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BooksSeptember 9, 2016

The weekly Unity Books best-seller list: September 9

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The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 9

AUCKLAND STORE

1 Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene (Bridget Williams Books, $15) by Rod Oram

“With economies stagnating, politics polarising, societies shattering and ecosystems suffering, I felt an urgent need to go walkabout last September….” Ace business journo Rod Oram writes of his travels to Beijing, London and Chicago to explore modern ills and to seek answers.

2 The Sympathizer (Corsair, $28) by Viet Thanh Nguyen

“For distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000)”: citation from the judges of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded to the author.

3 Commonwealth (Bloomsbury, $33) by Ann Patchett

“A drunken encounter at a christening party is the catalyst for this compelling saga of a dysfunctional Californian stepfamily”: The Guardian

4 Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25) by Hera Lindsay Bird

Poems.

5 Don’t Dream It’s Over: Reimagining Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand (Freerange Press, $40) Edited by Emma Johnson, Giovanni Tiso, Sarah Illingworth & Barnaby Bennett

Thoughts on journalism by a lump of commentators oh and one or two journalists.

6 Tail of the Taniwha: A Collection of Short Stories (Beatnik Publishing, $30) by Courtney Sina Meredith

Fiction.

7 Complacent Nation (Bridget Williams Books, $15) by Gavin Ellis

The Spinoff: “Former New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis claims New Zealanders are sleepwalking through an all-out assault on their democratic rights. Ben Thomas thinks Gavin Ellis should chill out a bit.

8 Can You Tolerate This? (Victoria University Press, $30) by Ashleigh Young

Essays. 

9 Nutshell (Jonathan Cape, $38) by Ian McEwan

“A tale told by a talking fetus….A smart, funny and utterly captivating novel”: The New York Times

10 Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton, $37) by Deborah Levy

The Guardian: “Rose has remortgaged her flat to come to a mysterious clinic in Spain run by a man called Gómez. Perhaps he can cure the mysterious paralysis that confines Rose to a wheelchair and binds her daughter to her with chains of control and dependency….A powerful novel.”

WELLINGTON STORE

1 New Torchlight List: In Search of the Best Modern Authors (Awa Press, $36) by Jim Flynn

“I don’t know why it’s been published…Amateur…Vague…Very little that’s useful”: Tom Moody in the revitalised books pages of the Listener.

2 Can You Tolerate This? (Victoria University Press, $30) by Ashleigh Young

3 Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25) by Hera Lindsay Bird

4 Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved & Died in The 1940s (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $40) by Anne Sebba

“Sebba’s fascinating and beautifully written study gives voice to…the Parisian women who resisted, collaborated, flourished, suffered, died or survived [the Nazi occupation of France] through a mixture of defiance and compromise”: The Spectator

5 Nutshell (Jonathan Cape, $38) by Ian McEwan

6 Things That Matter: Stories of Life & Death from an Intensive Care Specialist (Allen & Unwin, $37) by David Galler

Quack lit.

7 The Sympathizer (Corsair, $28) by Viet Thanh Nguyen

8 All Day at the Movies (Vintage, $38) by Fiona Kidman

Wellington satirist Charlotte Graham is about to file her review any day now.

9 All the Light we Cannot See (HarperCollins, $25) by Anthony Doerr

Publisher’s blurbology: “The paths of a blind French girl and an orphaned German boy converge in this novel, set around the time of World War II.”

10 Commonwealth (Bloomsbury, $33) by Ann Patchett

Keep going!