The top 10 sales lists recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND
1 Among Kinabuhi Sa Aotearoa: Filipino Lives in Aotearoa by Vivien Beduya (Bateman, $32)
“Among Kinabuhi sa Aotearoa is a glimpse into the lives of 14 Filipinos – the third-largest Asian group in Aotearoa – trailblazers who build community in their adopted home, uphold the struggles of their people in the Philippines and stand in solidarity with tangata whenua.”
2 He Told Us by Chris Wilson & Michael Dziwulski (Allen & Unwin, $38)
An account of that horrific day in March 2019 when an Australian man shot dead 51 New Zealanders in two mosques in Christchurch. This book reveals the years of radicalisation that led to the massacre and the warning signs that were missed.
3 Moonwalk by Michael Jackson (Arrow Books, $38)
There he goes again, moonwalking back into the centre of pop culture.
4 Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline Press, $38)
Not all the critics are wholeheartedly behind O’Farrell’s new epic. Here’s a snippet from Fiona Mozley’s review in the NY Times: “At its best, Land evokes weighty, time-slip novels like Alan Garner’s Red Shift, drawing associative lines across eras and grappling with the long afterlives of colonial violence. But it is deflated by characters whose confrontations with the forces around them are too shallow to constitute a serious reckoning with the moral dilemmas the novel poses at the start.”
5 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
A lawyer frustrated with the criminal justice system turns his hand to investigative journalism and produces the book of the year.
6 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador, $40)
Blockbuster true crime by one of the greats.
7 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate, $37)
“In her attempt to create a clever plot twist, Burke lets her characters’ humanity fall by the wayside. Perhaps this is what happens when your novel is workshopped by producers and Hollywood executives from its first draft.” Yikes. Read the rest of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s review here.
8 Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (Scribe Pubs Pty, $38)
Worthy winner of this year’s International Booker Prize.
9 No Pit Stops by Grant Baker (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)
Motivational memoir.
10 Whistler by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury UK, $39)
An ideal book for winter: warm, entertaining and all’s well that ends well.
WELLINGTON
1 Portrait by Jackson McCarthy (Auckland University Press, $25)
A great week for poetry and for Jackson McCarthy whose debut is endorsed by power house poets including Kate Camp: “McCarthy’s poems are intelligent and musical, unsentimental and gritty yet utterly, gloriously romantic. There is a freshness to Portrait, a kind of fluid clarity washing through like an eye bath; even its melancholy – and there’s plenty of it – feels salutary. A beautiful logbook of life in the present moment.”
2 The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City by Asher Emanuel (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
3 Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline Press, $38)
4 Degrees of Happy by Philippa Werry (The Cuba Press, $25)
A brand new young adult novel from award-winning writer Philippa Werry. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
“Tess’s parents have dropped a bombshell. The family’s moving back to the place everyone wants to leave, the place Tess calls Toytown. She doesn’t want to go and not just because it’s small and nothing ever happens there – moving means leaving Chloe behind, her sister who died.
What she doesn’t expect is how much happens in Toytown, especially with a half-brother and half-sister moving in, the promise of chickens and a frenetic dog called Milo. And school isn’t any less busy. Tess accidentally gets caught up in the annual Shakespeare festival, playing a tree in the Scottish play, and prompting for The Tempest, directed by a boy in a patchwork waistcoat who seems to think she knows what she’s doing.
Happiness, she has begun to realise, has gradations, like steps, or rungs on a ladder, and she’s not at the bottom anymore. And then it’s Chloe’s birthday, and with the voices of Miranda and Prospero in her head, Tess leaves her new life behind and goes to find her sister.”
5 Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)
What we will say is you can’t really go wrong with Strout.
6 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, $38)
Winner of the Women’s Prize for fiction!
7 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador, $40)
8 Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fourth Estate, $37)
9 Te Tiriti, Equality & the Future of NZ Democracy by Dominic O’Sullivan (Auckland University Press, $40)
“In this major work, the leading Māori political scientist Dominic O’Sullivan draws on theories of republicanism and the commonwealth to challenge understandings of Te Tiriti as a partnership between races, or between Māori people and the Crown.
O’Sullivan also critiques the idea that Te Tiriti created one people, assimilating Māori into colonial ways of governing.
Instead, he proposes a new politics where Māori self-determination and liberal democracy, rangatiratanga and kawanatanga, complement one another to promote meaningful and culturally grounded political equality.”
10 Whistler by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury UK, $39)
