New Nonfiction from Michael Sims, Umberto Eco, Penelope Lively, Humaira Awais Shahid, and Alain de Botton.

It's Tuesday, so my natural inclination is to walk to the front of the store and see what Jason has put in the Boswell's Best and New and Noteworthy cases. This is different from me running a report on what comes out on February 18, or if we're talking Penguin hardcovers, February 13 or 20, though I suspect that will change when they consolidate warehouses. So sometimes these books will be several weeks old, but they are new to me, which is why sometimes a customer will ask you about a "new" book that turns out to be a decade old.

Firstly there's The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond (Bloomsbury), from Michael Sims. The author who wrote The Story of Charlotte Web reveals (in the publisher's words) how the booking and quirky young man evolved into the patron saint of environmentalism. Rebeca Solnit, sort of a walking academic, or perhaps better termed an academic on walking, calls the work "a splendid piece of research and a superb introduction to the young writer, thinker, and insurrectionary."  Maureen Corrigan reviews on NPR.

Keeping to a natural history vibe, there is also From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation (Harvard), from Umberto Eco. True confession: I thought the only thing natural about this book is the pretty trees on the jacket and even they are tinged blue. The truth is however that Eco's book is about classification, including that of the natural world, into genus and species, and it is his premise that this is derived from the Neo-Platonist (I wanted to say Platonic, but that is apparently something else entirely) ideal of the Tree of Knowledge. Wlad Godzich of UC Santa Cruz offers praise that "this is a book that will enjoy a wide readership." Yes, I hear that From the Tree to the Labyrinth is next month's Penny's Pick at Costco. Very pretty book it is, though the white type on a pale green background makes me think that the designer is 22, at the oldest.

While I can't say too much about the book guts (I'm going with a fishing theme for this one), I really like the jacket for the Penelope Lively memoir, Dancing Fish and Other Ammonites (Viking). Ammonites, for those who want to know, are an extinct group of molluscs. Penelope Lively is very much not extinct; in fact she is, per some unnamed reviewer at The New York Times Book Review, "one of our most talented writers," since it is very rare that the editorial board of the NYTBR get together to make such a proclamation. Fitzgerald chronicles her own life, from when she was a fingerling in Cairo to her pre-spawning days at an English boarding school. You also may know (I remember this from my ex-coworker Catherine) that she's very hot on archaeology. Helen McAlpin in The Washington Post calls the work a"fascinating, clear-eyed but chilly meditation on the elements that add up to a life."

Another life is explored in Devotion and Defiance: My Journey in Love, Faith, and Politics (Norton). Humaira Awais Shahid, with the help of Kelly Horan tells of being one of the most prominent Muslim women activists and a legislator for women's rights in Pakistan. Having grown up a bookish young woman who identified with the independent-minded heroines of Jane Austen Virginia Woolf, and the Brontë Sisters, she never dreamed where love, with the Ednan Shahid of a prominent newspaper family, would take her (per the publisher).  Kirkus Reviews calls this, "a poignant story of a happy partnership that encouraged one Pakistani woman to face her oppressors."

If I was a better citizen, I would have been able to tell you all about Shahid without referring to publisher copy, but I am still, despite my attempts to keep up with the news, riddled with knowledge holes. Perhaps I should next tackle Alain de Botton's The News: A User's Manual (Pantheon). De Botton offers help on how to make sense of the news, offering 25 archetypal news stories, including an airplane crash, a murder, and a celebrity inerview, submitting each to unusually intense analysis. Unsual? It's clear the person who wrote the copy on the flap didn't know Alain de Botton very well. Kevin Canfield reviews the book for the San Francisco Chronicle. He seemed to like it, though he thought the suggestions were a bit "Ivory Tower." I'm waiting for the De Botton interview on On the Media.

That's our new release news of the week.

Monday Event Post Talks Up Post-Snow Events: Ilsa Bick Tuesday, Sheila Turnage Wednesday, Michael Hainey Thursday, Plus a Preview of Next Monday's Event with Gina Frangello and Robert Vaughan.

Well, all I can say is that I'm happy that we don't have an event tonight, what with another snowfall. 

Tuesday, February 18, 7 pm, at Boswell.
Ilsa Bick, author of White Space.

Before she became a writer of teen fiction, Ilsa J. Bick was a forensic psychiatrist who worked with children and adolescents. Through the dystopian thrillers she now creates, Bick still manages to address complex psychological issues affecting young people.

In a 2011 essay, titled “The Monsters in Us All: In Defense of YA Literature,” Bick wrote “….many, many children do live in hell. …if you do want to know about some kids like that, talk to a very wise librarian I met a few weeks ago at ALA. She works in Anaheim, and the population she serves lives with violence, gangs, drugs, rape, incest ... Know what those kids like to read? They devour contemporary novels that accurately depict their reality. And you know why? Because, in those novels, the kids triumph. They find a way out of hell. These books are quite hopeful because the teens in them do succeed where their parents and society have failed. These novels are journeys of growth from and through darkness toward the light.”

Bick’s books aim to do just that, such as in The Sin Eater’s Confession, which explores the emotional life of a young gay man serving as a medic in Afghanistan and the bigotry he faced back home in his small Wisconsin hometown that led to his being falsely accused of a brutal murder. Her newest novel, White Space, is the first in a new YA trilogy in the mind-bending tradition of The Matrix and Inception: where realities are fluid and nightmares live in a lost world between the lines.

Ilsa J. Bick is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of The Ashes trilogy, Draw the Dark, Drowning Instinct, and The Sin-Eater’s Confession. Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, a film scholar, former Air Force major, and an award-winning, bestselling author of short stories, e-books, and novels.

Wednesday, February 19, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Sheila Turnage, author of The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing.

When Miss Lana makes an accidental bid at the Tupelo auction and winds up the mortified owner of an old inn, she doesn't realize there's a ghost in the fine print. Naturally, Desperado Detective Agency (aka Mo and Dale) opens a paranormal division to solve the mystery of the ghost's identity. They've got to figure out who the ghost is so they can interview it for their history assignment (extra credit). But Mo and Dale start to realize that the Inn isn't the only haunted place in Tupelo Landing. As Mo and Dale handily track down the truth about the ghost (with some help from the new kid in town), they discover the truth about a great many other people, too.

A laugh out loud, ghostly, Southern mystery that can be enjoyed by readers visiting Tupelo Landing for the first time, as well as those who are old friends of Mo and Dale. Sheila Turnage is the author of New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor winning novel, Three Times Lucky, as well as a guidebook called Haunted Inns of the Southeast. She lives in North Carolina.

From Boswellian Hannah Johnson-Breimeier: "In this sequel to Newberry Honor Book, Three Times Lucky, rising sixth graders Mo LeBeau and her best friend Dale are back in action with a new mystery to solve for the Desperado Detective Agency. When the old decrepit inn in Tupelo Landing goes up for sale and Miss Lana accidentally buys it in auction, the unread fine print indicates a ghost is in residence. Mo and Dale set out to find out just who this ghost is. Is it untrustworthy Harm Crenshaw, their newest classmate, a saboteur who doesn't want the inn renovated, or a bona fide ghost? Mo LeBeau is one of my all-time favorite characters and she has captivated me again in The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing."

More on The Boswellians blog post, "Sheila Turnage, you say? YAAAAAY!"

Thursday, February 20, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Michael Hainey, author of After Visiting Friends.

“Searing and unforgettable...memoir writing at its best"—San Francisco Chronicle

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family—and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood.

Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died "after visiting friends," the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity—and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know—and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother.

From Boswellian Jannis Mindel: "After Michael Hainey's father dies, the then 6-year-old is given no explanation. That lack of explanation left a gaping hole inside the author that lead him on a journey of discovery, no matter the pain it caused. After Visiting Friends is part memoir and part detective story, as Hainey uncovers bitter truths about his father's past. Haunting, fascinating and elegiac, I thoroughly enjoyed this book."

Michael Hainey is the deputy editor of GQ. He was born in Chicago and now lives in Manhattan.

Previewing next Monday:
Monday, February 24, 7 pm, at Boswell: Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men, with opening author Robert Vaughan, author of Addicts and Basements.

“A life in Men is a vivid, devastating, and ferocious novel that captures a woman’s whole life in a world torn apart by terrorism and alienation…A story of love, passion, and friendship that will rock readers to the core.”—Patrick Somerville, author of This Bright River

The friendship between Mary and Nix had endured since childhood, a seemingly unbreakable bond, until the mid-1980s, when the two young women reunited for a summer vacation in Greece. It was a trip instigated by Nix, who had just learned that Mary had been diagnosed with a disease that would inevitably cut her life short. Nix, a free spirit by nature, was determined that Mary have the vacation of a lifetime, but by the time their visit to Greece was over, the ties between them had unraveled, and when they said goodbye, it was for the last time.

Three years later, Mary returns to Europe to try to understand what went wrong, in the process meeting the first of many men she will spend time with and travel with throughout the world. Through them she experiences not just a sexual awakening but a spiritual and emotional awakening that allows her to understand how the past and the future are connected, and to appreciate how important it is that she live her life to the fullest.

Gina Frangello is a cofounder of Other Voices Books and the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown. She is also the author of one previous novel and a collection of short stories. She lives in Chicago.

Opening for Frangello will be Milwaukee's own Robert Vaughan, whose first full-length book, Addicts and Basements, has just been published. Vaughan was a finalist for the 2012 Micro-Fiction Awards, and another of his pieces was a finalist for the 2013 Gertrude Stein Award. In addition to his writing, he is the senior flash editor at JMWW and Lost in Thought magazines, and leads writing roundtables at Red Oak Writing.

Hope to see you at one of this week's events.

Sunday Bestseller Post for Boswell, Week Ending Feb. 15--B.J. Novak, Elizabeth Kolbert, Jo Nesbo, and Lots and Lots of Sue Monk Kidd.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd
2. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
3. One More Thing, by B.J. Novak
4. The Secret Life of Bees (drop caps edition), by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Ripper, by Isabel Allende

This week's bestseller list includes a number of Sue Monk Kid titles, not just The Invention of Wings, but two other versions of The Secret Life of Bees and several nonfiction titles. Alas, one book that did not pop was Kidd's second novel, The Mermaid Chair. Enthusiasm runs much higher for her third novel.

Also on our list is national bestseller One More Thing, from television's B.J. Novak. He reveals in this Los Angeles Times review that his father was William Novak, editor of The Big Book of Jewish Humor and successful ghostwriter.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
2. Everything I Need to Know I learned From a Little Golden Book, by Diane Muldrow
3. The Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
4. Good Stock, by Sanford D'Amato
5. Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey, by Emma Rowley

The big pop this week is for Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction (Henry Holt). The New Yorker writer has gotten a lot of attention, including Rupert Darwall's review in The Wall Street Journal, with a caveat: " Ms. Kolbert's lively account is thought-provoking, whether or not you agree with its premise." And here's her interview on Fresh Air, where she recounts bats dropping dead in the caves of New England.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
2. Dear Life, by Alice Munro
3. Cockroaches, by Jo Nesbo
4. Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
5. Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner

One of the stranger publishing programs I've seen of late is the Jo Nesbo republishing program. The books have come out not exactly in order. Cockroaches (Vintage) is the second book in the series. The Independent's Barry Forshaw writes "Nesbo forged something new from the cliché of the dyspeptic alcoholic copper, making Harry Hole the most successful Nordic crime export since Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Redefining Girly, by Melissa Atkins Wardy
2. 101 Things to do in Milwaukee County Parks, by Barbara Ali
3. My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor
4. Firstlight, by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Traveling with Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd

The Lynden Sculpture Garden's Women's Speaker Series had a great evening with Melissa Atkins Wardy, author of Redefining Girly (Chicago Review). The book's been also been getting great write ups, including this Kelly Wallace's in CNN. "Atkins Wardy often tells parents in her community that once they become aware of the stereotyping and the sexualization, they won't be able to look away. 'Once you see it, you can't unsee it,' she writes."

Books for Kids:
1. The Scar Boys, by Len Vlahos
2. Better Nate than Ever, by Tim Federle
3. Five, Six, Seven, Nate!, by Tim Federle
4. Divergent, by Veronica Roth
5. Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage

 I'd like to say that we have a clean sweep in our top five of event books, but alas, Veronica Roth ain't coming to Boswell any time soon. That said, Len Vlahos's visit to Milwaukee for The Scar Boys (Egmont) was a big hit was area schools, as was Tim Federle, with sales continuing to come post-event. We're hoping for the same reaction to Sheila Turnage, who plays Milwaukee this Wednesday, February 19, 7 pm. If her presentation is half as good as that of Len Vlahos, I highly recommend you attend. Have you seen Mel and Hannah's blog post on Sheila Turnage's The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing? If not, you should now.

In the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins writes about Laurie Loewenstein's The Unmentionables. He writes "It's a historical, feminist romance in the positive senses of all three terms: a realistic evocation of small-town America circa 1917, including its racial tensions; a tale about standing up for the equitable treatment of women; and a story about two lonely people who overcome obstacles, including their own character defects, to find love together." Lowenstein will be at Books and Company this Wednesday.

In the blog, Jim Higgins' writes up what our Poet Laureates are up to. And in the print edition only, the Cue section features a write up of Bich Minh Nguyen's Pioneer Girl, written by Anthony Marra, originally from the San Francisco Chronicle, and Joshua Zeitz's Lincoln's Boys, reviewed by Scott Martelle in the Los Angeles Times. Of the former, Marra observes Pioneer Girl as "a surprising synthesis of the personal and the public, the intimate and the epic, the historical and the fictional." Of the latter, Zeitz "skillfully recounts what were heady days for (John) Nicolay and John (Hay), even as they were tragic days for the nation."

Saturday Gift Post: The Return of Blue Orange Games.

While attending two panels about gift buying for bookstores at our Seattle conference (and speaking at one of them), I was paying a lot of attention to the advice of other folks in the field. I wrote a lot of notes down in my notebook, but unfortunately, I also then lost my notebook, perhaps do to my nervous energy about being on the panel.

One thing I did pay attention to was that many booksellers were having great success selling Blue Orange Games. We brought several of their games in for a couple of years, but then I started hearing that their distribution channel was widening. In the end, I realized that it was unlikely they were represented south of Whitefish Bay and north of the Third Ward, and with the disappearance of several kids stores in the Ward, they might not even be there now, and so we revisited the brand.

One thing we had great success with was having a oversized demo of Gobblet Gobblers out for kids to play with. We still had all the pieces for that, even with several being integrated into Stacie's window displays over the past few years, but we also had the option to get another oversized demo of Pengoloo, and since Amie acknowledged that this game is fun indeed, we decide to increase our buy to make this happen.

Many of Blue Orange's games rely on memory or balance, and Pengoloo is no exception. It's a variation of Concentration where you roll dice, and the dice colors tell you which color eggs to look for, hidden inside the penguins. For older kids, you can also steal away penguins and eggs that were already captured, if you remember what color the eggs are.

In addition to Gobblet Gobblers, we also brought back their most popular game Spot It, and a variation for kids called Spot It Jr. Animals. We'd had decent sell through on their storytelling game, Tall Tale, so that was bought too. We wanted at least one of their balance games, so this time we went with Keekee the Rocking Monkey. Last time we brought in CooCoo the Clown. I suspect the Blue Orange Games folks heard about this theory that K sounds are the funniest.

And since I was reminded at the show how important it was to take advantage of freight specials, I reached that goal by picking up Crazy Cheese, a brain teaser puzzle appropriate for Wisconsin, and Bendomino, a domino variation.

Jannis put our game display together, integrated with our last order of cooperative games from Peaceable Kingdom.

For a much, much, much, much larger selection of games, visit our friends at Board Game Barrister, with locations at Bay Shore Mall and Greenfield Town Center. And thanks to Blue Orange for providing the jpg images.

What Did the Book Club Think of Ruth Ozeki's "A Tale for the Time Being"?

Part One: A Book is Picked

For months and months, folks have been coming into Boswell, telling me that I had to read Ruth Ozeki's novel, A Tale for the Time Being. They'd look at me and say, "I think you'd like it." Do I wear my reading taste on my sleeve so nakedly that even amateurs can figure out what I like? Oh, yes, there is this blog thing.

Back at Schwartz, we'd had a great run with Ozeki's first novel, My Year of Meats, successful enough that we made the tour schedule for the second, All Over Creation. Alas, that novel didn't seem to have the momentum of the first novel; why are audiences so fickle? To that measure, why is writing so fickle?

Ozeki took some time off between her second and third novel. After all, she's got a lot on her plate. Not only is she a filmmaker, but she's also a Zen Buddhist priest. I'm not sure what goes along with being a priest as I am not as schooled in Buddhism as you'd expect a bookseller to be. I would think you meditate, keep the sacred spaces sacred, and write books about the whole process.

So A Tale for the Time Being was announced, Ozeki came to 2013's Winter Institute, and I got a copy signed. I played my old trick of having it personalized to Daniel, to force me to read it, but it didn't happen. Much as I wanted to, there were authors with upcoming events who wound up beating Ozeki out for the "currently reading" slot, and heck, I suspect she wouldn't be into the competition anyway.

Can you imagine it? I pit two authors against each other in some game of skill to see who I read. The truth is, and I'm not sure how recently I mentioned this, is that when I have no reading deadline and can't figure out what to read next, I line up 13 books and pick a card. The seven of spades means I read the seventh book down. If I don't finish the book, I must give it away or donate it.

We came close to an event, actually, halfway between hardcover and paperback publication. Every year Ragdale, the retreat in Lake Forest, has an arts celebration called A Novel Affair, which seems to triple the number of writers in attendance. Over the last few years, Jane Hamilton has set writers up to read in Milwaukee. In 2012, it was Gail Tsukiyama and in 2013, it was Karen Joy Fowler, and that was how I wound up reading We are All Completely Beside Ourselves (on sale in paperback on February 25).

So it turns out that Ruth Ozeki also could have read with Karen Joy Fowler, or so could have any number of authors, such as Lauren Groff, whose Arcadia we also read at the in-store lit group. But if she had come, I wouldn't have had the group read A Tale for the Time Being as I would have read it already, and you know the rules--I only pick books I regret not reading.

So it seems that during the day, every other person comes into the store wondering why I hadn't read All Over Creation. Then I go home and stare at the inscription, "So nice to meet you!" See, she had a good time! I must have really charmed her in the four seconds I talked to her in the line. The paperback release is scheduled for December 31st, meaning that February is as good as booked.

Then the holidays come, and the book seems to surge in popularity, hitting a number of yearend bestseller lists. I almost feel prescient. OK, so it was also on the Man Booker shortlist, in the last year that you have to play the game, "how is this author part of the British Empire?" Answer: she's Canadian, perhaps by dual citizenship, but nonetheless. But being on the NBCC (National Book Critics Circle) shortlist? That's completely after we picked our book club selection, and I was completely not influenced by the piles of laurels thrown at Ozeki's feet.

Part Two: I read it.

So for those who are not paying attention to worthy literary fiction, A Tale for the Time Being is told from two different perspectives. A woman named Ruth, living on an island off the coast of British Columbia, finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shores. Inside is a diary of a young girl named Nao. She fears that this was lost in the tragic Japanese tsunami of 2011. Why do I not know the name of this storm, and why should I care, except that The Weather Channel now seems to name everything. That last storm was Pax, by the way.

The story alternates between Nao's perspective and Ruth's. Nao has trouble deciding how to tell her story. What tone exactly should she take? What she knows, as she writes from the cafe where young women dress up like French maids, is that her father, Haruki, is very depressed and seemingly wants to commit suicide. The victim of aggressive bullying at school, she is also thinking about ending her life. And then there's also her father's uncle, Haruki #1 (dad is #2), who one of the suicide bombers in World War II. The secret may lie with her great grandmother Juki, a Buddhist nun who takes care of a remote monastery.

Back in Ruth's story, there's a lot of pondering over exactly what happened. Ruth lives with Oliver, an artist in semi-retirement. It appears that Ruth might be happier in New York, but lives there for the sake of her husband, in a community that appears to be a hippie version of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (a lot of quirky characters and gossip).

At first, the story felt a bit heavy handed. The teenage girl, Nao, ponders a lot about "now", and though you might argue that the two words are not puns in Japanese, Nao actually grew up in the United States, in Northern California, where her father worked for a high tech company, but lost his job in the tech bust. This is another factor that has led to Haruki #2's depression. So I wonder, "Is the Time Being going to be a character? Is my brain big enough for that?"

So what can Ruth do? Of course a neighbor needs to remind her that this diary crossed the Pacific Ocean, and the likelihood is that Nao's fate is sealed. Of course you've figured out that Ruth is a stand in for Ruth, the author (and yes, her real-life husband is named Oliver). So Ruth is the reader and Nao is the writer, but we know that the reader is actually the writer. And that's just the beginning of the ideas that started spinning around in my head in this story that combines physics and Buddhism and storytelling (of course) together.

Part Three: What did the book club think?

N. was one of those people who liked it more the more she read it. She found the Japanese cultural details enlightening, though it was hard to read the scenes about the bullying, both among the Japanese soldiers and the Japanese students. Another attendee wondered how commonplace bullying was in Japan, and I noted that I had read a whole book about it, well mostly about that and the children who wind up never leaving their parents' houses.

Someone else noted that this treatment of soldiers is not uncommon, and we ourselves came across it when we read John Boyne's The Absolutist, which was about British troops in World War I. I noted that this was also just a story in the news, with that story circulating several months ago about toxic commanders in the military system. Here's Craig Whitlock's take in The Washington Post.

J1. really liked the give and take between reader and writer, though she thought maybe the Ruth sections could have been shorter. J2 really liked it and when she was finished, she wanted to start reading again from the beginning.

J3, our resident scientist, was particularly intrigued by the scientific theories in the book. Spoiler alert, but there was a lot of talk about multiple realities, and whether in fact there were two parallel stories told in Ozeki's novel. I'm not talking about Ruth and Nao, but Nao and Nao. Did Nao actually suffer two fates? It was discussed heavily. But the clues are in the references to Schrödinger's Cat and quantum mechanics that are spread throughout the story, and are discussed further in the appendix.

One of the things I should note here was that while there were a few women who did not like the book in the group, all three men did, so if you have a couples group or something, this might be a better suggestion than you first thought when you saw that teenage Japanese girl's face staring at you.

Several folks wondered whether someone like Jiko could have existed, and C., who read the book for her second time, said yes, much like Germany, there was a period in Japan before World War II where the culture was very progressive, and a women's rights pioneer like Jiko (yes, she had a life before her religious piety) absolutely did exist.

As I mentioned before, if there was any complaining, it was more about Ruth's story. Some folks didn't much see the point of her husband and the villagers, but L. found Oliver quite sympathetic and though the played a vital role in the story.

So then J2 (yes, she was probably the biggest naysayer) though that he happy ending felt fake. You say happy ending, I say Dickensian, but as we all noted, that was just one alternative. I bet Ozeki is a big Dickens fan anyway. So this led to (spoiler alert) another meditation about whether the quantum physics of Nao's story (affected by Ruth, the writer) spread to Ruth's own story. Specifically, did the cat die or not? I leave that to you to decide.

In my notes, I wrote the following equation and in the spirit of the science vibe of the story, I will repeat it here: Ruth's mother/Jiko = Oliver/Haruki #2. Sadly, I have no idea what I was thinking. T

Did I ever note that if you read two books in a row, you see connections that you never would see otherwise? Well I read this just after Patrick Ness's The Crane Wife, and I was surprised by how much I connected the stories. For one thing, while Kumiko in that story is not said to be Japanese, she has a Japanese name and spends her days cutting and folding paper...just like Haruki #2. I also thought both novelists were fascinated by the dualities of life and the alternative directions our fates take us, though while Ness's characters are generally on the precipice, Ozeki's seem to somehow follow both alternatives.

Our friend M. came by afterwards, unable to attend, and wondered whether we saw the parallels with The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Yes, for a French novel, there was also a strong Japanese esthetic, a philosophical pondering of life and suicide, with a lost teenage girl who deserves a better fate at the center of both stories (Nao and Polma). Renee in a sense is Haruki #2 and Ozu, the elegant older Japanese man, is perhaps Jiko. (Aside: we should hit our 500th copy sold of Elegance this year).

So then we talked about the crow imagery. What does it mean, what does it mean? After several rounds back and forth, I thought of Paul Harding's sage words and said, "Sometimes a crow is just a crow." G. agreed that crows are great and I showed everyone G.'s crow painting that hangs in our store. Elizabeth Kolbert worries about crows in her new book, The Sixth Extinction.

One of the great things about A Tale for the Time Being is that whether you go into the discussion having liked the book or not (or liking it at the beginning and then losing interest, or not knowing what to think and loving it by the end, or seven other combinations), you can't come out of the discussion without an insight or two, and a bit more respect for what Ozeki was trying to pull off.

And that makes for a great discussion. Oh, and everyone who told me that I would like the book was right. I'm so glad I took your collective advice.

Part Four: What's next?

Next up is Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers. To make room for Lorrie Moore, who is appearing at Boswell on Monday, March 3 for her new short story collection, Bark (7 pm, free and open to the public, let us reserve a copy for you), we've bumped the book club discussion to Tuesday, March 4, 7 pm.

If you want a head start on our April selection, we're discussing Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena on Monday, April 7, 7 pm...unless an amazing author wants to appear at Boswell on that date, and then we'll adjust.

Michael Hainey's Search for His Father, Many Years After His Death "After Visiting Friends." (Oh, and He's Coming to Boswell on Thurs. Feb. 20, 7 pm).

"My search for the truth and my decision to take on my fears--has confirmed for me that all of has to choose life, that I'm trying to learn to live each day."

When Michael Hainey was six, his father, Bob Hainey, died. It was on the street, leaving his job at the copy desk of the Chicago Sun-Times. The next day, his Uncle Dick came, along with the parents. They had the funeral, and then, pretty much, it was never mentioned again. His mother Mary raised the two boys on her own, in the shadow of O'Hare airport. Having left the newspaper business years before, she found a job at a hotel gift shop.

Michael's childhood is told in sketch-like form, almost dreamlike, the way childhood memoirs can be. Even a journalist has to paint their youth in broad strokes. After all, very few of us take good notes.

And then things all change. While Michael's in college, he decides to read his father's obituaries, and they just don't make sense. There were four general-interest newspapers in those days, with both the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times having sister papers that published in the afternoons. For one thing, the cause of death isn't quite right. For another, there are "friends" mentioned in the obits, and the Haineys never mentioned any socializing involved in the death. Odder still, his place of death was not on the route between the Sun Times and home. 

So Hainey goes on a multi-year quest to find out what happened. But the more clues he finds, the more confusing the story becomes. It seems as if these journalists, and pretty much everyone his father associated with was a journalist, though they would have called themselves newspaper men, have a different idea of truth when it involves one of their own.

Yes, in those days, newspapers weren't a profession but a trade, and you might follow your father, the way you would into the post office or the Ford factory. These were also the days (his dad died in 1970) when the business was beginning to change. Even into the 1960s, you didn't contradict the words of a politician or a policeman. Everyone was on the same side, fighting, well, folks who were not on the same side. And that's why it's important to note that Bob's older brother Dick was a newspaperman too, a bigwig at the Chicago Tribune.

Eventually Michael (I use his first name because there are an awful lot of Haineys in the story) heads to small town Nebraska, Ohio, San Francisco, and Wisconsin for his story.  I guess journalism really is in his blood. But for what?  He just wants to understand his father better. But as Hainey notes in the story, it's really a story about his mother as well. (Photo at right from Hainey's collection.)

Boy is this a Chicago story. And for folks who love newspapers, and I know there are a few of you out there, it's filled with fascinating details of the horse shoe copy desk, reading the upside down hot type, the various bars that each paper frequented, the smoke-filled rooms, and as I said previously, the changing self-image of reporters, making that journey from newspaperman to journalist.

Mr. Hainey does a great job of moving the story along, but he also really writes some wonderful profiles of the characters along the way. From his father's high school friend Kay to journalist-turned-lawyer who really changed his name to Natty Bumppo. Can you do that?

My go-to person for Chicago stories, Jannis, read After Visiting Friends, and also enjoyed it a great deal. Here's her recommendation: "After Michael Hainey's father dies, the then 6-year-old is given no explanation. That lack of explanation left a gaping hole inside the author that lead him on a journey of discovery, no matter the pain it caused. After Visiting Friends is part memoir and part detective story, as Hainey uncovers bitter truths about his father's past. Haunting, fascinating and elegiac, I thoroughly enjoyed this book." --Jannis Mindel, Boswell Book Company

Michael Hainey, an editor at GQ, is coming back to Chicago to promote the paperback version of After Visiting Friends, and our friends at Scribner suggested he detour to Milwaukee for an evening. He'll be talking (and probably doing a bit of reading) at Boswell on Thursday, February 20, 7 pm.  (Another photo from Mr. Hainey's archive at left.)


For more, read Rick Kogan's review in The Chicago Tribune and here's a nice interview with Hainey in, of all places, GQ. Oh, and check out Mr. Hainey's website and see how much he looks like his dad.

A Talk About Decision Making from Dan Heath Resonates with Many Booksellers.

In 2013, the Winter Institute had two plenary sessions with noted authors, Daniel Pink, and Malcolm Gladwell. I wound up reading both books, and then wound up hosting Gladwell as well. His talk turned out to be completely different from the one he gave in Kansas City, but judging from the crowd's reaction (and no complaints and all, this really floors me), he was triumphant.

So I approached my conference this year thinking that reading the book afterwards was likely to be a rewarding experience, especially when I saw that Dan Heath was the opener. They made it easy for me, as the second day was a panel of the Seattle7Writers, and it wasn't the kind of talk where you read the panelists' books afterwards. It did make me want to click through to every members' website and see who only links to Amazon, however.

While Dan Heath's book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (Crown Business) written with his brother Chip, was not brand new, we are all aware that successful business books have relatively long shelf lives, and his talk could make a difference in our lives, our work, and the book's sale.

The premise that Dan Heath (photo from his website) makes is that most people are bad decision makers. Among other striking finds was that 83% of corporate mergers do not add value to companies. So apparently there are four villains of decision making, and four ways to address them, which form the handy acronym WRAP. Now one of my tests of an acronym is whether I can memorize what each letter stands for, like Hudson, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. In this case W = widen your options, R = reality test your assumptions, A = attain distance and P = prepare to be wrong.  OK, I was slightly off; it was "attain distance before deciding."

Like many of these books, there are lots of real-world examples and studies and corporate missteps (like Quaker Oats buying Snapple) and agile change decisions (like Intel getting out of the memory business). What's good about Heath's book, is that his strategies work equally well for large corporations and small businesses. The other problem I note with some business books, and this is rarely why we do offsites for them, is that they are meant to help the business, not the individual, and that means the attendees expect the company to buy the book for them in bulk. I could see Decisive resonating with a business person as a way to attain his or her personal success in a company.

Amie, who attended the session with me, and I talked about the take-aways we got from the session. Try not to frame decisions as whether or not; add another option or two. Look to experts when possible; that's we are loyal contributors to the ABACUS survey, an annual report of bookseller success which looks at different variables and how they affect profitability. Amie was very hot on Heath's tripwire concept, where you use different variables to make or revisit decisions. That might mean testing an idea for three months, or making a decision to create a position when a certain segment of our business hit a percentage of sale.

So here are two things I've found myself doing after reading Decisive:
1. I really am trying to add at least one more option to every decision process, if not two or three
2. I've never tried to oversell the bookstore in employee interviews, but I find myself pointing out the store's flaws more aggressively than before, thinking about where folks come in with expectations that might not be met. Alas, I'm not planning to pay folks $4000 to drop out of the running, a la Zappos.

I'm hoping I will come up with more in time.

In the end, a small business in general, and bookselling in particular, is a crapshoot. We're really at the mercy of outside forces, and some changes we'll be able to make the right decisions on and will be able to roll with, and others, like if Amazon is able to destroy the process of distribution and sale of print books, will be harder to adapt to. Well, they will have their hands full building the new cloud for the CIA. Apparently they are still fighting with IBM over this.

While this is my first Heath Brothers title completely read, I think I still have a copy of Made to Stick somewhere on my shelves. I seem to remember they were one of the 800-CEO-Read success stories, and was definitely my former-sister-company-when-I-worked-at-Schwartz's business book of the year at heir awards. I'm pretty sure they just had their most recent awards, and wondered which title exactly won. The winner turned out to be Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success, by G. Richard Shell. It's a living workbook to develop and achieve your success values. Read more about it on their blog. Oops, I am off topic again.

Back to Dan Heath and Decisive. From what I heard, a lot of booksellers were grateful for your talk, and were planning to thoughtfully incorporate your ideas into their everyday work lives. And for those who are not fans of magic eight balls, here's the jacket image on UK and Australian editions that incorporates roshambo imagery. I think that's pretty clever, better than the campaign button and pocket pen that still shows up in searches. The old cover turns into the new cover; another magic trick! In any case, thank you, Mr. Heath, for attending.

New Releases from Matthew Quick, Susan Minot, Laua Lippman, Jennifer McMahon, and Newcomer Andy Weir, Which is Jason's Pick.

Today in The New York Times, Julie Bosman writes about series that are being released in a speeded-up time frame, instead of the traditional once per year. We would have added Joelle Charbonneau's Testing/Independent Study/Graduation Day series, which was the first major teen series that Amie could recall that was released in six-month increments. Charbonneau is coming back to Milwaukee for Independent Study. She'll be appearing at the Hales Corners Library on Wednesday, March 5, at 6:30 pm.

But as I say before events, all that pales in comparison with this week's new releases.  This week I'm focusing on fiction, and the first thing that caught my eye was The Good Luck of Right Now (Harper) by Matthew Quick, the author of The Silver Linings Playbook. A middle-aged guy who has lost his mom writes to Richard Gere, based on his mom's obsession with him, leading to a road trip to Canada from Philadelphia with a librarian, her brother, and defrocked priest to find life's answers. Early reviews from the trades were positive and quirky, if not starred, and if Janet Maslin in The New New York Times (I promise I'll link to other medium) had issues, he was reviewed by Janet Maslin the day before on sale, and that's something right there. Should I say Jonathan Tropper-esque?

Susan Minot returns with Thirty Girls (Knopf), a change-of-pace novel about a group of kidnapped schoolchildren in Uganda, under the control of The Lord's Resistance Army, based on a real event that happened in 1996. The story is told through Jane, an American writer in Kenya, and Esther, one of the kidnapped girls.The unnamed Booklist reviewer wrote: "So sure yet light is Minot's touch in this master work, so piercing yet respectful her insights into suffering and strength, that she dramatizes horrific truths, obdurate mysteries, and painful recognition with both bone-deep understanding and breathtaking beauty." Marie Arana in The Washington Post notes that while Minot's style is an acquired taste, "if you keep patient, all its scattered, neurotic strands will wind into a tight cord, and, in the end, you may calm down, stay in this writer’s hands and make sense of the exhilaration and horror."

On the way to our Sue Monk Kidd event last night, Sharon was telling me that Laura Lippman started her tour, which reminded me that I should include our rec of After I'm Gone (William Morrow). Here it is: "Although I have only visited Baltimore once, and then, only the train station, it is a city that I feel quite familiar with, thanks to the mysteries of Laura Lippman. Her latest book tells the story of Felix Brewer and his disappearance to avoid prison. It’s not so much Felix’s story as it is the tale of the women he left behind. His wife, Bambi, his three daughters, and his mistress, Julie. Julie’s body is found ten years later. After I’m Gone is told in Lippman’s engaging style, moving back and forth between decades and crimes to piece the puzzle together. Familiar characters from Lippman’s other books make cameo appearances to keep the story going. I enjoyed this fictional trip to Baltimore as much as I have all the others."--Sharon Nagel, Boswell Book Company.

If you'd like to read more about Lippman's latest, here's an interview Mary Carole McCauley conducted in The Baltimore Sun of course, the paper where Lippman was once a reporter, and where for a short time, my old friend Michelle was a copy editor for her. After I'm Gone launches at Baltimore's own The Ivy Bookshop.

Speaking of recs, Jason has a great one for The Martian (Crown), a new novel from Andy Weir that is also on sale today. He writes: "On the Ares 3 mission to Mars, a freakish storm causes the crew to abort the mission and flee back to earth. The only problem is that they think Mark Watney is dead and they left him behind. In fact, he is very much alive and is now the only living thing on Mars. Mark, who is fortunately a botanist by trade, attempts to figure out how to stay alive, setting up communications with Earth, and entertaining himself with old 1970s television and disco music. Along the way, he will have to deal with being very much alone. Andy Weir's book is hilarious and action packed, and very well thought out. This is how a space mission to Mars would most likely go. Having read The Martian, I’d probably pass on the chance to join up."--Jason Kennedy, Boswell Book Company

Entertainment Weekly called Weir's book, which they note was originally self-published, "an impressively geeky debut novel, and it could easily double as a survival guide."

And finally there's Jennifer McMahon, who moved to Doubleday for The Winter People, after several releases at Harper/Morrow (I assume she jumped imprints there along with an editor, but who knows?) In her newest, a young woman in Vermont, who finds her mother has disappeared, and find some answers in the diary of another mother-daughter death of 100 years ago, where the mother is said to still haunt the town as a ghost. The starred Booklist review notes that "this mystery-horror crossover is haunting, evocative, and horrifically beautiful."

And here's a nice recommendation from fellow Vermonter Chris Bohjalian: "I don't believe in ghosts. At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I read The Winter People. I also don't need to sleep with the lights on. I told myself that, too. But I was whistling past a graveyard—or, in this case—past a Vermont landscape that is authentic and recognizable and still altogether chilling. The Winter People is terrifying—everything you could want in a classic ghost story.”

Addendum: I got an email back from our always-on-the-ball rep Jason, noting that Jennifer McMahon didn't move from Harper to Doubleday with an editor, but was acquired by longtime Knopf/Vintage/Doubleday/Pantheon/Anchor dare-I-say-anchor Anne Messitte. What I meant to say was that McMahon moved from Harper paperbacks to Morrow paperbacks with Promise Not to Tell, Island of Lost Girls, Dismantled, Don't Breathe a Word, and The One I left Behind might have been editorial movement, but when I looked closer, this was actually movement between the paperback lines, which is sometimes more of a positioning statement than for which imprint the editor acquires.

I actually knew the backstory about this, since I had talked to agent Dan Lazar about McMahon several months before publication. He told me that he was excited about Messitte's enthusiasm for taking McMahon to the next level, and I think they've done a good job. The book rocks the literary/commercial and genre/mainstream divides with its cover treatment, and I can see both Sharon and Jane (whose been getting into ghost stories with Wendy Webb) reading it. And maybe Anne for the mystery angle.

So that's more of the story, in an effort to offer a little clarification.