I it's one of the many things I messed up, and didn't set up. Next year, I promise I will be better, or maybe I'll just send two other people.

As we were going through the Chronicle booth (or perhaps just afterwards, or perhaps just after I had spent ten minutes being dazzled at McSweeneys), Jason noticed that there was a correlation between publishers who got it, who were still consistingly doing interestingly packaged books that competed with ebooks, and publishers who were still doing full color or otherwise interesting print interesting catalogs. I don't know if it's really true, but it seemed like an interesting thought at the time.

I should also give our first shout out to the Black Dog and Leventhal collection, My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop. It's coming out in the fall, and not only are we included, Next Chapter is too. I think this deserves it's own post, don't you?

Fortunately there were still some fortuitous meetings. Michael and Marissa from Graywolf were great, which I guess should not be a surprised, since we seem to rec every other book they publish, and Alice from Norton was gracious enough to go through the catalog with me, just as if we had made an appointment weeks ago.  Both of us gushed a bit about Manil Suri, whose third novel, The City of Devi, is coming in early 2013. And of course our friend George was holding the fort at Bloomsbury, touting Lance Weller's Wilderness, a Cold Mountain-esque novel that deserves more than my easy comparisons to bestseller phenoms.

But sadly, the only thing more shoddy than my comparisons were my jittery photos. I had this idea that I would take a whole bunch of pictures of men holding books and cut off their heads, the way women's  are always cut off on the jackets of novels. Alas, it's a project that needs more time and a steadier hand. So my apologies in advance for the blurriness of the photos, and we'll continue to chat up more buzzed about titles as fall approaches.

A Day on the Floor of the Book Expo.

1. So we're in New York for Book Expo America. While the convention is but a blip on the population of New York, there are signs of the show outside the hall. Here's a billboard for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. You may have heard that #7 is due on November 13.

Other book ads were simply something that New York sees all the time. It was fascinating to see the ads in the New York subways. Jason and I took the C train to Greenlight in Brooklyn (duplicating the trip I made with Amie last year) and then we took the G to Word. Alas, I got off at the wrong stop, so we'll save that trip for later in the week.

2. It's my first glance at Coffee Houses's compilation, Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores, edited by Hans Weyandt, the co-owner of St. Paul's Micawber's Books. This is based on a blog feature that included picks from our own Stacie.

There's already been a great advance review from Kirkus which notes the collection is "entertaining, informative, satisfying and fun--everything books should be." I also heard from Chris (pictured--I decided to cut off his head in the photo like so many of the book jackets I spotted on the subway) that the librarians have been very enthusiastic for the book's publication. We're hoping to put together a great event this fall to celebrate the publication.

3. My post about Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones on Tuesday was prescient in that I heard her speak at the ABA Celebration of Bookselling just shortly after the entry posted. What a wonderful collection of authors, including a number (Andre Dubus, Ann Patchett, Jeffrey Eugenides) who appeared at Boswell and many others whom we hope would visit in the future.

After the lunch, the authors who attended signed copies of their books. I came this close to getting my hardcover signed, but alas, I left it in the hotel room. I could also head down to Chicago on Saturday, but I have to work.

4. The show has changed a lot over the years. There was a time when every booth gave out tons of galleys, and you would just grab and go, but nowadays, most of the larger publishers connect galleys to signings, and the signings generally involve long lines.

One hot ticket was Gillian Flynn (pictured, concentrating on her long line), whose Gone Girl came out on Tuesday, June 5. The book is getting all the great reviews we expected. Here's Sherryl Connnelly in the New York Daily News, noting that Flynn outdoes her first two novels in a thriller that takes The War of the Roses to a new level.

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Sharp Shooting Ride Up and Down the Stark River.(Event is This Friday, June 8, 7 pm)

The first time I crossed paths with Bonnie Jo Campbell was when her short story collection American Salvage was published. She emailed me and said she’d be in Chicago for a reading, and perhaps we could add something on in Milwaukee. We emailed each other back and forth but the problem was that we only had a few week’s notice and couldn’t make the short notice work.

And then American Salvage was shortlisted for the National Book Award and W.W. Norton picked up the distribution and the rights to her next novel, Once Upon a River. And that’s when she met a few Boswellians in person. She met Stacie at the AWP conference (that’s the Association of Writers and Writing Programs) and Jason at the bookseller institute. It turned out that Campbell read at Next Chapter for her hardcover, and while we talked about her coming back in conjunction with the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison, her schedule was simply too full.

Instead, we went out for coffee, which was documented previously on this blog.

And the paperback came out, and Campbell, true to her word, worked with her publicist to get her up to Milwaukee, in conjunction with Printer’s Row Lit Fest. So everything was set. We knew we wouldn’t get too much press in the Journal Sentinel, as Campbell had already had a review and not one, but two interviews. And she’s already been on Lake Effect. But we had a bunch of reads.

Except one. I was too afraid to read it. Folks who knew my delicate nature thought it might be too violent for me. So it’s a good thing for me that we have several booksellers who can go to the dark places—Stacie, Shane, Greg, Jason, even Sharon. We have at least two upcoming events coming by master craftsmen who explore such dark places—Patrick Somerville on July 11 and then Donald Ray Pollock on July 17. Now don't forget, we have a large core of customers that see violence as a path to the larger literary truth. I'm not riffing against violence here.

And of course I also let the in-store lit group pick The Sisters Brothers as our July selection. But Shane told me (yes, he’s a fan of this one too) that it’s not as violent as some have said.

But now that we had an event, I had to revisit my Once Upon a River fears. And I have to say, some bad stuff happens, but it’s not particularly graphic, and it’s not violence for violence’s sake. I should have read the Mike Fischer's review in the Journal Sentinel more closely, where he notes that this is like Cooper, Melville, Kerouac, and McCarthy, only with the women that are missing from those books.

Margaret “Margo” Crane is just 14 when the story opens. Her Grandpa Murray runs the local factory. But then Grandpa dies and the factory passes to Uncle Cal. Margo’s mom abandons her dad (they aren’t married) without much contact info. And Cal comes on to Margo at the annual Thanksgiving feast, and that sets in motion a series of events leading to Margo alone on the river.

She’s got some maturing to do but one thing Margo does have is her skills as a sure shot. Her time on the river, through a series of meetings, riffs a bit off of Huckleberry Finn. I’d be more positive about that if I’d read Huckleberry Finn. The hole in my classic literature knowledge seems nebula large sometimes, doesn’t it?

As Margo grows, she learns to take control of her body, learns to trust, but also learns to protect herself. I should note that there is rape in the book, and some killings. But none of the violence is superfluous, and there several books I've actually finished that one be closer to classifying as brutal.

Reading reviews actually helped me put the story in perspective. I learned from Jane Smiley in the New York Times Book Review that Margo is the mother of the heroine of Rachel, the heroine of Q Road, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s first novel. Smiley writes, “It would be too bad if, because of Campbell’s realistic style and ferocious attention to her setting, Once Upon a River were discounted as merely a fine example of American regionalism. It is, rather, an excellent American parable about the consequences of our favorite ideal, freedom.”


And Lisa Schwartzbaum in Entertainment Weekly offered extraordinary praise, but got a little caught up in the river angle. At one point, she offers “an assured Campbell narrates in a graceful, gliding, confident voice 
that steers the action smoothly from one bend in the plot to the next — a demonstration of outstanding skills on the river of American literature.” And what did I learn from this? Yes, you risk sending your review’s credibility down the drain if you overdo that metaphor thing.

And Alan Cheuse might be one of the biggest fans of all. You know him from NPR but he wrote this print piece for the Chicago Tribune for the hardcover: “Fortunately Bonnie Jo Campbell works all of this material, some lyrical, some naturalistic, and all of it contributing to the creation of a heroine some smart young adolescents may find as attractive as Annie Oakley—or Huck. With an ease and an always convincing prose, this novel is one of the most compelling of the year.”

So now you have the story.
1) Where the heck did I get the idea that I would be too feint-hearted to read this?
2) When you get a ton of press in hardcover, it’s tougher to get attention for the paperback.
3) Campbell is appearing this Friday, June 8, 7 pm, along with Natalie Bakopoulos, author of The Green Shore, which features a teenage girl, Anna, in no less than a struggle against the military takeover of Greece (yes, it takes place in the late 60s, early 70s.)

If you missed it last year, don’t make the same mistake twice.

How Did the Book Club Discussion Go of "Salvage the Bones"? I'm Only Guessing Here.

So you probably don’t want to hear that I spent so much time on Saturday reading Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones that I didn’t spend enough time prepping for my trip to New York and wound up misreading my flight time. And yes, I missed my flight. So now I’ve spent all Sunday on one standby flight after another and every flight has been oversold. The sad thing is that due to the nature of my standby, I am always the lowest priority and get bumped from every flight.

I’m not saying that I blame Salvage the Bones or anything, only that it an intense book that takes a lot of concentration. And the irony is not lost on me; I didn’t need to read this book for this month’s in-store lit group, because I’m supposed to not be in Milwaukee. But I might wind up in Milwaukee after all, if flights continue to sell out as they have. So now I’m prepared.

Ward’s novel (her second I think, after Where the Line Bleeds) is one that I’ve written up a lot without reading it. There was some sort of promotion when the book won the National Book Award, and of course I had to say a little something when I featured the book on our seasonal book club brochure. I knew it was about a poor family on the Gulf Coast, in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.

Now I know more. Esch is a 15-year-old girl, a dreamer, obsessed with mythology. She has a brother Skeetah, who likes violent dog fights, but at the same time, is particularly maternal towards his own dog, China, whose pregnant with pups. There’s also Randall, the older brother, and Junior, the younger one, minor characters. Their mom is dead, and their dad is struggling. Oh, and Esch is secretly pregnant, through Randall’s friend Manny, who already has a girlfriend.

This is a novel about survival. Skeetah’s dog has just given birth, and these dogs are struggling. The family is struggling. Esch’s hormones are struggling too. And this is all leading up to a hurricane that we already know is going to have devastating consequences. Oh, and every dog fight is an act of survival too, and it should be noted that the fights are never for money.

The story’s a bit stylized in the language. I immediately thought of Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow, since I just read it, and it features the voice of an African American teenager. But the girls of Jones's novel have a more big city feel. And then I thought of Lark and Termite (and I should say, someone else gave me this idea), which is also about a brother and sister in the south—well, West Virginia, which is sort of more like Pennsylvania than Louisiana. But it’s poor, and Esch and Skeetah, which could have been a name for this novel, does recall Lark and Termite, doesn’t it? That two name title is always a good fallback--one of our shortlist titles for the August in-store lit group was Vaclev and Lena.

Once again, my biggest disappointment is with my lack of knowledge. While I can compare one novel to another, I am ill-equipped to analyze how the mythology, specifically Medea, was woven into the story. But in this Paris Review interview, she helps out a bit, explaining how Medea is part of Esch, China, and Hurricane Katrina itself.

I guess there was some controversy with the shortlist for this award, but apparently Victor La Valle does a good job defending their picks. And I guess the judges are expected to read all the submissions (really? all of them?) and not just say, who do we like who has gotten a lot of attention. I particularly enjoyed Ron Charles’s “eat crow” review in the Washington Post, where he discovered the joys of several of the finalists.

So of course I was not able to attend the book club meeting, but I heard that one regular really liked it, and grew quite fond of China, while another had trouble and was probably going to stay home. And the third? She finished but didn’t pass judgment.

So here are our next two discussion titles:
Monday, July 2, 7 pm:
The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt.
Revisionist western features two hired guns set amidst the California gold rush. Shortlisted for the Man Booker and winner of Canada's Giller Prize. We haven't done anything like this lately, and the group is always up for a challenge.

Monday, August 6, 7 pm:
The Buddha in the Atti[c, by Julie Otsuka.
It's summer and we're reading something short. This beautiful novel about Japanese mail order brides has been a regular staff pick at Boswell from Amie, and also won the Pen Faulkner prze.

Monday Event Preview for June 4-10. Stieg Larsson's Partner Eva Gabrielsson on Wednesday, Plus Bonnie Jo Campbell and Natalie Bakopoulos on Friday.

We’ve got two great events for you this week!

Wednesday, June 6, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Eva Gabrielsson, author of There are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me, in Conversation with Mitch Teich, of WUWM’s Lake Effect. Tickets for this event are $5 and can be purchased in store, or on our website. Tickets cannot be held for later purchase, and are not refundable. However, you will be able to use your ticket for $5 off the cost of There are Things I Want You to Know About Stieg Larsson and Me through June 30.

Needless to say, with Millennium Fever sweeping the world for the past two years, Gabrielsson has been besieged with interviews. There was the unfinished fourth manuscript, and disagreement over how Larsson’s fortune would be divided, being that Larsson, who died of a heart attack in 2004, and Gabrielsson never married. We are so pleased to be hosting Gabrielsson on her paperback book tour.

Is Mikael Blomkvist a stand-in for Larsson himself? How about Lisbeth Salender? It would take longer than a blog post to analyze that question. Gabrielsson does note that Larsson and Saldender both shared a preference for fast food pizzas.

This is probably your only opportunity to see Gabrielsson. The odds of her returning to Milwaukee from Sweden seem pretty thin.

Friday, June 8, 7 pm, at Boswell, The Mighty Michiganders:
Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River, American Salvage, and Q Road
and
Natalie Bakopoulos, author of The Green Shore.

I’ve already dedicated a day to the merits of The Green Shore. However, I should also point to my Indie Bound rec, which is featured in the June flyer.

“As we follow the current economic travails of Greece, it is hard not to recall its turbulent history, particularly The Regime of the Colonels that ruled from 1967 to 1974. Bakopoulos humanizes this period through the eyes of one family -- a widowed doctor, her three children, and her brother, a notorious local poet. The personal and political mash up in this passionate story, at once a tale of a particular place and time, yet also a timeless mirror of the struggles of life under any repressive government. A compelling read.” -- Daniel Goldin, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI
#1 pick for the month of June is Richard Ford’s Canada. Catch the rest of the bookseller recs here.

But I haven’t said enough about Bonnie Jo Campbell, returning to Milwaukee for her acclaimed novel, now in paperback, Once Upon a River.

The Journal Sentinel swooned over the most recent novel. Not only was there a rave review from Mike Fischer. Here’s a short excerpt: “There's plenty that's ugly on Margo's river, from the pollution within it to some of the people living along it. But there is also great natural beauty--keenly observed and described with a tender regard reminiscent of the best of Berry or Stegner. And there are wonderfully rendered, life-affirming relationships with careworn housewives, old men and faithful dogs ---themselves bookended by loving memories of those who have died and barely articulated dreams regarding those still to come.

And here are some interesting details you can pick up in Jim Higgins’s two published pieces about Bonnie Jo Campbell.
1. Campbell was just short of getting her PhD in mathematics at the University of Chicago.
2. Like her heroine Margo Crane, Campbell knows her way around a gun.
3. Campbell lived for a short time in Riverwest, at which time she took classes at UWM.

The Campbell profile from Jim Higgins in the Journal Sentinel.

Campbell and Bakopoulos are both in these parts for the Printer’s Row Lit Fest over the weekend. Campbell is appearing in conversation with Jesmyn Ward, author of the National-Book-Award winning novel, Salvage the Bones, which we’re discussing tonight (sans me) at our in-store lit group, 7 pm. Alas, her Chicago appearance is sold out for advance tickets, but they do take a certain number of walk ups.

I think Ward and Campbell are a good match, as she is also a Mighty Michigander, at least regarding her MFA credentials.

And Bakopoulos is on a panel on June 9 with our pal Samuel Park, Marisel Vera, and Brigid Pasulka. That one still has advance tickets.

Sunday Bestsellers for the Week Ending June 2, 2012--New Releases, Belmont Pops, Trilogy Triumphs, and the Possible Effect of New Jackets in Paperback.

Hardcover fiction:
1. Second Impressions, by Ava Farmer
2. Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
3. Sacré Bleu, by Christopher Moore
4. Istanbul Passage, by Joseph Kanon
5. Home, by Toni Morrison.

A little more about Istanbul Passage from the publisher, Atria. A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion. Tom Nolan in the Wall Street Journal called it a "fast moving, thinking man's thriller."

Hardcover nonfiction:
1. Drift, by Rachel Maddow
2. American Grown, by Michelle Obama
3. Imagine, by Jonah Lehrer
4. Kentucky Derby Dreams, by Susan Nusser
5. The First 20 Minutes, by Gretchen Reynolds

Susan Nusser's Kentucky Derby Dreams pops in advance of the Belmont Stakes next Saturday. It's the first time in years that we've had the chance at a Triple Crown winner, and what do you know? Nusser is reading that day with fellow equi-writer Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto, at Printer's Row Lit Fest in Chicago. Here's a link to all the festivities. And don't forget that Alyson Hagy is reading at Boswell on Tuesday, June 12, 7 pm.


Paperback fiction:
1. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
2. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett
3. Fifty Shades Darker, by E.L. James
4. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
5. Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks

I just admire the fact that a few paperback fiction books outsold the Fifty Shades trilogy, or whatever it's called. Have a bunch of you noticed the media calling it Shades of Grey, as if "Fifty" is the dirty word. What's that about?

Meanwhile many book clubs are choosing Patchett and Brooks, our beloved dynamic duo of visiting authors last spring, whose novels took the traditional one year route into paperback. Doesn't seem to have affected momentum at all. Somebody explain to me the theory behind 6-8 month releases that are now becoming popular. I've heard talk that it's all about getting the book into competitive pricing with the ebook, but I think it's about trying to earn the advance back faster. What say you?

Both worked well in paperback, and that usually means that the paperback jacket doesn't change, a la Caleb's Crossing. I'm usually very opinionated on jacket changes, but I have to say I like both jackets for State of Wonder equally. I can't figure out why it was changed--I guess the darker color might pop a bit more on a table, especially as so many publishers are dressing their covers in yellow and tan. And as I stop back and look at this post, the jackets of Nusser and Adams would definitely blend into the hardcover, but not the paperback of State of Wonder.

Paperback nonfiction:
1. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
2. Bossypants, by Tina Fey
3. Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum
4. Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon
5. Turn Right at Machu Picchu, by Mark Adams

Though we had nice sales on Mark Adams' book in hardcover, it's nice to see that Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, has found its sea legs in paperback. It has captured that funny/informative travel/history niche that we almost always have a market for. Here's the NPR roundup for the book, categorized as one of summer's biggest, juiciest nonfiction adventures. "Adams unearths a fascinating story, transporting his readers back to 1911, when Yale professor Hiram Bingham III hiked the Andes and stumbled upon one of South America's most miraculous and cloistered meccas," Rachel Syme informs.

Books for Kids:
1. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
2. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
3. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
4. The Last Summer of the Death Warrior, by Francisco Stork
5. Brown Bear, Brown Bear Slide and Find, by Bill Martin and Lois Ehlert

Unlike James, no kids' book could topple Suzanne Collins's supremacy. It's hard to believe that our #1 book came out in this very hardcover edition only months after we opened. Further down the list is another book that was selling back in 2009, but as a self-published edition. It's Dallas Clayton's An Awesome Book, an eye-popping inspirational story that has built a large and enthusiastic fan base that includes our buyer Amie. You can read an interview with Wired's Geek Dad here.

Saturday Gift Post--New Cards, New Banks, New Journals.

I've been doing a checklist of things we need for the store before I go to Book Expo.

1. Cards. We finally are stocked back up on graduation cards, but sadly there aren't that many graduations left to go. We've still got a few major high school celebrations, which often means owls.

Amie likes the pig card from Hello Lucky, that says "Wallow in your success." And speaking of which, I brought in several new designs from them featuring the work so Esther Aarts. I LOVE the "Let's Party" card on the left.Aarts is a one person studio based in the Netherlands. You can see some of her other work here, and yes, the web page is in English and Dutch.

2. Speaking of owls, there's finally a new animal bank from Benjamin, and it's an owl. Two years later, and these animals are still a hit. One does wonder why some obvious animals are not to be found. There's no dog, for example.

3. And finally, we're all stocked up on boxed cards and journals. Halley was particularly excited about the Charley Harper otter cards, which we hadn't brought in previously, and several other designs started selling within days.

And that purple box we mentioned last week from M. Cornell? We sold both in less than a week, which is good for us.

And now, off to BEA, where on top of all the book stuff, we usually find one or two gift lines.

Peter Pauper had some journals on backorder. I don't think we'd had the Byzantine style previously. It's kind of a nice teal.

Terry Gross Convinces me to Read About the Physical Nature of the Internet. I Spot Part of It on Wisconsin Avenue While Going for Soup.

Because I use a car more for work, I find myself listening to the radio when I previously might have been reading. But sometimes the car makes me read more.  I find myself traveling a lot during Fresh Air (11 am and 7 pm on WUWM), a show I would have previously had to listen to online, and then before the internet, just heard about. That's because there was a time it wasn't aired in Milwaukee.

Fresh Air is one of the few media contacts that I remember back from my publishing days (thirty years ago) that really hasn’t changed much. I just looked at the masthead and there were Danny and Phyllis, the folks to whom I would send my author pitches, by mail, mind you. I’m not sure I ever got someone on the show in the years that I worked in publicity, but they were always the most gracious of rejecters, even to publicity assistant.

Later promoted to assistant publicist.

Later promoted to associate publicist.

Later promoted to junior lieutenant associate assistant publicity manager.

It’s almost odd to think that Terry Gross can still generate so much enthusiasm, such intellectual curiosity, for whatever subject she is discussing, whatever icon of the arts she is interviewing. I want to read every book, spend hours watching every cable show, and listen to every track of whomever she has on the show. Fortunately this desire usually dissipates; the world gets in the way. But I’m always amused by the folks who call from their cars between 11 am and Noon. “Do you have this book?” they ask? “I want to read it now.”

Yesterday I turned on the radio in the middle of an interview with Andrew Blum, author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. His thesis is that while we don’t think of the internet as a place, and in fact laughed at Senator Ted Stevens for calling it a bunch of tubes, that’s pretty much what it is.

Blum explores the physical presence of the internet, exploring data centers and network stations, and explains how it happened that in a development that was supposed to be the end of place, place matters more than ever.

But it was his name-dropping of Milwaukee that really hooked me. On a visit to see the place where they print the internet networking map, on the northwest side, a friend told him to check out what has become a regional data transfer center downtown. It wasn’t on purpose; the purported telecom hotel they were renovating on Milwaukee Street a decade ago was just torn down to build a hotel. No, this is just an old office building where there’s a device wired to get 25,000 customers onto the internet. And as more and more companies clustered here, they slowly drove out the lawyers and dentists.

And it so happened that our Harper rep was selling the fall list (the folks who publish this book, under the Ecco imprint) and she had just heard the piece too. And I had come into the story late and couldn’t figure out what he was doing in Milwaukee. And my confusion about the center was fed into her info that it was one of only about a dozen in the country, but she was referring to the giant printing press.

I wound up reading Andrew Blum’s Tubes straight through. There are two things that are fascinating about his journey. The first was how much physical nature there is to the internet. What we think of is nothingness is in fact miles of cables, buildings full of switching centers, and massive data centers. Blum visits all the historical centers of this technology, noting that a surprising amount is simply the next, next, next, next generation of the telegram.

And the other thing is how open much of it is. The internet was built on trust. It only works if the addresses and pathways are public. If not, you can’t get the information. And while there’s a lot of security in say, the Docklands, where much of Europe’s routers lead to (you should not be surprised to hear that the #1 most travelled path is New York to London), it’s only when you get to Google that everything becomes shrouded in secrecy and doubletalk. Yes, Google maps obscures its own data center. What we need is a competitive mapping company focusing on Google!

It’s strange to think that Google is basically grabbing information about our lives, from personal data to maps of our homes, and yet mumbo jumbos its way out of providing access to not just reporters, but to elected officials. As the handler told Blum when he noted disappointment: “Senators and governors have been disappointed too!” And how about this scripted lunch conversation: “Can you tell Andrew what you like about working at Google and living in The Dalles?”

It’s light years away when Blum visits the new Facebook Center in Prineville. Where Google is closed, Facebook winds up being open, more in the spirit of the Internet itself. Cablevision winds up similarly closed off, but this appears to be more the exception than the rule.

As I was yapping about this book to our pal Mike, he noted that Tubes would normally be something I was not interested in (technology) but in the end, sort of winds up being something I am interested in, some sort of weird hybrid of cultural history, travel writing, and even urban planning. And then I noted that per Blum, the switching station was just a block north of where we were eating. It really does somehow seem both exciting and shocking that everyone knows where it is.

So I spent a day reading a book and it wasn't even connected to an upcoming event? Yikes. And while Blum is not coming near Milwaukee, here's a list of his stops if you happen to be reading this blog from one of his tour markets.