Monday Event Post--Jessie Garcia at the Brookfield Public Library Tonight, Sanford D'Amato at Boswell Tomorrow (Tuesday)

We have two events this week. Both authors have been appearing around town for a bit now, so I don't think I have to tell you too much about the books.

Tonight, Monday, December 16, at 7 pm, we will be at the Brookfield Public Library, as the bookseller for Jessie Garcia's talk for My Life with the Green and Gold.  You folks in Brookfield obviously know where your library is, but if you're coming to see her from somewhere else, the library is located at 1900 North Calhoun Road, 53005. That's about two miles north of the old Schwartz Bookshop location, now a Half Price Books.

Here's an interview with Ms. Garcia on WTMJ4 news to whet your appetite

Tomorrow, December 17, 7 pm, we're hosting Sanford D'Amato for his memoir with recipes, Good Stock: Life on a Low Simmer for a talk/reading. It's hard to gauge the size of the crowd, being that he's already done a number of appearances and still has several more scheduled after us, with our friends at Glorioso's and The Spice House.

The Spice House event is at 1031 N. Old World Third Street on Thursday, December 19, from 6 to 7:30 pm. For more information,visit their website or call (414) 272-0977.

Mr. D'Amato will be signing at Glorioso's on Friday, December 20, from 12 noon to 2 pm. For more information, contact them at (414) 272-0540.

For more about the new memoir, read Nancy Stoh's story in the Journal Sentinel. 

Don't forget, I'm a guest on the Kathleen Dunn show today on Wisconsin Public Radio at 2 pm. What book are you giving as a holiday gift? What's your favorite book of the year? Call (800-486-8655), email, tweet or post your suggestions on Facebook.

Sunday Bestsellers for the Week ending December 14, 2013: A Chef and a Box of Crayons Battle it Out for First Place.

It's the second biggest bestseller numbers of the year for us, excluding events. I remember the days when I'd be reporting for Schwartz and we'd have quantities well over 100. It's not like that anymore, but it's still fun, so let's start the show.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato (our event is this Tuesday, 12/17)
2. Schlitz: Brewing Art, by Paul Bialas
3. The Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
4. 1227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off, by John Lloyd, John Mitchenson, and James Harkin
5. Stitches, by Anne Lamott
6. Driven, by Donald Driver
7. A Reader's Book of Days, by Tom Nissley
8. David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell (ticketed event January 31)
9. The Big New Yorker Book of Cats, with a forward by Anthony Lane
10. Humans of New York, by Brandon Stanton

Boy, look at that 1227 Quite Interesting Facts take off. It's interesting how the world has no shortage of trivia, but if you package it well, it will work. This is from a BBC quiz show called "QI" in which contestants answer trivia questions and get more points if their answers are "quite interesting." The authors were interviewed by Scott Simon on All Things Considered last September.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
2. The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
4. The Valley of Amazement, by Amy Tan
5. Sycamore Row, by John Grisham
6. The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride
7. Tenth of December, by George Saunders
8. The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy
9. Longbourn, by Jo Baker
10. Someone, by Alice McDermott

Hey, how's that for gender parity? Men and women divide the top ten slots on our hardcover fiction list, but it's no question that Tartt and Catton are running away with the show. The top ten New York Times for 2013 popped Tenth of December, and we're expecting to see several of the others have a strong week. I see Jason took a strong position on Americanah for fiction and Wave for nonfiction. We had an interesting chat about this. As a newspaper, the New York Times leans towards politics in their nonfiction picks, but it seems like one area where it's hard to get folks who weren't previously interested to jump on a political book as a Christmas gift. We'd be better off with more biographies and history, for example. 


Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh
2. Milwaukee at Water's Edge, by Tom Pilarzyk
3. Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris
4. Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
5. On the Map, by Simon Garfield
6. Wild, by Sheryl Strayed
7. How Music Works, by David Byrne
8. The World Until Yesterday, by Jared Diamond
9. Detroit City is the Place to be, by Mark Binelli
10. Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman

Nonfiction paperbacks have a particularly nice bump in sales at the holiday season. While I'm not surprised to see Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom pop onto the list (yes, we sold right out of our initial order), one wouldn't expect Detroit City is the Place to be to have such a strong paperback sale. And Simon Garfield book type sale has flipped. While Just My Type had a much stronger sale in hardcover, we've closed to doubled the Boswell hardcover sale of On the Map with the paperback release.

I was chatting with a customer about Mark Binelli's book, telling her that our friend Lori just moved to the midtown Detroit area.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Best American Short Stories 2013, edited by Elizabeth Strout
2. Dear Life, by Alice Munro
3. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan
4. The President's Hat, by Antoine Laurain
5. The Dinner, by Herman Koch
6. City of Dark Magic, by Magnus Flyte
7. City of Lost Dreams, by Magnus Flyte
8. Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, by Maria Semple
9. Illuminations, by Mary Sharratt
10. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan Philipp Sendker


Several of my booksellers are reading City of Lost Dreams, the sequel to City of Dark Magic. Jason noted to me that it never really left the front new and noteworthy table, and that we're #2 among independent bookstores on Above the Treeline with 146 copies sold.  Compare that to a book like Herman Koch's The Dinner, where we're a perfectly respectable but not front-runner 15th place.And that's better than our ranking for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, either in hardcover or paperback. That book is quite the indie bookstore phenomenon.

We're still in a solid second place on Above the Treeline for The President's Hat.

Books for Kids:
1. The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt with illustrations by Oliver Jeffers
2. Jumping Penguins and Laughing Hyenas, by Marije Tolman
3. Flora and Ulysses, by Kate DiCamillo
4. Alphablock, by Christopher Franceschelli
5. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
6. Squirrels on Skis, by J. Hamilton Ray
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Volume 8: Hard Luck, by Jeff Kinney
8. Steam Train, Dream Train, by Sherri Duskey Rinker with illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld
9. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See (board book), by Bill Martin with illustrations by Eric Carle
10. The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg
11. Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, by Sherri Duskey Rinker, with illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld
12. The School for Good and Evil Volume 1, by Soman Chainani
13. Lego Minifigure Year by Year: A Visual History
14. The Animal Book, by Steve Jenkins
15. More than This, by Patrick Ness (event Wednesday, January 29 at Boswell)

Wow, look at those crayons move! The Day the Crayons Quit has our second best sale for any format, just one copy behind D'Amato's Good Stock, with Donna Tartt in third place.

We can still never figure out whether board books are hardcovers are paperbacks, which is only one reason why I generally combine the kids' bestseller lists. Another problem is that the better way to sort kids' books is by age range, but how much does one separate it out? I was thinking board with picture books, and then everything else, from middle grade to adult. But where do you put early readers. I'll keep working on this.

Amie took a big position on Alphablock and had a nice pop in sale this week. It's a big chunky board book with every book appearing in die-cut form, in addition to what the letter stands for. There are some nice pictures on the Kids' Book Review blog, with a heart-racing write-up from an enthusiastic Tania.  The photos give you a very good feeling for the book.

We're so excited that we've got Patrick Ness coming on January 29, 2014 and though he's coming for his adult title, The Crane Wife, our enthusiasm is bubbling over for his most recent kids' book, More than This. These are our best hardcover sales for a Ness title to date.

I'm sure you won't be surprised that we are the #1 store on Above the Treeline for sales on Squirrels on Skis. To paraphrase another I Can Read title, go, Jane, go!

In the Journal Sentinel this week, Jim Higgins and his team of critics pick their top tens for 2013.

Here are the selections from Jim Higgins. Hannah will be pleased to see the inclusion of Men We Reaped.

Mike Fischer picks his top ten here.

Mysteries hold court on Carole E. Barrowman's list.

My New Year's Resolution is Inspired by a Customer's Stray Comment, and Also a Book of Course.

I’m happy to say that visions of six inches of snow did not seemingly affect our business too much today. Unlike last weekend’s blast, which left us with more snow than was predicted, this weekend’s snowfall was not as strong as the original forecast, though it was still slippery.

I ran into our friend Kelly, who mentioned that in 2014, he was hoping to get back to reading a book per week, as he’d fallen off track in 2013. It was funny that he brought this up, as I was also already thinking of new year’s resolutions as well, and yes, mine also involved reading. I don’t expect read any more books in 2014 than I did in 2013 (I’m projecting it will be about 75 altogether) but I am imagining a slightly different assortment. I’m imagining what it would be like to fill in literature holes. A classic a month? A focus on a particular author? Can it be possible?

For these crazy thoughts, I place the blame squarely on John Sutherland’s A Little History of Literature (Yale), the newest in a series of primers that have previously covered history, science, and philosophy. I wasn’t planning on reading this, but after our rep John talked it up at rep night and Jane featured it at the Woman’s Club, I started including it in my own presentations.

The more I talked about it, the more I thought, “Maybe reading A Little History of Literature is the next best thing to actually reading all the books. For Sutherland, literature is not just written records, particularly before the printing press. He begins with myths and epics, both oral traditions, and then covers mystery plays and Shakespeare. Chapters are devoted to movements in fiction, poetry, and drama, such as the romantics, the empire builders, the dystopians, and the magical realists. Folks like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Virginia Woolf get their own chapters.

By now, you’ve probably guessed that the true title of this book should be A Little History of English Literature. While Sutherland does cover some American movements, and goes international with the magical realists (not just the Latin Americans but Gunter Grass too) and counts the Prix Goncourt among the major prizes, this is first and foremost about the United Kingdom. Many counties get one mention, such that China, Japan, India, Portugal, Italy, and Canada are checked off respectively with Mo Yan, Haruki Murakami, Jose Saramago, Italo Calvino, and Margaret Atwood, respectively, and Atwood just gets props for her dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale.

One thing I can say about this work is that it does highlight a number of woman writers, not just Austen and Woolf, but the Brontës; Sylvia Plath, George Eliot, Toni Morrison, and most notably, Anne Bradstreet, the first American novelist. Anne who? I do indeed have holes in my knowledge base.

But what of Ernest Hemingway or Edith Wharton, and Saul Bellow’s only mention is his putdown of developing cultures in his Nobel acceptance speech. In general, the further back Sutherland goes, the less I know, and thus the more I appreciate his recaps. Do I need an explanation of how book clubs work? No. Do I need an explanation of Chaucer? Yes. Fortunately, a good amount of Sutherland's survey is more of the latter than the former.

So this is the great thing about giving A Little History of Literature as a gift. It only made me more aware of my literary shortcomings and made me want to broaden my horizons. So now I’m making my reading list for 2014, and it’s including things like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Can I work another day in a bookstore without having read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Can it be five years since I last read Charles Dickens?

I bet I can do it, at least for January. I’ll let you know how I do at the end of the year.

Friday Short Post--On the new French Blue Bags, Wrapping Up the Sad JFK Anniversary with Not Such Happy Sales.

I came back to Boswell today to see that we had an auspicious occasion--the changing over of the medium sized paper bag from brown to French blue ink. I feel like I should have some sort of ceremony going on.

We flipped a few displays this week, so with Hanukkah over, we had a space for the ten best of the year from The New York Times. It probably eventually needs to go in the front of the store, but interestingly enough, that back table perfectly displays ten books. I should remember that for the future.

It's about time to take down our memorial table for JFK's assassination. We of course don't have final numbers on how these books did, but it's pretty clear that the category was over-published for the anniversary. It doesn't really look like anything broke out at all at Boswell and there were some publishers that really aggressively reprinted old titles as well. I almost think it's better in many cases to keep away from these marketing opportunities.

Here were the top five titles by demand from Ingram:
1. A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination, by Philip Shenon
2. Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, by Bill O'Reilly
3. Five Days in November, by Clint Hill
4. Those Few Precious Days: The Final Year with Jackie, by Christopher Anderson
5. Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House, by Robert Dallek

The most we sold of any of these titles since July was three. We are clearly just one tiny store in the mix, but if a book had broken out nationally to the general market, I think we would have felt the enthusiasm a bit. But I actually went on Above the Treeline a bit and saw much better sales at other stores. In the case of A Cruel and Shocking Act, dramatically better sales, so I'm not sure why our customers reacted differently. I will note that several books did have poor sell through, so I still stand by my original thesis,  amending it to say that the Philip Shenon book did seem to be the breakout success. I don't count O'Reilly as it was not published into the anniversary but came out last year.

Cats Dogs, and Other Strangers at My Door: A Roundup

Being that I have befriended five cats on my recent trip to Massachusetts, I thought it seemed appropriate to round up the man, many, many dog and cat books that we seem to be featuring at Boswell this holiday season. Some are highlighted in our holiday newsletter, others were featured on our new release display, and still others have a presence on our impulse

The biggest of the bunch, at least in terms of trim size, is Kittenhood: Life-Size Portraits of Kittens in Their First 12 Weeks (Stewart, Tabori, and Chang), by Sarah Beth Ernhart. It came in very early, well before our gift tables came up, and I think it wound up face out in the section for a bit, leaving little room for anything else. The photography is very nice, with that large trim size making our feline friends look almost life size. I think the blank white pages are for effect. There are 25 breeds represented, including Mabel the sphynx, which I think is hairless. I really didn't know there were so many breeds out there!

Featured in our holiday gift guide is The Big New Yorker Book of Cats (Random House) and it is also Boswell Best through December. This collection of short stories, essays, cartoons, and magazine cover reproductions features work from E.B. White, Jamaica Kincaid, Haruki Murakami, Roald Dahl, and more. The New Yorker reprinted Anthony Lane's introduction in celebration of National Cat Day, which I don't have to tell you is October 29. Every so often, someone suggests the store get a cat (Left Bank Books has one in St. Louis, as does the slightly differently named Boswell's Books in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. The store is named after the cat, not the writer!

When it comes to the impulse table nowadays, it seems that every other book started as a blog. I guess publishers see that as sort of test marketing the title. Henri, Le Chat Noir: The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat (Ten Speed), by William Braden, is no exception. Apparently Henri perfectly captures feline malaise, saying, among other things "Sir Isaac Newton wrote, 'Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.' So, no, you should not consider getting a dog."  Did Henri's film really win the People's Choice award at the Internet Cat Film Festival?

I certainly don't need to mention the world-famous Grumpy Cat (Chronicle), because that Grumps is nothing short of movie-star famous. You sort of get the rhythm from these things, so the book, which is subtitled "Disgruntled Tips and Activities Designed to Put a Frown on Your Face" is filled with Grumpy reading lists, puzzles, and lots of advice, such as "Time heals all wounds. I broke your watch." Interestingly enough, Grumpy Cat has no human author--instead it's a product of Grumpy Cat Ltd.

You may remember Michael Showalter from The State or Michael and Michael Have Issues, two cable series from days past. His comedy partner, Michael Ian Black, is now game show hosting, and I just read that Showalter is a writer on the ABC series, Super Fun Night. But enough web searching (oh, just one more, he had a memoir two years ago called Mr. Funny Pants) as we are here to talk about cat books, and Showalter has one called Guys Can Be Cat Ladies Too (Abrams). The design looks modeled a bit on Stuff White People Like, but the book is as much a guide as it is snarky fun. OK, its mostly snark but a portion of the author proceeds is being donated to The Humane Society of New York.

Time to stop purring and start barking. Carli Davidson's Shake (HarperDesign) is pint-sized photography book capturing dogs in their most candid moments of mid-shake, to quote the publisher. I believe there are internet-distributed videos that have had a lot of play. It's interesting that the stop-motion images capture the most fascinating facial expressions in the dogs. The Huffington Post wrote " a wet shaking dog may be a common sight for pet lovers, but few have ever seen wet dogs captured like this" and The New York Times called Shake "a hilarious portrayal of flying fur, flopping jowls, and bulging eyes." This is also featured in our holiday gift guide.

Veering inspirational is Devoted: 38 Extraordinary Tales of Love, Loyalty, and Life with Dogs, by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh (National Geographic). Ascher Walsh is a freelance writer who volunteers at a shelter in Manhattan and has an organization to raise funds for the care of rescue dogs. Chancer is a golden retreiver who became companion to a boy with featal alcohol syndrome. Dutchess is a sled dog who trained for the Iditeraod.  And Schoep (named after the ice cream) is a mixed-breed shelter dog who helped pull his master out of depression.

Interestingly enough, I haven't seen so many animal narratives this Christmas, though I did note that Jason brought in the 7000th edition of The Cat Who Came for Christmas (Back Bay). There is Sharron Kahn Luttrell's Weekends with Daisy (Gallery), about a woman who does weekend care for a dog who is trained by a convict during the week. I'll bet you didn't know that many service dogs are trained in prisons. Well it turns out they've already sold movie rights to this book (actually done before book rights were sold), which they are comparing a bit to The Blind Side.

And finally for those who vote "other" in the pet elections, there is The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990-1990 (Blue Rider), translated from the original Hamster by Miriam and Ezra Elia. The diary was found by Dr. M.E. Rodenstein, specialist on Hamster Linguistics and Philosophy, at a North London garage sale.  Dr. R. calls this a profound meditation on the nature of captivity and the soul, interlaced with stark reflections on the grinding banalities of everyday being.

As long as we are talking about cats and dogs, don't forget about the Wisconsin Humane Society. Whether you are adopting a pet, looking to volunter, or just looking to donate needed funds, start by checking out their website.

On Our Holiday Gift Guide Landing, Plus a Few Fiction Recommendations.

Folks on our mailing list should be getting their holiday gift guides any day now, if they haven't already. When I called into Boswell, I was told that several folks had arrived bearing one in hand, and at least one person bought a pile of The Day the Crayons Quit as a result. Sharon and I would agree this is a worthy pile indeed, though Jannis noted that it's a bit long for a storytime. As an aside, Jannis's first storytime was a big hit and we've scheduled #2 for Sunday, January 12, 11 am, featuring Philip and Erin Stead's Bear Has a Story to Tell and Kevin Henkes's Old Bear. I'm sure you can't bear to miss this one!

You're probably wondering how we figure out how to gather addresses. You've got to be on the Boswell Benefits program and you have to have given us you're correct address. Believe me, nowadays that's a tall order. Who remembers to update their street address tp their bookseller when they move. If you have moved in the last year, why not check your address with us the next time you're in the store so you can get next year's newsletter? If all goes well, we might actually send out two, but since we haven't done a spring one in several years, I wouldn't count on it.

Needless to say, we can't afford to send to everyone who signs up, so we came up with a threshold for sales that would get your on the list. Assuming about 400 newsletters will come back, that will give us a mailing of about 3500. For the rest of you, we'll have copies available at Boswell, and soon if not already, a downloadable pdf on our website.

I thought I would offer some highlights. Today I'm going to note some fiction titles that haven't yet been featured on the blog or email newsletter. I first took note of Fiend (Crown), a novel by Peter Stenson. I think Jason had also read this, but it's one of Greg's yearend recommendations so to me, he owns it. Per the publisher: " A long-time, hopelessly addicted meth user, Chase Daniels see the impending zombie apocalypse as an opportunity to hit restart and become the man he once dreamed of being." Oh good, an inspirational zombie novel. Jason notes (I guess they can share enthusiasm) that "the brilliance in the book comes from the story being told from inside the mind of a meth addict." It's a great pick for that person on your list who likes The Walking Dead or World War Z.

Another featured title is the Algerian novel, Where Tigers are at Home (Other Press), by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès  Per the publisher: "Winner of the Prix Médicis, this multifaceted literary novel follows the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher across 17th century Europe and Eleazard von Wogau, a retired French correspondent, through modern Brazil." I suppose this has nothing to do with our friend Jeff, who recently stated doing bookstore marketing at Other Press, had a great visit to the store, looking around and chatting up booksellers.

If you follow our recs, you can't be surprised this would be on our list. Alan Cheuse said it best, in his NPR review: "This book--the first of his to appear in the U.S. in English-- stands as a challenge to readers who want their fiction to offer a quick pay-off. The novel is probably scholarly enough to satisfy those who enjoy reading Umberto Eco, and erotic enough for those who take pleasure in the sexual gambits in the fiction of Milan Kundera. And among its other narrative delights is an adventure plot straight out of Michael Crichton." Oh, and since we love books in translation and their translators, let us give props to Mike Mitchell.

When it comes down to it, there's not a lot of fiction on our year-end list that I haven't written about before. So then it came down to what I was going to feature as a rec in the gift guide. In the end, I used the "which book am I most likely going to want to reread" and that made me lean towards Cathleen Schine's Fin and Lady (Sarah Crichton/FSG). Maybe it's my New York roots, but boy did I think she did a great job at capturing Manhattan in the 1960s. And I just loved the relationship. Maybe it's because I have such strong bonds with my two sisters. Because they were a bit older than me, it didn't really cement until I was a bit older--when I was a kid, it was all just a big mystery. Plus Fin and Lady was funny, sad, sweet, poetic, joyous,  and didn't have the problem I've had with several books a year where I questioned the ending. This one was perfect.

I hope to write a few more posts on some of our other gift ideas.

Visiting Worcester, Massachusetts Leads Me to Yet Another Old Department Store Post, This One About Denholm's.

As you may know, I have a special interest in retail, and while I am fascinated by everything from supermarket and drug chains to independent bookstores (of course), I am particularly drawn to the old regional department stores of yore. After all, I not so long ago did a post on Something for Everyone: Memories of Lauerman Brothers Department Store So as I was visiting my mom and sister for a few days, I thought it would be appropriate to read Denholms: The Story of Worcester’s Premier Department Store (History Press).

My sister Claudia has always shared my interest in the grand dames of retailing. Like me, she took a short shift at a department store in her youth (at the old Stern’s on New York’s 42nd Street). As a grad student, she rented from a buyer at Muehlig’s, a Ann Arbor Dry Goods Store. When she lived in Ithaca, we went to Rothschild’s and when she moved to West Lafayette, we took short trips to Loeb’s in Lafayette and longer pilgrimages to L.S. Ayres and Block’s in Indianapolis.

When she arrived in Worcester in 1987, we went to the now defunct Worcester Galleria, featuring a Filene’s in existence since 1920 and a Jordan Marsh that opened with the mall in 1971. What we couldn’t figure out was where the home grown store was. A little research led us to Denholm and McKay (known commonly as Denholms) and that led to a visit to the original building, which still has a bit of signage and the escalators.(I'm hoping to have a couple of photos of the Denholms building, but for now, I'm decorating the blog post with other department store book jackets. I should note that I have visited the site of every one of these stores, though most had closed long before I got there.)

I now know from reading Christopher Sawyer and Patricia Wolf’s history that this was in fact an Escal-aire, and was installed by Otis Elevator in 1964, later than I would have suspected. Like many stores, it was very emotionally connected to the town with fashion shows, exhibits, truck delivery, and a return policy that was strict in writing but very loose in practice.

There are always things I want to know about an old department store. What was the name of its special boutique for high end women’s goods? The Salisbury Shop. What was the name of the restaurant? It acutally didn’t seem to have a special name. It was on six and then moved to the basement, when it became a leased operation. Yes, there was a special company that ran department store tea rooms, just like operations specialized in operating department store jewelry and book departments. Did you know that Waldenbooks started that way?

The downtown store closed in 1973 with the Auburn branch store following several months later. The seeds of its closer were likely the likely suspects of expanding suburban retail as well as the opening of the downtown mall, which Denholms chose to not be part of. They would have had to build a new store, so it’s likely the result would have been the same. The controlling families, seeing the writing on the wall, sold out to an outside operator who seemingly siphoned off cash and then sold the stores to a liquidator. This is still pretty common in retailing, alas.

I was sad to learn that the beautiful fractured script typeface was only in use for the last few years before the store closed. Boy would I love one of their gold and white striped shopping bags. I told my sister to ask around to her friends whose parents and other relatives are cleaning out their attics and basements.

It was all great fun, with a touch of melancholy. Do I have some beefs about the book? Yes, I would have liked more packaging, a little more about their marketing to kids (there had to be some sort of Billie the Brownie like character at Christmas), and no indication of the specific dish or snack item whose smell permeated the store. I'd love to see some packaging too--hot boxes, bags, more contemporary charge cards. Did they make up private labels or was everything just "Denholms" or "Denholm and McKay?" Sawyer has a Denholms blog, which I'm hoping will answer some of my questions.

I guess I’m sort of catching up on my department store reading. The Denholms book came out in 2011, and another book I just bought, L.S. Ayres & Company: The Store at the Crossroads of America (Indiana University Press), by Kenneth L. Turchi, was published in 2012. Just to keep me up to date, 2013 releases Woodward & Lothrop: A Store Worthy of the Nation's Capital (History Press), by Michael Lisicky, who wrote one of the Gimbels books, and Toledo's Three Ls: Lamson's, the Lion Store & Lasalle's (also History Press), by Bruce Alan Copytek, and 2014 promises a History Press book on Canada’s Eaton’s and an Arcadia Publishing volume on Richmond’s Thalhimers.

Barbara Pym 101--Yet Another Post About Barbara Pym, But This Time We're Celebrating Her Birthday on January 2.

Yes, this is a continuation of my post from last January, "The Pym-iest of Pym posts." Since that post last January, we've increased Barbara Pym awareness dramatically. We brought in as many volumes as were available, and what with our staff rec displays, we went from 6 Barbara Pym books sold in 2012 to 53 in 2013. Hey, I consider that a success.

Featuring the books has uncovered many closeted Pym-philes. And this was another reason that led us to plan Barbara Pym 101, a celebration of her 101st birthday.

There was only one problem--I hadn't read Pym in years! I am not much of a rereader, but in this case, it just seemed like the right thing to do. For one thing, the only two books I haven't yet read was The Barbara Pym Cookbook, and the diaries and letters in A Very Private Eye, and neither one of those books was going to fulfill the the Pym-shaped hole in my heart. (I did, by the way, read Hazel Holt's biography, A Lot to Ask).

Jane, Anne, and I just had an organization meeting for this celebration. We'll have some refreshments, of course, and several folks speaking. Then we're going to open the room for reminiscences from attendees. We want you to share your Barbara Pym memories. In the case of Anne, she recalled visiting the Book Noon in Whitefish Bay in the 1970s, where Beverly first recommended the read. In my previous post, I mentioned being turned on to Pym by my friend Billy when I lived in New York, obsessing enough to buy the special edition E.P. Dutton hardcovers.  Amusingly enough, when these were added to the Ingram database, they seemed so cheap that they were coded as paperbacks.

You know the story, right? Pym published through 1961 and when her next book was rejected, she stopped writing. She started again in 1977 after interest in her work fireballed and that book, Quartet in Autumn, was shortlisted for The Booker Prize. Per Fantastic Fiction, here is her bibliography.

Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
Excellent Women (1952)
Jane and Prudence (1953)
Less Than Angels (1955)
A Glass of Blessings (1958)
No Fond Return of Love (1961)
Quartet in Autumn (1977)
The Sweet Dove Died (1978)
A Few Green Leaves (1980)
An Unsuitable Attachment (1982)
Crampton Hodnet (1985)
An Academic Question (1986)
Civil to Strangers: And Other Writings (1987)

I decided to start with Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym's first-published novel. While Excellent Women is probably best known, and is the only book still published by Penguin, I thought it might be fun to move chronologically. The term "excellent women" came to be associated with that Pym heroine.

Set in small town in England, the focus is on Belinda Bede and her sister Harriet, two fifty-something sisters, rather comfortable but hardly wealthy. Belinda is the quiet and somewhat nervous one, pining away for the town's Archdeacon Henry Hoccleve, who spurned her some thirty years ealier. He's long-married to Agatha, a somewhat pushy woman who to Belinda's mind, doesn't treat Henry very well.

While Belinda is reticent and obsessed with protocol, Harriet is outgoing and flirtatious, obsessed with the latest fashion trends, and fending off proposals from their neighbor, Count Ricardo Bianco. More than anything, she loves coddling the young curates, and she's got a live one in Edgar Donne. Add to that a few other town ladies, plus some male visitors to town (including a Bishop), and you've got something between Jane Austen and a contemporary teenage comedy.

I didn't know how I'd react to Pym after so many years, but within fifty pages I was completely immersed in the Bedes' world, sighing at their setbacks, and giggling with delight at their triumphs and revelations. At one point, Harriet is contemplating the affections of Nathaniel Mold, the Deputy Librarian, and while she has explained away the fact that she spotted him coming out of a public house of all things, in the morning, no less, shes' still concerned.

"How could one possibly know all the things that had to be known about a person at first sight. Belinda had said she believed Mr. Mold had a very nice house, but then poor Belinda was so vague and for all that the house might be semidetached and not at all in an advantageous position."

I don't even know what an advantageous position means, but I can only imagine falling for someone and learning that their house was semi-detached.

Belinda's obsession with the Archbishop drives the heart of the story, just one of several unrequited loves in the plotline. But her loyalty seemingly knows no bounds, and the more that Henry reveals himself to be a pompous and rather lazy bore, the more Belinda makes excuses. Yes, you want to kick her, but really, how bad is this anyway? And so there's a bit of philosophy to the whole thing. What exactly do we want for the sisters? Answer: their happiness of course, but sometimes our expectations of happy endings aren't exactly grounded in reality.

About halfway through Some Tame Gazelle, I had the revelation that this is actually my third time reading this book. At first I was disappointed; I'm positive that there are many Pym novels I've only read once. But then I thought about the folks I know who reread books every year (To Kill a Mockingbird has been mentioned, as has The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter series) and I thought, so I read a book every ten years. Must all my reading be to support and author event?

In addition to the Open Road titles, published earlier this year, three volumes of Pym were released by Coffeetown Press. They are the last three books: Crampton Hodnet, An Academic Question, and Civil to Strangers. Jane is a fan of these covers. 

And then I thought that in a way, this was to support an author event, only without the author. Don't forget, "Barbara Pym 101" is Thursday, January 2, 2014.