A year in reading - the Boswell In-Store Lit Group

What did the book club think?

It’s been a while since I highlighted the books in our In-Store Lit Group, partly because of COVID (the in-store component of the name has not been appropriate for almost two years!) and partly because the days go so quickly that I never get around to writing it. January seemed like a good time to recap. Here are our 2021 selections and some thoughts on each. There wasn't a single book that I thought was a bad book club read - it's just that not every book is for every book club. Some folks want an intense discussion and others are just happy to have everyone show up and for most of the attendees to have read it.

January: Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stewart. I always prioritize the big prize winners in our selections, particularly if I haven’t read them, in my hopes that we are furthering the cultural conversation. Last year’s Man Booker Prize winner took off in a big way, and momentum was furthered by BookTok. Most folks liked the book. It was long, so not everyone finished. And it was sad. And some people just don’t like sad books. It’s been a huge success for indies in general. I should also note that addiction is a rich topic for writers and the alcoholic dependency of Shuggie’s mom is heartbreaking. Stewart’s next novel, Young Mungo, comes out in April 

February: Feast Your Eyes, by Myla Goldberg. Here’s a book that was shortlisted for the National Book Award, but at least for us, had been relatively quiet (which translates to under 5 copies). It was an event with the Jewish Community Center that turned me onto this book, which took the form of an art catalog for a New York street photographer. I hadn’t read something from Goldberg since The Bee Season, her debut. We tend to do well with novels about the art world. Conversation focused a lot on the alternate structure and the artist’s burden of juggling career and family (she’s a single mom) without support. It was also interesting to explore the women who shaped Goldberg’s fictional character. I wound up placing this on our book club table for a season, as there was a very enthusiastic reaction to this novel.

March: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu. Another prizewinner, Yu’s novel received the National Book Award for Fiction. Based on his previous book, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, I thought this book would have a stronger speculative component than it does. I’d place it more in the realm of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West – a speculative element to the premise, but a relatively realistic follow-through. It’s set in a complex where they are shooting a police procedural on the first floor (think Law and Order) while Asian actors live upstairs. Since reading this book, I’ve read several others that explored the prejudice that Asian actors have been faced with in the performing arts – interchangeable identities, forced accents, and the lack of rolls. For more about this, read Kal Penn’s You Can’t Be Serious or Don Lee’s upcoming collection, The Partition. Yu has written for Westworld – you can see that influence too.

April: The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sarah Collins. This book won the Costa Prize for Best First Novel, which is one of many prizes I pay attention to. It was also on the radar of now-retired colleague Jane, which I consider a book club plus. It’s a historical novel, set on a Jamaican plantation and then in London, about a woman who lives under a cruel master, and then, despite being anti-slavery laws in the books, is given to a London family. I should note that Collins mentioned that she was inspired by the story of Francis Barber, the servant of Samuel Johnson and an important source for James Boswell. We’d had some success doing spoiler virtual interviews in conjunction with our book discussions, but Collins was already hard at work on her next book, though I checked, and it’s not yet scheduled.

May: The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste. One thing I found interesting about my research is why some books take off and others don’t. Mengiste also had a major award nom, a finalist for the Booker Prize, but an Edelweiss check showed that her novel had much stronger sales at indies than the Collins book did. It was also a historical novel, set in Ethiopia during Mussolini’s invasion of the country during 1935. The result is an Afro-centric war epic, which also celebrates the achievements of women. Another nice thing about historical fiction is that one can also focus on the story’s true elements. Some book clubs chafe at books that are longer than 400 pages, but for every group who wants longer books, there’s another that wants to know when they can read another book like A Little Life, which is over 800 pages. The answer? Hanya Yanighara’s follow-up, To Paradise, released this week.

June: A Children’s Bible, by Lyida Millet. Millet’s novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award, and even more importantly for sales, was named one of The New York Times’s ten best books of 2020. We tend to have strong sales on these books, which are featured through the holidays. The only problem? Macmillan ran out of copies – they experimented with a print-on-demand hardcover that got mixed reviews. It’s about a group of children left alone by their drinking and carousing parents, who fall prey to just about every bad thing that can happen – definitely filed under apocalypse fiction. To me, there’s a style of writing that’s very popular with critics, with Millet alongside writers like Jenny Offill and Patricia Lockwood. For me, they make great book club picks because I feel the need to read them, but I probably need support from fellow readers to get through them. But they are not for every group - though I'm almost definitely going to include No One Is Talking About This on my In-Store Lit Group selections.

July: Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell. Sometimes it’s important to give the group a sure thing, especially when the regulars grumble. I also usually pick one book a year where I’ve already read it. And so I picked Hamnet, a novel akin to Geraldine Brooks, which focuses on Shakespeare’s family, and the notation of O'Farrell's that Shakespeare never wrote directly about the Plague, but named a play Hamlet several years after the death of his son (Hamnet). I also was reminded of Maureen Corrigan’s comment that her book club, on discussing the title, asked if they could just read Hamnet over and over. Apparently I like Corrgan’s picks – more than half of them have either been features on our book club table and/or the In-Store Lit Group. Still a huge seller for us!

August: Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawaii Strong Washburn. Lots of great reviews for this one, which sold okay for us in hardcover (that translates to 5-10 copies). There was also a special Independent Bookstore Day edition that put it on my radar. Plus I got to chat with him for 30 seconds at the 2020 Winter Institute, something that I wasn’t able to do in 2021 and now 2022, both virtual. But it was my nephew Adam who convinced me to read it – I sent him a lot of books, and he gave me some feedback – it’s a story about Hawaii, when you’re not a tourist and the islands are not a paradise for you, just life. The eldest son in the family performs what is perceived as a series of miracles, leaving both him and his miracle-less siblings scrambling for meaning, not just in their youth, but in early adulthood.

September: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong. This is one of those books where I thought I would read it before publication (once again, I got to say hello to the author back at the 2019 Winter Institute), but after a certain point, I thought it would be perfect for book club. And what a pedigree - longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award, shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction. It’s a poetic (the author’s prior work is poetry collections) memoir-like novel of a queer Vietnamese-American kid growing up in Hartford and the legacy of trauma in his family. This is one of those books that took an extra year for paperback, as hardcover sales were so good.

October: The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich. Apparently I lost interest for a few months in sleepers. This was one of our big books of 2020’s COVID spring, and that was before the Pulitzer Prize win, which exploded sales. We’d last read Erdrich’s The Round House, which was structured like a thriller, though with Erdrich’s trademark multi-voice structure. This one might be more classified as historical fiction with a contemporary frame, another popular bookstore genre, focusing on a historic attempt to decertify an indigenous tribe, which Erdrich’s own grandfather was active in fighting back. It also hinted at Erdrich’s sense of humor, which really comes to the fore in her latest novel, The Sentence. Like Hamnet, it’s been very, very popular with book clubs, and unlike with the sleeper novels, it’s hard to determine the effect we’ve had on sales.

November: The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice, by David Hill. I was hoping to discover another Killers of the Flower Moon or Say Nothing, but in the end, it reminded me a little more of Rich Cohen’s Sweet and Low, a combination memoir/history that I think was my favorite of the Rich Cohen books back when I was reading one after the other. It’s about the rise at fall of Hot Springs, Arkansas, which at one time competed with Las Vegas, and before that, Havana, as the gambling capital of the United States, only with one caveat – the gambling there was never legal. His voice alternates between the kingmakers and a poor croupier, who turns out to be his grandmother. I also found it interesting as Kirk’s parents live just outside Hot Springs, so I have visited the village, which still has the legacy of the baths, but not really the casinos.

December: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, by Deepa Anappara. Djinn Patrol is told through the eyes of a young boy in an Indian slum as children go missing and he and his friends try to solve the crime. It wound up being longlisted for the Women’s Prize (we’ve read a number of winners and shortlisted titles over the years) and winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. I’m not sure it would satisfy the tastes of traditional mystery readers, but I think it’s a good book club book, though we had a less-than-usual number of readers finish it. I think they got caught up in the Hindi words spread throughout. My advice is to not worry about them so much or let them slow you down – come back to them later. Being that the writer is a journalist, this story is inspired by a true incident in India.

January: The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue. I figured out a really strange stat – I have now read one novel of Donoghue’s every decade – Stir Fry in 2004, Life Mask in 2004, Room in 2011 (also for the book club), and now her latest. Donoghue, a relatively prolific writer, certainly for literary fiction, already has her next novel scheduled: Haven, for next August. The book had lots of press, published in the midst of COVID, but was a little quiet in paperback, at least for us. Hoping to help change that. This novel, the story of a nurse in a maternity ward in Dublin during the Great Flu of 1918, won almost universal praise from the 16 attendees, plus everybody finished it, a rare achievement. I don’t normally mention the naysayers, but I loved this comment by our one member who didn’t like it – she thought it read like a medical manual. Like Room, all the pivotal scenes take place in closed quarters, and like many of Donoghue’s books, there is an interest in exploring questions of motherhood. It will definitely move to our book club table.

More about the Boswell-run book clubs, what we’re reading next, and how to join. For now, they are still virtual. And yes, we have a new book club starting soon.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending January 8, 2022

Here's what's selling at Boswell for the week ending January 8, 2022

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
2. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
3. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
4. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
5. Bewilderment, by Richard Powers
6. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave
7. The Maid, by Nita Prose
8. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
9. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
10. Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen

It appears that January 4 was not a big release date for fiction. Oh for the days when Putnam packed their calendar with post-Christmas leads, albeit mostly of the variety that didn't always get traction at indies like Boswell. But we do have one buzzy new title - The Maid, by Nita Prose, which is the Good Morning America Book Club pick. From Bethanne Patrick on NPR's website: "Devotees of cozy mysteries, rejoice: Nita Prose's debut, The Maid, satisfies on every level - from place to plot to protagonist... Let the locked-room hijinks begin!"

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Good Life Method, by Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko (watch event video here)
2. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
3. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
4. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
5. The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
6. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
7. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
8. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
9. Winter's Children, by Ryan Rodgers
10. Unthinkable, by Jamie Raskin

Here's a book that was completely off my radar for the holiday season - Winter's Children: A Celebration of Nordic Skiing, by Ryan Rodgers. I had no idea of the origin of cross-country skiing in America, despite my late father's love for the activity - Bear Mountain State Park was his favorite place to go, but if it was cold enough and the snow hit right, Bethpage State Park was a closer option. From the publisher: "In the winter of 1841, a Norwegian immigrant in Wisconsin strapped on a pair of wooden boards and set off across the snow to buy flour - leaving tracks that perplexed his neighbors and marked the arrival of Nordic skiing in America. To this day, the Midwest is the nation’s epicenter of cross-country skiing, sporting a history as replete with athleticism and competitive spirit as it is steeped in old-world lore and cold-world practicality. This history unfolds in full for the first time in Winter’s Children."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
2. Verity, by Colleen Hoover
3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
4. Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam (More about our Boswell-run book club picks here - we're reading this in March)
5. Circe, by Madeline Miller
6. Late in the Day, by Tessa Hadley (Register for Feb 10 virtual event here)
7. Dune, by Frank Herbert (two editions)
8. The Humans, by Matt Haig
9. Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman
10. How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig

This week Matt Haig has three titles in our top ten, what with continuing sales for The Midnight Library, strong sales for his last, How to Stop Time, and a nice repackaging of The Humans (which I'm guessing several bookstores pushed for). This is our buyer Jason's favorite of Haig's titles, and was the backlist book that best matched the esthetic of the new titles - it's about an immortal extra-terrestrial who takes the form of a professor of mathematics to learn more about the species. Note to indie bookstores: if you are selling The Midnight Library, you can sell this too.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2. A Short History of Canada, by Desmond Morton
3. Voices of Milwaukee Bronzeville, by Sandra E Jones
4. Miseducation, by Katie Worth
5. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
6. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
7. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
8. Draw the Line, by The Draw the Line Artists
9. Killing Rage, by bell hooks
10. How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan

While January usually brings us an author memorial table or two, this season has sort of overwhelmed us with sadness. Two authors pop up this week - Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and bell hooks's Killing Rage: Ending Racism. How does one highlight these titles without taking on the ambience of a funeral parlor. We're still trying to work this out as beloved writers and authors with books pass away, everyone from Anne Rice to E.O. Wilson to Jonathan Spence to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to even Betty White - it looks like there were already some things planned for her 100th birthday.

Books for Kids:
1. Heartstopper V4, by Alice Osman
2. Survivor Tree, by Marcie Colleen, illustrations by Aaron Becker
3. The Unwanteds, by Lisa McMann
4. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
5. Aaron Slater, Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty, with illustrations by David Roberts
6. Norman Didn't Do It, by Ryan T Higgins
7. Frozen Mountain: Decide Your Destiny, by Emily Hawkins
8. Here's to Us, by Becky Albertalli
9. The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, by Nikole Hanna-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrations by Nikkolas Smith
10. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman, illustrations by Loren Long

We've got a staff rec for the first three volumes of Heartstopper, a teen LGBTQ+ graphic series that chronicles the romance of Charlie and Nick, so I'm guessing there's one for #4 as well. Rainbow Rowell is also a fan: "Absolutely delightful. Sweet, romantic, kind. Beautifully paced. I loved this book."

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reports on The Steal, the new book from Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague: "Wisconsin, one of the most divided states in a divided country, gets several close-ups in Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague's new book about persistent efforts to undo the presidential election that knocked Donald Trump out of office." Tickets for this event are $5, to match the other bookstore programs that are schedule. Ticket fee is included.

Boswell bestsellers, for the week ending January 1, 2022

Here's what you wanted, but didn't get for Christmas. Boswell bestsellers, week ending January 1, 2022

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
2. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
3. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
4. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
5. Oh William, by Elizabeth Strout
6. The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
7. Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson
8. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart
10. Mary Jane, by Jessica Anya Blau

I did a little research and found not one but two titles that had nice sales in 2021 but never before hit our top 10, so they fall under the category of what did you really want, don't you think? The first is a book that Margaret and I have been pushing, Mary Jane for months. It's been a hit with a number of Friends of Boswell. It had a number of weeks ranked in the teens, but this was its top ten breakthrough. We had a great conversation with Jessica Anya Blau, which you can watch here.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
2. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah Jones and The New York Times
3. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
4. The Storyteller, by Dave Grohl
5. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
6. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
7. The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
8. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
9. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
10. North American Maps for Curious Minds, by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience has been solidly in our top ten since its release, but sometimes a #1 ranking after Christmas is not about a sales surge, but watching the competitition slow down. I thought I maybe had five emotions - who knew? Brown did. From Belinda Muscombe in Time: "In surveys taken by 7,000 people over five years, Brown and her team found that on average people can identify only three emotions as they are actually feeling them: happiness, sadness and anger. For Brown, who made her name by illuminating the finer contours of humans’ emotional landscape, this is not nearly enough. So, in Atlas of the Heart, she sets out to map 87 different emotions, pointing out the distinguishing features of each."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
2. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
3. The People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
4. Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno Garcia
5. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
6. The Glass Hotel, by Emily St John Mandel
7. Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters
8. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession
9. How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig
10. Homeland Elegies, by Ayad Akhtar

I double-checked twice to make sure this wasn't a bulk sale, but TJ Klune leaps to the top with The House in the Cerulean Sea, an after-Christmas treat. While we've been having solid sales on most of these, I was curious about the pop on My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which while is a regular seller for us, doesn't generally hit our top 10 two years after paperback release. No, it wasn't a bulk sale. No, it's not from a book club registered with Boswell. No, I didn't spot anything that would cause a sales pop from internet news, thought I didn't check social media trending, like on BookTok? Or maybe it's a non-registered book club. Maybe you'll let me know!

I know why Homeland Elegies had the pop, having done the recommendation that led to the titles section.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2. Ordinary Girls, by Jaquira Diaz
3. Great Cholesterol Myth, by Jenny Bowden
4. ABA Field Guide to Birds of Wisconsin, by Charles Hagner
5. Open Secret, by Rumi
6. Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
7. We Keep the Dead Close, by Becky Cooper
8. Badass Habits, by Jen Sincero
9. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
10. Miseducation, by Katie Worth

This has been a particularly sad December for the passing of revered authors. It will be a while before we have decent stock on Joan Didion (1934-2001) titles, but we sold enough copies of Slouching Towards Bethlehem for it to make the top 10. My guess is that we'll see more appearances of bell hooks, E.O. Wilson, Didion, and even Desmond Tutu when we have stock.

When talking to a book club that's had enthusiasm for these history/true crime hybrids like Killers of the Flower Moon and Say Nothing, I had suggested We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence, which had been recommended for me by Jason and Madi, and had a good 2020 holiday of sales in hardcover for us.In some ways it felt like a more traditional true crime title (perhaps that's the packaging), regarding the murder of Jane Britton, unsolved for fifty years, but just look at the reviews and you'll see that Cooper takes it to another level - plus it was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. I don't think I had even caught that Vanguard won the history prize!

Books for Kids: 

1. Firekeeper's Daughter, by Angeline Boulley
2. Beasts of Prey, by Ayana Gray
3. When Stars Are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, with illustrations by Iman Geddy
4. Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives V2, by Dav Pilkey
5. Furia, by Yamile Saied Méndez
6. Aaron Slater, Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty, illustrations by David Roberts (okay, here's one)
7. Witches Steeped in Gold, by Ciannon Smart
8. Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor
9. A Fierce and Subtle Poison, by Samantha Mabry
10. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats (and here's sort of another - plus the traditional hardcover is #11)

Christmas is over when the picture books apparently disappear from our top 10. Part of this is that we're back to fulfilling school orders. Let me give a shout out to Witches Steeped in Gold, being that it is a more recent release, having been published in 2021 (I think I already wrote up Beasts of Prey). From Kirkus Reviews: "A Jamaican-inspired fantasy about a matriarchy maintained by magic and marred by manipulation. Jazmyne Cariot is a 17-year-old witch of the Alumbrar order and next in line to rule as doyenne of her island of Aiyca, though she has yet to inherit her magical powers. Iraya Adair is an 18-year-old Obeah witch and the rightful heir to the Aiycan throne, newly free after 10 years of imprisonment. Historical tensions position these two witches as enemies, both possessing plans to remove the current doyenne." It's a "richly realized tale!"

From the Journal Sentinel, reporting on book restoring with Jennifer Rude Klett: "If anyone understands the emotional attachment of books in the home, it's James Twomey, who perhaps has the most unusual combination of occupations in Wisconsin. Twomey is a professional restorer of antiquarian books and maps. He is the owner of Book Restoration Co., with locations in LaFarge and Kenosha. He is also a livestock farmer for a herd of heritage Tunis sheep at his Sandstone Ridge Farm in LaFarge, part of the hilly Driftless Area."

Boswell yearly bestsellers for 2021 - from the adult side

Here are some of our bestsellers by category for 2021, excluding some of our bulk orders, but including event programming.

Hardcover Fiction (including poetry):
1. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
2. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
3. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
4. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
5. Send for Me, by Lauren Fox
6. Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult
7. The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman
8. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
9. Shoulder Season, by Christina Clancy
10. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead

11. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
12. The Breaker, by Nick Petrie
13. Raft of Stars, by Andrew J Graff
14. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
15. The Paris Library, by Janet Skeslien Charles
16. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Ronan Hession
17. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy
18. The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
19. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab
20. Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney

I can't imagine I've ever read the top 6 books in this category before, but 7 out of 10 read is pretty much par. Last year I read eight. Imprints with two in the top 10 - Knopf (Ishiguro and Fox), Viking (Towles and Haig) and Viking Books for Young Readers (two Amanda Gormans)

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
2. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
3. Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
4. The Midwest Survival Guide, by Charlie Berens
5. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner
6. What It's Like to Be a Bird, by David Sibley
7. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
8. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
9. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner
10. How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X Kendi

11. Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green
12. Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House, by Nicholas D Hayes
13. The Sum of Us, by Heather McGhee
14. Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris
15. Untamed, by Glennon Doyle
16. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
17. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders
18. Taste, by Stanley Tucci
19. Hero of Two Worlds, by Mike Duncan
20. Shape, by Jordan Ellenberg

Just four books read on this list! The Knopf imprint has three books in the top 10 while One World has two.  

Paperback Fiction:
1. Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
2. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
3. Hamnet, by Maggie Shipstead
4. Dune (two editions), by Frank Herbert
5. Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
6. Circe, by Madeline Miller
7. The People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
8. The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
9. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Ronan Hession
10. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
11. Every Now and Then, by Lesley Kagen

12. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
13. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
14. The Glass Hotel, by Emily St John Mandel
16. Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman
17. The Drifter, by Nick Petrie (two editions)
18. One Last Stop, by Casey McQuiston
19. Red, White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston
20. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix

Authors with two books in our top 20 - Madeline Miller and Casey McQuiston. A book with a very strong showing that just missed the top 20 because there was a decent sized school order - The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. Needless to say, if we combined hardcover and paperback sales totals, Leonard and Hungry Paul would gain a good advantage. You'd also might see some advantage to Hamnet.

Paperback Nonfiction (excluding bulk orders)
1. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
3. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
4. Walking Milwaukee, by Royal Brevvaxling and Molly Snyder
5. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
6. Voices of Milwaukee's Bronzeville, by Sandra E Jones
7. New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton
8. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
9. The American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Wisconsin, by Charles Hagner
10. The Best of Me, by David Sedaris

I'll have some kids lists coming up!

Boswell bestsellers, week ending December 25, 2021

Boswell bestsellers for the week ending December 25

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
2. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
3. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
4. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
5. Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen
6. Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart
7. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
8. Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult
9. State of Terror, by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny
10. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
11. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
12. Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney
13. Shoulder Season, by Christina Clancy
14. Bewilderment, by Richard Powers
15. Gold Diggers, by Sanjena Sathian

It's easy to look at some of this year's top hits and see them as a bit of a pale comparison to their previous works in sales, but one has to remember that both Cloud Cuckoo Land and The Lincoln Highway only had one season - it took years for All the Light We Cannot See and A Gentleman in Moscow to hit their sales totals.  

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
2. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
3. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
4. Taste, by Stanley Tucci
5. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner (best reviewed nonfiction of the year on Book Marks)
6. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
7. The Wisconsin Supper Clubs Story, by Ron Faiola
8. The Midwest Survival Guide, by Charlie Berens (we still don't have copies)
9. The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
10. Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris
11. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
12. Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe
13. How I Became a Tree, by Sumana Roy
14. Lyrics: 1956 to Present, by Paul McCartney
15. Atlas of the Invisible, by James Cheshire

Our top sales performer in nonfiction hardcover (which also dwarfed all fiction contenders) proved to be Giannis, just like we expected. We passed a landmark number when Jason found stock at a wholesaler's alternate warehouse. It turned out that there's not the same kind of demand for a Milwaukee Bucks star player at Ingram's Oregon warehouse.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier
2. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
3. Send for Me, by Lauren Fox
4. Dune V1, by Frank Herbert
5. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession
6. Circe, by Madeline Miller
7. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
8. The Searcher, by Tana French
9. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
10. Murder at the Mena House V1, by Erica Ruth Neubauer (new book in March!)
11. The Drifter V1 (two editions), by Nick Petrie
12. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
13. When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamin Labatut
14. Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
15. Dune Messiah V2, by Frank Herbert

The big story is that while the hardcover list was short on sleepers, Jason's been able to position and hand-sell The Anomaly into our #1 slot. Hey, he got me to read it. We had a nice discussion over whether this novel, about a group of airline passengers who, three months after they landed in an electrical storm, land again, and how the world confronts this strange occurrence, is a thriller or not. Jason said no, and I said yes, it had enough elements to qualify. Judge for yourself!

Another nice development - I've been noticing sales of The Drifter substantially up over the last two years (we were down a little in 2020 over 2019, but that should be no surprise) - the trade paperback is holding pretty steady, but mass market sales were up a third over 2019. His new book, The Runaway, debuts January 18- register here for this event, in person or broadcast.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Gray Matters, by Ellyn Lem
2. The Best of Me, by David Sedaris
3. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
4. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
5. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
6. Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World, by Matt Kracht
7. Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, by Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi
8. Sapiens a Graphic History V1, by Yuval Noah Harari
9. Sapiens (the non-graphic version), by Yuval Noah Harari
10. New York Times Cooking No Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton

Of interest #1: So that's where the cookbooks are. This is not the first week on our bestseller list for Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love: Recipes to Unlock the Secrets of Your Pantry, Fridge, and Freezer, but being that paperback nonfiction has our weakest numbers in general, it's the first week with substantial sales. Sales are just a fraction of last year's Ottolenghi Flavor, but I don't think the expectations were as high either.

Of interest #2: Remember how avian (bird-filled) last year's bestseller list was? Much like jigsaw puzzles, interest is still there, but sales are back down to earth. This year's late entry is The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World, which I guess you give as a joke to all the folks who took up birding in 2020. It's the follow-up to Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America, which is also still selling.

Books for Kids:
1. Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives V2, by Dav Pilkey
2. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman, illustrations by Loren Long
3. Big Shot V16: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney
4. Tales of Fearless Girls, by Isabel Otter
5. The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo and Sophie Blackall
6. Stuntboy: In the Meantime, by Jason Reynolds, illustrations by Raul the Third
7. Norman Didn't Do It, by Ryan T Higgins
8. Turtle in a Tree, by Neesha Hudson
9. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
10. Every Day Amazing, by Mike Barfield
11. Aaron Slater, Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty, illustrations by David Roberts
12. The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne, by Jonathan Stroud
13. Twas the Night Before Christmas, by Clement C Moore, illustrations by PJ Lynch
14. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Renee Graef
15. The Mitten board book, by Jan Brett

One kids book that we really took to (it's a Jenny pick) is Turtle in a Tree, by Neesha Hudson. She wrote: "Not only is the story charming, important, and slyly hilarious, but Neesha Hudson’s whimsical artwork does a beautiful job expressing the many emotions of her characters. Turtle in a Tree will be among my favorite picture books of the year." This is Neesha Hudson's first book that she wrote and illustrated - she illustrated Walk Your Dog for Elizabeth Stevens Omlor in 2018. I also see she has prints for sale - and as this is part of my job, I did check on greeting cards.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending December 18, 2021

Here's what's selling at Boswell. No annotations this week - just glad to get the list out.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman
2. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
3. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
4. The Ballerinas, by Rachel Kaplke-Dale (signed copies still available)
5. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
6. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
7. Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen
8. State of Terror, by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny
9. Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult
10. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
11. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab (both editions)
12. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
13. Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney
14. Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart
15. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
2. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
3. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
4. Taste, by Stanley Tucci
5. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
6. The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
7. The Midwest Survival Guide, by Charlie Berens (we don't have copies!)
8. Lyrics: 1956 to Present, by Paul McCartney
9. Wisconsin Supper Clubs Story, by Ron Faiola
10. World Travel, by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever
11. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber/David Wengrow
12. The Storyteller, by Dave Grohl
13. Baking with Dorie, by Dorie Greenspan
14. North American Maps for Curious Minds, by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek
15. Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
2. The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier (just finished this this morning!)
3. Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman
4. Circe, by Madeline Miller
5. When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamin Labatut
6. The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
7. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
8. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
9. Dune V1, by Frank Herbert
10. Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
11. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
12. Send for Me, by Lauren Fox
13. The Every, by Dave Eggers
14. The Thursday Murder Club V1, by Richard Osman
15. The Overstory, by Richard Powers

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake
2. New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton
3. Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
4. Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
5. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
6. Walking Milwaukee, by Royal Brevvaxling and Molly Snyder
7. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
8. The Best of Me, by David Sedaris
9. Hiking Wisconsin, by Kevin Revolinski
10. 111 Places in Milwaukee You Must Not Miss, by Michelle Madden
11. Vanguard, by Martha S Jones
12. Little Pieces of Hope, by Todd Doughty
13. Tacky, by Rax King
14. Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World, by Matt Kracht
15. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel

Books for Kids:
1. Cat Kid Comic Club Perspectives V1, by Dav Pilkey
2. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse, illustrations by Renée Graef
3. Clarice the Brave, by Lisa McMann
4. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman, illustrations by Loren Long
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot V16, by Jeff Kinney
6. Dream Street, by Tricia Elam Walker, illustrations by Ekua Holmes
7. Tales of Fearless Girls, by Isabel Otter
8. Woodland Dance, by Sandra Boynton
9. Aaron Slater, Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty, illustrations by David Roberts
10. Norman Didn't Do It, by Ryan T Higgins
11. Turtle in a Tree, by Neesha Hudson
12. Stuntboy: In the Meantime, by Jason Reynolds, illustrations by Raul the Third
13. Frozen Moutain: Decide Your Destiny, by Emily Hawkins
14. Crayon's Christmas, by Drew Daywalt, illustrations by Oliver Jeffers
15. Willodeen, by Katherine Applegate

One week to go!

Boswell bestsellers, week ending December 11, 2021

Here's what is selling at Boswell this week.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult (signed tip-in copies available)
2. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
3. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
4. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
5. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
6. The Ballerinas, by Rachel Kapleke-Dale (Register for in-December 15 in-store or broadcast event here)
7. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab (2 editions)
8. Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan
9. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
10. State of Terror, by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny
11. Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara
12. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
13. Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart
14. Oh William!, by Elizabeth Strout
15. The Kindest Lie, by Nancy Johnson

I decided to expand fiction this week, mostly because I like these four runners up - I read four of the five. Both Clark and Division and The Kindest Lie are novels set partly in Chicago, which might be why I gravitated to them. Johnson recently told me that she is working on her next book, which is exciting. And I should note that it's recommended by Jodi Picoult, this week's #1: "The Kindest Lie is a deep dive into how we define a family, what it means to be a mother, and what it means to grow up Black. This beautifully crafted debut will keep asking you these questions and more."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris
2. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
3. The 1619 Project, created by Hannah Nikole-Jones and The New York Times
4. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
5. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
6. Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner (our signed copies have taken off!)
7. The Midwest Survival Guide, by Charlie Berens (we're out through Christmas if you haven't already ordered this)
8. North American Maps for Curious Minds, by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek
9. The Storyteller, by Dave Groh
10. Atlas of the Invisible, by James Cheshire
11. The Wisconsin Supper Clubs Story, by Ron Faiola
12. How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith
13. Best Wishes, Warmest Regards, by Dan Levy and Eugene Levy
14. History Makers, by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
15. All About Me, by Mel Brooks (I think this also might be gone for the season)

This time of year I'm caught between reading ahead (what's good for the book) and reading 2021's highlights that I missed. On the fiction list, I caught up with Oh William! and Small Things Like These. Yes, you can call out that they are both relatively short books, but reading them has helped me sell them, particularly Keegan. On the nonfiction side, I spent part of my day finishing Clint Brown's How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slaves Across America. I liked that it was structured as a travel narrative, with Smith visiting places like Monticello, Angola Prison, and a walking tour of lower Manhattan.

Follow up to last week - I learned that Matthew Bucklan of North American Maps for Curious Minds lives in the Milwaukee area! Nobody tells me anything.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier
2. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
3. The Thursday Murder Club V1, by Richard Osman
4. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
5. Dune, by Frank Herbert
6. The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
7. Once and Future Witches, by Alix E Harrow
8. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
9. Hercule Poirot's Christmas, by Agatha Christie
10. When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamin Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West

When We Cease to Understand the World is one of The New York Times's top 10 books of 2021 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award for translated literature. Per the publisher, it's "a fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining." From The New York Times review by Corinna da Fonesca-Wollheim: "In any case, the individual characters are merely vehicles for Labatut. His true subject is the ecstasy of scientific discovery and the price it exacts — from the individuals who sacrifice everything in its pursuit, and from the human species, which gains ever more powerful tools to master a world that keeps eluding comprehension."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Best of Me, by David Sedaris
2. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
3. Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris
4. On Story Parkway, by Jim Cryns
5. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
6. Calypso, by David Sedaris
7. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
8. Cain's Jawbone, by Edward Powys Mathers
9. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
10. Theft by Finding, by David Sedaris

Guess who came to Milwaukee? Thanks to Mr. Sedaris (who actually did bring snacks to his event, a lovely and quite large box of chocolates), I was able to keep the nonfiction paperback list to ten slots. The list is a couple of regional titles (On Story Parkway, Jim's biggest hit at Boswell), Milwaukee River Greenway, a couple of national standards that continue to work at Boswell (Braiding Sweetgrass and The Body Keeps the Score) and one sleeper (Cain's Jawbone), which might well be selling at bestseller levels (not the first week on this list) but the NYT is probably excluding it because it's a puzzle - that advice list is brutal.

Books for Kids - Picture Books and Board Books
1. Dream Street, by Trista Elam Walker, with illustrations by Ekua Holmes
2. The Snowy Day board book, by Ezra Jack Keats
3. Norman Didn't Do It, by Ryan T Higgins
4. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman and Loren Long
5. Tiger Tiger Burning Bright, edited by Fiona Waters
6. The 1619 Project: Blood on the Water, by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrated by Nikolas Smith
7. The Mitten Board Book, by Jan Brett
8. Aaron Slater Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty with illustrations by David Roberts
9. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse with illustrations by Renée Graef
10. The Story Orchestra: The Magic Flute, by Jessica Courtney Tickle (and Mozart, sort of)

Named one of the New York Times best books of the year, Dream Street is, per the publisher "a magical story from the critically acclaimed author of Nana Akua Goes to School and a Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winning illustrator. Illuminating this vivid cast of characters are vibrant, joyful illustrations that make this neighborhood - based on the Roxbury neighborhood in Boston where the author and illustrator grew up together as cousins - truly sing." We just hosted a virtual event with Walker.

Books for Kids - Middle Grade, Graphic Novels
1. Clarice the Brave, by Lisa McMann
2. The Unwanteds V1, by Lisa McMann
3. The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo with illustrations by Sophie Blackall
4. Kaleidoscope, by Brian Selznick
5. Pony, by RJ Palacio
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot V16, by Jeff Kinney
7. Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives V2, by Dav Pilkey
8. Bird and Squirrel on the Run V1, by James Burks
9. Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, by Ben Clanton
10. Tales of Fearless Girls, by Isabel Otter, with illustrations by Ana Sender

I had YA categorized with middle grade/graphic novel, only to realize that there were no YA, graphic or otherwise, in our top 10. I find that adults get a little nervous buying books for teens, and I've also noticed there is nothing hot that's crossing over to us at the moment. The section almost always has people browsing it, but it looks like, at least for us, they are not coalescing around anything in particular as in past years.

Both The Beatryce Prophecy and Kaleidoscope might cross over to the younger demos of YA, so that's something. Kaleidoscope, the latest from Brian Selznick, is one of Amie's picks. Here's what the publisher had to say about this one: "A ship. A garden. A library. A key. In Kaleidoscope, the incomparable Brian Selznick presents the story of two people bound to each other through time and space, memory and dreams. At the center of their relationship is a mystery about the nature of grief and love which will look different to each reader." It's hitting a number of best-of-the-year lists. Still remember that magical night we hosted Selznick - it's so long ago I think it was at Alverno College, back when they had the Alverno Presents series.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, we've got the top books of the year from Jim Higgins and Carole Barrowman. Jim's picks include two of my favorites, Send for Me and Squirrel Hill. Access the whole list here.

Carole's got a great selection of mysteries and thrillers including two books I really liked, which I read at her suggestion - Clark and Division and Razorblade Tears. plus Kent Krueger's Lightning Strike, which we recently recommended not once but twice on Larry Meiller's recent Wisconsin Public Radio show.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending December 4, 2021

Boswell Bestsellers, week ending December 4, 2021

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult (Tickets for December 8 OAC event here)
2. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
3. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
4. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
5. Leviathan Falls V9, by James SA Corey
6. Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone V9, by Diana Gabaldon
7. Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen
8. Bewilderment, by Richard Powers
9. Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan
10. State of Terror, by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny

While you might not know James SA Corey if you weren't into science fiction, we have enough fans on staff for me to know that this Leviathan Falls (out of stock - more expected) is the final installment in the Hugo-award-winning Expanse series. Today I also learned that Corey is the work of two collaborators, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. From the Publishers Weekly starred review: "This fully satisfying resolution renders the entire series an all-time genre classic." Needless to say, if you're intrigued, start with Leviathan Wakes, not this one. By the way, James and Corey are the authors' middle names while S.A. is Abraham's daughter. In Germany, they leave out the middle initials. Oh, and Franck was George RR Martin's personal assistant - that's from Wikipedia, so take this all as you will.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Midwest Survival Guide, by Charlie Berens (not in stock - we're taking orders)
2. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
3. The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
4. Atlas of the Heart, by Brené Brown
5. North American Maps for Curious Minds, by Matthew Bucklan
6. These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett (Tickets for December 7 virtual event here)
7. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard
8. The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
9. Atlas of the Invisible, by James Cheshire
10. The Wisconsin Supper Clubs Story, by Ron Faiola
11. World Travel, by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
12. Baking with Dorie, by Dorie Greenspan
13. Carnival of Snackery, by David Sedaris 
14. The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel
15. Frank Lloyd Wright's Forgotten House, by Nicholas D Hayes

The lists are a bit lopsided during the holiday, so I grabbed five slots from paperback nonfiction and gave it to the hardcover list. Not as many cookbooks as you sometimes see on this list (we had four in the top 15 last year this week), but there are two map books, which also seems to be a holiday staple.

We've got North American Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Continent, the follow-up to 2019's Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds, which I should note was written by a different author. And then there's Atlas of the Invisible: Maps and Graphics That Will Change How You See the World, by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, which itself is the next project after 2017's Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics. It just goes to show, if you have one map book in you, there's probably a follow-up somewhere. From Dave Pugl at the Ela Area Public Library in Lake Zurich, via Library Journal: "The resulting atlas will enable readers to better understand the world and its challenges. Furthermore, as the authors express eloquently in the epilogue, it is designed to inspire readers to act." 

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
2. The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier
3. Dune V1, by Frank Herbert
4. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
5. The Drifter V1, by Nick Petrie
6. Circe, by Madeline Miller
7. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession
8. The Thursday Night Murder Club V1, by Richard Osman
9. The Witch's Heart, by Benevieve Gornichec
10. A Deadly Education V1, by Naomi Novik

Things are feeling a bit more normal on the paperback tables when we can see sales pops with paperback new releases. The Witch's Heart, inspired by Norse mythology, sold almost as many copies in its first week in paperback that it did life of book in hardcover. Bookmarks shows a lot of raves for the book, including Tom Shippey's in The Wall Street Journal, which noted: "Ms. Gornichec subverts the mythology from inside, knowledgeably and provokingly. Whatever the Elder Edda may say, the heroines of The Witch’s Heart will not be a delight to 'wicked women' alone." 

This is the February selection of the Books and Beer Book Club. More about upcoming book club discussions here.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kemmerer
2. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
3. New York Times Cooking No Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton
4. Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
5. An Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake

Not much new here, but I don't think I've highlighted An Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures since it was in hardcover. Since then, I think it won the Royal Society Science Book Prize, whose finalists included Breath by James Nestor and The Last Stargazers by Emily Levesque, both of which have made appearances on this list. Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running, offered this praise: "Entangled Life is a must-read for citizen scientists hoping to make a positive difference on this sacred planet we share," but I should note he's obviously part of the mushroom lobby.

Books for Kids:
1. Tales of Fearless Girls, by Isabel Otter with illustrations by Anna Sender
2. Cat Kid Comic Club: Perspectives V2, by Dav Pilkey
3. Daughter of the Deep, by Rick Riordan
4. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman with illustrations by Loren Long
5. Mindful Mr Sloth, by Katy Hudson
6. What's Up, Construction Truck?, by Matthew Reinhart
7. Stuntboy: In the Meantime, by Jason Reynolds with illustrations by Raul the Third
8. The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo with illustrations by Sophie Blackall
9. Aaron Slater, Illustrator, by Andrea Beaty, with illustrations by David Roberts
10. Norman Didn't Do It, by Ryan T Higgins

So excited to see the release of Jason Reynold's Stuntboy: In the Meantime, a collaboration with illustrator Raul the Third. Booklist offers a starred review: "Through 10 slice-of-life episodes interspersed with breaks for life rules ('1. Run up and down the hallways. All the hallways. Always.') and full-color inset panels recapping oddly parallel plotlines in a beloved sci-fi show that invariably climax with 'An Explosion of Great Magnitude,' the narrator records his growing anxiety over the 'meantime' arguments his parents have been having lately about their possessions - a sign, he twigs at last, of their impending separation. For a time he feels (and the illustrations depict literally him as) split in half, unrecognizable to friend and foe (ex-foe by the end: Herbert the 'Not So Bad After All') alike."

*I excluded some older school orders that we wound up needing time to process. But allow me to give a shout out to Stef Wade's Q and U Call It Quits.

Over at the Journal Sentinel, a piece from Kendra Meinert at the Green Bay Press Gazette about how Charlie Behrens's Midwest Survival Guide hit The New York Times Bestseller list.