Boswell Book Company Monday Event Post, Week of April 21, 2014--Meg Wolitzer, Brian Freeman, Ann Peters, Stuart Gibbs and More.

Tuesday, April 22, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Brian Freeman, author of The Cold Nowhere.

We have been sharing events with Mystery One for over a year now, and with Books and Company since we've been open, but this might be our first double share. No, I think Joelle Charbonneau also did this for The Testing. 

Freeman's signing at Mystery One at 5 the same day as us, and then appears at Books and Company on Wednesday, April 23. Freeman comes off his best novel win at the International Thriller awards with a Duluth-based story that gives Nordic Noir a run for its money in the "chiller thriller" category. Booklist writes "The narrative moves between the point of view of Stride and that of the girl's pursuer, making this well-plotted, atmospheric thriller feel like a high-stakes chess game."

This is Freeman's first Jonathan Stride mystery published with Quercus. The previous installments, as well as one stand-alone, were published by Minotaur, while another stand-alone was published by Silver Oak, through Sterling. Our best sale to date was with his 2010 stand-alone, The Bone House, which had a great write-up from Carole E. Barrowman. Barrowman also touted Freeman's newest in a Journal Sentinel write up yesterday. Freeman rounds up some of his reviews here.

Wednesday, April 23, 6 pm, at the Oak Creek Library, 8620 South Howell Avenue, 53154: Stuart Gibbs, author of Poached, Belly Up, Spy School, and Spy Camp.

After a day of school visits (contact Jannis if you are interested in championing a school visit next fall), we whisk Gibbs due South to the Oak Creek Library, where you can learn more about Teddy Fitzroy, boy animal detective. His family works at the FunJungle (no space, two caps) animal park in Texas, and after being caught in a local bully's prank (they drop fake severed limbs into the shark tank), he becomes prime suspect in a genuin koala poaching.

Matthew Weaver in Voice of Youth Advocates writes "Also the author of Spy School, a TV and screenwriter, and a former zoo worker, Gibbs goes the extra mile in establishing the reality of FunJungle, stressing proper animal care while giving an insider’s view of the politics behind zoo exhibits and management. Even better, Teddy’s parents never doubt their son’s innocence and actively engage in his adventure. These extra details lend credibility to the caper and raise the stakes. This will appeal to animal and mystery lovers alike."

Here's a complete map of FunJungle. Please consider setting the third installment on Monkey Mountain. Don't forget the 6 pm start time!

Also on Wednesday, April 23, 7 pm (reception, the author speaks at 7:30), at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 West Brown Deer Road in River Hills, 53217:
A ticketed event with Ann Peters, author of House Hold.

The Woman's Speaker Series at the Lynden Sculpture Garden is a partnership with Milwaukee Reads, with sponsors Bronze Optical and MKE Localicious. Tickets are $30 and include admission, light refreshments and wine, and a copy of House Hold. For Lynden members, the cost is $25.

Kirkus Reviews lauded this memoir, writing that "Nostalgia is a complicated version of love, Peters reveals in this elegiac memoir, which can threaten to fade the vivid present to a sepia-toned past."

From Booklist: "Peters ties her memories to great stories of small-town life by Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and others. Twenty years of living in New York evokes romantic notions about the city drawn from the writings of Willa Cather and Paule Marshall. Eventually, Peters buys a small house in upstate New York. All along, she ponders her constantly changing landscape, resenting changing and reluctantly conceding her participation in that change, resigning herself to living inside others' history. Peters writes beautifully of the meaning of authenticity and the need to belong."

This fluency with Edith Wharton and Willa Cather as well as the author speaking to the geography of Wisconsin explains a bit why Boswellian Jane is so fond of the book.  She's been recommending it for book clubs, which we'll rev up when the book goes into paperback.

Ann Peters is associate professor of English at Stern College, Yeshiva University, and the recipient of the 2012 McGinnis Ritchie Award for Nonfiction. She lives in Brooklyn and in upstate New York.

Thursday, April 24, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings, The Wife, The Ten Year Nap, The Uncoupling, and more. (Photo credit by Nina Subin)

I read my first Meg Wolitzer novel in 1986. Back then, I knew her as the daughter of Hilma Wolitzer, whose most recent book is An Available Man. I read Silver back in 1988 and I think this might have been the first time I had read novels by a mother and a daughter in a family. For some reason, that seemed very exciting to me. I also read the next novel, This is Your Life, which was about a comedian and her two daughters, which became a movie, but I seem to remember had Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson) in it.

Time skips. Wolitzer's fan base grows. We have some very nice sales for Wolitzer's novels at Schwartz. My coworker Nancy reads a few, and I use her quote. I'm trying to figure out whether Ms. Wolitzer ever appeared at Schwartz. Please comment below if you've seen her. Sometimes I just can't remember and other times my memory is faulty. I was convinced that Chuck Klosterman came before Boswell's 2009 appearance, but he said that was not the case.

Wolitzer had hit the national bestseller lists before, but I feel like her new novel, The Interestings, has reached a level of popularity and acclaimed she hadn't before seen. The book has had amazing reviews and hit a number of best-of-the-year roundups, including this wonderful review in The New York Times from Liesl Schillinger.

"The Interestings is warm, all-American and acutely perceptive about the feelings and motivations of its characters, male and female, young and old, gay and straight; but it’s also stealthily, unassumingly and undeniably a novel of ideas. Wolitzer has been writing excellent fiction for 30 years, and it has always been this astute. From the start, her subject has been the practical, emotional and sexual fallout of women’s liberation, particularly as it affects mothers and children. But here she has written a novel that speaks as directly to men as to women. With this book, she has surpassed herself. Just don’t call her exceptional."

Eden Lepucki rhapsodizes over The Interestings in The Millions. She compares the book to two other novels I read and enjoyed, Beautiful Ruins (which we all know) and Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins (which we should know better). 

Suzanne Koven in The Boston Globe: "The main characters in Meg Wolitzer’s complex and engaging new novel, The Interestings, were born in 1959 (as was Wolitzer). They’re members of that shadow generation, not old enough to have participated fully in the dramatic events that dominated their childhoods, vaguely aware that when they finally arrived late to the party of adulthood, it, and they, might turn out to be less fascinating than they hoped."

My sister's friend Christine heard Meg Wolitzer speak at a fundraiser in Phoenix and told me that Wolitzer was as wonderful a speaker as could be--engaging, smart, and witty. To me, those are the three points of fabulousness. Oh, and she's a good friend of another author who has been a dear friend to the store, so we better do a good job, or else.

We've had a nice display up with the bags as well (the reissues from Wolitzer offer many design variations, but they are definitely type covers!), and we've been talking about the event a lot. I panic before every event, but several indications, like a number of book clubs who have promised me they are coming and the fact that The Interestings has been our #1 selling trade paperback fiction title for the last two weeks should allow me to exhale, at least for a minute.

Monday, April 28, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Five year anniversary celebration with Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

As Jim Higgins wrote in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Boswell Book Company could not have picked a more fitting new book for its fifth anniversary celebration." If you skipped Friday's post about the book, you can read it now. and tear up a bit (note: not "tare" up,  but "teer" up).  And Zevin has promised to guest-write a post later this week.

Monday, April 28, 7 pm, at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, 2210 N. Terrace Ave. 53211:
Timothy Corrigan, author of An Invitation to Chateau Du Grand-Luce: Decorating a Great French Country House.  There is a $5 admission fee for this event, which goes directly to Villa Terrace. 

Folks come to us about event ideas all the time, and sadly, mostly don't work out. By the time folks know about books, the tours are planned. More than that, it's sometimes hard to understand that when the publisher author comes to us, the onus for attendance is lower than when we go to them.

So here is a textbook example of when a customer's idea can and does work. Our friends Pat and Stephanie noted that Timothy Corrigan, one of the world's most acclaimed decorators, was going to be in Chicago in April, on tour for his book, and wouldn't it be a great thing for us to be able to add Milwaukee on. Corrigan lived in Milwaukee at one time and had plenty of fans who were well-connected to bring out a crowd.

We originally had the event scheduled for another day, but a shift in his schedule made April 28 the best opportunity. The only problem is that we already had Gabrielle Zevin booked, and as a national tour, the date wasn't flexible. I just couldn't let this go, and suggested Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum. The museum was excited to be part of this--we had a very nice event for The Art Forger at their sister museum, The Charles Allis. And when we asked his people, it turns out that Corrigan had been taken by Villa Terrace on his last trip to town and had photographed it. Destiny, right?

The book is about how Corrigan purchased an 18th century chateau and restored it to its former glory.  Corrigan tells all to David Keeps in this Los Angeles Times column. Hope you'll join us for this lovely event.

Boswell Sunday Bestseller Post, for the Week Ending April 19, 2014.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin (event 4/28)
2. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
3. Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler
4. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Frog Music, by Emma Donoghue

See below for the Journal Sentinel review of Gabrielle Zevin. My sister Merrill talked to me this morning and went on about how much she liked The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.  It's also nice to see Nickolas Butler and Sue Monk Kidd, former visitors, continuing to have legs. I don't think we'll see Donna Tartt in the near future, but there is a small chance that Emma Donoghue might visit Boswell for the paperback tour of Frog Music. I'm in the midst of making fall proposals, and her name came up. We'll certainly let you know.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Capital in the Twenty First Century, by Thomas Piketty
2. Jesus, by James Martin
3. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book, by Diane Muldrow
4. Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis
5. How Jesus Became God, by Bart D. Ehrman

We got our shipment of Capital in the Twenty First Century and promptly sold through them all. The New York Times features French economist Thomas Piketty on the front page of their Sunday business section, where he notes that income equality is likely to worsen over time.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer (event 4/24)
2. Trace, by Eric Pankey
3. Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
4. Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline
5. Saving Kandinsky, by Mary Basson (event 5/9)

We're hoping for a good showing at our event for Meg Wolitzer this coming Thursday. People are really connecting to The Interestings and we have a good number of book clubs with the book on their calendar. I'm currently reading it for our book club, which has moved from May 5 (due to Keillor) to April 24, at 6 pm, before our featured author speaks.

You may have noticed a pop in sales for Dark Eden, by Chris Beckett. This novel is an adult dystopian about a group of people called The Family who live in Eden, a group of people who must stay in the safety of The Forest and not cross into The Snowy Dark. They have to wait there until The Travelers come back for them. So of course John Redlantern breaks all the rules and you can only imagine what happens. Hey, I think I got the plot right. The book won the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction novel of the year.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Wrigley Field, revised edition, by Stuart Shea
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo
3. My Boyfriend Barfed in my Handbag, by Jolie Kerr
4. The Distance Between Us, by Reyna Grande
5. On Looking, by Alexandra Horowitz

After however how long (two years?), Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers hits the paperback rack. What with most publishers doing their old paperbacks, the rule of thumb about a year spread between hard and soft no longer applies. In the old days, if a book was working, the hardcover publisher couldn't delay a paperback if they sold the rights, or rather, it was very, very hard to do so. Now there's really only one thing that forces the paperback and that is the film release. That's definitely the reason for The Fault in Our Stars and Gone Girl paperbacks, even though they are both on our bestseller list for hardcover, and that's why Unbroken will likely hit paperback this fall. 

Books for Kids:
1. The Scraps Book, by Lois Ehlert
2. The 26-Story Treehouse, by Andy Griffiths
3. The 13-Story Treehouse, by Andy Griffiths
4. Lots of Spots, by Lois Ehlert
5. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Guess who we hosted this week? If you guessed John Green, you are not only wrong, but you are dreaming. Griffiths is in the midst of a five-week tour around the United States, to hook kids on his crazy brand of humor that has become an Australian phenomenon (and yes, we chatted about our favorite Australian writers Hannah Kent (who visited last fall) and Graeme Simsion (who is coming for the paperback of The Rosie Project on June 18).

On Saturday, my niece and nephew and 80-odd other fans came to see Lois Ehlert for her new book, The Scraps Book. This is our third event with Ehlert (four if you include one at MPL) and it was more than twice the attendance we've had before. Both of us wondered whether the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter was a good time for an event. It turned out it was.

In the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, which he calls "a big wet kiss to readers and bookstore people." I'm not going to go on too much about the review here, since I just yapped on about the book on Friday, but if you need more incentive to pick up the book, Higgins offers even more reasons why the book is worth reading, including highlighting many of the vibrant secondary characters who populate the story. Don't forget, our event is April 28, and we'll have a little something extra--a little talk, a little nosh, a little toast--to celebrate our fifth anniversary.

Plus Carole E. Barrowman's monthly mystery roundup:
The Intern's Handbook by Shane Kuhn is a "twisty and twisted comedic thriller" about a killer intern (this temp agency hires younguns to off corporate honchos who have it coming) relating his cases as he tells of his last case before his mandatory retirement at 25. "Imagine Dexter working in The Office."

The Long Shadow, by Liza Marklund is Barrowman's return to Nordic Noir after reading too much "gratuitously and graphically mtilated women" Here, Annika Bengtzon investigates the murder of Swedish hockey star and his family on the Southern coast of Spain.

Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well, by Nancy Atherton is the latest adventure of "a Miss Marplish spirit who communicates with her niece, Lori, to solve the peculiar and the puzzling." The newest concerns the death of the village recluse, and the unintended consequences of a wishing well being found on the estate. This one has "an especially witty and wonderful Agatha Christie vibe."

The Cold Nowhere, by Brian Freeman is the latest "superb psychological thriller" featuring Jonathan Stride, this one death on a giant ore boat and "a homeless teenager seeking refuge with Stride." Freeman is visiting Mystery One on Tuesday, April 22, at 5 pm, and Boswell at 7, and then on Wednesday at Books and Company, also at 7 pm.

Blood Always Tells, by Hillary Davidson, is "a striking departure from her series with travel journalist Lily Moore. This one tells of a woman trying to get even with her two-timing boyfriend who winds up in a blackmail scheme which leads to a kidnapping. Barrowman says the plot is "engrossing."

And also Mike Fischer reviews In the Light of What We Know, by Zia Hander Rahman. He notes that even though the book can be summarized as a "classic bildungsroman" moving from Bangladesh to Great Britain to the United States and then to Asia, "there's nothing simple about this dense, sprawling and thrilling ambitious debut novel, which relentlessly calls into question how much we should trust paragraphs like the one I've just written--or more generally, the stories within which we live an d through which we lull ourselves to sleep."

Collette Bancroft of The Tampa Bay Times reviews On Reading the Grapes of Wrath, by Susan Shillinglaw, on the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath, which also has an anniversary edition. She writes "Longtime Steinbeck fans and first-time readers alike will find much to enrich their understanding of The Grapes of Wrath in Shillinglaw's book.

Saturday Gift Post--Daniel and Jen Discuss Mother's Day Cards.

This week we realized that we used the 48 pocket spinner for our graduation and the 24-pocket one for Mother's Day, only to realize that most graduation celebrations are taking place after Mother's Day. We had plenty of cards for both, so Anne switched it up, and now just about all our Mother's Day cards are on display. I think we're at the point where we're not going to have two cards left on the Saturday before the holiday. We'll see.

Jen and I were sorting through cards and we realized that we had a lot to say about the selection. We each picked out several that we could chat about.

Daniel: First off are these two peacocks. What do you think is up with that?

Jen: Don't you think peacocks are a symbol of Hera, the Greek goddess? She represents women, marriage, and birth, which seems mother-y to me.

Daniel: Oh!

Jen: I also like the colors in these cards. They are not all pinkish.

Daniel: These cards are kind of domestic, but they aren't too stereotypical. I really love the teacup card, partly because I like tea and these seem like such authentic illustrations. You can see the personality behind the person who would have each cup.

Jen: I agree. Doesn't Mom really need to relax and have a cup of tea (sometimes from Long Island)? I like the imagery of the card on the left because it has a real vintage art feel. I also like the colors.

Daniel: Many of us love the Ghost Academy cards (below left) because their aesthetic are at once funky and sentimental. Plus the block printing technique is unique.

Jen: I'm a sucker for book art, which is why I like the one on the right, even though it is pink.

Daniel: It's the card I gave my mother. How could I not?

Jen: The card on the left below is the one I gave my mom, mostly because I can be an ass. Ha ha!

Daniel: Yes, I thought that it had a good combination of graphic pop and authentic sentiment. The one on the right reminded me of myself at a young age. There's a story of me crying all the way home from Manhattan on the subway. I should send several cards to my mother just to make up for that.

Jen: Moms should do more boxing. I may be an ass sometimes (see above), but my mom kicks ass (below).

Daniel: I love my mom but it's hard to imagine her fighting. Her reflexes have always been a bit slow, and moreso now that she's 90.

Jen: Doesn't matter. Mom's are always in your corner fighting, just sometimes it's not literal. Regarding the card on the right, we've all had those moments where we realize we sound like our Moms.

Daniel: You could definitely give this card with Kelly Corrigan's new book, Glitter and Glue.

Daniel: We have 38 more pockets of Mother's Day cards on display, plus about five more to come out as these sell. If you come on May 10, not so much.

Jen: That's all, folks!

On Gabrielle Zevin's "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry," Bookseller (and Sales Rep) Love, Five Years of Boswell, and a Toast on April 28.

Today is day 1842 of Boswell being in business.

It's not unusual to have early buzz from booksellers about a book from Algonquin; this is the publisher of Water for Elephants, A Reliable Wife, and The Art Forger, after all. That said, 2013 was a quiet year. The lead titles for the spring and fall books were more well-known authors, Jill McCorkle and Lee Smith, and even though McCorkle had the #1 Indie Next Pick, tied with the identically titled Kate Atkinson, neither book successfully got to that "everybody's reading it" stage of handselling, at least at our store.

So it's late 2013 and that means spring 2014 is coming, and in the case of Algonquin, this meant that the buzz was building on some book or other, with advance manuscripts (probably paper and electronic both) making the rounds. I'm not great about advance-advance reading, so I don't always make said first round, but lo and behold, by the time I do get an advance copy, it's accompanied by something like thirty recommendations from booksellers for The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

Alas, this blew me away the first time I saw such a thing, but after seeing it a bit, my emotional reaction was, once again, that I am not on that list because I'm reading a book for an event that is next week. Darn that towering pile and my limited reading abilities! That alone would have gotten me to read the book.

But then I got another note from Craig Poplears, the man who makes this stuff happen. He had done an advance mailing of the book to sales reps. Really? And still I didn't get anything? Is my early reading reputation that bad?

Now sales reps are really busy, and almost all of them spend their reading time pouring through their own lists. I find that many of the best sales reps read outside their lists as well. They are often more aware of what works and what doesn't. And some of them are just amazing readers. So it turns out that two of the responders were either current or former sales reps of mine, both of whom I liked, but more than that, both of whom had taste that not only resonated with me, but also with our customer base.

So I read letter number one about The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (called The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry in the UK, which often feels the American title is quite right, though honestly, what's the difference?) from my old friend Johanna Hynes. I've gotten permission to reprint it here.

"Two weeks ago I was walking out the door to sales conference, when my mailman put a package in my hand. I was late and so just shoved it in my bag and made my way to the airport. It wasn’t until we were ten thousand feet in the air that I looked carefully at it and realized it was the package I was desperately waiting for from you.

"I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say I will remember reading this book for the rest of my life. I read it every moment I could spare during a busy week of sales conference- waking up early to do so, and crawling into bed after a long day of listening & schmoozing to spend just a bit more time with AJ. When I got to the end, I wept and wept and wept, and the only thing I could think to do to fill the ache in my heart was to start the book over again. So I did. And when the end came around again, I closed the book, went for a walk, then came back and began it yet again.

"There is the old cliché that books find you at the right time. Having recently switched publishing houses, and having the great fortune to work this summer at Carmichael’s Bookstore, I fell in love anew with the publishing industry. With connecting people to books that will change them forever- both as a handseller on the bookstore floor, and as a publishing rep making sure stores have those gems on their shelves. I have not read a book before that illuminates all the glorious pieces of bookselling so vividly, and with such precision.

"I hope you will forgive my belated thank you. I wanted to begin to find the words for how deeply this novel has moved me. As you know I originally wanted to read it because of its connection to the man in publishing I most adored and revered, which it so lovingly pays homage to. But beyond that personal connection, I found it is a book to read and reread to be reminded of why so many of us have given our lives over to the pursuit of literature.

"Please let me know of anything I might do in my small capacity to help evangelize for this novel. I am committed to making sure this book finds its way into the hearts of thousands of book lovers like me.

"And so, thank you. The galley you sent was a gift beyond measure."

So Johanna has always been one of my favorite people. We are sort of bonded by several things--our love of books, our work commitment, and perhaps a tendency to gossip a bit. Its a strange bond--we were meeting together the day of the World Trade Center bombings. We listened to the news, we cried, but in the end, I wound up continuing to buy books for Schwartz as news came in about the New York tragedy. 

We shared a lot of books together, and Johanna is one of those folks who read lots both in and out of her bag. She wound up being one of the early readers to bond with me over Chris Cleave's Litle Bee. I will never forget the message I received on my answering machine after she read the book. But we also bonded over that person that A.J. Fikry sort of pays homage to, our late sales rep, as beloved a figure as you could possibly be in Midwest book circles.

Mark is sort of the sales rep who has disappeared at the beginning of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, with the new rep taking his place. Always knowing what book to recommend, he also had the ability to enchant the most cantankerous buyer. He was every bookseller's buddy, wowing the staff at our rep nights, and getting us all behind titles. I remember when he sold me Alan Bennett's An Uncommon Reader. We just kept chatting about it until we came to the same conclusion--not only are we going to sell a ton of The Uncommon Reader, but we're going to make a lot of people very happy when they read it. And it turns out that was a case--we wound up selling well over 500 copies, and to this day, one of the book clubs who registers at Boswell has the name "The Uncommon Readers."

And why do I find this so funny? Because when Dave Mallmann, my other longtime colleague turned sales rep, read the book, this was completely his instinct. This is what its like when a buyer comes across something he just knows is going to work, when everything comes together, like when Johanna sold us Nicole Krauss's A History of Love many years ago or when Dave said to me, you must, must, must, must read Beautiful Ruins. Here's what he wrote about Zevin's novel.

"Well, this morning (just a few minutes ago, actually) I finished it. What can I say? As a bookseller for 18 years and a Sales Rep for just over 18 weeks, I found The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry absolutely irresistible. All of the characters were perfectly drawn, the writing style was effortlessly charming, all of the story elements--the various relationships, the mystery element, the constant references to literature old and new, the ending--came together so flawlessly and worked so well, I was astonished. It's not often that you read a book in December and say, "that is one of the best books I read all year," but that is certainly the case here for me. As a bookseller, I would be thinking about how to place this book. Certainly in multiple locations: in the section (faced out, of course), on a prominent New Release Table, at the front counter, and almost certainly on multiple booksellers' [Insert Name Here] Recommends shelves. As a rep, the first question I would ask is: what is the carton quantity? Because that's how I'd sell this book in to bookstores: by the carton."

I don't want this to become an homage to Mark Gates post, mostly because I just don't think I could do him justice. For one thing, I think he already go one when Dean Bakopoulos published My American Unhappiness, with its character Mack Fences. Based on the lives Mark touched, there will eventually be more than two characters in novels inspired by Mark Gates, if there aren't already. The connection Mark made with booksellers is the connection that Island Books in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry makes with customers. And that's probably why booksellers like the book so much.

So I read the Gabrielle Zevin's novel. And I'm not going to lie--this is a sentimental story. Very sentimental. But you know what? When it comes to the places we love and our best memories, a little sentiment is ok. Emotion is the connector; it's the emotion that gets us through the hard stuff, right? It often depends on where your head is at the time, what we're being sentimental about, and how the sentiment is drawn. I read this book and thought, not everyone's going to love this book, and I know exactly the kind of critic that's going to not like it. And I also know the kind of person who's going to love it.

Sentimental or not, life can be like this, if not at the time, it can certainly seem that way in retrospect. After all, it's just about ten years ago that my old mentor David Schwartz died, and can it be possible that we got news of his death while several of us booksellers were driving home from the Book Expo America convention where Schwartz was honored as PW bookstore of the year? Talk about highs and lows. And then I think of Beverly Segel. Oh, how Bev would have loved this book!

I send in my quote, and I turn around, and the April Indie Next List comes out and no surprise, the book is #1 for the month. And there my quote is. And the first thing is, hey, I wrote the Indie Next quote for the last Gabrielle Zevin novel, The Hole We're In. People are going to think we're friends, or that I run the Gabrielle Zevin fan club. I wrote to Mark at the American Booksellers Association, and told him this coincidence, and that maybe he should change me out. And he wrote back, and said that he looks for the quote that best personifies the book, and apparently if I really love Zevin's next book, I might still be in the running for the bookseller quote.

Oh, here's what I wrote: "Fikry is a bookseller with a small shop in a sleepy island resort town off the coast of Massachusetts. He’s a bit cantankerous, but with good reason: his wife, the ‘people person’ of the relationship, has recently died and his prized possession, a rare copy of Tamerlane, has gone missing. Despite those losses, there’s one strange addition, a baby girl left on his doorstep with an explicit request for Fikry to take her in. Zevin’s novel offers the reality of both death and rebirth, held together by the spirit of the bookstore. It’s a romantic comedy, a spiritual journey, and if you include the chapter openings, a collection of short story criticisms as well. In short, it’s a celebration of books and the people who read them, write them, and sell them.”

I've yet to have a baby on my doorstep, but now, as we've turned five, I have continued to think about my own bookstore and the function it serves in the community. Needless to say, I am continuously worried, but at Gabrielle Zevin's event for The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (that's the Canadian edition, at right above) on Monday, April 28, I'm going to stop worrying for a second and just celebrate our anniversary.

First I'm going to go to the reception at Villa Terrace for our other event for Timothy Corrigan (we couldn't say no when the event was moved to that date from the 30th) for An Invitation to Chateau Du Grand-Luce: Decorating a Great French Country House ($5 admission to Villa Terrace, event starts at 7 as well, details on our Facebook page) and then I'm going to toast again at Boswell. It might be a long toast--I'm going to say a few words about the state of the store before we start, but I promise there will be toasting accoutrements.

 But if you aren't able to come to either event, and you are a supporter of Boswell, I wanted to thank you again. As I say at the end of each author event, we wouldn't have a bookstore without you, and I mean it. On to day 1843.

New Displays at Boswell Plus More on World Book Night.

1. Among the many things I haven't done in a while is update our film table. It turns out that winter is finally over, the awards have been handed out for 2013 films, and it's time to seriously talk 2014. Among the upcoming films I am most interested in hearing more about is the adaptation of Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You, or should I say it's the film coming out where I actually read the book! I have actually seen two moves this year in the theater, which is more than 2012 and 2013 put together. You should all know that The Grand Budapest Hotel is inspired by the work of Stefan Zweig (Is it on our film table? It is not!). I also saw The Lunchbox, which seems, more than anything, to be inspired by a Harvard Business School study on the dubwallahs.

2. What comes first, graduation or Mother's Day? Well, this year I mixed it up in my head and put up the graduation day display first, mostly because we had piles of those books in overstock, whereas I think Jason buys less mom-specific titles. If a woman writes a book and it comes out in April, it often finds its way onto the table. Hey, I don't come up with that practice--I see it everywhere. It's better than a table about cooking and cleaning, right? And regarding those weird mom-specific but completely inappropriately themed titles, it turns out we don't have stock on Sudoku for Mothers this year. Most of our signs are not date specific, but it gives me pleasure to come up with something new. This year's sign features animal babies and their parents.

3. Jason reminded me that he needed a Game of Thrones display for the season, as our sales do pop when during the broadcast period. Everyone asked where the plush dragons were this year, but alas, I hadn't brought them in again. Fortunately, I was preparing an order from another vendor and the had in stock the dragon from Room on the Broom, the picture book from Julia Donaldson. Who knows? Maybe we'll bring in the witch for our event with Deborah Harkness in August (yes, she's coming) Among the new releases inspired by the book/cable series, one with a particular amount of enthusiasm among our staff is the Game of Thrones: A Pop  Up Guide to Westeros.

4. Finally, Sharon noted that it might make more sense to do a display of World Book Night titles rather than running back into storage every time a giver came in to pick up their books. Our sign for this is a little cryptic, but you should be able to figure it out. Here are the 2014 selections for the United States.

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
After the Funeral by Agatha Christie
The Ruins of Gorlan: The Ranger's Apprentice, Book 1 by John Flanagan

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (regular and large-print editions) by Jamie Ford
The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
Pontoon by Garrison Keillor
Same Difference by Derek Kirk Kim
Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
Miss Darcy Falls in Love by Sharon Lathan
Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
The Raven’s Warrior by Vincent Pratchett
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
When I was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago (English or Spanish editions)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette (regular and large-print editions) by Maria Semple
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
100 Best-Loved Poems edited by Philip Smith

If you missed out on this program, try again next year. Mark your calendar to start looking for the program to take proposals in November. You should also know that we have several boxes of extra books to give out. If you have a good proposal, email Sharon at Boswell

What the Book Club Thought of "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena."

Even before the book was released, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena had a lot of buzz. It was talked up by John, our sales rep, as one of the first breakout titles of Crown’s new literary imprint, Hogarth. The imprint had already had one hit in Herman Koch’s The Dinner, but this was another animal entirely.

The story is set in Chechnya across two wars, from 1994 to 2004. Sonja, an ethnic Russian, tries to maintain order at the hospital, but with no other doctors and one nurse left, the best they can do is treat the wounded and be a safe haven for women to give birth. Arriving there is Akhmed, an ethnic Chechnyen, who claims to have medical experience, but not much. He offers to help, as long as Sonja will provide safe haven to Havaa, the daughter of his friend Dokka, who’s been taken by the feds, and Akhmed knows Havaa is next.

Sonja’s sister Natasha has disappeared, and she really has no clue what happened. This happens once before, when Sonja was doing medical training in London, and things didn’t go well. And Akhmed? Well his village is pretty much decimated, due to the war and not helped by the fact that his other friend, well former friend, Ramzan, has become an informant for the feds, turning in folks for sympathizing with the rebels.

Ramzan lives with his father Khassan, a former academic, who is horrified by Ramzan’s actions but really has no other alternatives. And while it would be best for Akhmed to flee, his sick wife keeps him tied to the village.

So the setup will remind you of several other books. Like The Tiger’s Wife, the book is set in a war-torn country in Eastern Europe, with a doctor-like hero. Tea Obreht’s book is more post-war, and though you see the ravages of war, there’s a lot more brutality in Marra’s novel and while there’s the same sense of fanciful imagery, Obreht’s is more magical realism while Marra’s is more grounded in reality. Another book we read in the group that is drawing comparisons is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun.

Another book this reminded me of was Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son.* Both capture a place, in Johnson’s case North Korea, that I didn’t much understand, and used the novel’s intimacy to understand what’s happened in that part of the world. They also both exude paranoia. S. noted that the story had parallels to David Gillham’s City of Women, which she was currently reading for another book club. I was also reminded a bit of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, with its four characters holed up at the end of a war.

While A Constellation of Vital Phenomena didn’t quite explode on contact the way we hoped, it’s had a very steady sale, and a number of yearend best-ofs and an assortment of awards have helped its momentum. It won the John Leonard first fiction prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the first Carla Coen literary prize (she was the longtime co-owner of Washington's Politics and Prose), and the Discover Great Writers award for fiction from Barnes and Noble. Whatever it takes!

It didn’t seem to matter that A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was a difficult, brutal, intricately woven book. The in-store book club was unified in its praise. J1 thought it was gorgeous, with realistic characters, and it really showed the human face of war.

J2 also liked it, though she warned that it was hard to read when you’re tired. The first word that came to L.’s mind was depressing, but she didn’t quite mean that in a negative way. It was well-written, compassionate, with dark humor, but there’s no way around it; the story highlights that there’s a lot of evil in the world.

S. liked it a lot. It reminded her of Jonathan Safran Foer, and she wanted to offer a special thank you to the author for not killing the dogs. G. noted it was quite dark, but liked it enough to read much of it twice. She appreciated all the research that went into the story, and liked finding out what happened to the characters, which offered glimpses of hope amidst the rubble.

C. noted she doesn’t normally read war stories but this was different as it followed the civilians, who are usually marginalized in such a story, but are often the big victims. N. probably was the one naysayer in the group. She was also depressed by the story, and was left confused by some of the plot jumps.

I was grateful that the author or publisher saw fit to put the year on every chapter heading , as there is so much time jumping going on . I also liked the small mystery element of trying to piece together what happened to both the gun and the suitcase, which each play important roles in the plot .

Of course a conversation wouldn't be complete without a word on cover treatment. For the paperback, the publisher moved away from the stars in the trees look in the hardcover and went with the bright blue suitcase in an battle-scarred field. Most of the attendees liked the paperback cover just fine. I wonder if the book wouldn’t have sold better with an emotionally charged picture of Havaa on the cover. I’d so much rather not see that, but I wonder if it would have helped sales.

The Canadian edition echoed the suitcase motif of the American paperback. Europe seemed to go with crisscrossing black sticks on a white field, with a bird and bloodlike red dots. For the paperback, the UK replaced the bird with what appears to be Havaa. The Swedish edition seems to be ebook only.

We spent a lot of time talking about Sonja and Natasha, and the family dynamics that seemed to play out between them. I wondered to the group whether the white slavery subplot was perhaps one too many horrors inflicted on the reader for one book. Their answer was fairly unanimous—it’s a part of war and should be there. Even escape is often no escape.

There is so much to talk about in this book! There are hard choices everywhere and fascinating friend and village dynamics. Life in an occupied country, life during wartime, confronting torture—there’s a lot to take in. Several of us noted the old testament parallels running through the story, most notably drawing from Abraham and Isaac, but also Cain and Abel, Leah and Rachel, and even Moses.

Is this book for everyone? No, of course not. For book clubs that are serious about discussion, however, and aren’t afraid to travel to dark places, but also need that emotional connection to help them handle the story, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is perfect.

Charles McGrath profiles Marra in The New York Times. Marra writes about his relationship with Chechnya in The Wall Street Journal.

Alas, our next book club discussion, for Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, was originally set for May 5, but when the publisher offered a visit from Garrison Keillor, how could we say no? Instead we moved our discussion to Thursday, April 24, at 6 pm, just before Wolitzer’s appearance at 7. We move back to our regular slot with Bill Cheng’s Southern Cross the Dog, which we will discuss on Monday, June 2, 7 pm.

*It turns out Anthony Marra was a student of Adam Johnson.