Boswell and Books

Another Day, Another Display--Putting Up the Ira Glass Display, Moving Philip K. Dick, Adding More to the Flames of Zombie Insurrection.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:33:00 +0000

So Ira Glass is at the Pabst on February 4, as per an earlier email, and we're selling books there for the "Reinventing Radio" program. Now I should say up front that there is no autographing, though I guess if you run into him at a bar afterwards, I'm not telling you he won't sign, as he seems like a good guy.

We agreed to sell various "This American Life" authors' books at the event, and the promoters asked if we would help get the word out. One of their requests was for in-store display featuring various contributors, and since they are also some of our favorite authors, how could we say no?

Buy your tickets here.

***

One of the weirdest display spaces we have are the shelves of our lecturn. It doesn't sell books that well, but it does turn heads. We're closing out the run of The Duel series from Melville House. In addition to a stray copy sold here and there, we did find a customer for one complete set.

Now our Philip K. Dick display celebrating the release of The Exegeis of Philip K. Dick has converted backlist only and moved to the lectern and the end table display we previously had of Dick's new title and backlist is now a recurring zombie display. I got Jason's hopes up by implying that Colson Whitehead's Zone One had a date set for a film adaptation, but if you read carefully, I noted "maybe."

An Expansion of a What Was One Point in a Multi-Pronged Blog Post--How to Enter Our Iron Cupcake Ticket Giveaway to Promote Karen Tack and Alan Richardson's New Book, Cupcakes, Cookies, and Pie, Oh My!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:58:00 +0000

So I'm looking at Christina's confirmation from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, regarding Karen Tack and Alan Richardson's visit to Milwaukee on Sunday, February 12, for the last Iron Cupcake at Discovery World. She notes that we will do marketing and in-store display for the book. Well we did, but once the event sold out, we felt uncomfortable promoting it. So we took the signs away. And folks had a little trouble understanding exactly what we were marketing.

The event is sold out.
There are no tickets at the door.

Yes, folks are trying to hunt down tickets on Craig's List.

What to do? Now a smart marketer would have set aside some tickets for a giveaway, but I haven't had an event sell out so early--that's Sandy's doing, not mine. So I went to Sandy and told her my dilemma, and because she is the smart marketer I long to be when I grow up, she had put aside some tix for this very thing.

We're giving away ten pairs of tickets and you can enter in one of two ways.

1) Through old-fashioned entry forms at Boswell

2) Via our Facebook contest page, where you enter with your favorite out-of-the-box cupcake flavor.

There are five winners from in-store entries and five from Facebook. And yes, we are weeding out duplicates.

Voila, a window promoting the contest is born. I'm so happy that I could cut off the snowflakes and replace them with dangling cupcake air fresheners. It saved me a lot of time, and it looks pretty silly.

Today I went to Milwaukee Cupcake Company again. I had another blood orange and a green tea. And then a chocolate peanut butter. All minis.

Our St. Robert School Book Fair Page is Up.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:40:00 +0000

We've had all sort of fun getting our web pages together for the St. Robert School book fair. We discussed doing this back in November, just before Carl, who was doing our website programming, left for his new job in the healthcare field.

I'm very impressed that St. Robert put their trust in us. We warned them this was our first book fair ever. But we also promised them that we would avoid including merchy stuff, such as licensed character early readers.

Amie watched me putzing around and seemingly doing all sorts of things I'd been putting off for months; she was pretty sure we weren't going to have everything ready, and secretly, I was not disagreeing.

With Stacie's help, I learned to make web pages, and we came up with a selection of titles for the school. We're offering three ways to purchase titles. You can either visit the website and place an order ahead of time. Or you can buy books at the open house this Sunday, using one of the school laptops. Or you can buy books in the store, where we will have most of the recommended books on display.. All count towards the book fair totals.

I still need to make some updates. Today it was decided that all books will be picked up at Boswell instead of being delivered to the school. And there are still some lists of teacher picks to be added.

I know this is a little different from typical book fairs, where the books are there to be purchased. I am calling this method "girl scout cookie" style. Buy now, deliver later. And coincidentally, we just agreed to allow the girl scout troop from Maryland Avenue Montessori School sell cookies at the store on a Saturday in March.

Visit the St. Robert book fair page. You don't to be a St. Robert family for your purchases to qualify. It's still a work in progress. My photo of the Boswell kids' book area is still not showing up on the published page. I guess a second career for me in drupal programming is apparently not imminent.

Six Interesting Things About Today--Four of Them Involving Books.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:39:00 +0000

1. We had a meeting at Discovery World about our upcoming Iron Cupcake event on February 12, in support of Karen Tack and Alan Richardson's wondrous new book, Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie, Oh My! Yes, these are the Hello Cupcake folks. You can order a signed copy from us.

This event is absolutely sold out. There are no extra tickets at all for sales. However, we are giving away tickets at Boswell. Drop by and fill out a form. We'll also have a Facebook giveaway contest going. We'll give away five pairs of tickets in store and five more on Facebook. Thanks to Sandy for helping make this work.

2. On our way back from the meeting, Stacie and I stopped at the Milwaukee Cupcake Company. I had a blood orange cupcake, which was super delicious. Halley and I have been debating for weeks about the merits of Milwaukee Cupcake vs. Honeypie/Comet. It's not a bad dilemma to have.

3. Our new cards from Rifle Paper came in. I had the order all put together when a customer asked if we had any packs of Valentine postcards for adults. Huh? And then it dawned on me that I had just seen some, so we ordered them in for the table. We'll see how it goes.

4. Perelman's Silence, by Pascal Mercier. Night Train to Lisbon was one of those books with great word of mouth. A lot of booksellers sold him to folks who like Carlos Ruiz Zafron. It's the story of a linguist (hooray for linguist protagonists) driven to desperate acts when he plagiarizes a colleague's work at a conference. Weekendavisen called Mercier an "excellent stylist" while Berlingske Tidende compares the book to Crime and Punishment. Yes, I get my kicks from quoting Danish newspapers.

5. Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, by John M. Barry. I'm sort of interested that this book plays off the themes of last week's history book by David Hackett Fischer (who looked at the diffrences between the cultures of the United States and New Zealand). In this book, Barry looks at how the rights of the individual versus that of the state, from the vantage point of Roger Williams, the scourge of Massachusetts, who went on to found Rhode Island.

6. The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey. This novel, set in 1920s Alaska, first came to Stacie and my attention when we had a drink with Robert Goolrick at the Pfister (I foget how he wound up there--it had nothing to do with an event at Boswell) and we asked him what he was reading. I don't remember what he said then, but here's what he said now:

"If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, The Snow Child would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment--a combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaska wilderness."

Plus I love the cover illustration by Alessandro Gottardo. I would totally buy his greeting cards. Sorry, that's the way I think nowadays.

Amie and Stacie are Back from Winter Insitute, Plus What's Going on This Week at Boswell?

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:48:00 +0000

I've spent the last 24 hours hearing about the very inspiring Winter Institute, held last week in New Orleans, from our two attendees.

Amie brought the store back a lovely gift, a fancy edition of The Works of Boswell, with gold edges and ribbon marker. It was published by Black's Readers Service, Roslyn, New York, most likely in the 1950s. I was just talking to a lawyer, who happened to grow up in that very town. We shared some memories of the duck pond and the Jolly Fisherman restaurant.

Stacie and Amie came back with lots of ideas too. I'm confident they will be better at putting at least some of them into practice than I generally am at this sort of thing.

And now, a preview of this week's events!

Tonight (Monday, January 23, 7 pm) is our long-awaited event with Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son. It's so rewarding to see this book already being cited as likely to be one of the best novels of 2012.

For a taste of tonight, listen to Johnson talk about his work on NPR's Weekend Edition. And if you don't generally read this blog, why not check out my older post on The Orphan Master's Son.

On Thursday, January 26, we're hosting the co-editors of Dispatches from the Classroom: Exercises for Creative Writers and Creative Teachers. Joseph Michael Rein, David Yost, and Chris Drew. These UWM graduate students explore issues of daily concern to creative writing instructors from many viewpoints and stands as a much-needed teaching resource for the field—by the field.

And then on Friday, January 27, it's time for Paul Wilkes, author of The Art of Confession. Since I already spoke on this book at length in another blog post, allow me to paraphrase and say that The Art of Confession draws on traditions from ancient Greece, psychoanalysis, Judaism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Islam to show readers how to incorporate a confessional practice into their daily lives.

In addition, you can say hi to Stacie at a restaurant offsite (private party, so if you weren't invited, you can't say hi unless you happen to run into her and well, maybe you should just say hi to her when she's at the store tomorrow), and Jason's going to interview Mr. Johnson for a magazine (exciting, huh?) And I've been furiously trying to enter titles for our first book fair. We're creating order pages on our website. I'm excited, but worried I won't get it done in time. Do I seem distracted? I am.

Oh, and all events are at 7 pm.

What's Selling at Boswell This Week? I'm Anxiously Awaiting a Breakout Paperback--Where are The Reliable Wives and Little Bees of Just a Few Years Ago.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
2. American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar
3. Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George
4. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James
5. The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson

Our reprint order came in for The Art of Fielding--hooray!

Our event with Adam Johnson for The Orphan Master's Son is tomorrow, January 23, 7 pm. Entertainment Weekly gave it an A and called it "vivid and chilling." This is the kind of event where you are going to kick yourself for not having gone. And you're really going to wish you had a signed first edtion.

Hardcover Nonfiction:

1. The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch

2. The Big Thirst, Charles Fishman

3. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson

4. Charles Dickens, by Claire Tomalin
5. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

We had a wonderful time with Finch (I may have mentioned that previously), but I also enjoyed my lunchtime talk with Charles Fishman, who was in town for a water conference and also for a luncheon with Tempo, the Milwaukee organization that promotes women in business.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Fates will Find Their Way, by Hannah Pittard
2. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford
3. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
4. A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
5. Swamplandia, by Karen Russell

Ms. Pittard noted to me that there is an homage to the hardcover jacket inside the paperback edition. And I noted that unlike many novels written by women, there are no body parts on the paperback jacket. "That's in my contract," Pittard replied. I'm not sure if she was kidding.

Note on paperback releases. That rash of paperback breakouts has slowed to a crawl without Borders, especially when you exclude the award-driven ones. Any suggestions on likely candidates?

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Big Thirst, by Charles Fishman
2. The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
3. Your True Home, by Thich Nhat Hanh
4. The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal
5. The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

I don't think The Big Thirst was a hard on sale (that means you can't sell it before a certain date), but thank you to Free Press for letting us sell the paperback at the event slightly before the book was schedule to arrive in soft cover.

Aside from that, no surprises on our list. Gretchen Rubin and Thich Nhat Hanh waltz along. Your True Home reminds me of The Power of Kindness--many an indie could be selling tons of this book by just featuring it in an impulse or prime display area.

Books for Kids:
1. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
2. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
3. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
4. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
5. I am a Bunny, by Ole Rissom/Richard Scarrey

I'm getting the wrap-up on how Winter Institute went for Stacie. John Green gave us Facebook advice! Well, not us personally--it was addressed to 500 booksellers.

Saturday Gift Post--New Arrivals, Including Puppets, Purses, and Kawaii Cards, Crawl In.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:03:00 +0000

I mentioned that on my trip to Atlanta, I was quite aware of empty spinners and displays, so on my return to Milwaukee, I was glad to see that several of my post-Christmas orders had showed up.

We picked up a new card line, Magnination, which is in the style of kawaii, or those Japanese-ish animorphic stuff drawings with Wilma Flintstone and Barney Rubble faces. By that, I mean dots for eyes, as opposed to the dot within the circle of Fred Flintstone. There are about a dozen designs altogether--it's letterpress with up to five color runs, so the cards ain't cheap at $4.95, but they are so gosh-darn charming that I'd easily argue their worth.

One of our toy vendors came in with some new product, and we all quickly took to these sock monkey purses. The zipper is on the mouth, no less. We also brought in the baby sock monkeys again, though this time, only the brown ones.

I don't know what I was thinking, weather-wise, but we also got in some very cute sock monkey umbrellas. I guess those are going out in March.

And finally, we picked up some new Folkmanis puppets. In addition to stocking up for Easter (they make pretty adorable bunnies), I brought in some extra of the new robins to decorate our spring is coming table, which ineveitably goes up in February.

One bookseller noted that she didn't think this piggy was particularly cute, but having just seen the Project Runway episode with Miss Piggy, I think all this porcine puppet needs is some designer duds.

Come to think of it, both the sock monkey and the piggy also have Barney Rubble eyes. Maybe Kim Carnes could sing about that.

Snowy Day Activities--Booking Events and Making Displays.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:38:00 +0000

Once again I flutter around to different activities without too many customers to get in the way. Most of the ones here live within five blocks of the store and just hang out and read. Eh, it makes the store look fuller.

I've been booking a number of spring events--some big, some small. When you book an event, you see it at its fullest potential. A couple of hours before, you see it in full panic mode. The results are somewhere in between.

Our event last night at Sugar Maple is a case in point. A decent turnout for Hannah Pittard (pictured using primitive phone technology, looking like an impressionist painting) and Patrick Somerville, authors of The Fates Will Find Their Way and the forthcoming This Bright River, respectively, but when you consider what great readers they both are, I'm a bit disappointed. I'm somewhat bemused that I still here folks wondering why there isn't a store in Bay View, but I can't seem to get too many of them to come out for a literary good time.

They were happy, but I want more. More, I tell you!

I love the Adrienne and Bruno's Sugar Maple space so much, it doesn't even bother me that I get a parking ticket at every event. Why? Because I have to get to the bar at about 6:40 for a 7 pm event and the two-hour meters are active until 9 pm. It's obvious that parking checkers patrol the lot until 8:59.

We'll try again, perhaps partnering with some Bay-View-based organization. Any suggestions?

It's been driving me crazy that we were behind on displays. I've come up with a few good ones, but it's a work in progress. Since we heard that Little, Brown is out of first editions of American Dervish, let's see if we can keep it going with a signed first edition display.

I'm still working on my two favorite display idea. One needs more books to come in and the other needs props.

I Should Have Split Yesterday's Blog Into Two Parts, and Since I'm Too Tired to Write Something Original, Here Are Our Top 20 Hardcover Fiction Titles of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:52:00 +0000

I just got home from our Sugar Maple event with Hannah Pittard and Patrick Somerville, only to find that the blog got away from me today. We wound up selling books at the University Club for a lunch with Charles Fishman, author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. I enjoyed the talk quite a bit, and one byproduct of this event is that we're going to try to sell the book off our new paperback table. Milwaukee has a keen interest in water--let's see how broad that interest is.

And just because one paragraph seems a little skimpy to me, here are our top 20 hardcover fiction titles of 2011.

1. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
2. The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett
4. Drawing Conclusions, by Donna Leon
5. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain
6. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
7. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James
8. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes
9. The Union Quilters, by Jennifer Chiaverini

10. Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks
11. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
12. The Katyn Order, by Doug Jacobson
13. American Boy, by Larry Watson
14. Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
15. The Wedding Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini
16. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
17. Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
18. When the Killing's Done, by T.C. Boyle
19. 11-22-63, by Stephen King
20. Ready Player One, by Ernie Cline

Twelve books were helped by events; eight were not.

Spirituality Author Paul Wilkes Notes That Confession is a Path to Renewal (Event is 1/27), But Daniel's Mantra is Guilt is a Force for Good. Turns Out to Not be That Different.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:19:00 +0000

Having read Paul Wilkes's new book, The Art of Confession: Renewing Yourself with the Practice of Honesty, I know that the last thing Mr. Wilkes would want would be for me to drop a C-bomb on you in order to stun you into attending our event on Friday, January 27 (7 pm).

I've thought about what would be an interesting way to call attention to Mr. Wilkes's appearance on the blog. The Art of Confession is a meditation on the role of confession in history, in society, and how it is a practice in every (just about) religion and spiritual tradition. I'm sure it goes back farther than the Code of Hammurabi, but at least since then, folks have gotten a list of best societal best practices, and been asked to follow them. As Wilkes notes, the desire to be the good is at the center of all great faiths.

Our society, however, has become rife with faux confession and false apology. Perhaps they help celebs dodge bad q scores, but do they lead to a better person? Not likely. It turns out that confession is just one of the steps to healing and renewal. But faux confessions just lead to repeating bad behavior. And it's not really a confession if you don't have the intention to change.

While The Art of Confession draws from a number of faiths, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism (as well as non-religious therapy), confession is probably most linked to Catholicism, and that is Wilkes's background. A Marquette graduate, Wilkes left behind a journalism career in New York to explore spirituality from his home base of Wilmington, North Carolina, where he has written many books, most notably Holding God in My Hands, In Due Seasons: A Catholic Life, and The Seven Secrets of Successful Catholics. Wilkes has a lot of books out there and some are tough to get. If you were hoping to buy a particular book by him at our event, it would be great if you let us know now, giving us a chance to make sure we had it.

There were two things that fascinated me in particular about The Art of Confession. One of them was Sister Karen Kirby, who saw her job as bookseller at Wellspring Bookstore (can't find the link) as a place where folks would go to deal with difficult subjects, and wind up starting the confession process by asking, "Do you have any books on...?" I'm just saying up front that this actually has happened to me over my twenty-plus years of bookselling, but I also want to note that I am probably not the right person for this. From now on, I'm giving out Sister Karen Kirby's phone number. Bartenders also work for this purpose.

The other thing that Wilkes reminded me of is one of my guiding mantras--guilt is a force for good! I've stopped myself from doing many things wrong by imagining how bad I'd feel afterwards. And sometimes I've even done something extra with the guilty feeling I'd have of not having done my best work.

So join us for an evening of renewal with Paul Wilkes on Friday, January 27. Do it to get a sense of renewal. Or maybe you knew Wilkes a long time ago and are just showing up out of guilt for letting your friendship lapse. I'm okay with that.

A Short Trip in Atlanta--We Not Only Visit Three Bookstores, but Also Three Sites of Atlanta Bookstore History.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:23:00 +0000

As folks know from the blog, I was recently in Atlanta for a gift show. We'll be able to judge the success of this buying trip once some of the orders come in (and even more so if they sell out), but that's not what this particular blog is about. It's about trying to visit what I would consider the most interesting parts of Atlanta in the shortest amount of time. Fortunately my former coworker Brian has lived in the city long enough and knows me well enough to point out some of his highlights.

I passed up The World of Coca Cola and the Margaret Mitchell house (the former because I didn't want to go through security and the latter because I still haven't read Gone with the Wind) for what I consider the most important part of Atlanta history--the legendary locations of Rich's and Davison's department stores.

Davison's was easy--Brian works in the building. Bought by Macy's in the 1920's, the store was called Davison-Paxon and then Davison's until the 1980s. I never understood why some Macy stores changed names very quickly (San Francisco, Kansas City) while others (Bamberger's in Newark, Lasalle's in Toledo) held onto their names for decades. The store closed in 2005 when the Macy's and Rich's stores were merged.

You can see why the Rich's store closed earlier, in 1991, despite being the stronger brand overall in the market. This part of downtown is not in as good a shape as Peachtree Street. That said, the building is beautiful and the store had one of the best book departments, led by Faith Brunson. In their day, department store book buyers were very active in the American Booksellers Association, almost always holding a seat on the board of directors. Here's an article from EW talking about how the Gone with the Wind sequel Scarlett was an Atlanta phenomenon.

We headed for Decatur, where there's is actually more than one bookstore, perhaps due to the popular Decatur Book Festival. It's a bustling inner suburb shopping district with strong pedestrian traffic, perhaps due to a well-placed Marta stop, which nonetheless gives the square a sort of speed bump.

The Blue Elephant Book Shop is a few blocks from the core, having moved to Decatur a few years ago from the Emory area. It's former location was once a branch of Chapter 11, a local Crown-ish phenomonenon of small, bestseller driven discount stores.

Blue Elephant is in a converted house, with several rooms a la King's English in Salt Lake City. I had a chat with both booksellers working that shift; after going back and forth on books we both liked, we settled on a local author as the best rec for me, Thomas Mullen's The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. It's said to be Chabon-esque. The author has several books out, including the newly released The Revisionists.

I really liked the collection of blue elephants!

Several blocks down the street was Little Shop of Stories, the legendary bookstore for kids that is well-known for their events, service, storytimes, and teen outreach. Doing some research, I read that this store also moved, but just across the square. They also had a decent-sized section of adult fiction and nonfiction; I've seen this at other children's bookstores, but this was probably a bigger selection than I've seen elsewhere. I didn't get to see it, but I hear they have a nice storytime/event space upstairs. They have three storytimes per week--very impressive. And what an event list! They just had John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars. I would have gone, but they were sold out.

Having finished the Nerds books, I decided to get the first volume of the Sisters Grimm series there. I'm looking forward to it.

I couldn't leave Decatur without visiting the two locations of Wordsmiths, the indie that opened in 2007 and closed in 2009, just before we opened, with not one but two interesting locations in its short life. The first was in a converted post office. It had a great parking lot but was a bit too off the square for foot traffic. The second was in a converted bank building, where the vault was for comic books and graphic novels. I'm sure two store openings in two years was tough on their cash flow. The first store is now Greene's a fudge/nut/toy store (yes, I brought back pecans for the Boswellians) and the second is sort of a convenience store.

Driving around the city, we headed through Midtown, where Outwrite Books is--hope I'll visit that store next time, as I had a friend who once worked there. Instead we went to Buckhead to visit another Atlanta bookstore ghost, the beloved location of Oxford Bookshop in the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center.

Oxford was the store Atlantans talked about the way someone from Denver discussed Tattered Cover or a Portlandian pondered Powells. The store opened in 1973 and the store quickly became an institution. However, it was one of the casualties of the big Barnes & Noble and Borders expansion in the mid 1990s. Like several other stores, the store tried to expand in response to the chains potentially cutting into their business, but found themselves unable to make up for lost revenue. If you'll remember, we did that at Schwartz but survived that round--the Mequon and Shorewood openings and Brookfield expansion were meant to solidify our position in the market for B&N's arrival.

So here's an article that remembers the great Oxford now that one of its rivals, Borders, has closed. We did wind up heading to Richards Variety, a houseware, toy, candy, and novelty shop in that shopping center with a pretty large book section. It's very, very well stocked, focusing on face-outs in quantity. It's sort of like Winkies, only without a Hallmark store.

Off to Little Five Points to visit A Capella Books, a store that was doing what seems to be Atlanta's favorite activity, moving. Their new location is in Inman Park. The store is a mix of new and used. It's a general-ish bookstore, but wears its heart on its sleeve with a small section devoted to Howard Zinn, plus a UFO/mysterious phenomena shelf. We'd probably do a bit better with that stuff if we curated it better.

I wound up buying the paperback edition of Open City by Teju Cole. I don't think I ever had a copy, but it's possible I'll go back to Milwaukee and find it at the bottom of a pile.

I had heard much about Little Five Points, with folks telling me it would probably be the neighborhood I found most interesting. I was sort of surpised at how many clothing stores there are, but Brian assured me that fashion is very, very important to an Atlantan.

So next we went to a part-clothing store, part everything else alternative store, the legendary Junkman's Daughter, a store I read about in the book Retail Superstars. It's kind of an indie Urban Outfitters, but the clothing is vintage instead of faux vintage. I thought it was a very interesting place but either they had an amazing holiday and are waiting for more product or they have to store some of their fixturing. Here's a website link. It was not working when I looked at it--Daughter, I know what that's like! I've now been to six stores on Whalin's list. Don't ask me why I haven't been to Abt Electronics, as I pass it periodically on the freeway and I could just get off and look.

What also could have been on the list of Retail Superstars was Your Dekalb Farmers Market. I asked Brian what he'd most miss about Atlanta if he moved away and this was his pick, with no hesitation. The market is sort of like Woodmans in that it is a bit warehousey and doesn't take credit cards, only debit. But it's a little like Sendiks in that their produce, meat, and fish is pretty amazing. And it's a little like Outpost in that they have a lot of organic products and make a lot of their own bakery. And it's a little like Pete's Fruit Market, only I don't know why; I've never been there.

We went on a Sunday evening--apologies for the blurry outside picture. It was very crowded. I had a lentil samosa from the cafeteria line. I thought to myself, there's so many interesting things here I could say to myself, "Only blue things today" and walk out with blue potatoes and blue corn chips and fresh blue crabs. I have never seen live blue crabs before--their appendages are blue. Really.

I still need to go to Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati.

We also went for a drink at Dante's Down the Hatch. This was a bar that was originallly located in Underground Atlanta during its first heyday, in the early 1970s. Apprarently the place was done in by Marta construction, relaxing of blue laws in Dekalb County, and oddly enough, a relaxation of the dress code that required bars that served alcohol to require jackets and ties. There's still a location in Buckhead that is apparently quite popular with proms. There's a boat and moat inside and its a jazz club and fondue restaurant. Need I say more? One author told me that she set a scene there because, well, how could you not? But now I can't remember the author or book and neither could the bartender. Please tell me if you remember!

And what's my favorite thing about Atlanta? No question, it's the hexagonal tiles that line the sidewalks of old neighborhoods like Cabbagetown and Candler Park. Originally acutal titles (see top of blog), the tradition has been continued with scored concrete (at left). Sometimes the lines are down by machine and look pretty authentic. Sometimes they are done by hand and are ridiculous. The old tiles are often popping up due to rampant tree root growth. It's apparently hard to jog on the sidewalks of some neighborhoods. But I couldn't get enough of them.

More from Brian on his blog, where he ponders architecture, Atlanta, urbanism, transportation, and lychee-flavored candy.

This Week We're Celebrating Sugar Maple Thursday: Join us for an Evening with the Delightful Hannah Pittard and Patrick Somerville.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:36:00 +0000

There's no question that we like mixing it up a bit in terms of author events, but if I may be lazy for a moment, allow me to admit that the easiest events to execute are at 2559 North Downer. In addition, they generally do double duty in that they bring folks who might not have otherwise visited into the shop where they might buy something else, or even better, come back.

But events only at the Boswell location? That would be boring. So we've tried a little of everything, with more new locations coming in 2012. For example, on Wednesday, March 14, we're doing our first event at County Clare, for an Irish literary thriller called Until the Next Time. More on that later.

This Thursday, January 19, we have our third event at Sugar Maple, one of our favorite outside venues. In 2010, we hosted Justin Cronin and Dan Chaon. In 2011, we had the Algonquin buddies for the free beer tour, David Anthony, Josh Wilker, and Pete Nelson. And now we're hosting Hannah Pittard, author of The Fates will Find Their Way, now in paperback, with Patrick Somerville, author of two story collections, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature and Trouble, plus two novels, The Cradle and the forthcoming This Bright River.

Here are how we make the decision on what events to hold at Sugar Maple:

--The authors should already know each other, or there should at least be some social glue that brings them together. So last time, that was Craig at Algonquin.

--The potential audience meshes well with the bar's audience. You could imagine either author hanging out at a bar discussing plot, structure, and Belgian brews.

--We're not under a huge amount of pressure to maximize sales. We sort of learned that after the first event. While everyone says that folks are more likely to buy something (anything) after a drink, I've done this enough to know that sell-through percentage is not as good as when the event is in the bookstore.

I really like getting the store into a different neighborhood too, especially one where we have a good number of loyal customers, but still have more potential to grow. For every Bay Viewer that zips over the Hoan to the East Side regularly, there's another that bemoans how far away it is. It should take you about ten minutes if you are coming from the vicinity of our store.

So for all the folks I know who tell me that haven't visited Boswell because they never leave Bay View, this is your opportunity to prove that you have literary affectations. You're not a literary lumpkin, are you?

You may recall me talking up Hannah Pittard's novel in hardcover. You may also recall me talking up Patrick Somerville's last novel. In fact, one might say I am huge fans of both. They are also both wonderful readers and speakers. And teachers too. I had dinner with a writer/customer last week who is a student of Somerville's at Northwestern who was pretty over the moon about his talents.

Somerville's latest, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, is a loosely-connected collection that, per Booklist, "unleashes the full force of his mischievous imagination." Set at the School of Surreal Thought and Design, it follows a character who has The Machine of Understanding Other People and can see into the minds of others, say, a couple squablling about the end of the world, which by the way, in this case, is not theoretical. Think Joe Meno, think Jim Shepard, think about my bookseller who liked it but didn't give me a quote. I could do beter following up on these things.

In summary, both authors are both wonderful and accessible, a rare combo. And that's why this is a great bar event. You will be hypnotized into buying both their books and you will not disappointed. Even after I say the word "avocado." And then I will be happy with attendance and book sales and we'll be able to host another event at Sugar Maple.

See you Thursday at 7 pm, and don't forget to eat at one of the great places around the KK triangle, as I call it. You've got Riviera Maya, Lulu, Cafe Centrale, and if you go south a bit, Hue. I love the pho and the bánh xeo (it's like a crepey omelette) and the kitchen sink rice and the bánh pátê chaud (pork and puff pastry appetizer) and, well, other things.

What's Selling This Week, January 8-14? Being That I am Tabulating This Remotely, There Were a Few Surprises for Me Too.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Greetings from Atlanta! It's good to know that we still sold a few books while I've been gone.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar
2. Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George
3. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James
4. The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson
5. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

In Believing the Lie, the new Thomas Lynley mystery from Elizabeth George, a wealthy businessman asks for a more thorough investigation of the mysterious death of his nephew, which has been ruled accidental. I don't think so!

Our rescheduled Ayad Akhtar event went very smoothly. Now I can start worrying about David Finch (Tuesday), Hannah Pittard/Patrick Somerville (Thursday, January 19), and Adam Johnson (January 23).

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Townie, by Andre Dubus III
2. Van Gogh, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
3. Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
4. The Obamas, by Jody Kantor
5. Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank

What's going on with that sales pop for Townie, being that the event with Andre Dubus III is not until February 17? This is for our in-store book discussion on Monday, February 6. Though the paperback will be out in time for folks who want to wait, we're discounting the hardcover 20% until then so that folks who want to can get an early start on the book.

The Obamas doesn't sound particularly salacious--just the case of a modern working couple who had to revert to a more old-fashioned marriage paradism as that is pretty much still required for a president. It will be interesting to see if when we get a female president, her husband (yes, I'm making many assumptions here) leaves his job.

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
2. Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes
3. Swamplandia, by Karen Russell
4. The Fallback Plan, by Leigh Stein
5. Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, by John Le Carre

Lauren Beukes's sales pop is also due to an upcoming book club discussion. The in-store science fiction group is meeting to discuss Zoo City on Monday, February 13, 7 pm. The novel is said to be an interesting take on the urban fantasy genre, set in a reimagined Johannesburg.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Bossypants, by Tina Fey
2. Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff
3. Gimbels Has It!, by Michael J. Lisicky
4. Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism, by Ralph Nader
5. Your True Home, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Nader's new book has been on and off our bestseller list since it came out late last year, but now that the gift sales are out of the way, it's ranking is a bit higher. It's sort of a progressive answer to the (are they more conservative or libertarian?) anti-big government books that periodically hit a nerve.

We're kind of surprised at the background color change for the paperback edition of Bossypants. I am all for yellow books, but this one seems a bit off. Just for the record, it is rather trendy of late. Here's a collection of yellow bestsellers in the house.

And now you can answer that question, "Is this book yellower than a duck or not quite as yellow?"

Books for Kids:
1. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
2. The Fault in our Stars, by John Green
3. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
4. I am a Bunny, by Ole Rissom/Richard Scarry
5. Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, by Mem Fox/Helen Oxenbury

The Fault in our Stars is about a cancer patient who falls in love at a support group. Booklist called it " Booklist called it his "best and most ambitious novel to date" and you may have heard that he signed every copy of the first printing, a big first printing.

Saturday Gift Post--A Day at the Atlanta Gift Show

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:30:00 +0000

One of the tricks of writing a blog post about a gift show is that I couldn't figure out whether it was considered ok to take pictures. At least one vendor we carry had a no-picture policy, but with the others, who knows?

In the end, I decided it was more important for me to carry my notebook and a pen and write down the vendors and items that interested me; that left no third hand free for a camera.

I'm feeling a bit lost after my first day at the show. There are a ton of vendors here, and needless to say, most aren't appropriate for the bookstore. However, I am sure there are gems in here and it's up to me to find them. The problems with bringing in vendors run the gamut, but these are the most frequent issues that prevent me from

--opening order too high

--item count too high (in other words, you need to buy 12 of something and we'd be lucky to sell 6)

--display issues. Where do you put this stuff where it seems like a natural part of the bookstore?

Today I'm looking at trends and trying to spot items that might work together. Tonight I'm hoping to review spring titles in our electronic catalogs and see if the book and gift trends converge anywhere. I will say this--remember our six-month display of French stuff? Well I had my choice of metal Eiffel Tower stands. I must have counted 20 models in various booths.

Our Top Paperback Fiction Titles for 2011, Compiled by Jason

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:40:00 +0000

I had no idea if we would take off, but the snow stopped by morning, making our odds better. After doing a bit of shoveling, I headed for the airport. Our plane took off right on time. Here's the view from my window in downtown Atlanta.

My, this isn't a particularly interesting blog post. So here are our top 25 fiction paperbacks* for 2011. The only things we excluded were orders that were totally from one bulk sale. If we had multiple bulk sales on the other hand...

1. A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
2. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
3. Imperfect Birds, by Anne Lamott
4. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
5. Tinkers, by Paul Harding
6. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
7. Room, by Emma Donoghue
8. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

9. The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer

10. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

11. The All of It, by Jeannette Haien
12. Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
13. Montana 1948, by Larry Watson
14. The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano
15. The Slap, by Christos Tsiolokas
16. Swamplandia, by Karen Russell
17. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford

18. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

19. The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman

20. Separate Kingdom, by Valerie Laken

21. The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson
22. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
23. The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake
24. Sarah's Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay
25. The Girl who Fell from the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow

Thanks, Jason! Now I have a few more interesting blog posts that nonetheless don't require a lot of thought.

*Yes, this includes mass markets. But there are no contemporary mass markets on our list.

The Snow Comes Down Steadily, We Buy Books for Our This American Offsite, An Email Newsletter Goes Out.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:28:00 +0000

Needless to say, I have spent every waking minute wondering if we did the right thing by moving Ayad Akhtar's event to Friday (January 13, that's tomorrow) for American Dervish. Amie came back from an appointment noting she was stuck on a freeway for an hour behind an accident. The first snow of the year is always pretty tough. Right now I'm feeling like I did the right thing as I wish the steady accumulation in our alley.

Today I spent the day working on all sorts of projects. We're selling some This American Life books at the Ira Glass evening at the Pabst Theater on February 4. There's not book signing or anything--it just seemed like an interesting thing to do. We also picked up several other talks around town, plus we're working on our first book fair. It's funny that Glass doesn't really have any books, just that New Kings of Nonfiction anthology. You'd think there'd be a lot of ideas floating in his head.

If you want to get tickets to his show, here's the link.

I'm planning to go to a gift show tomorrow of all things. Do you think my flight will take off? I'm not sure... With the Akhtar, I'm sort of hoping it is cancelled and I can reschedule for Saturday.

We did get another email newsletter out yesterday. One error. Much as we try to match day and date, occasionally something slips up. Our event at Sugar Maple on Thursday, January 19 with Patrick Somerville and Hannah Pittard had the wrong date listed once. We're hoping to get another newsletter out next Tuesday--meanwhile, everything is correct on our signs and blog and Facebook and website.

Want to read our email? Here it is.

We Can't Always Get Out of the Way of Storms, but Since in This Case We Could, Ayad Akhtar is now Appearing on Friday, January 13, 7 pm, at Boswell.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:36:00 +0000

One always takes a risk in Milwaukee with winter events. And that's not just true about Milwaukee--don't forget that the East Coast got clobbered with a giant storm this past October. Snow happens, and for the most part, we deal with it.

But Ayad Akhtar's evening at Boswell for American Dervish is not just any event. It's his hometown launch. While we know that the weather forecasters tend to emphasize the worst, it's evening rush hour that's expected to be the messiest, in terms of wind and visibility. And I don't want to be panicking about friends and family on the road.

The good news is that we're able to move this event to Friday, January 13, 7 pm, when the storm should be over. You can laugh along with me when it turns out we only get one inch.

Still can't make it? We can get a first edition copy signed for you.

Laugh Along with David Finch as He Chronicles The Journal of Best Practices at Boswell on Tuesday, January 17.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:51:00 +0000

I would love to say I discovered David Finch's humorous take on Asperger's in his original New York Times Magazine essay, "Somewhere Inside, a Path to Empathy," but I must admit I am a consistent but sometimes spotty reader of the Sunday paper. Instead it was the reading room at the Great Lakes booksellers fall trade show where I fell for his charms. That's why I am particularly excited that Finch will be speaking at Boswell on Tuesday, January 17, at 7 pm.

He was talking about his semi-professional (or was it semi-amateur) diagnosis of Asperger's by his wife, a speech therapist, after giving him a battery of questions. The entire room was laughing along with Finch's descriptions of his behavior, his coping mechanisms. We definitely weren't laughing at David, but with him, as he described his behaviors, his coping methods, his take on others and himself. He made his diagnosis real and understandable to everyone in the audience.

What we learn from his new memoir, The Journal of Best Practices, is that this journey to coping has involved a lot of learned behavior. One particularly intriguing strategy that Finch had taken was to assume characters, or as he notes, "versions of myself that are optimized for the social environment at hand. Conversations must be scripted, facial expressions rehearsed, personalities summoned."

Much of the story is about learning to be in a relationship with others, particularly Finch's wife Kristen. And there is a lot of learning going on. Getting the kids ready for school for example. Not that easy.

I thought this book was great and yes, wrote a rec for the Indie Next list for January*, but ever since I read a take on The Journal of Best Practices from Mel, one of our new booksellers, anything I write pales in comparison. So I think the best thing to do is link you over to her "Of Horses and High Speed" essay in her personal blog, Nefarious Fiddlesticks, and let you read it for yourself.

I can assure you that this event on Tuesday, January 17, 7 pm, is going to be both insightful and entertaining. Hope to see you there.

*Here's my write-up for the American Booksellers Asosociation Indie Next list. you can read about the rest of the January picks here:
The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch.
“After five years of a struggling marriage, Finch’s wife, Kris, made a breakthrough guess — her husband had Asperger syndrome. The Journal of Best Practices is David Finch’s well-documented attempt to go beyond his previous efforts at fitting in and to actually learn to do things like listen, empathize, and ‘go with the flow.’ Finch still doesn’t like flying in a plane or unsolicited wetness, but the results of his determination are not just meaningful to his family, but also an enlightening, endearing, and amusing chronicle for the rest of us.”

Escaping from New York, Ethiopia, Marriages, Truth, Life...a Book Club Discussion About Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:37:00 +0000

A young man works in a refugee settlement center. His job? To rewrite the stories of the wannabe immigrants so that they were more likely to be granted asylum.

His name is Jonas Woldemariam.

"Where are you from?," people would ask.

"Peoria," he would reply.

Mengestu's second novel, How to Read the Air (French edition pictured above, being as the author lives in France, hardcover to the left), is another twist in the traditional immigrant story. It's about a group of people who rewrite their present to make sense of their past.

Mengestu weaves three narratives, one of Jonas's courtship and later estrangement from his wife Angela. The second is of the journey of Yosef and Mariam, the parents of Jonas, but not from Ethiopia to the United States, but from Peoria to Nashville. And then there is the saga of Yoself's escape from Ethiopia through Sudan that Jonas tells his students at the school where he teaches.

But there are clues that all of these stories, just like the ones that Jonas embellishes for the asylum center, might not be true.

Our in-store lit group met to discuss How to Read the Air (UK edition below right), and had a polite but not always on-the-same-page discussion about storytelling, fiction, truth, and asylum centers. I started out with a few misleading truths of my own--that we would meet on January 2 (postponed) and that the book was at least partly about Ethiopia. It turned out that even Yosef's story begins on the border of the Sudan. Mengestu's point seems to be "don't make assumptions about me," but C. noted that even reviewers sometimes misled their readers about how much Addis you were really getting.

Reading a bit of Mengestu's own story, he grew up with fellow students upset that he didn't fit their mold. To whites, he was black. To other blacks, he didn't speak right, didn't look right, had the wrong kind of name. These are themes we've come across before, most notably in The Girl Who Fell from The Sky. We wondered how often this happens in real life, an actual confrontation of this sort, wherein G. noted that this happened to her a number of times in life. Why aren't you whatever?

Or to rephrase the assumption statement, "Don't put me in a box," as C2 noted. The box imagery seemed to be prevalent in the story, culminating in the storage box that Jonas claims Yosef was placed in for his immigrant voyage. I saw the story with a parallel action motif, of escape. Everyone in Mengestu's story is escaping from something--another country, marriage, expections, one's past, New York. A recurring joke that Jonas's wife Angela likes to tell involves all the ways her father left the family.

If there was any sort of consensus in the conversation about How to Read the Air (the American paperback at left), it seemed to be a dislike or at least a lack of understanding about Angela. She's an African American woman who has overcome a tough past to be a New York lawyer. She's at a second-rate firm, but she's got a game plan to get ahead, only Jonas isn't with the program. I sort of sympathized with her more than others--and felt that Jonas never really made the attempt to understand her. This is compared with Jonas's father Yosef, who despite physically abusing his wife, got some sort of sympathy from the story Jonas told to his class about his escape, and this sympathy passed on to our readers. I was surprised by this.

Storytelling accomplishes a lot. It passes on knowledge. It creates relationships. But one thing we don't always think about is that storytelling is a balm for the truth.

For example, I think the fiercest debate was whether Yosef's story was true, false, or true with embellishment. It's my thought that there are hints throughout the narrative that the story is false.

Others disagreed, but at least in this case, I'm the one telling the story.

***

Our next in-store lit discussion is Monday, February 6, 7 pm. We're talking about Andre Dubus III's memoir Townie. Speaking of father-and-son narratives, this is about Dubus's upbringing in a hardscrabble mill town with a single mom, estranged until young adulthood from his acclaimed short story writer father. Hope I got that correct--I no longer trust my descriptions.

Townie should be coming in paperback any minute, or if you'd like to buy the hardcover from us, we're keeping it priced at 20% off until the paperback arrives.

And then on Monday, March 5, we'll discuss Karen Russell's Swamplandia. You knew it had to happen...

Poet, Prose Stylist, and Perhaps Puppeteer Pops into Boswell This Wednesday, January 11.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:55:00 +0000

"I just enjoy this tute! Thanks for expressing so many great suggestions along with us almost all! I like your talent pertaining to materials. Our god Thank you you!"

It's so heartwarming to see how well my posts go over with readers, particularly ones linking comments to gold-buying and other get-rich quick websites. I can't imagine how all you folks will respond to today's blog, reminding folks of a week of another interesting event this week at Boswell.

I think we've covered Ayad Akhtar pretty well (Thursday, January 12, 7 pm, for those hiding under a rock), but we've got another fine author this week, Leigh Stein, whose first novel from Melville House, The Fallback Plan, will be featured this Wednesday, January 11, 7 pm.

Stein's novel covers the life after college territory of many a first novel (they are somtimes called slacker lit-we've got at least one more event this winter from an author whose novel veers this territory), but does so in a particularly exuberant and wry manner. Esther is home with a drama degree, not quite ready to give up on an acting career. A babysitting opportunity comes up (or rather, is thrust at her), and really, is there any choice in the matter?

Is Esther's lethargy really boredom or is it closer to depression? Is it a good idea to be hanging around with her old pal Pickle and his devastatingly handsome friend Jack? And could this new nanny-esque role be just the jolt Esther needs for a jumpstart into adulthood?

Now that I think about it, the nanny is even more of a modern icon that has been featured in many a Boswell event. Though we never hosted the authors of The Nanny Diaries, works from Lorrie Moore, Lori Tharps, and Mona Simpson have looked at the nanny, the nannied, and the nanny needer from just about every angle. I saw one advance reviewer compare Stein to Ms. Moore. Another, at Booklist, saw The Fallback Plan as a modern interpretation of Judy Blume's Are You There God, It's Me Margaret. Hey, Chuck Palahniuk just took a turn at that. Maybe we'll start moving the Blume young adult books again. We sell her middle-grade work more successfully.

And hey, here's a Gary Shteyngart quote: "Beautiful, funny, thrilling and true."

Here's the Journal Sentinel's event post. I mention this because Mr. Higgins let me know that the arts posts on Tap--reviews and interviews and such, do not count towards your article minimum for subscribing. They continue to be free! Thanks for clearing that up.

Did I mention that Stein is a triple threat? In addition to her fiction writing and blogging, Stein's first book of poetry will also come out later in 2012. It's called Dispatches from the Future and it's been compared to Ada Limón and Tao Lin. Stein has received an Amy award from the magazine Poets and Writers. Have us hold a copy for you when it comes out in June.

Stein's poetry possesses the same cheekiness as her fiction, only perhaps taken to another level. Here's a video from her 2010 blog, Poets and Puppets:

leigh stein from Leigh Stein on Vimeo.

So isn't it fair for me to call Stein a puppeteer? I've got video proof.

And finally, since I'm throwing in everything but the kitchen sink here, here's a list of the 33 books Stein read in 2011. See where you overlap. And perhaps see you this Wednesday, January 11, at Boswell.

And to close, perhaps we'll get a lovely comment such as this from one of our many readers, with a side business in selling prepaid phone cards: "Well this is good info for me. Thanks for sharing this!"

What Sold Last Week? Film Stuff, Plus a Few New Releases That Were Upcoming Events.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:56:00 +0000

Oops! Folks who got an email with the rank list had Readme several slots higher than it was supposed to be. When I was creating the list, I sorted the categories wrong and Readme wound up in nonfiction, leaving me to add it back in incorrectly. It actually should have been #7.

Am curious about folks who put Goodnight iPad in nonfiction when it's not by mistake due to problematic category sorting, which happens to us all the time. Do you think this book actually happened?

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James
2. American Dervish, by Ayad Akhtar
3. Goodnight iPad, by Ann Droyd
4. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
5. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

Alas, Journal Sentinel reivewer Mike Fischer didn't like American Dervish as much as Adam Langer in The New York Times did. I'm hoping to have a friendly debate with him at one point, but I will just say that if my customers, many of them as eruidite as book reviewers, had their way, many review-proof titles, from A Visit from the Goon Squad to The Art of Fielding to The Tiger's Wife would have gotten slammed somewhere. Interestingly enough, I haven't gotten anyone complaining to me about The Sense of an Ending yet. It's coming, don't worry.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. A Little History of Philosophy, by Nigel Warburton
2. The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt
3. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
4. The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch
5. Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank is also featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review today so based on our sales patterns, you should see Pity the Billionaire on next week's bestseller list as well. Regarding Nigel Warburton's late sales pop, he was helped along by one particularly enthusiastic customer buying late holiday gifts.

David Finch, author of The Journal of Best Practices, is coming to Boswell Tuesday, January 17. I just got another read on the book from Mel. I'm hoping to have a nice blog post about the book this week. Did you ever have a dream where you thought you wrote something but maybe you didn't?

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
3. Swamplandia, by Karen Russell
4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John Le Carre
5. The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson

Still a lot of filmy stuff on the lists. And so many editions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in our system, and that's excluding second hand copies. We had the previous edition from Scribner, the new Penguin edition, and the even-newer Penguin tie-in edition. As is our wont, we sell the non-tie-in cover better (pictured), but we wind up bringing in the tie-in just in case the publisher lets reprints go on the original. It happens!

Further down, Rosamund Lupton's Sister is selling pretty well off the front tables. We're up to 9 copies sold, which I was impressed with, until I saw that the hardcover, which came out last June (another speed up), sold 6 copies. I guess this seems like a good reason to speed things up--our sale after the initial pop was minimum, so I suspect what's really going on here is not a question of making sure readers are still aware of the title, but of earning back the advance faster. Needless to say, with the rise of ebook sales, which we don't even track when we sell the book, we're more out of the loop than ever while publishers have better than ever sales info.

In short, I'm happy to sell the 9, as long as at the cycle isn't speeded up so much that I'm no longer selling the 6. We'll see how it goes. Oh, and we also had a sales pop on Leigh Stein's The Fallback Plan (event is Wednesday, January 11) and Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (event for new story collection in February).

Paperback Nonfiction"
1. Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes
2. Bossypants, by Tina Fey
3. The Warmth of Other Suns, by Ingrid Wilkerson
4. The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal
5. The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin

Our #1 book was partly a bulk sale, but since it has some individual sales too and was brand new, we included it. This Science magazine contributor whose work has appeared in Best American Science Writing looks at diet theory from the last century, and comes down hard on the calories in, calories out model.

Books for Kids:
1. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
2. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
3. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
4. Mouse and Lion, by Rand and Nancy Burkert
5. The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg and Friends

When does that film come out again? March 23.

Saturday Gift Post--No New Gifts!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:53:00 +0000

January is the month when most new gift catalogs come out. While a few vendors have two catalogs per year, most of them only do one, with an occasional supplement in summer. Though several of our vendors have moved to web-only sales, we're still getting approximately one catalog a day from our regular vendors.

I've got a long way to go, and this time of year, you don't want to load up too much. I've got basics coming in right away, but several vendors have spaced out orders coming in February, March, and April. And just because I did let a few things run down too far this past December, I've got a few orders placed for next fall. It's all mapped out on a planner, to prevent me from going overboard.

So yes, this mini-plush wind-up penguin won't show up till October.

We are the Stories We Tell, North Korean Style (A Post About The Orphan Master's Son Event is 1/23).

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I told you we had several major events scheduled for January. In our Boswellian trip around the world, we touch down in North Korea with Adam Johnson. The book lands next Tuesday. Here we go!

Every book we read is implicitly about storytelling.

Sometimes the story is straightforward--a history, a chase, a great love affair. And though some stories do not make themselves apparent as well as others, it seems like the ones that do are also most appropriate in book form. Those that are more fractured, like dictionaries and used car guides, seem now better suited for other structures.

Sometimes the storytelling aspect of a book is more explicit. I was recently chatting with a customer about Mary Helen Stefaniak's recently-in-paperback novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, noting that the novel blends a traditional Southern storytelling novel with a traditional Middle Eastern one, sort of like The Help meets Tales of the Arabian Nights. And then there is Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which uses the structure of the stories to play on the plot, character and themes of the novel.

Cultural identity is all about storytelling too, and sometimes a novel reflects that. But note that in many countries, the story is about the country's leader, and in North Korea, that leader has woven quite the story. The problem for readers is that there are very few stories that make it out of that country and into our novels and memoirs. My former colleague Jane and I used to discuss this all the time when looking for book club picks; where is the story that sheds light on the North Korean experience, the way writers have mined Vietnam and China and Cuba and the Balkan nations? When you search North Korea on the Ingram (one of our wholesalers) database and select fiction, only 16 titles appear. One of them, Jia, written by Hyejin Kim, was in fact on one season of our book club selections. Nice going, Cleis Press!

But all this changed when I read The Orphan Master's Son, a tour-de-force novel set inside North Korea. Pak Jun Do is a low-level operative, charged with kidnapping Japanese and South Korean folks for intelligence tasks. But a chain of events leads to him impersonating Commander Ga, in charge of the prison mines and married to the beloved actress Sun Moon. Like many novels I love, the story is told from several perspectives--from Jun Do/Ga, from his interrogator, and from the official loudspeaker chronicling the Best North Korean story of the year.

But Adam Johnson plays with the storytelling narrative by subverting the idea of genre altogether. As Richard Powers notes in a conversation chronicled in the advance copy, Johnson collides "bildungsroman, prison narrative, sea story, romantic drama, escape thriller, comic picaresque, and heroic opera", not to mention social realist drama and a wee bit of satire.

Per Johnson, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or DPRK, for short), you are your story, or more interestingly, the story is you. If everyone is starving but the government says you live in a land of plenty, you are in the land of plenty. If the retired folks are respected and are sent off to a wonderful retirement resort where they sip drinks while lounging at the beach, that is the case, even if they were more likely shipped off to prison mines.

In a sense, they are all Sun Moon, actors and actresses living a part that calls for duty above all. If you are, say, the wife of the head of a farm collective and your husband is wonderful but not meeting the collective quota, what do you do if your husband is burned beyond recognition on a mission and when he returns he is an ogre and possibly not even the same person, but runs the collective better? In North Korea, it wouldn't even be an issue, but it might be the plot of a popular film, possibly written by Kim Jong Il himself.

The no-name interrogator, writing the stories of the doomed, and then administering the Autopilot (it was said to be more effective than lobotomies), is in some sense the most brutal and yet sympathetic of the characters. He cares for his blind, aging parents in a high rise without a working elevator (so that they don't escape). He's insistent on doing things this new-fangled way, as opposed to the old-fashioned torture/killing of the Pubyok. Despite having a decent job, he never knows when he'll be swept up to do some harvesting in the fields. (Yes, even the ice cream truck is a ruse to catch children for hard labor).

And his parents cower in the apartment, panicked about American attacks, listening to the official loudspeaker, which yes, pipes into the apartment. His parents always give every indication that they believe everything on the loudspeaker as the truth. Because when it comes to these swiftly-changing stories, trust becomes something truly rare. As in many regimes of this sort, anyone can turn on you: your neighbor, your friend, your student, your child, or yes, your parent. Someone who might say, "I denounce this citizen as an imperialist puppet who should be remanded to stand trial for crimes against the state." But then there is this memory of something once said by his father:

"See, my mouth said that, but my hand, my hand was holding yours. If your mother ever must say something like that to me, in order to protect the two of you, know that inside, she and I are holding hands. And if someday you must say something like that to me, I will know it's not really you. That's inside. Inside is where the son and the father will always be holding hands."

Oh, that left me a little shaken, and so did The Orphan Master's Son. What a novel! It's not anything you've read before but if you're a reader who's excited by innovation...Richard Powers or David Mitchell or William T. Vollman or...well anyone who is writing at the forefront of fiction, playing with character and structure and plot and language, but turns the whole, not into a mishmash, but a towering achievement. (Is that too over the top? Should I find some women writers to compare him to? I'll work on that.)

I'm so excited (did you notice?) to say that we are hosting Adam Johnson on Monday, January 23, 7 pm. Come to see a novelist who will likely get numerous accolades in 2012. Or just come to hear the story of someone who actually went to North Korea to do research. Either way, it should be an event you won't forget.

More on Ayad Akhtar from an Early Reader, A Note on Journal Sentinel Links, Stacie's Interview with Cedar Block Gallery's Brent Gohde on His Upcoming Show at the Turner Hall Ballroom on February 18.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:25:00 +0000

1. Here's a little more on Ayad Akhtar (event is now Friday, January 13, 7 pm). While I think this event is of interest to all kinds of people, I wanted to get a few reads from my Muslim customers. Little, Brown was gracious enough to send me an extra advance copy of American Dervish for this purpose. I asked our friend Bara if she might be interested in trying it. Here's what she thought:

"Eloquently written, American Dervish invites us into the life of a young boy, Hayat Shah, who is caught between two different worlds, but wants nothing more than to be happy. He recounts the events in his life as they relate to his Aunt Mina who has taken her young son and left Pakistan to stay with Hayat’s family. Struggling to find happiness at home, Mina introduces Hayat to the beauty of Islam and the power of the Quran, which stirs a sense of joy in his mother and infuriates his father, forever changing him. Other events lead him to the local Muslim community and its anti-Semitism.

"Ayad Akhtar brings to light a new Muslim-American perspective of growing up in 1980’s Wisconsin. In this post-9/11 world, so many misconceptions and different interpretations of Islam exist. Yet even within Islam and its many cultures, individuals chose their own interpretations, as we witness when Hayat remembers the same verses of the Quran at the beginning and end of the story, each time with different interpretations."

Thanks, Bara! Mr. Akhtar was also on NPR's All Things Considered this morning.

2. Like The New York Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has gone to a paywall. You can read up to a decent number of articles per month before subscribing. As soon as I can link my print subscription to my website, I can start not worrying about using up my limit. And speaking of which, we'll have a small ad in the Journal Sentinel this Sunday for three upcoming events. A few others are being underwritten on Wisconsin Public Radio. Hope these efforts convince a few more folks each time to come out for some great event programming we have this winter.

I'm not quite out of links yet, so here's Jim Higgins's take on Smut, Alan Bennett's new collection of novellas, where he notes, "Bennett makes witty comedy of these tales, which are nowhere near as prurient as the cheeky title suggests." Read the entire review here.

3. Stacie and I were chatting about Brent Gohde's Cedar Block Gallery show at Turner Hall Ballroom on February 18, entitled "Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and how the Quest Was Won" and in an instant, she had interviewed Brent for The Boswellians. Gohde talks about the intersections of art and science and how some key bookselling events influenced the creation of this show, most notably:
--Three years as a Harry W. Schwartz Bookseller (at the Downer Avenue location)
--An author visit from Leonard Sclain, author of Art & Physics
--A copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and a subsequent visit to Brookfield to see Douglas Adams.

Hey, I worked that event. I wonder if Brent brought a towel to be signed? Read the entire interview here. And buy tickets here to this show, co-sponsored by Alverno Presents and WMSE radio.

Presenting Ayad Akhtar, Author of American Dervish, at Boswell, rescheduled for Friday, January 13, 7 pm

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Goldin) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:45:00 +0000

I may not love shoveling snow that much, but one of the reasons I look forward to January is because it is a great time to publish new authors. 2012 looks particularly bounteous, as we've got three authors visiting whose books are featured in the January Indie Next flier. I've read all three, and plan to talk about them at more lenth soon, but none has as much local importance as the first novel by Ayad Akhtar (photo at right credit Nina Subin), American Dervish.

American Dervish is the story of Hayat, a boy growing up in the Milwaukee area. He's a first-generaton American of Pakistani parents, and he's got a lot of influences in his life. His father, a research physician, is a nonbeliever. The Muslim Pakistani community that his family is immersed in is very devout and conservative. And then his mother's closest friend Mina arrives with her son. On the run from a bad marriage, she must leave Pakistan in order to hold onto custody of her son. Mina is also very religious, but she observes in her own way, rejecting doctrine for spiritual intent. I think one would call this Sufi-esque.

Now everyone knows that there only four of five great plots that tell all the great stories, a story that, and one of my absolute favorites, that drive my several of my top fifty books of all time (that I never gave to Hans at Micawber's, my apologies, thank you for trying) from Pride and Prejudice to An Unsuitable Boy, is a character choosing between two suitors. And in Mina's case, she has two doctors--what could be more difficult than that? One is a devout Muslim opthalmologist, who though perhaps not the most attractive or effervescent of guys, is nonetheless accepted by the community. The other is a Jewish researcher, a friend of Hayat's father, who is nonetheless willing to convert to be with Mina.

Hayat watches all this from the sidelines. As an astute observer, he breathes in every pronouncement, from those of his father and Aunt Mina, to that of the local religious leader. And from that you begin to get a sense, as he makes a number of decisions, some rather disastrous, that it's not exactly easy for a young Muslim to grow up in America. And mind you, this novel is set before 9/11. And yet Hayat's journey is one that anyone of a strong faith must come to terms with as he or she grows up in America, whether you are raised Muslim or Jewish, Amish or Dawkinsian Athiest. You've got family, you've got community, and you've got everything else--your journey is your story, only it might not be as well written as Akthar's.

And what a story it is! Akhtar's novel is positively cinematic with a broad canvas, and yet with the sharp dialogue and tight setting of a stage play, and that's not really a surprise, what with his work as an actor, screenwriter, and playwright. Akhtar co-wrote and starred in the film, "The War Within," which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, as well as playing Neel Kashkari in "Too Big to Fail." He is also an accomplished playwright, and has not one, but two plays premiering in 2012, "The Invisible Hand" in Chicago and "Disgraced" in Saint Louis."

I'm excited to note that Ayad Akhtar will be speaking/reading/signing at Boswell for a special Milwaukee launch of American Dervish, now scheduled for Friday, January 13 (note: this was edited after publication). Since I met Akhtar at a pre-publication author dinner last fall, I can tell you that he is an erudite speaker (and I assume reader), full of charisma and wit. Yes, I know this is beginning to sound like an author crush. But isn't that a little about the allure of these events? The best ones, the Ann Patchetts and Jeffrey Eugenideses and Geraldine Brookses and T.C. Boyleses (did I really have to use so many authors whose names end in "s" and their ridiculous pluralization issues?), are nothing if not charmers.

For more information on Ayad Akhtar, visit his website.