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.
A Hunger Games prequel starring Haymitch Abernathy and set 24 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute. A fulsome discussion about the book, and reactions to it, is over on Slate.
“To say the collection is brought to life by the photographs is an understatement; the photographs are pieces of art in their own right,” writes Jessie Bray Sharpin in her review of this majestic book.
6 Together We Roared by Steve Williams and Evin Priest (HarperCollins, $39)
Tiger Woods’s long-time caddie shares his relationship with the golfing star.
“An editor’s adventures through the last golden age of magazines,” goes the subtitle. And here’s the publisher’s blurb:
“When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of society’s most talented editors and shapers of culture. Carter arrived in New York from Canada with little more than a suitcase, a failed literary magazine in his past and a keen sense of ambition. He landed a job at Time, went on to work at Life, co-founded Spy magazine and edited The New York Observer before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who tapped him to run Vanity Fair.”
8 Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, $38)
“Adichie weaves stories of heartbreak and travail that are timely, touching, and trenchant.” Read the full Kirkus Review, here.
Simply one of the greatest novels of the century by one of the best writers of our time.
10 Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley(HarperCollins, $38)
One of those novels with a cover and publicity material so crammed full of puff quotes that it’s quite hard to figure out what it’s actually about. Something about music and romance.
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One of the biggest memoirs of the year: The Spinoff’s Alex Casey and Claire Mabey had an extremely appreciative conversation about it; and you don’t want to miss the Ali Mau edition of My Life in TV.
The bookshop owners and writers who are taking over the world with their delightful cosy crime series! Here’s the delicious blurb for this second instalment:
“In this rollicking new adventure, Garth and Eloise (and Stevie) must sniff out a prolific poisoner ahead of a vital fundraising event, the Battle of the Book Clubs. As time runs out and the body count rises, it seems the bad actors are circling closer to the people and places they care about.
Could Pinter, the infamous serial killer from Eloise’s past, somehow be involved? And when anyone could be a suspect, how can Garth and Eloise keep their customers, their small town and their beloved bookshop safe?”
All of Jane Austen’s novels, ranked. Image: Claire Mabey and Tina Tiller.
On the occasion of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, Hannah August ranks her novels. Happy birthday, Jane!
It was 250 years ago this year that a family in a small village in Hampshire welcomed the arrival of a baby daughter. This daughter would go on to write six of the most beloved novels in the English language, attract the type of fandom more commonly associated with modern-day pop stars, inspire a proliferation of increasingly loose film and television adaptations of her work, and end up with her portrait on the English 10-pound note.
The occasion of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday is a perfect time to revisit her work. But before you cue up the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, consider the joys that can be had from actually reading the original novels. And if you’ve never read one and are wondering where to start, The Spinoff has kindly prepared the following entirely non-definitive ranking.
6. Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility was Austen’s first novel, and it shows. It’s pretty schematic – its central characters, the sisters Elinor and Marianne, respectively embody the qualities in the novel’s title, but unlike in Pride and Prejudice, these qualities of characterisation don’t really drive the narrative events. Instead, Elinor and Marianne are at the mercy of the two men they fall for, the charming yet insincere John Willoughby (Austen’s first experiment with the fuckboy character type, who will show up again and again in subsequent novels), and the nice but dull Edward Ferrars.
Greg Wise as Willoughby and Kate Winslet as Marianne from the 1995 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
The best thing about this book is the recognisability of certain characters – most straight women have known (and perhaps dated) a Willoughby; many of us have held tight to the same romantic ideals as the youthful Marianne. But this doesn’t really make up for the multiple missteps of its final movement. Elinor’s beloved Edward is suddenly released back onto the marriage market through a plot twist that feels awkwardly contrived; Willoughby’s sympathetic response from Elinor when he finally apologises for his behaviour ignores his truly awful treatment of a previous lover. And there’s a bit of unavoidable ick for contemporary readers about having the 17-year-old Marianne end up with a man 18 years her senior.
Eligibility verdict:Sense and Sensibility will always be invited to the ball, but lacks sufficient attractions to guarantee a partner for every dance.
5. Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey is a pretty silly novel. But it’s also the novel in which Austen most overtly flexes her satirical muscles, and as a consequence it’s also pretty funny. Its heroine is 17-year-old Catherine Morland: naïve, unaccomplished, “often inattentive, and occasionally stupid”, but also nice, enthusiastic about life, and very well-read in a certain type of novel.
The novels Catherine prefers are those stuffed with Gothic clichés – ruined castles or (ahem) abbeys with hidden passageways, secret messages stashed inside innocuous-looking containers, apparent benefactors who’ve imprisoned young women. When Catherine is invited to stay with the Tilney family, who happen to actually live in an abbey, much of the humour and narrative tension that ensues results from her over-active imagination and her determination to map her reading onto real life, with embarrassing results.
Yet Austen’s message isn’t (naturally) about the dangers of reading novels – one of the most romantic moments of the book comes when Catherine discovers that her beau, Henry Tilney, is equally passionate about her favourite novels, and the takeaway is instead that reading for pleasure can be a key part of a life conducted with good sense and sound moral judgement.
Eligibility verdict:Northanger Abbey isn’t a key contributor to the drawing room conversation, but it’s having such a nice time chuckling over the book in its lap that it doesn’t care.
Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland scaring herself with gothic novels. An illustration from the 1833 edition of the book.
4. Mansfield Park
This is the Austen novel that most people haven’t read. Which is a shame, because it’s absorbing, tightly plotted, and feels like it’s prefiguring the later 19th century novels of George Eliot or Thomas Hardy. Fanny Price is the eldest daughter of a mother who made an ill-advised marriage and is struggling with a bothersome number of offspring. Fortunately Fanny’s aunts, who made better matrimonial and procreational choices, decide that they can take Fanny under their wing, and she moves to live with her four cousins at the country estate of Mansfield Park.
Fanny is quiet, timid, and well-behaved, and develops a crush on her cousin Edmund, who himself only has eyes for the more vivacious Miss Crawford. Edmund’s two sisters, meanwhile, are engaged in a rivalry for the affections of Miss Crawford’s brother, a charming cad in the Willoughby mode. How Fanny will escape the clutches of Mr Crawford when he ultimately turns his charm on her, and how she and Edmund will finally end up together, are matters of genuine suspense right up until the novel’s closing chapters.
Fanny’s a somewhat insipid central character, but the novel’s structurally highly satisfying in the way she becomes the fixed point on the moral compass of the supporting cast, the key members of whom undergo genuine self-development, or get their comeuppance in ways that feel fully deserved and narratively consistent.
Eligibility verdict:Like the shy, silent girl in the corner of the room, Mansfield Park turns out to be surprisingly engaging when you take the time to get to know her.
3. Persuasion
Diehard Austen fans are already pulling out their inkpots and pens to tell me this novel deserves a higher ranking, and I get why. Persuasion is the Platonic ideal of the romance novel, the urtext of enduring love and second chances. For anyone who’s ever hoped that the one that got away might show up on their doorstep years down the line – rewarding them for all the time they spent making the best of it as a single person – Persuasion is here for you.
At 27, Anne Elliot has, we are told, lost her “bloom”. (The satire in this novel is targeted towards characters – like Anne’s father and elder sister – who are obsessed with physical beauty and youthfulness.) At 19, she was in love with Captain Wentworth, a charming young naval officer whom she was persuaded not to marry by an older female friend because of his apparent lack of prospects. Eight years later, he re-enters her life, a much more eligible bachelor than he once was…
Apologies but here is Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliot in Persuasion
This novel is Austen’s most romantic because it vindicates individual conviction – Anne sees Wentworth’s true quality before society does, rather than conveniently falling in love with someone who’s already highly esteemed. But it’s not perfect – the cad character just gets shuffled off stage at the end, which is narratively unsatisfying, and Anne ultimately lacks the spirit of the heroines of the next two novels.
Eligibility verdict:Persuasion is absolutely marriage material. But its attractions are such as will appeal predominantly to more mature, refined tastes.
2. Emma
Emma is a perfect satire of small-town life. It takes to its greatest extreme Austen’s perennial theme of the limited prospects for young women living in rural villages – both in terms of matrimony and entertainment more generally. Twenty-year-old Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich”, is starved for things to do, channelling her energy and talents into misguided matchmaking endeavours amongst those who enter her small rural orbit. Her misplaced conviction that she’s right about everything is what makes her both infuriating and sympathetic. That she manages to endear herself to us despite the fact that the narrator is gently mocking pretty much everyone and everything throughout (her heroine included) is part of the novel’s charm.
The only reason this novel hasn’t ended up in first place is that, on the romance front, it’s a bit of a dud. Another 18-year age gap between Emma and her eventual husband is exacerbated by the fact that his treatment of her is occasionally uncomfortably paternalistic: telling her off for her bad behaviour (even if she’s deserved it) makes it feel as though she’s being shamed into loving him.
Eligibility verdict:Emma has masterminded your evening’s entertainment and has ensured that the victuals are excellent, the conversation sparkling, and an equal number of attractive young gentlemen are available to partner the ladies. Time spent with this novel cannot possibly be regretted.
Emma Woodhouse and Mr Knightley. An illustration by Chris Hammond in an 1898 edition of Emma. Image: Houghton Typ 805.98.1770, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
1. Pride and Prejudice
So predictable, I hear you murmur around the card table. That Austen’s best-known, best-loved, most adapted novel should take out first place – did she even bother to read the others?
Here’s the reason Pride and Prejudice is a better novel than Emma or Persuasion: it has it all. It’s funny – see the depictions of Mr Collins, of Lady Catherine de Bourgh; also Austen’s presentation of the younger Bennet sisters and their parents. It offers a nuanced examination of the pressures of patriarchal society – see the different decisions Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas make about matrimony. But it’s also the novel where it’s easiest to get behind the central romantic partnership.
Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (left) and Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth Bennet is smart, kind, witty and independently minded. Mr Darcy is (though it takes a while for it to be revealed) loyal, generous and open to self-improvement. They’re both young and hot. It remains perennially easy to find them attractive as characters, whereas the qualities that distinguish a Fanny Price or an Anne Elliot are less seductive for contemporary readers. You do not want to get stuck at a party talking to Fanny Price; you’d be pretty happy to get stuck talking to Elizabeth Bennet. Pride and Prejudice encourages us to form an attachment to its romantic leads as individuals, not just to the idea of their eventual union – it is this that sets it apart from Austen’s other novels.
Eligibility verdict:It is a truth universally acknowledged that a ranking of items must be in want of a first-place-getter. Despite the excellent company, Pride and Prejudice is the most eligible contender for that title.
