The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND
1 To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador, $38)
Auckland’s new fave. Sam Brooks has just written an article that may make you see Hanya Yanagihara’s work in a slightly different, more fan-fiction-y light. An excerpt: “Yanagihara has a deep love for her characters – the kind of love that is more common in fanfic than in literary fiction. You write about these characters because something made you love them, rather than creating characters to then make them miserable, like a sociopathic child playing with toys.”
2 The Promise by Damon Galgut (Chatto & Windus, $37)
The 2021 Booker winner.
3 Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, $35)
The third Lucy Barton novel, starring ex-hubby William. From the Guardian: “Strout, as ever, does not rely on plot, instead stuttering between randomly remembered moments, whether a panicky evasion or an incomplete conversation, which build the picture of a shared life and its lonely aftermath. Though to label them random undersells the quiet virtuosity: what we have here are exquisitely choreographed flashes of lightning that illuminate the confusion and contradictions and misjudgements of any marriage.”
4 The Island Of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (Viking, $37)
A bewitching new novel set in 1970s Cyprus, by the most widely-read female author in Turkey. Goodreads reviewers sigh “Oh, my heart” and proclaim “I’m a fan!”
5 My Body by Emily Ratajkowski (Quercus, $35)
What’s it like being a world-famous sex symbol? Emily’s here to tell you.
6 Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
Congratulations Rebecca! Greta & Valdin is a Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction finalist. Books ed Catherine Woulfe says, “It’s the book you’ll be recommended right now if you go into a store and ask for something light but not dumb, funny but not cheesy, something to counter, you know, everything.”
7 The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Hutchinson, $37)
You might not be ready to leave the kiwi nest and take a US road trip with a group of eclectic misfits – and regardless of readiness, you likely won’t be able to do so back in 1954. Luckily, you can read Amor Towles’ most recent novel instead.
8 Speed & Scale: An Action Plan For Solving Our Climate Crisis Now by John Doerr (Penguin Random House, $38)
Investor and philanthropist John Doerr was told by his teenage daughter that climate change was his generation’s mess – so it was theirs to clean up. He unleashes a nerdy business acronym, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), on the problem of climate change and comes up with a plan. Here’s more nerdiness from the publisher’s blurb: “What if the goal-setting techniques that powered the rise of today’s most innovative organisations were brought to bear on humanity’s greatest challenge? Used by Google, Bono’s ONE foundation, and thousands of startups the world over, OKRs have scaled ideas into achievements that changed the world. With clear-eyed realism and an engineer’s precision, Doerr identifies the measurable OKRs we need to reduce emissions across the board and to arrive by 2050 at net zero – the point where we are no longer adding to the heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.”
9 Violeta by Isabel Allende (Bloomsbury, $37)
One hundred-year-old Violeta reflects on her life, which is bookended by the Spanish flu and the Covid pandemic.
10 Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate, $35)
Crossroads is the first novel in a new Franzen trilogy, focused on a Midwestern family (no surprises there) led by Reverend Russ Hildebrandt. So what does the Religion News Service think of it? Overall, a thumbs up – with a pretty lol critique of its unsexiness: “Franzen is sometimes as clumsy and unsexy as his characters when it comes to sexual matters. He accurately portrays the guilt and conflict, but, despite the sexually charged era they live in, Franzen’s characters are sexually timid, boring and, we suspect, unskilled.”
WELLINGTON
1 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)
The little book that’s bringing home the bacon, bearing fruit, taking the cake, and making a pretty weird dessert with the winnings.
2 Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury, $35)
Feel stressed, tired, and overloaded with information, while surviving on a diet of Uber Eats? Johann Hari says that could be part of your inattention problem.
3 Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism by Mariana Mazzucato (Penguin, $26)
From the Times: “Mazzucato’s solution is to redesign capitalism in the interests of stakeholders rather than shareholders, and to reshape the relationship between government and the state as a ‘mission economy’. Civil servants should be active, not passive … Britain and America, she believes, need to abandon the neoliberal belief in minimalist government that merely regulates the market and lets the private sector drive innovation.”
4 To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador, $38)
5 The Promise by Damon Galgut (Chatto & Windus, $37)
6 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Simon & Schuster, $23)
A novel about a Hollywood starlet who had six (jokes, seven) husbands.
7 Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
8 Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman (HarperCollins, $38)
Award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five billionaires and how “their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a 50-year trend of wealth centralisation … widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back.”
Don’t worry, the publisher’s blurb also describes Davos Man as “rollicking” and “compulsively readable”, so you’ll be entertained as you shed a tear.
9 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Canongate, $33)
Read this 2021 bestseller accompanied by a midnight snack.
10 Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It by Oliver Burkeman (Bodley Head, $38)
Scary fact: 80 years is just 4,000 weeks. Now that you’re frightened, read this book to find out what to do about it.