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 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)
Riveting and insightful interview between Rooney and Merve Emre now up on The Paris Review including a moment where eldest child Emre calls out Rooney for a very middle-child answer.
2 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)
If you loved Olive and you loved Lucy then what are you actually waiting for. More Strout!
3 Juice by Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton, $55)
The latest novel from one of the greatest Australian writers of our time. Here’s the blurb: “Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
Problem is, they’re not alone.
So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.”
4 Precipice by Robert Harris (Hutchinson, $38)
Brilliantly researched story of a complex love amid the catastrophes of World War I.
5 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)
“The jump in maturity of Manawatu’s writing is immediately apparent: there is a marked growth in style and confidence. Manawatu aimed for the tihi of the mauka and hit it. The narrative is confident and assured in its structure, as is the precious matauraka of our iwi: the hard k of our Kāi Tahu dialect is unmissable, our karakia, our whenua, our rauemi.” Read more from Jenna Todd’s exquisite review in The Spinoff.
6 The Odyssey by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $40)
The final in Fry’s bestselling series of retellings. Will Homer’s hero make it home?
7 Let Them Eat Tripe by Tony Astle (Bateman, $45)
Inside Antoine’s! Juicy!
8 Playground by Richard Powers (Hutchinson, $38)
From the bestselling author of that book about trees, The Overstory.
9 Nexus: A Brief History of Information by Yuval Noah Harari (Penguin, $45)
A terribly relevant adventure through information networks from the stone age to today’s AI explosion.
10 We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Viking Penguin, $38)
Celebrity crime novelist with latest smash hit.
WELLINGTON
1 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)
2 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)
3 We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Viking Penguin, $38)
4 Bloody Minded: War, Womanhood & Finding My Voice by Susie Ferguson (HarperCollins, $40)
This hotly anticipated memoir from beloved broadcaster Susie Ferguson covers life in a woman’s body from her time as a war correspondent to living in Aotearoa and starting a family.
5 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Press, $38)
6 Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
A heady, funny, tragicomic, debut road trip novel by stunning writer Michelle Rahurahu. Here’s the blurb: “Erin can hear the whaanau whispering, and they won’t tell her why. She’s ditched school to help her aunty clean houses – even though she has a full-time job looking after all the moko. But no one cares, and soon she will be picked clean, like the bones in her maamaa’s bedroom.
STAR is home for the first time in years, and he’s worn the same clothes for days. Everything feels unfamiliar: the karakia, his nephews, the house that he grew up in. He’s too scared to tell his family that he’s bombing back at uni. And the past is an affliction, a gently rising tide.
It is 178 years after colonisation. Together, the cousins escape. Free-wheeling across the countryside in a car without a warrant, they cast their net widely. Their family mythologies, heartaches and rifts will surface, and among it the glint of possibility: a return to the whenua where it all began.”
7 Make it Make Sense by Lucy Blakiston & Bel Hawkins (Moa Press, $37)
Cute reviews over on Good Reads, like: “Life bible 🙏 So glad I’ll have this to turn to for gems of wisdom, life perspective, and lols whenever I need to forever now 💖”
8 The Odyssey by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $40)
9 Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty by Avril Bell (Auckland Uni Press, $30)
Waatea News did an interview with Bell on this book, that you can watch online here.
10 Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment by Monty Soutar (Bateman, $40)
The second in Soutar’s three-book series that tells the story of pre-colonial Aotearoa. Here’s the blurb:
“It’s 1818 on the East Coast of Te Ika-a-Maui, New Zealand. Hine-aute, granddaughter of the legendary warrior Kaitanga, is fleeing through the bush, a precious yet gruesome memento contained in her fishing net. What follows is a gripping tale of a people on the cusp of profound change that is destined to reverberate through many generations to come.
The Europeans have arrived, and they’ve brought guns and foreign diseases, ushering in a whole new world of terror and trouble. They’ve also brought a new religion, which will cause Maori to question everything they had believed to be true. Hine and her sons Ipumare and Uha are caught in the crossfire of change, creating fractures in their close familial bonds and undermining everything they hold dear.
From raids by musket-wielding war parties to heightened internecine warfare; from the influx of whalers, traders and Christian missionaries to the signing of The Treaty of Waitangi, Kawai: Tree of Nourishment strikes hard and deep into the heart of the initial impact of colonisation on Maori, and is guaranteed to leave readers stunned.”