The week’s best-sellers at the two best bookstores in the Western world.
UNITY WELLINGTON
1 Rants in the Dark: From One Tired Mama to Another by Emily Writes (Penguin, $35)
Oho!
2 Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, $30)
Awesome essays by the world’s most famous New Zealand writer right now.
3 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family & Culture in Crisis by J D Vance (HarperCollins, $35)
“A compassionate, insightful, often moving, yet unflinching window into the seemingly almost insurmountably vicious cycle of poverty, abuse and alienation which continues to blight the so-called ‘hillbilly’ working class of the US…Though published before last year’s presidential election, Hillbilly Elegy offers a perspective which goes a long way in explaining a culture and people far removed from the so-called beltway politics of mainstream America …It offers a unique and valuable insight into Trump’s America, and Vance’s timing couldn’t have been better”: Josh Hetherington, Spinoff Review of Books.
4 Nowhere Man #2 Orphan X by Greg Hurwitz (Michael Joseph, $37)
“All of the other must-read American crime writers are rapturous about the book, but Lisa Gardner puts it best by suggesting that Evan Smoak is ‘a perfect mix of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher’…The hero is trained in everything imaginable that might be of use in what are sometimes known as black ops. He becomes expert in all of the martial arts, in weaponry of all sorts, including the skills of a long-range sniper and in acting any part, reading people and being able to blend in anywhere. All of this adds to a formidable, virtually unbeatable set of skills”: Ken Strongman, Stuff.
5 The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Portobello, $23)
Depressing.
6 Goneville: A Memoir by Nick Bollinger (Awa Press, $39)
Joyous.
7 The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Oneworld, $28)
Funny.
8 Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25)
#Ockhamsowhite alert: Shortlisted this week for the poetry prize at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
9 Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova (Granta, $40)
Please tune into the Spinoff Review of Books next week when Garth Cartwright presents an interview with the author, and an analysis of her acclaimed new book.
10 Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto by Jessa Crispin (Black Inc, $30)
“Inside the slender volume is a furious rant…It offers no concrete strategy for meaningful change….She opts for broad generalisations…Disappointing”: Stephanie Convery, The Guardian.
AUCKLAND STORE
1 Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration by Simon Sinek (Portfolio Penguin, $35)
His talk on TED.com is the third most watched talk of all time.
2 Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek (Portfolio, $37)
His Twitter bio thing reads, “To run & jump & laugh & cry & love & hope & imagine…to experience as much as I can all for one purpose: to inspire.”
3 Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek (Portfolio, $26)
“We are not present until someone else says we are,” and other mindless homilies.
4 Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, $30)
5 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by JD Vance (William Collins, $35)
6 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Bloomsbury, $33)
We look forward to the forthcoming review by Wyoming Paul.
7 Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova (Granta, $40)
8 The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Corsair, $35)
Fiction.
9 Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta (Picador, $25)
More fiction.
10 Lines in the Sand: Collected Journalism by AA Gill(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $30)
“Gill has never revealed a first-rate mind; he expresses something more interesting, an original mind”: The Spinoff Review of Books.