What did the book club think? - Mister Monkey, by Francine Prose

What did the book club think? - Mister Monkey, by Francine Prose

This month Jen picked Francine Prose's most recent novel, about a not-very-good theatrical production of Mister Monkey, adapted from a beloved children's book. The story jumps perspective from character to character, as we jump from actor to director to costume designer to author to, well, waiter in the restaurant where the author eats. He's actually quite the fan!

This was a left-field pick for the group. It doesn't play with genre too much, and there might not be enough escapism to call it cerebral escapism. That said, the conversation went well.

I've read a lot of Francine Prose over the years, having read at least four of her novels (Household Saints, Hunters and Gatherers, A Changed Man, and Goldengrove, and two others sound familiar and my list is filed away and I'm too lazy to double check) and a collection of stories (Women and Children First). When I looked up her bibliography, I realized that's still a tiny fraction of her work. In addition, while I did not read Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, we had a great read in house and one of my sisters talked to me quite a bit about the book, so there's that. Back in the day when I would read 8-10 books a month, I used to rank my reading and I remember Women and Children First was my #1 book for the month. A Changed Man, which is sort of a fictionalized version of Arno Michaelis, pre Arno Michaelis, might have been #1 as well.

In a lot of ways, Mister Monkey hearkens back to her contemporary novels (so not so much Lovers or Goldengrove). Prose has a pointed take on contemporary culture and issues. What was once an adult story about a Vietnam veteran bringing a monkey back to a poor Latino family became a children's story - it was the poachers, not the war, that led to Mister Monkey (the character, not the story) coming to New York, where he settled with a wealthy white family. Contemporary interpretation gives the story imperialist overtones, a la Curious George and Babar.

By changing the perspective in each character, you might think this was a novel in stories, but despite each character's perspective being fully fleshed out, the tales are too intrinsically tied together to work independently. I was hard pressed to imagine Mister Monkey being having its genesis as a story. If Prose was here, I would have asked her which perspective came first.

The plot is sort of kicked off by an incident at one of the performances, where a little boy throws off the rhythm of the play by asking his grandfather if he was enjoying the show, loudly, during the performance. Margot drops her cell phone during a key scene, and Mister Monkey jumps into her arms and well, has an adolescent-style reaction. Then the boy causes problems at his school, when he gets fixated on Mister Monkey and evolution, which is clearly not addressed in the show, as the playwright who adapted the story is an Evangelical Christian.

Here are the chapter perspectives:
1. Margot (the lawyer)
2. Adam (the monkey)
3. The Grandfather (attending the performance)
4. Edward (the grandson, attending the performance)
5. Miss Sonya (Edward's teacher)
6. Ray (the author of the book)
7. Mario (the waiter at a restaurant where both Miss Sonya and Ray have dinner)
8. Lakshmi (the costume designer)
9. Eleanor (the show's villain)
10. The Monkey God (the real Mister Monkey)
11. Roger (the director)

Many of the protagonists are support players in other chapters. We see a really bad blind date from at least three different perspectives. You can't help but laugh when Miss Sonya learns the truth about her icky environmental lawyer dinner partner. But then you think, maybe he has a point?

The order of the stories is very important. We liked how much everyone disliked the monkey-averse matron, because, well, she was the villainess (despite being a nurse in real life, a profession that tends to be viewed quite positively), and we had to upend our expectations when we read her story. I think this graying of characters (as opposed to black-and-white assumptions) is something that runs through Prose's work, from what I remember.

In terms of positioning, several questioned why Prose made the Monkey God the next to the last chapter. We all agreed it might have been better to have that chapter come at the end, pulling the story out of the ordinary. It was jarring enough, but to have it crash back, only to have an open-ended narrative regarding three of the characters.

Based on the paperback cover treatment (all type, no monkey), I'm wondering if the publisher had trouble positioning the story. I am reminded of Don Lee's Lonesome Lies Before Us, another funny-sad story, which has yet to have a paperback publication scheduled. I'm not sure why they just didn't keep the hardcover jacket. I think perhaps a cartoony cover might have worked, much like the hardcover jacket, but maybe with additional characters. Maybe not. 

I guess I detoured to Don Lee because Prose reminds me of Lee in her humor. It's intellectually funny, something that might, and I say this again and again, might be more appreciated if she were English. Take that New York Times quote from Catherine Schine: "It's that funny. It's that sad." The reviews are truly amazing, and take up multiple pages at the front of the paperback edition.

If you find Mister Monkey intriguing, I might recommend Lives of the Circus Animals, a novel from Christopher Bram that sometimes shows up on my rec shelf. It's also about theater in New York, also has multiple character perspectives, and also has a funny sad vibe.


Next up for the Books and Beer Book Club is Bannerless, by Carrie Vaughan. It won the Philip K. Dick Award - join them Monday, September 17, 7 pm, at Downer Avenue's Cafe Hollander. Enjoy your discussion with a glass of beer or wine! Visit our Boswell-run book clubs page for future dates for the rest of our upcoming book club discussions.

This week: Anna Lardinois's ghosts and legends, Lil Rev's dulcimer, Mike Lankford's Leonardo da Vinci at the Charles Allis, plus Ellen Hopkins a week from Tuesday

We're open Labor Day from 10 am to 5 pm.

Wednesday, September 5, 7:00 PM, at Boswell:
Anna Lardinois, author of Milwaukee Ghosts and Legends

Anna Lardinois, founder of Gothic Milwaukee and ardent collector of stories, leads a tour (from the comfort of Boswell) of Milwaukee’s haunted houses, eerie avenues, and bedeviled buildings.

Beneath Milwaukee's calm façade, its ghastly past awaits. In life, Charles Pfister played the dutiful hotel host, and he tends this office still in death. The overbearing spirit of Frederick Pabst keeps persistent watch over the mansion that shares his name. The remains of the Newhall House Fire, the city's deadliest disaster, lie beneath a new building, but those who lost their lives that night refuse to rest in peace.

Even the suburbs hold their share of ghoulish secrets, including the furtive dwarves of Haunchyville, the fabled Bray Road Beast and the stubborn spirits lurking in Deacon West's house. Lardinois shares the spine-tingling tales of the Beer City's famous, and not so famous, specters and legends.

Anna Lardinois is the creator of the self-guided walking tour collections Walking Milwaukee: Downtown Edition and Tosa Edition. She happily resides in a historic home in Milwaukee that, as yet, does not appear to be haunted.

Thursday, September 6, 7:00 PM at Boswell:
Lil Rev debuts his latest album Mountain Dulcimer

Lil Rev, Milwaukee’s multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, might be best known for his ukulele playing and his role throughout the city as a music educator, but on his latest CD, on sale at Boswell, he brings his unique focus to a most American musical instrument, the mountain dulcimer.

This collection features classic old-time, pre-war blues, yiddish, folk, and original material. Recorded in Milwaukee, Lil Rev’s latest is infused with a genuine Midwestern touch.

Unlike the more common Appalachian or Celtic repertoire found on most dulcimer recordings, Rev tackles early blues, songs like Mississippi John Hurt’s soulful “Louis Collins.” The record includes a Carter Family standard, a sea shanty, and other old time folk styles. His originals are well crafted and poignant, but the focus is firmly on the blues. And if you think you can’t play a convincing country blues on the dulcimer, Rev’s virtuosic playing on “Squabbling Blues” will change your mind.

Lil Rev is a multi-instrumentalist, educator, and entertainer from Milwaukee. He has written a series of instructional ukulele books for Hal Leonard Publications and released several solo and collaborative albums, including Claw and Hammer, Fountains of Uke, and Harmonica Americana.

Friday, September 7, 7:00 PM, at Charles Allis Art Museum, 1801 N Prospect Ave: Mike Lankford, author of Becoming Leonardo: An Exploded View of the Life of Leonardo Da Vinci

Lankford explodes every cliché about Leonardo Da Vinci and then reconstructs the mysterious-as-ever artist’s life from a trove of evidence about Leonardo’s life and times in this Wall Street Journal selection for 2017 Book of the Year.

This event is free with paid admission to the Charles Allis Art Museum - $7 general public, $5 students and seniors. For more information, visit charlesallis.org.

Seeking to envision Da Vinci without obscuring the residue of historical varnish, the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of Renaissance Italy, usually missing in other biographies, are all here, transporting readers back to a world of war, plague, and court intrigue, of viciously competitive famous artists, and of murderous tyrants with exquisite taste in art.

Lankford brilliantly captures Da Vinci’s life as the compelling and dangerous adventure it seems to have actually been - fleeing from one sanctuary to the next, somehow surviving in war zones beside his friend Machiavelli, struggling to make art his way or no way at all, and often paying dearly for those decisions.

Mike Lankford is author of Life in Double Time: Confessions of an American Drummer, selected best music book of the year by eight major newspapers including the Chicago Tribune.

Tuesday, September 11, 7:00 PM, at Boswell:
Ellen Hopkins, author of People Kill People

The author of 14 bestselling YA novels and 3 adult novels, Hopkins comes to Boswell with her latest, a compelling, complex story that tackles gun violence and white supremacy.

A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for protection. Who was it? Each character has the incentive to pick up a gun. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race and possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything in a devastating accident and sunk quietly into depression?

Someone will pull the trigger. And someone will die. One tense week brings all six people into close contact in a town wrought with political and personal tensions.

Ellen Hopkins is the author of Crank, Love Lies Beneath, and A Sin Such as This, and other acclaimed novels. She lives in Carson City, Nevada, where she founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit youth housing and resource initiative.

Want to know about more events? Visit the Boswell upcoming events page.

It's the midpoint of Labor Day weekend. Forecast is hot and humid. Maybe a trip to the bookstore is in order. Here are suggestions from the Boswell bestseller list, week ending September 1.

It's the midpoint of Labor Day weekend. Forecast is hot and humid. Maybe a trip to the bookstore is in order. Here are suggestions from the Boswell bestseller list, week ending September 1.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai
2. The Fall of Gondolin, by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Dear Mrs. Bird, by AJ Pearce
4. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
5. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
6. There There, by Tommy Orange (Register here for Tue Sep 25 event)
7. Paris by the Book, by Liam Callanan
8. Circe, by Madeline Miller
9. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
10. The Music Shop, by Rachel Joyce

Originally crafted in 1917, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Gondolin was edited by Christopher Tolkien, and appeared in a different form in The Silmarillion. It also appeared in Unfinished Tales. And yes, there's already a Wikipedia entry. Andrew Griffin in The Independent says that it's a work that needs a lot of excavating on the part of the reader, but it's totally worth it. "What a fitting finale to that mythology The Fall of Gondolin is," Gondolin exclaims, though without an exclamation point.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, by John Gurda (Milwaukee Public Library Loos Room event Mon Oct 1, 6 pm)
2. Winners Take All, by Anand Giridharadas
3. The Restless Wave, by John McCain
4. Educated, by Tara Westover
5. High Risers, by Ben Austen (Rose Petranech Lecture at Boswell on Mon Sep 17, 7 pm)
6. The Hidden Lives of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
7. Epic Hikes of the World, by Lonely Planet
8. Summer V4, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
9. The Soul of America, by Jon Meacham
10. The Tangled Tree, by David Quammen

A week of memorials for John McCain and Aretha Franklin had folks looking for books. While McCain had a book at the ready, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations, written with Mark Salter, it looks like the best Franklin book is David Ritz's biography Respect. Politico reprints its farewell statement.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman
2. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (Peaver translation)
3. Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
4. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
5. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
6. Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
7. Edge of the Known Bus Line, by James Gapinski
8. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
9. The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry (In-Store Lit Group Tue Oct 2, 7 pm, at Boswell)
10. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

Sometimes you have a book that is under-the-radar in hardcover and simply explodes in paperback. That's the case for Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. I was presenting to a book club and I think 13 of the 15 attendees had already read it. On the other hand, there's a book like The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry that sold and sold in hardcover, but has been a little quiet in paperback. Is this word-of-mouth vs. reviews? Is Essex Serpent a bit long for book club discussion? Because we had an extra week for our book club (we read Sing, Unburied, Sing a week early), I picked The Essex Serpent for our October selection, and I like that there is a ghostly thread of connection between the two works. Regarding the book club in question, I did get them to read a long book over their winter break, only it was The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein
2. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
3. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
4. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
5. Democracy in Chains, by Nancy Maclean
6. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
7. The Optical Vacuum, by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (event at Boswell Wed Sep 12, 7 pm)
8. Milwaukee Ghosts and Legends, by Anna Lardinois (event at Boswell Wed Sep 5, 7 pm)
9. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
10. Night Moves, by Jessica Hopper (even at Boswell Sat Sep 22, 7 pm)

Richard Rothstein will be at MATC for The Color of Law on October 16 for The Color of Law. Tickets here. This is part of the LISC Milwaukee and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council (MMFHC) community book read.

Of Jessica Hopper's lates, Boswellian Chris Lee wrote: "Night Moves captures a time, people, and place in a city that feels like a ghost town Hopper (and gentrification) has left behind, but for a while, in these pages, it's so alive, full of shouting, laughing, screaming masses of strangers and friends that pound the cracked concrete and fill the saggy-ceiling'd rooms of falling apart buildings during sticky-hot days and blue-lips-frigid nights."

Books for Kids:
1. Conjuror V1, by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowman
2. Nephilim V2, by John Barrowman and Carole E. Barrowman
3. Lord of the Fleas V5, by Dav Pilkey
4. Right of Passage, by Richard Wright
5. The Day You Begin, by Jacqueline Woodson
6. Harbor Me, by Jacqueline Woodson
7. A Is for Activist, by Innosanto Nagara
8. Click, Clack Quack to School, by Doreen Cronin, with illustrations by Betsy Lewin
9. Pax, by Sara Pennypacker, with illustrations by Jon Klassen
10. Illegal, by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, with illustrations by Giovanni Rigano (Register for event at Boswell on Thu 9/13, 6:30 pm)

Rémy Dupree and his friends Matt and Em Calder are battling to save the world as we know it, first in Conjuror and then in Nephilim. #3 in the series, Inquisitor, is published in the United States on October 1.

Per the publisher, Jacqueline Woodson’s first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. Of Harbor Me, the new novel by Jacqueline Woodson, Boswellian Tim McCarthy wrote: "This novel was a profound experience for me. Woodson tore my heart out and then gave me most of it back."

Featured in this Sunday's Journal Sentinel TapBooks page is Maxwell King's The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers (available Tuesday). From Jim Higgins: "Maxwell King traces the roots of the mature Rogers back to both the loneliness and the creativity of his childhood. More surprisingly, King also reveals the role affluence played in making Rogers who he was. Growing up in a family of means produced a man who cared more about children than making money."

Also included is Vox, by Christina Dalcher, reviewed by Steph Cha, originally from USA Today.

Two Chris picks for the week of August 27: Rebecca Makkai on August 28 and James R. Gapinski on August 30

We've got two events this week and both books have the special seal of approval from marketeer Chris Lee.

Tuesday, August 28, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, in conversation with Lake Effect's Mitch Teich

The acclaimed author of The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House returns to Boswell for a special evening of conversation about her latest, a dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy, set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris. For this event, Makkai will be in conversation with Mitch Teich, the award-winning Executive Producer of WUWM’s Lake Effect.

Here's what Boswellian Chris Lee has to say about this epic novel: "The Great Believers is the kind of book that reminds me why I love reading in the first place, a book that lets you live a part of someone else's life. It's the kind of book that throws open the door of a world and welcomes you inside. It's about Yale Tishman in Chicago in the 80s, as his art world career begins to take off, watching his friends - his family (one genius conceit of the novel is the family saga structure Makkai uses to tell these friends' story) - decimated by the AIDS crisis during its American height. And there's a second storyline, 30 years on, as Yale's dear friend Fiona searches for her runaway daughter in Paris, pulling old friends back into her orbit as she comes to terms with the toll of losing those closest to her decades before - there's a devastating understanding in this book that the damage of PTSD comes from more than one kind of war. This is a beautiful, heart wrenching, and true novel."

Chris isn't the only believer in Rebecca Makkai's third novel, which has received raves from Daniel and Lynn in house. For example, Michael Cunningham in The New York Times Book Review wrote: "The Great Believers is peppered with surprises, a minor wonder in a narrative so rife with dreadfully foregone conclusions. As is true of many good novels, writing about it requires considerable navigation around spoilers. Suffice it to say that in the mid-80s sections the grim reaper runs rampant, but there’s no telling who’ll be felled and who’ll be spared. The 2015 sections are, in their way, a detective story. How, after all, does a mother locate her adult daughter, knowing only that she’s somewhere in Paris?"

In addition to her novels, Makkai is also the author of the story collection Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in several Best American anthologies as well as Tin House, Ploughshares, and Harper’s.

Thursday, August 30, 7:00 PM, at Boswell:
James R. Gapinksi, author of Edge of the Known Bus Line.

Former Milwaukeean James Gapinski catches a ride to Boswell with his newest book, Edge of the Known Bus Line, winner of the Etchings Press novella prize.

Here's Chris's take on Edge of the Known Bus Line: "A horrible little adventure, funny, dark, and weird, just the way I like 'em. On her way home from a shift at the deli, our heroine is left for dead in a mud-caked shantytown where depressed cannibals worship the prophecy of a probably imaginary bus. It's the kind of scene I used to dream up on deliriously hot summer camp days, out in the woods, staring at the sun, imagining a band of people cut off society, trying to make sense of it all while also trying to stay alive. It's a story about survival, about holding onto hope against all odds that there's someday an escape from the life you've been dropped into, about the way that hope alienates you, and about the monster you might become. And it's about tripping on psychedelic spider venom. This one goes by fast, but it sticks with you and leaves you thinking, maybe being a monster isn't the worst thing."

Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels, says, “this is a bus we’ve all been on, and this is a town we all carry around with us. The only question is: will James R. Gapinski let us out where we want, or where we deserve?”

James R. Gapinski is author of Messiah Tortoise, a collection of linked flashes, and his work has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Word Riot, and Juked. He is Managing Editor of The Conium Review, holds an MFA from Goddard College, and an MA from Prescott College. While in Milwaukee, he worked with acclaimed poet Margaret Rozga.

Boswell bestseller bonanza for the week ending August 25, 2018

Boswell bestseller bonanza for the week ending August 25, 2018.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The President Is Missing, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
2. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
3. Ohio, by Stephen Markley
4. The Other Woman, by Daniel Silva
5. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
6. Circe, by Madeline Miller
7. The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn
8. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
9. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
10. Desolation Mountain, by William Kent Krueger (event at Boswell Sat Sep 29, 3 pm)

Ohio is in the spotlight, as it's the setting for not just Celeste Ng's perennial bestseller Little Fires Everywhere but also Stephen Markley's first novel, which is touted by Boswell's Chris Lee: "Ohio is a portrait of incredible depth that tells the truth of a generation doomed from the start but still swinging for the fences as they run out the strings of their wrecked lives." Jeff Baker in The Seattle Times calls Ohio "a big novel about what happened after 9/11, the initial euphoria and the long depression that grips us still."

Hardcover Fiction:
1. How the Right Lost Its Mind, by Charles J. Sykes
2. Misdemeanorland, by Issa Kohler-Hausmann
3. Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, by John Gurda
4. Unhinged, by Omarosa Manigault-Newman
5. Educated, by Tara Westover
6. The Fall of Wisconsin, by Dan Kaufman
7. The Chapo Guide to Revolution, by Chapo Trap House
8. Atlas Obscura, by Dylan Thuras et al (Register here for Greenfield Library event, Tue 9/18, 6:30 pm)
9. The Tangled Tree, by David Quammen
10. From the Corner of the Oval Office, by Beck Dorey-Stein

We're definitely cosponsoring an event with Issa Koehler-Hausmann for Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing, as part of the Frank Zeidler Annual Lecture. The date is now likely to be Monday, October 8 and the new location will be announced shortly. Sam Roberts in The New York Times noted that some of her findings can be provocative such as: "Most police practices are intended to reduce violence and social harm, Ms. Kohler-Hausmann acknowledges, and, indeed, the chief beneficiaries have been residents of poor and minority neighborhoods where crime is disproportionately high."

Paperback Fiction:
1. Girl Waits with Gun V1, by Amy Stewart
2. Lady Cop Makes Trouble V2, by Amy Stewart
3. Miss Kopp's Midnight Confession V3, by Amy Stewart
4. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
5. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
6. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
7. Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
8. Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney
9. Galahad's Fool, by Bishop and Fuller
10. Edge of the Known Bus Line, by James Gapinski (event at Boswell Thu 8/30, 7 pm)

My reading percentage of the top 10 jumped 10% in the last 24 hours as I closed the book on Sing, Unburied, Sing. We'll be discussing it Mon at 7 at Boswell for the In-Store-Lit Group. October's selection is The Essex Serpent, November's is Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, and December brings us #7, Hotel Silence. You can bet I'll be watching this PBS Newshour video where Ward answers readers questions for the program's book club.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Children Save Yourselves, by Ronald J. Berger
2. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein
3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
4. Call Them by Their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit
5. The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, by Thomas H. Fehring
6. Little Walks, Big Adventures, by Erin Burh
7. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
8. A Year in the Wilderness, by Amy and Dave Freeman
9. The Pigeon Tunnel, by John LeCarre
10. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises from Rebecca Solnit has a staff rec from Conrad Silverberg, who says: "Let's face it, sometimes we need someone to point out that the arguments that lie ahead are not to be made couched in disinterested rhetoric, and that our opinions can be conveyed effectively with passionate insistence and not, was we might otherwise be inclined, through reptilian disinterest. This is precisely what is needed to face our possibly grim future with eyes wide open." Solnit recently was featured in the By the Book column of The New York Times.

Books for Kids:
1. Illegal (paperback), by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano (Register for this event on Thu 9/13, 6:30 pm, here)
2. Illegal (hardcover), by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano
3. How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens, by Paul Noth
4. Rough Patch, by Brian Lies
5. Old Hat, by Emily Gravett
6. Bear and Hare Go Fishing, by Emily Gravett
7. The Field, by Baptiste Paul, with illustrations by Jacqueline Alcantara
8. Magical Love Box, by Mary Reinhart, with illustrations by Shawn McCann
9. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
10. Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

Brian Lies's Rough Patch is featured on the Fall 2018 Indie Next Kids List and it has a rec from Boswell's Jen Steele: "Evan has lost his faithful companion and nothing can help ease his pain, not even the garden where Evan and his dog enjoyed most of their time together. But something extraordinary is happening in that neglected garden. Something that will help ease Evan's pain. Rough Patch is a thoughtful and impressive picture book about friendship and loss. Brian Lies gives us a picture book that will pull at the heartstrings!"

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins highlight 17 books to look out for this fall. Read more about each book in this seasonal roundup.
--Ball Lightning, by Cixin Liu
--The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, by Maxwell King
--Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, by Mark Leibovich
--Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military, by Neil de-Grasse Tyson and Avis Lang
--The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, by Joanne B. Freeman
--A Lakeside Companion, by Ted J. Rulseh
--The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman
--Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan
--The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century, by Deborah Blum
--Transcription, by Kate Atkinson
--A Spark of Light, by Jodi Picoult (Tickets for our Sun 10/21 event here)
--Virgil Wander, by Leif Enger (Register for this free event on Wed 10/17 here)
--Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami
--Heavy: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon
--The Library Book, by Susan Orlean
--Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life, by Jane Sherron De Hart
--Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce, by Colm Tóibín

And from USA Today, Mary Cadden discusses how Shari Lapena's An Unwanted Guest is an update of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

This week at Boswell: Ronald J. Berger, Amy Stewart (ticketed), and Bishop and Fuller

This week! Ronald J. Berger's Holocaust story, presented by HERC, then our ticketed evening with Amy Stewart, author of the Kopp Sisters series and numerous other nature bestsellers, and then Bishop and Fuller return to Milwaukee for the Fringe Festival, detouring to Boswell for their novel.

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Ronald J. Berger, author of Children, Save Yourselves! One Family’s Story of Holocaust Survival

Tuesday, August 21, 7:00 pm, at Boswell

Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Ronald J. Berger tells his family’s compelling true story of two Jewish brothers who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland.

This event is cosponsored by Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center.

Berger’s father endured several concentration camps, including the infamous camp at Auschwitz, as well as a horrific winter death march. His brother, the author’s uncle, survived outside of the camps by passing as a Catholic among anti-Semitic Poles, including a group of anti-Nazi Polish partisans, eventually becoming an officer in the Soviet Army. The book traces the defining prewar, wartime, and postwar events that marked their extraordinary lives.

Ronald J. Berger is Professor Emeritus at UW-Whitewater. He has published numerous books and articles on topics that include crime and criminal justice, disability, and the Holocaust. Originally from a Jewish community in Los Angeles, he lives in McFarland, WI.

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A ticketed event with Amy Stewart, author of Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions

Wednesday, August 22, 7:00 pm, at Boswell

Tickets available here!

We’re celebrating the paperback release of the third book in the series, Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions, and pre-celebrating the September 11 release of #4, Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit. And speaking of things that won’t quit, we’re celebrating the success of the first two books in the series, Girl Waits with Gun and Lady Cop Makes Trouble. So mostly, we’re just celebrating.

This is a ticketed event - $17 includes admission and a paperback. Available at stewartmke.bpt.me. Choose from Girl Waits with Gun, Lady Cop Makes Trouble, or Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions. For a fourth option, attendees can purchase admission, cover all taxes and fees, and get a pre-release copy of the forthcoming hardcover, Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit for just $24. That's right! You can get a copy of the latest Kopp Sisters adventure before its release date in September, but this option is only available at the event.

Here's proprietor Daniel Goldin's take on Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit: "While escorting two inmates-to-be to the Morris Plains asylum, Deputy Sheriff Constance Kopp is forced to pursue one of them into a muddy river when he escapes. But it’s charge number two that’s got Kopp flummoxed – Anna Kayser just doesn’t seem crazy, and when she confesses that it’s her fourth visit to the asylum, each time at her husband’s bequest, Kopp decides to do some investigating. Meanwhile, her boss Sheriff Heath is running for president and while his designated replacement seems all but assured, a rival is now arguing the jail is poorly run and no place for a woman to work. All this, plus a new war-related pigeon project for sister Norma and some glamorous work at the Fort Lee Hollywood studio for Fleurette. Stewart’s excellent fourth entry in this historical series is just the right blend of thrills and humor, and you’ll no doubt be incensed by the period treatment of women. And yes, all the cases are based on true events. Great for readers of historical fiction, mystery, or Stewart's nonfiction!"

Amy Stewart is the award-winning author of seven books, including her acclaimed fiction debut Girl Waits with Gun and the bestsellers The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants. She and her husband, based in Portland, Oregon, own the bookstore Eureka Books in Eureka, California.

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Bishop and Fuller, authors ofGalahad’s Fool

Thursday, August 23, 7:00 pm, at Boswell

Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller, founding members of Milwaukee’s experimental Theatre X, have toured America since 1969 as actors, playwrights, and puppeteers. Returning to Milwaukee for this year’s Fringe Fest, they will appear at Boswell with their novel, Galahad’s Fool, which offers a glimpse of backstage reality unadorned by glitter but blessed with a hardscrabble magic.

A year after the death of his co-creator and soul mate Lainie, a grizzled, acerbic puppeteer struggles to build a solo show. What Albert Fisher intends as a lightweight spoof turns sharply personal as he labors to birth a raw myth of love and loss.

Albert’s aging Galahad, no longer a glittering hero, launches a second mad quest for the Grail. To follow him his wife secretly changes guises with their frail, androgynous Fool. As the performance evolves, Albert finds kinship with Galahad’s despair and dogged vision, opening himself to the risk of new love.

Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller have created more than fifty plays and four radio series. Their books include the novel Realists and memoir Co-Creation: Fifty Years in the Making.

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More upcoming events on Boswell's, wait for it, upcoming event page.

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending August 18, 2018

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending August 18, 2018

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Cherry, by Nico Walker
2. Paris by the Book, by Liam Callanan
3. There, There, by Tommy Orange (register for Tues, Sep 25 event here)
4. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
5. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
6. Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk
7. The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin
8. A Double Life, by Flynn Berry
9. The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer
10. Noir, by Christopher Moore

In The New York Times, Alexandra Alter writes about Cherry, the new novel by Nico Walker: "Mr. Walker, 33, wrote the novel while serving an 11-year sentence in a federal prison in Kentucky, after pleading guilty in 2012 to robbing 11 banks around Cleveland during a four-month spree. His case puzzled prosecutors at the time, because he was such an unlikely criminal. He came from an affluent, supportive family, and was a war veteran who had received seven medals and citations for service in Iraq, where he went on more than 200 combat missions in 2005 and 2006."

Of the book, Boswellian Chris Lee wrote: "Cherry is Full Metal Jacket for the Iraq War, kicking in doors until it's boring and watching friends die ugly, pointless deaths. But then it comes home to an addict's life of dope boys and thieving, living from shot to shot."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Fall of Wisconsin, by Dan Kaufman
2. Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, by John Gurda
3. Calypso, by David Sedaris
4. High Risers, by Ben Austen (event Mon Sep 17, 7 pm)
5. You Can't Spell Truth Without Ruth, edited by Mary Zaia
6. Llive, Llaugh, Llove Llike a Llama, by Pop Press
7. The Soul of America, by Jon Meacham
8. Famous Father Girl, by Jamie Bernstein
9. Jell-o Girls, by Allie Rowbottom
10. Indianapolis, by Lynn Vincent

Melissa Firman writes about Allie Rowbottom's Jell-o Girls: A Family History in Shelf Awareness: "With candid and unflinching descriptions connecting the history of Jell-O, feminism and her mother's unpublished writings, Rowbottom makes a case that the curse wasn't physical, emotional or confined exclusively to their family. (Pearle Wait, the original holder of the Jell-O patent, went bankrupt shortly after the sale.) Instead, the curse was a repressive societal attitude 'reflected by the messages about women and their worth that her family sold with each box of Jell-O.'"

Paperback Fiction:
1. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
2. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman
3. Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
4. Beautiful Music, by Michael Zadoorian
5. Girl Waits with Gun, by Amy Stewart (Tickets for Wed, Aug 22 event here)
6. Delicious, by Ruth Reichl
7. Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
8. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
9. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward (In-Store Lit Group discussion Mon Aug 27, 7 pm)
10. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

It's almost time for our event with Amy Stewart on Wednesday, August 22, 7 pm (tickets here). While Girl Waits with Gun has been a regular on our bestseller, one of our options for ticket holders is getting the brand new Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit, which releases on September 11. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy where I note: "Stewart’s excellent fourth entry in this historical series is just the right blend of thrills and humor, and you’ll no doubt be incensed by the period treatment of women. And yes, all the cases are based on true events." And Publishers Weekly wrote: "The blend of practicality, forthrightness, and compassion in her first-person narration is sure to satisfy series fans and win new admirers."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Little Walks, Big Adventures, by Erin Buhr
2. The Color of Law, by Richard Rothsein
3. Sacred Fire, by Roland Rolheiser
4. My Own Words, by Ruth Bader Ginsberg
5. Long Players, by Peter Coviello
6. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
7. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
8. Meaty, by Samantha Irby
9. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
10. Prarie Fires, by Caroline Fraser

Joining current bestseller You Can't Spell Truth without Ruth, a book of quotes, and a long run for The Notorious RBG is Ruth Bader Ginsberg's collection of writings and speeches, My Own Words, written with Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, now in paperback. From Stav Ziv in Newsweek: "Ginsburg wrote the book’s preface, while Hartnett and Williams contextualize each part and the selections, which include law review articles, speeches, briefs and dissents...It’s Ginsburg’s first book since she became a justice two decades ago."

Books for Kids
1. Illegal, by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin, Giovanni Rigano (Register for Thu, Sep 13 event here)
2. The Lifters, by Dave Eggers
3. The Inventors at No. 8, by A.M. Morgen
4. Toaff's Way, by Cynthia Voigt
5. The Legend of Greg V1, by Chris Rylander
6. The Unicorn Rescue Society V1, by Adam Gidwitz
7. The Basque Dragon V2, by Adam Gidwitz
8. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
9. If You Had a Jetpack, by Liesl Detlefsen, with illustrations by Linzie Hunter
10. A Place for Pluto, by Stef Wade, with illustrations by Melanie Demmer

The squirrel can be a polarizing animal in a bookstore. While one Boswellian has been known to openly proclaim squirrel aversion, our buyer Amie Mechler-Hickson is quite fond of a book that features Tamiasciurus hudsonicus. Just out is Toaff's Way, written by Cynthia Voigt and illustrated by Sydney Hanson. The advance reviews agree. Publishers Weekly writes: "Fans of Voigt's Davis Farm books will relish this newest animal adventure featuring Toaff, a gray squirrel whose curiosity gets him in trouble as much as it brings happy surprises." Kirkus called it "a brilliant, bushy-tailed bildungsroman." I should note that Kirkus did forget to note whether the squirrel was Red or Douglas.

Journal Sentinel TapBooks page back next week.

Display Focus: What to Read After A Gentleman in Moscow

It's been almost two years since the release of A Gentleman in Moscow, and still Amor Towles's second novel continues to show up on hardcover bestseller list. Paperback publication is 2019 at the earliest. And when a book makes that sort of cultural impact, it's time to come up with a "what to read after" list.

This sort of list is very popular on websites that are filled with lists. Here's one that just appeared in Pop Sugar on books to read after Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects. And then another list appeared three days later on Hello Giggles. It's not that I don't use other people's lists to make our list. I cribbed like crazy for our Afrofuturism table*. But when it comes to A Gentleman in Moscow, there are lists on Book Browse and of course Goodreads, but nothing really thought out about what makes A Gentleman in Moscow tick. And I wanted something besides other books that are well written and people like, like Beautiful Ruins. After I thought about it, I saw how Pachinko might fit, but it's not on my list. Here's Indian Prairie Public Library's list.

Of course in this case, we certainly recommend that fans go back to his first novel, Rules of Civility. But as booksellers, we've got to do better than that. I brainstormed with Jane and we came up with three broad categories.

First up - books that have hotels as their centerpieces. I'd been thinking about this table off and on for about a year, but I think one of the things that got me to act was our store's growing passion for Hotel Silence, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. The book is being passed from one bookseller to another with ever-increasing enthusiasm. I was just speaking to Nancy, my former Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops colleague who would conspire with several us to sell lots and lots of copies of books we loved, like The History of Love (which you probably know) and Astrid and Veronika (which you likely don't if you're not an old Schwartz customer). I said, "You would love this book," and she said, "I already read it, and I do." That's paraphrased.

Several other books came to mind. There's Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac and Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. But the book that's really taken off from this table in this category is Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. Baum was an Austrian Jewish writer who was a prolific and popular writer in the twenties (while she was also an editor at a German publishing house). Grand Hotel came out in 1929, was translated into English by Basil Creighton, and became an MGM movie starring Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, and received the 1933 Best Film Oscar. OF the book, Shelf Awareness wrote "Grand Hotel prefigures Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs by examining multiple characters from different classes (both guests and the hotel staff) in a single-setting microcosm of society and lives up to its reputation as a modern classic."

For a while, Jane kept pointing out how hot Russian literature and history was in inspiring contemporary fiction.Some of the recent releases which had a place at our (display) table :
--The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden (recommended by Jen)
--I Was Anastasia, by Ariel Lawhon
--The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes
--Patriots, by Sana Krasikov
--The Revolution of Marina M., by Janet Fitch
--The Romanov Empress, by C.W. Gortner.

And finally, a more generalized theme that we selectively used to draw from was the idea of perseverance. We were discussing this when Kathleen Rooney came to visit for Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk***.  I told her about the table I was working on (yes, this was two months ago) and she told me that fans are continuously coming up to her to say that they thought that Lillian was a great follow up to Gentleman. And when I pitched this to Jane, she said, "Absolutely!"

*And convinced a publisher to release an old book in paperback due to its appearance on multiple lists. But that's for another post.

**Thematic resonance. I'm reading a 2019 novel with a similar revelation.

***Speaking of Nancy, she told me that Lillian is still the best book she read this year. I am working on my top 5 for 2018 for Jason (don't ask) and since we're allowed to put one reprint on, I cam close to including this. I always read books on paperback publication, which I'm told is a bit unusual for a bookseller, but between our paperback events and the book club I lead, I find it very useful. Plus my taste can be all over the place in hardcover - sometimes it's better for me to know what other people are generally coalescing around.