The only published and available best-selling 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 Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee (Upstart Press, $38)
Stand by for a Spinoff review.
2 Auckland Architecture: A Walking Guide by John Walsh & Patrick Reynolds (Massey University Press, $20)
Recommended companion reading: Auckland’s Best Benches: An ‘Oh God I’m Knackered’ Guide
3 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)
Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney
4 The Spy & the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre (Viking, $40)
Should tide you over until the final season of The Americans hits Lightbox.
5 Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks (St. Martin’s Press, $54)
“Equal parts advocacy and analysis—a welcome addition to the growing literature around the politics of welfare” – Kirkus Reviews
6 The Mistake by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, $30)
The perfect pick-me-up for anyone headed in for surgery.
7 A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win WWII by Sonia Purnell (Hachette, $35)
Is it Spook Week?
8 Lanny by Max Porter (Faber & Faber, $30)
“Dead Papa Toothwort wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs of bitumen glistening thick with liquid globs of litter” – opening sentence.
9 Little by Edward Carey (Gallic Books, $31)
“In this gloriously gruesome imagining of the girlhood of Marie Tussaud, mistress of wax, fleas will bite, rats will run and heads will roll and roll and roll. Guts’n’gore galore: I bloody loved it” – The Spectator
10 Don’t Send Flowers by Martin Solares (Atlantic Books, $23)
Mexican drug cartels, machismo, general mayhem: a fitting follow to 2010’s The Black Minutes.
WELLINGTON
1 Night as Day by Nikki-Lee Birdsey (Victoria University Press, $25)
On the poet’s bedside table, apparently: Hone Tuwhare, Small Holes in the Silence. Raymond Carver, Cathedral. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. Mutuwhenua, Patricia Grace.
2 A Mistake by Carl Shuker (Victoria University Press, $30)
3 Spring by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton, $34)
We covet it purely for its bucolic, bursting-with-life cover.
4 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)
5 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber & Faber, $33)
Apparently worth the initial hard slog?
6 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Noah Yuval Harari (Vintage, $30)
Best line: “we did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”
7 How to Take Off Your Clothes by Hadassah Grace (Dead Bird Books, $25)
More local poetry! “One of her poems, ‘Men who pay to touch me’, is made up of one-line comments from customers such as “You’re too fat to be a stripper”, “Why can’t I touch you”, “Why won’t you kiss me”, “Oh my God, marry me”. She says all the comments were made in a 48-hour period” – Radio NZ
8 Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (Allen Lane, $35)
Illustrative chapter headings: Heat Death. Hunger. Unbreathable Air.
9 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $33)
Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney
10 Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Windmill Books, $28)
“I am far from the first critic to recommend Tara Westover’s astounding memoir… but if its comet tail of glowing reviews has not yet convinced you, let me see what I can do” – the New Yorker