This Week's Events! Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Kenneth Kapp, and John Hagedorn, Plus a Head Start on Brandon Sanderson Next Week.

Here's what is going on this week! And if you like your event calendar seasoned with some book recommendations and heads up on other things going on around town, check out our most recent email newsletter, which went out today. Oh, and Happy President's Day.


Wednesday, February 17, 7 pm, at Boswell
Robin Pickering-Iazzi, author of The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature: Life Sentences and Their Geographies.

Please join us at Boswell Books as Robin Pickering-Iazzi, professor in the Department of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and editor of Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature, presents her latest book, which draws on a wide variety of documents and texts from 1990 to the present to measure the size of the mafia’s real-life impact and how Italian and Sicilian culture are depicted in popular culture.

Published by the University of Toronto Press, it's interesting to see that sometimes the press matters more than author, as the book has gotten more pickup in Canada than you'd normally expect for a Whitefish Bay writer. For example, here's Jack Batten writing about the book in the Toronto Star: "In this absorbing collection of tales about the Mafia in Sicily, most taken from Italian fiction but a significant few from the personal experiences of real people, "life" emerges as the winner over "literature." Measured in drama and in acts of remarkable bravery, the stories told in their own words by a handful of Sicilian women who dared to resist the Mafia are far more compelling and tragic than anything dreamed up by the novelists and short story writers."

We obviously have an unofficial organized crime week emerging.

Thursday, February 18, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Kenneth Kapp, author of The Slow and Painful Awakening of Herr Wilhelm Neimann: A Morality Story.

Over the years, Kenneth M. Kapp has worked in turns as a researcher and teacher of mathematics, an artist, and as an industry professional at IBM. These days he is a writer and yoga instructor in Shorewood. Here's a little more about the book.

Wilhelm Neimann returned from the eastern front in 1944 shattered on many levels. He was a hero but the medals could not make up for the life he had planned as a teenager, the university position he had hoped for was now beyond his reach. He teaches history in a gymnasium in Schweinfort, a small village in southwestern Germany. As he becomes part of this small community -- one where Jews always found refuge and rescue -- he must find his own final solution.

He and the villagers are challenged by a small group of students, the Jugendknote. One of them is convinced that the ashes from the crematoria have entered into the food chain making all Germans Jewish -- from the inside out. Two others are determined to find the SS officer that killed their uncle during the war. Schweinfort has its own stories going back centuries

Friday, February 19, 7 pm, at Boswell:
John Hagedorn, author of The In$ane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia.

This Glendale writer has been covering the sociology of gangs for many years, having previously written People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City and A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture. Now he turns his attention to Chicago, and the attempt by Latino gangs in the 1990s to build a modern Chicago-based organization that would reduce the violence between gangs and help "business."

As Hagedorn tells Annette Elliot in the Chicago Reader, his source about the building of Spanish Growth and Development (SGD) was the unnamed "Sal Martino," which you should all understand is an alias. Elliot notes that "The Insane Chicago Way posits that the Mafia exerts a larger influence on contemporary gangs than law enforcement believes, mostly through a complex network of 'associates' who act as middlemen between the two criminal organizations." So the structural similarities were more than homage.

Our original event was postponed due to a conflict with a community policing meeting, but second time's the charm. And there won't be a snow emergency either - we're expected to reach fifty degrees on Friday.

Coming next week:

Tuesday February 23, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Brandon Sanderson, author of Calamity, the third novel in The Reckoners, a #1 New York Times bestselling series. I should also note that fans of Mistborn series are celebrating the release of both the fifth and sixth books, most recently The Bands of Mourning, just released on January 26.

Sanderson will be speaking and taking questions, followed by a signing. We'll start giving out line letters at 5 pm. He'll personalize up to three books, and will sign memorabilia and pose for photos. Please note, you must buy a copy of Calamity to get other books signed.

Here's Mel Morrow's recommendation for Steelheart, the first book in the series. Being rather linear, I like to recommend that folks begin at the beginning:

Steelheart rec: "Never before has the post-apocalyptic struggle for human survival been so riveting or uplifting. Sanderson has unparalleled gifts of fantastic world-building and the creation of complex, believable characters. He brings these gifts to Newcago, the setting of his new novel Steelheart, where the sun never rises and the super-human Steelheart holds the entire city of humans and super-humans hostage. All over the post-Calamity world, humans bow to Epics, allowing them to pillage, kill, and destroy at their leisure...until The Reckoners decide to take the power back. Can six humans defeat a hundred invincible villains? Is there any good left in the hearts of super-humans? Follow 18-year-old David through the steel catacombs of Newcago and into the fray as The Reckoners tip the scales in an anti-Epic battle for the fate of humanity. Sparks, Steelheart is a fun read!" (Mel Morrow)

We should also note that tickets are still available for the LeVar Burton talk at the UWM Union on February 24. Tickets are $10 for non-UWM students, $12 for UWM faculty and staff, and $14 for the general public, with a $2 discount for purchasing early, but they are free for UWM students so you might want to lock your ticket in now. Alas, no online sales for this one.

The annotated Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 13, 2016

Here come the bestsellers!

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Forgetting Time, by Sharon Guskin (signed copipes available)
2. The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie
3. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
4. Georgia, by Dawn Tripp
5. My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
6. Ancient Mistrel, by Jim Harrison
7. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
8. The Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector
9. The Secret Chord, by Geraldine Brooks
10. The Expatriates, by Janice Y.K. Lee

Who would have ever guessed that a Brazil table would sell books, but it has been doing so. The idea was to tie into Carnival, an international variation on a Mardi Gras table with New Orleans books. But it seems like Brazil has been in the news of late, and that has piqued interest and that's probably one reason why The Complete Stories from Clarice Lispector hit our bestseller list.

I wish I could say that every time I link to the Journal Sentinel reviews and say "and now for next week's bestsellers" that I was prescient, but this week, we in fact had a pop on Dawn Tripp's Georgia, a novel based on the life of Georgia O'Keeffe, and we're pretty sure the review drove sales--our initial buy was minimal.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
2. Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
3. Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, by John Gurda
4. In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri
5. Bettyville, by George Hodgman
6. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
7. Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks
8. The Road to Little Dribbling, by Bill Bryson
9. My Life on the Road, by Gloria Steinem
10. The In$ane Chicago Way, by John Hagedorn (event Fri 2/19, 7 pm, at Boswell)

I like to make sure we have hardcover editions when we do a paperback event but sales vary dramatically. I have had large events without a single hardcover sold and smaller smaller events with much better sales, but whatever the format, sales for Bettyville were strong, despite it being 7 degrees outside. Another memoir of sorts, Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling, continues to get review appreciation. Alida Becker in The New York Times Book Review writes: "Although he’s now entering what he fondly calls his dotage, the 64-year-old Bryson seems merely to have sharpened both his charms and his crotchets. As the title of The Road to Little Dribbling suggests, he remains devoted to Britain’s eccentric place names as well as its eccentric pastimes, calling our attention to the likes of the Society for Clay Pipe Research, the Pillbox Study Group and the inexplicably popular Roundabout Appreciation Society.

Paperback Fiction:
1. A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
2. Medium Hero, by Korby Lenker
3. White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
4. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay V3, by Elena Ferrante
5. My Brilliant Friend V1, by Elena Ferrante
6. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald
7. Boston Girl, by Anita Diamant
8. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
9. Blood on Snow, by Jo Nesbo
10. Agamemnon, by Aeshcylus, translated by David Mulroy

One of the things we have noted in the past is that very long novels tend to have a harder time breaking out in paperback, but for the second time in months, one has made the cut. Following A Brief History of Seven Killings, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life has been firmly in the top realm of the bestseller list. It's one of those books that is expected to make every awards shortlist, and when it doesn't, some critic writes a column questioning it. Here's one of the very strong reviews that jumpstarted the book's momentum, from Jon Michaud in The New Yorker: "Yanagihara’s novel can also drive you mad, consume you, and take over your life. Like the axiom of equality, A Little Life feels elemental, irreducible - and, dark and disturbing though it is, there is beauty in it."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Bettyville, by George Hodgman (signed copies available)
2. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson (in store lit group Mon Mar 7, 7 pm)
3. The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
4. World War II Milwaukee, by Meg Jones
5. Grace and Style, by Grace Helbig
6. Finding Zero, by Amir D. Aczel
7. And Goodnight to All the Beautiful Young Women, by Joel Kriofske (event Wed Feb 24, 7 pm, at Boswell)
8. The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature, by Robin Pickering-Iazzi (event Wed Feb 17, 7 pm, at Boswell)
9. We Gotta Get Out of This Place, by Craig Werner and Doug Bradley (event Mon Feb 29 7 pm, at Boswell)
10. Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Charnow (I wish!)

Hey, why can't we have a book club read Finding Zero? One of the groups that registers with us knew to schedule their discussion for when Amir Aczel's book came out in paperback - kudos to them! This math book got a great write up in The New York Times from Amir Alexander when the book came out in hardcover, explaining the setup: "It is zero, Dr. Aczel points out, that makes our place-value number system possible. Without it, there is no way to distinguish among 48, 480 and 4,080. Zero is indispensable for our familiar arithmetical operations, and it is half of the binary language of modern computers. And yet, even though we can hardly imagine life without it, Europeans had no concept of zero until the 13th century, when they referred to it as and Indian or Arabic numeral. Where then did this epoch-making concept originate Determined to find out, Dr. Aczel turns to the East." that Aczel's story is "gripping, filled with the passion and wonder of numbers." Alexander praises the book as "gripping, filled with the passion and wonder of numbers."

Books for Kids:
1. Masterminds V2: Criminal Destiny, by Gordon Korman
2. Masterminds V1, by Gordon Korman
3. Ungifted, by Gordon Korman
4. I am a Bunny, by Ole Risom with illustrations by Richard Scarry
5. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker
6. Silly Wonderful You, by Sherri Duskey Rinker, with illustrations by Patrick McDonnell
7. Whisper, by Pamela Zagarenski
8. Bad Luck, by Pseudonymous Bosch
9. Masterminds V1 (hardcover), by Gordon Korman
10. Mary Jemison: Native American Captive, by Jane Kelley

Guess who visited this week? If you guessed Gordon Korman, you are correct. But there are more student sales to ring in, so expect to see his books pop up again. And while she didn't visit, we had a nice pop for Sara Pennypacker's Pax, which is illustrated by the award-winning-and-once-visited-Boswell Jon Klassen. Boswellian Barbara Katz is a big fan,, who wrote "Pax takes a powerful look at the consequences of war on both people and animals. In beautiful prose, the book is told in alternating chapters between Peter, and the fox, Pax, who he raised. Tension builds as Peter goes on a three hundred mile quest to find Pax and bring him home, while Pax strives to find Peter. Heart-stopping adventures await Pax and Peter, as both change and mature when they meet other memorable characters. Pax provides compulsive reading and much to think about."

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews William Shatner's Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man. His take?: "Readers accustomed to William Shatner's punchy, pugnacious style on Twitter may be surprised by "Leonard," his relaxed, warmhearted appreciation of Leonard Nimoy, his "Star Trek" co-star and friend who died in 2015." According to Shatner, the creation of Spock might have had its origins in The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

There are more reviews of Samanth Hunt's Mr. Splitfoot, reviewed by Connie Ogle, originally in the Miami Herald, and Alexander Chee's Queen of the Night, by Katherine A. Powers, from Newsday.

Valentine's Day 2016: card roundup, "Worm Loves Worm," plus Simon Van Booy's Boswell reference in "Tales of Accidental Genius."

Valentine's Day 2016.

I was talking to Jason, as I do every year, about holiday books, and he noted that despite publisher's best efforts, it is a rare adult trade book that takes off for Valentine's Day. Kids books, sure! I was just reading Worm Loves Worm, a picture book by J.J. Austrian with illustrations by Mike Curato, which posits the thesis that worms should be the spokes-insects for marriage equality. The cricket explains to the two worms in love how to have a marriage, but which is to be the bride and which the groom? In the end, they mix it up. Mike Curato's illustrations are as adorable as they are for the Little Elliot books, most recently Little Elliot in the Big City.

Our gift trade is not exactly made for Valentine's either. One tricky thing about seasonal merchandise is that you have to be all in to make it work, and there are plenty of other stores in town that do this well. We have our lovely Polish boxes with heart designs and some heart-shaped coin purses and that seems good enough for me.

But cards! Our card sales for Valentine's Day are hardly Christmas levels, but they are better than Mother's Day and Father's Day. More than half the cards we get are not Valentine specific, so we cycle through leftovers in the friendship section over the course of the year.

Last year I was talking to Eugenia Cheng, author of How to Bake Pi, and I asked her why her book in Great Britain is called Cakes, Custard + Category Theory (note that I've left out the serial comma, being that Brits are not as fond of it as we are). She told me that one thing that Brits are definitely not fond of is puns, but they apparently are quite jolly on alliteration.

In the world of greeting cards, it's all about puns nowadays. The days of a rhyming couplet or quatrain are alas, are akin to bloomers and bow ties. Wait, bow ties are back. OK, so one day we'll be rhyming again, but for now, this Maginating card with kauai typewriter saying "Just my type" to me says it all. Previously Maginating was doing letterpress out of California. Their new cards are offset out of Missouri, and that means the price is lower. There are lines like Good Paper and Hello Lucky that completely thrive on puns, and getting that pun first before the other card lines could mean a hit card, which I think in the indie world means one that is picked up in Paper Source.

Speaking of price, I am going to generalize about gender, and this does not mean that it is true for everyone. There's an old adage in marketing that women are more price sensitive than men, perhaps because in past ages, women had less control of their checkbooks (what's a checkbook?) and no-less-old-fashioned take that said a higher percentage of women than men enjoy shopping and part of the joy of shopping is finding a bargain. But if I have offended anyone here, let me right that by saying in general, men seem to be more price conscious about card buying than women. I am much more likely to see a man come to the register with a $3 card, and if the card is $5, it's probably being bought by a woman. I'm not sure why, but perhaps women value cards in higher numbers than men too - this reinforces the old generalization about women being more relationship oriented. So for you cheap guys, this Madison Park Valentine's Day card might be for you. The illustration is by Sara Walsh. It's cute, but not too cute for a guy insecure about his masculinity. It's got lots of blue and gray and yellow, and only a little pink.

It would be nice to have a movement called #weneeddiversegreetingcards as I must confess that when I'm looking for inclusive images, they are harder to find than I'd hope. I found several new baby cards with all kinds of kids, and I now have several kid-friendly birthday cards groups of kids of different ethnicities. But a wedding card? It's tough. There are card lines specifically for African Americans, but the minimums are too high to pick and choose. That's why I was excited to find this card from Retrospect. It's a reproduction of a Harlem Renaissance painting "Jitterbugs," by artist William H. Johnson. Retrospect is not known for their copy, but I am amused that the inside message is Barry White's "You're The First, My Last, My Everything." Technically this is not the lyric but the title, so it's not in copyright. Clever, huh?

As always, I've gone to a lot of vendors to find our cards, 18 altogether. And as such, this blog could go on for pages and pages. I could yammer on about how exciting it was to find a card that used the word "canoodling," as we refer to the couch in the right rear of the store as the canoodling couch. I could tell you the top ten puns, and how I have to be very careful or I will bring in the same clever card from two different lines, as there's a lot of stealing of card copy in the industry...or maybe it's not stealing, but just like in math, where multiple people will be trying to solve the same problem simultaneously. But instead I will show this Ghost Academy card which highlights another trend, the self-reflexive, break the fourth wall card. I am sending you a card about sending you a card. I like their art, and I like that their cards are block prints. But most of all I like that you're sending a card complaining about the holiday, but you're still sending it. My sentiments exactly!

Speaking of Valentines, last fall Boswell Book Company received one from Simon Van Booy. Sharon read the book right away, but it took me a while to get it to the top of my pile. In his new collection, Tales of Accidental Genius, Boswell was referenced! It's the first time I can think of this happening in a work of fiction from a traditional publisher. In the story "Infidelity," a couple recalls going to Milwaukee. She attended a conference while he went to a book signing of one of his authors. It truly warmed my heart!

As Van Booy notes, "the stories in this collection are concerned with the manifestation of genius through acts of kindness and feelings of compassion of others, and the characters in these stories serve but are not subservient." I'd like to say that "Infidelity" is the highlight, but there's no question that the star of the show is "Golden Helper II: An Epic Fable of Wealth, Loneliness, and Cycling," which itself is supposed to be the film treatment of another story, Private Life of a Famous Chinese Film Director." It's the story of a lonely man, Weng, who adapts his father's invention into a clever device to speed up his tricycle which he uses to go back and forth from his vegetable stand. Weng's discovery is discovered, but more than that, his good deeds change the lives of all around him. And yes, maybe he even finds love. In many ways, there are similar themes here to The Illusion of Separateness, but Van Booy really immerses himself into Chinese culture (and was himself inspired by learning about his Chinese grandfather) such that even the style of the story, told in short incidents, reinforces the theme and the mood of the story. Sharon calls the prose "spare and beautiful" and that's absolutely true, but don't think you're going to zip through the story. I found myself moving slowly and rereading parts. Van Booy also has this talent for being heartwarming without being saccharine. And yes, I would go see this film.

Thanks for the Valentine, Mr. Booy. Here's one back at ya!

This Week's Events, Part II: Jane Kelley, Gordon Korman, Sharon Guskin, and Korby Lenker, only one of which is at Boswell.

As you may have heard, the next Democratic debate takes place in Milwaukee on Thursday, February 11, at UWM. What happened to the Saturday night debates? They finally have the debates on a night when people are primed to watch, and we have three competing events that night. It's against my religion actually to have three events on any night, certainly in February, when I don't even want two competing events, but all these dates fell into place without much control on my part.

Amusingly enough, when the Republican debate was in Milwaukee, it was downtown. Of course we had an event three blocks away, our first event at Turner Hall. It's fate, I guess. On the other hand, the weather hasn't been event weather for the past few days, and that's good, because we didn't have any events. As Jen and I said every time something went eerily well* at our recent gift show trip, "Lucky penny!"

We could have rescheduled John Hagedorn's orginally-in-January event for February 11 and then we would have had to reschedule it again. But right now, his talk in conjunction with The In$sane Chicago Way stands at Friday, February 19, 7 pm, at Boswell. And now onto this week's offerings!

Tuesday, February 11 event #1, 6 pm, at the Frank L. Weyenberg Public Library:
Jane Kelley, author of The Book of Dares for Lost Friends and Mary Jemison: Native American Captive, tells "The Story of a Book."

Kelley chronicles the writing and publishing process, from the idea lightbulb going on through writing, agenting, publishing, and marketing. She has written numerous books for kids and now has her first nonfiction book out under the pseudonym E.F. Abbott. Kelley's other books include Nature Girl, The Desperate Adventures of Zeno and Alya, and The Girl Behind the Glass.

The Frank L. Weyenberg library is located at 11345 N. Cedarburg Rd., just north of Mequon Rd.

Tuesday, February 11 event #2, 6:30 pm, at the Shorewood Public Library:
Gordon Korman, author of Masterminds #2: Criminal Destiny and many other books like Ungifted.

This free event features a talk about Masterminds and its sequel, Criminal Destiny, as well as the life and work of Gordon Korman, the beloved children's book author. Masterminds is a great series where a bunch of kids in a sleepy New Mexico town discover they are part of a grand experiment - they are the clones of great criminal masterminds. So will they turn evil or not, especially when they realize that they have to be more than average, they have to be heroes? Two Boswellians, Barb and Todd, are fans of this series. As to how this places out, I'll bet this series goes for at least one more volume, so we'll see what happens. Some of Korman's other popular books are Schooled, The Hypnotists, and the Swindle series.

The Shorewood Public Library is located on 3920 N. Murray Ave., just south of Capitol Dr.

Tuesday, February 11 event #3, 7 pm reception, 7:30 talk, at the Lynden Sculpture Garden:
A ticketed event with Sharon Guskin, author of The Forgetting Time.

The Women's Speaker series, produced by Margy Stratton at Milwaukee Reads, presents the debut of Sharon Guskin's The Forgetting Time. This is the first fiction release for the great Amy Einhorn, editor at Flatiron Books. At her own imprint at Putnam she is best known for publishing Kathryn Stockett's The Help, but she also published Jenny Lawson, Liane Moriarty, Eleanor Brown (The Weird Sisters), Suzanne Rindell (The Other Typist), and Sarah Blake (The Postmistress). Great stuff, right? We're kind of groupies.

Our own Sharon Nagel was an early fan of The Forgetting Time, noting: "Even though a novel may be beautifully written, it will remind you of another book you’ve read. It’s so rare to find a novel like The Forgetting Time, which takes you in a direction that you never expected, on a journey that you could not have foreseen." And here's Tracy Sherlock, book editor of the Vancouver Sun: "The Forgetting Time is a great read - Guskin combines a thought-provoking idea with a well-written and compelling story that ensures readers will stay with it, whether or not they believe that souls live on after death. This novel is both engaging and riveting. It will make you think about what really matters and how best to spend the time we have."

The Lynden Sculpture Garden is located on 2145 W. Brown Deer Rd in River Hills. Apologies to those for a mistake in our flier - the talk is at 7:30, not 7, so now you won't be late. Tickets are $30, $25 for Lynden members, and includes wine and light refreshments from MKE Localicious, and a copy of The Forgetting Time. The event is sponsored by Bronze Optical.

And for Friday, February 12, 7 pm, something completely different at Boswell:
Korby Lenker, author of Medium Hero.

Lenker is a folksinger from Bellingham, Washington, who is hitting the road on a book tour for his first collection of short stories. Kirkus Reviews called the book "a quick, pleasurable set of short stories" noting: "Lenker’s debut story collection presents vignettes of relationships between friends, family, and significant others. These stories straddle a border between an Everyman’s search for meaning and a highly specialized look at modern Americana."

Other fans of note include Tim O'Brien, Medium Hero is "distinctive, disarming, entertaining, and completely convincing" while Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak called Korby's stories "clever and well-crafted, with a tendency to linger in your mind long after you've finished reading."

Lenker will be reading with a little music playing thrown in. As a performer, Lenker has opened for Willie Nelson, Susan Tedeschi, and Nickel Creek, among others. This event is free. Visit Korby Lenker's website for more info.

*My favorite example of this was when we went to pilgrimage to Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, one of my favorite shops (we went to six bookstores altogether on our trip), I put us on the wrong train and we had to turn around, delaying us about 30 minutes. I looked down at my phone and had a text from Delta, telling us our flight out had been delayed another half hour.

Oh, and don't forget about our event with NBCC-nominated author George Hodgman, appearing for the paperback release of his memoir Bettyville. He's at Boswell on Wednesday, February 10, 7 pm. Here's all the details on yesterday's blog.

George Hodgman Taps into Our National and My Personal Obsession with Caregiving (and Hodgman is at Boswell for Bettyville on Wednesday, February 10, 7 pm)

Have you ever read a number of books in a row and only realized in retrospect that the books were related? I think I'm picking books at random, but this is clearly not the case. For example, I just finished the newest novel from Cathleen Schine, titled They May Not Mean To, But They Do. It comes out in April. It's about a couple both struggling with their aging parents. Freddie's father keeps getting asked to leave his assisted living facility in Los Angeles, while Molly's parents back in New York are still in their apartment, but her father is barely holding on, and her mom, in her mid-eighties, is trying to take care of him while still keeping her job at a museum. The book comes out in June, when I'll have more to say about it, but folks anxiously awaiting Schine's latest will not be disappointed.

Last month I read My Father the Pornographer, a memoir from Christopher Offutt, which officially goes on sale February 9.  I've been a big fan of Offutt's for years; if my reading lists were more organized, I could list which books I've read, but let it be said that I'm pretty positive that I've read two other memoirs, a short story collection, and a novel. I'm assuming he waited for his dad to pass away before writing this book, but to my knowledge, there was really no hint that his father was a prolific writer of adult content work, written using various pseudonyms and covering just about every sub-genre. At its heart, however, it's a father-son story, and in a lot of ways, it's about the changing relationship he had with his father as each one aged. In this case, his mom took care of his father, and while they had a working relationship for much of their life and kept the secret together (he wrote, she typed), she certainly had her hands full; Dad did not seem like the most pleasant person to be around. You can read my rec here.

There's a cultural zeitgeist regarding caregiving. Look at the reaction to Can't We Take About Something More Pleasant? Not that that book wasn't amazing, but there are a lot of amazing books in the world but they don't generally sell like Roz Chast's. And of course Chast herself has never had a book that sold like that either. 

And then there's George Hodgman. His memoir Bettyville came out last year and has gotten raves from any number of publications and shows, such as Fresh Air, the Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times. It's even being adapted into a series for Paramount television. It's a book that really touches a nerve. One of our sales reps, not the rep for Bettyville, told me how much she loved the book. She'd done her share of caregiving and told me that Hodgman put into words what so many feel when they are in the position. And then I was talking to someone at public radio about another book, who when she heard we were hosting Hodgman, practically swooned. "I love that book," she exclaimed. 

I hadn't read the book in hardcover publication, even though everyone was convinced I had. When feelers were put out that the publisher was considering sending Hodgman to Milwaukee for the paperback, I dug in. Bettyville so captured the dynamic of mother and son - of a gay man struggling with addiction, having gotten through the AIDS crisis, lost his job, juggled freelance work, of having escaped a small town only to have to return. And his mom too had her own disappointments, outliving her husband and a companion, accepting her lot but also wistfully shopping at the fancy stores in St. Louis, imagining what it would be like to have had, well, a different lot. But after reading the book, you can't help but love them both.

So with all this success, Bettyville is now out in paperback and George Hodgman (photo credit Sigrid Estrada) is coming to Boswell on Wednesday, February 10, 7 pm*, but after that, Jane and I will be talking Bettyville up to book clubs all spring, and if we hit a nerve, longer than that. I think the nerve it hits is clear. And it does it so well. As Steve Weinberg wrote in the Kansas City Star: "What a superb memoir it turned out to be. Hodgman is by turns wry, laugh-out-loud funny, self-deprecating, insecure to the point of near suicide, an attentive caregiver despite occasional, understandable resentments."

So the thing to note is that my own mother, who has been in assisted living for several years, has been struggling with decline. I'm not the family member on duty - that honor goes to my sister in Massachusetts. We haven't been able to talk of late since she just can't hear over the phone. I installed Skype, only to have her get a infection that led to a hospital stay and further decline and now I'm worried she won't know who I am. I hope to visit her sometime soon, but for now, I've been getting updates from Claudia and sharing news with my other sister, Merrill, in Arizona.

So when I told Claudia that I was buying her a signed copy of Bettyville, she said to me that she wasn't sure that this was exactly what she wanted to read right now. But I said, trust me, I'm a bookseller, and this is exactly what you want to read right now. I could be wrong, but I'm feeling confident. We'll see how it goes.

*Our caregiving memoir series (I guess it's a series now) continues on Wednesday, February 24, 7 pm, when we're hosting local writer Joel Kriofske, author of And Good Night to All the Beautiful Young Women: A Tale of Episodic Dementia - The Parent Becomes the Child. It's the story of his relationship with his father as the latter drifted in dementia. 

For February, It Was a Pretty Exciting Week: Boswell Annotated Bestsellers for the Period Ending February 6, 2016.

Here are the Boswell bestsellers for the week ending February 6, 2016.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
2. The Swans of Fifth Avenue, by Melanie Benjamin
3. Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
4. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
5. Noah's Wife, by Lindsay Starck
6. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
7. The Drifter, by Nicholas Petrie
8. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist, by Sunil Yapa
9. Nox, by Anne Carson
10. Warriors of the Storm, by Berard Cornwell

I'm not sure why, but we had a much better 2nd week than its first week out for The Swans of Fifth Avenue, by Melanie Benjamin. It's a novel based on the friendship and destruction of said friendship between Truman Capote and Babe Paley. Caroline Preston's review in The Washington Post writes: "In her author’s note, Benjamin says she had more fun writing “The Swans of Fifth Avenue” than her previous novels, and it shows. The best scene in the book, the fabulous Black and White Ball told from the viewpoints of various guests, displays Benjamin’s wit and verve."She notes the similarities between Charles Lindbergh in her previous bestseller, The Aviator's Wife, and Bill Paley in this novel. And here's Caroline Leavitt's interview with Benjamin on her blog CarolineLeavittville.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. When Breath Becomes Air, by Paula Kalanithi
2. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
3. Binge, by Tyler Oakley
4. Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, by John Gurda
5. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
6. Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
7. Presence, by Amy Cuddy
8. Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks
9. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
10. Miller: Inside the High Life, by Paul Bialas

When Breath Becomes Air continues to be our top seller in this category. Lucy Kellaway in The Financial Times writes: "Anyone buying this book expecting a mawkish weepie will be disappointed. It turns out not really to be about dying at all but about life and how to live it — though the closeness of death gives it an urgency and economy: by the end, Kalanithi’s hands were so sore that he wore seamless gloves to type."

If you want to know what folks who like Grace Helbig are also interested in, this bestseller list offers some hints. Two books that popped at our event are Welcome to Night Vale, and especially Tyler Oakley's Binge. Note that both editions were signed. We probably could have sold another 10-20 of the latter, but the attendees pretty much cleaned us out.

Note to Tyler Oakley fans: we have signed copies of Grace and Style.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald
2. Agamemnon, by Aeuschylus, translated by David Mulroy
3. The Fathers We Find, by Charles P. Ries
4. A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James
5. The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
6. A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
7. How to Be Both, by Ali Smith
8. My Brilliant Friend V1, by Elena Ferrante
9. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
10. Funny Girl, by Nick Hornby

We're a little late to the party, but now it appears that everyone at Boswell is reading A Man Called Ove, a book that is currently top 10 on national bestseller lists. As Jane notes, of all the curmudgeons we've championed, Ove is about the curmudgeon-iest. Jane Clinton in the (UK) Sunday Express notes: "Fredrik Backman, a well-known blogger and columnist in his native Sweden, launched the character of Ove in a blog post and his readers demanded more. So A Man Called Ove was born. This word-of-mouth bestseller has sold more than 650,000 copies in Sweden and has been a hit across Europe. It deserves to do at least as well here. I loved A Man Called Ove so much that I started to ration how much I read to prolong my time with this cantankerous, low-key, misunderstood man. If you enjoyed Rachel Joyce’s marvellous bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry, you will love this book."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Grace and Style, by Grace Helbig
2. Grace's Guide, by Grace Helbig
3. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
4. World War II Milwaukee, by Meg Jones
5. Coloring for Contemplation, by Amber Hatch
6. The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
7. We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. Graphesis, by Johanna Drucker
9. Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook, by Mary Bergin
10. The Ramen Fusion Cookbook, by Nell Benton

We were out of World War II Milwaukee for several weeks, hoping for restocking from our wholesalers, but finally found success when we went directly to Arcadia/History Press. Jones recently had a column in the Journal Sentinel about Bob Birmingham, a World War II vet: "It was Jan. 17, 1945, in the final months of World War II, and Birmingham's fifth bomber mission. He had celebrated his 19th birthday five weeks earlier. It was a time when fresh-faced teenagers like Birmingham were forced to grow up in a hurry. He didn't attend his graduation ceremony at Pius XI High School; he was drafted during his senior year. His diploma was mailed to him."

Books for Kids:
1. Stick Dog Tries to Take the Donuts V5, by Tom Watson
2. Two Friends, by Dean Robbins
3. Hello, by Liza Wiemer
4. Stick Dog Dreams of Ice Cream V4, by Tom Watson
5. Stick Dog V1, by Tom Watson
6. Stick Dog Chases a Pizza V3, by Tom Watson
7. Anna and the Swallow Man, by Gavriel Savit
8. Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog V2, by Tom Watson
9. I Am a Bunny, by Ole Risom and Richard Scarry
10. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker

Since our top eight bestsellers are event books this week, I could say that the spring author event season is on. I should note, however, that it took a little bit to sort out our school events for Tom Watson, author of Stick Dog Tries to Take the Donuts. Watson has another new book coming out in May, Stick Cat. Kirkus Reviews writes on the upcoming book: "Transitioning smoothly are the plentiful line drawings and the humor of misunderstanding. Fans of Stick Dog will enjoy this series kickoff whether they are cat kids or dog kids." One thing I've noticed about series is that the advance review organs are likely to review first in the series but after a while, they are well aware that librarians, booksellers, and even reviewers look at track and reviews mean less, so they go where they are needed.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Brian E. Clark profiles The Sacred Disease: My Life with Epilepsy, from Madison doctor Kristin Seaborg. "Seaborg said her advice to those with epilepsy, which affects 3 million Americans, is to not let the condition define who they are. 'Epilepsy is not a sentence,' she said. 'It's something you need to be aware of and treat. But you shouldn't let it limit what you want to achieve. And that includes having children, which is always a roll of the dice. But our three are perfectly healthy, so we are blessed.'"

Erin Kogler reviews Dawn Tripp's Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe. The book focuses on her long relationship with New York photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. She writes: "Overall the book is a lovely portrayal of an iconic artist who is independent and multidimensional. Tripp's O'Keeffe is a woman hoping to break free of conventional definitions of art, life and gender, as well as a woman of deep passion and love." Kogler also appreciated the "vivid descriptions of of O'Keeffe's work and her intense personality."

Mike Fischer takes on Howard Jacobson's, My Name is Shylock. This former Man Booker winner has written a book in the new Hogarth Shakespeare series, which offers contemporary takes on classic plays. Fischer's take: "Jacobson's treatment of Strulovitch's Christian tormentors — including a version of Portia as a reality TV host who never met a plastic surgery she didn't love and a presentation of the daughter-stealing Lorenzo as a footballer with rocks for brains — is so broad that the intended humor falls flat. But there's nothing flat about Jacobson's provocative exploration of what Shylock embodies and who his Jewish descendants are — a question of identity that's itself been shaped by how both Christians and Jews see Shylock himself."

And finally, Jim Higgins reviews Charlie Jane Anders's All the Birds in the Sky, which mashes up science fiction and fantasy together through the characters of a witch and a scientist in near-future San Francisco coping with climate change apocalypse. What does Higgins think? The novel "is as light and crisp as an apple yet as pleasingly dense as a burrito. It engages with a metaphor at least as old as medieval Sufism while also drawing on the preoccupations of today's hipsters."

And just one more news piece. Laurie Hertzel's On Books column in the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune looks at a survey that shows that 92% of college students prefer print to ebooks for studying.

Boswell Eventorama: Dean Robbins Tuesday, Gavriel Savit Wednesday, David Mulroy Thursday, Dave Reidy with Valerie Laken Friday, Grace Helbig ticketed signing Saturday.

Tuesday, February 2, 7 pm, at Boswell:

Dean Robbins, author of Two Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass

Two friends, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, get together for tea and conversation. They recount their similar stories fighting to win rights for women and African Americans. The premise of this particular exchange between the two is based on a statue in their hometown of Rochester, New York, which shows the two friends having tea.

This is Madison writer Dean Robbins' first day of school visits, followed with a public event. We're hosting two more schools on February 16. If you're interested in getting on the distribution list for these school opportunities, please contact Todd.

From Kirkus: "The two were friends, and in his imagined scenario, Robbins deftly moves between her objectives and words to those of Douglass. He gives a basic introduction to what society expected of women and how African-Americans were denied rights."

Wednesday, February 3, 7 pm
Gavriel Savit, author of Anna and the Swallow Man.

Here's a write up from Boswellian Jen Steele: "Professor Lania and his daughter, Anna, lived a happy charming life. Professor Lania teaches linguistics and Anna has grown up speaking many languages. Her father had many friends from all over the world and she enjoyed (was proud of?) being able to talk to them in their native tongues. But in 1939 in Poland, when Anna was in her seventh year, she learned that 'War is a heavy word in every language.' When the Germans arrived, their first mission was to target all the intellectuals and academics of the city of Krakow. She knew her father had to go, but never guessed he would not be coming back. Anna was left alone with nowhere to go, until the day she met a mysterious man who, like her, could speak many languages. Together, they embarked on a journey across Poland. During their travels, the Swallow Man taught Anna many things; most importantly the language of 'Road' and how to survive this new life of theirs. Anna and the Swallow Man is a historical novel filled with magic and suspense!"

From Shelf Awareness, here's a write up from Karin Snelson: "Savit's novel, with its wise, philosophical narrator, has the classic feel and elegant, precise language of a book that's been around forever. Amidst a riveting survival story of brutal cold, hunger and chilling narrow escapes are musings on the power of words and the power of silence, the value of truth and the necessity of lies, the horrors of war, the resilience of people, love, death, the keen intuition of children, living with uncertainty. Alongside the purposeful detachment that comes with the storyteller's voice, though, is real, edge-of-seat suspense and powerful emotion. The details of Swallow Man's true identity - Is he the Polish bogeyman Boruta? Is he really a magical being? Is he a 'brilliant, beautiful deception?' - don't ultimately matter because, as the Swallow Man tells Anna, 'questions are far more valuable than answers.'"

Thursday, February 4, 7 pm, at Boswell:
David Mulroy, translator of Aeschylus's Agamemnon.

Agamemnon, King of Argos, returns to Greece a victor in the Trojan War. He has brought with him the seer Cassandra as his war-prize and concubine. Awaiting him is his vengeful wife Clytemnestra, who is angry at Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia to the gods, jealous of Cassandra, and guilty of taking a lover herself. The events that unfold catch everyone in a bloody net, including their absent son Orestes. Aeschylus (525–456 BC) was the first of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, a forerunner of Sophocles and Euripides. His early tragedies were largely choral pageants with minimal plots. In Agamemnon, choral songs still predominate, but Aeschylus infuses them with such dramatic feeling that the spectator or reader is constantly spellbound.

Translator David Mulroy, professor emeritus of classics at UWM, brings this ancient tragedy to life for modern readers and audiences. Using end rhyme and strict metrics, he combines the buoyant lyricism of the Greek text with a faithful rendering of its meaning in lucid English. You can here more about Mulroy, the book, and the translation process by listening to his interview with Bonnie North on WUWM's Lake Effect.

Friday, February 5, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Dave Reidy, author of The Voiceover Artist, in conversation with UWM's Valerie Laken.

Simon Davies suffers a crippling stutter inherited from his father. At the age of seven, he decides to stop speaking completely, eventually rendering his vocal cords useless from atrophy. Unable to speak, Simon finds solace in the voices piping through his bedside radio. Eighteen years later, Simon rebuilds his voice and learns to mostly manage his stutter with a series of subtle tics he s developed to loosen his vocal cords. He moves to Chicago and pursues his lifelong dream of becoming a voice on the radio voiceover artist. Meanwhile, his younger brother Connor, in every way more confident and charming than Simon, attempts to take his prodigious talent for improv comedy from the barroom stages of Chicago to the television studios of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Coming out of his years of silence, Simon seeks to balance his relationship with his brother, forcing Connor to examine what brotherhood and success mean to him.

Here's a few lines from the very interesting Kirkus Review: "As a voice-over artist might say in a commercial: you get all this and more! With the story summarized, the novel’s busyness shows. Reidy is restless, moving from narrator to narrator; nearly all the major characters get his or her own section, all in first person (except, shrewdly, for a chapter about Simon before he found his voice, narrated in third). As a result, the novel often feels like it’s stopping and starting; halfway in, readers may think the main narrative hasn’t even begun. But the voices and characters themselves are rich and varied—a reminder that plot, slavishly tended to, can result in stuffy prose. Here, Reidy has fun, and isn’t that sometimes the raison d’être for clear, familiar premises? The more solid the outline, the more fun it is to color outside of it."

I should also note that Katie Jesse of the People's Books Story Hour will be taping the event for replay on Riverwest Radio. It's sort of like a Riverwest take on Chapter a Day. You can read more about this podcast here.

Saturday, February 6, 2 pm, at Boswell: A ticketed signing with Grace Helbig, author of Grace and Style: The Art of Pretending You Have It.

Grace Helbig doesn't want to tell anyone how they should dress, how they should do their hair or makeup, or even which dog poop bags to purchasebecause surprisingly, Target has numerous options for that too! While Grace doesn't claim to be stylish or polished, she is very self-aware and perceptive. Trendy? She'd rather have fun trying. She loves fashion as much as the next lady, man, or French bulldog, but telling others how they should look doesn't suit her. Instead, with Grace & Style, Grace takes us into her closet and shares her silly and practical approach to stylewhich obviously includes an entire chapter on sweatpants. One part parody, one part fashion fun, and one part personal experience, Grace's latest guide to life as a woman in America today is more H&M than Chanel. So tighten your Banana Republic belt a few notches and learn how to pretend and convince everyone around you that you've got style and grace!

Tickets are $21 and are available via phone (1-800-838-3006) or through the Brown Paper Tickets website, event #2487975: You can also call 800-838-3006. Each ticket includes all tax and fees, admission for one to the signing line, a photograph with the author, and one autographed copy of her new book, Grace & Style. Alas, no personalizations or inscriptions, and Ms. Helbig will not sign memorabilia. And while you can accompany the ticket holder on the signing line, only the ticketed attendee will meet the author.

You probably want to visit the Grace Helbig channel on Youtube now, don't you?