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 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House, $32)

Wildly varying reviews over on the wild west of Good Reads. “The Let Them Theory is single handedly the best ‘make your life better’ book that I have ever read,” said Erin with her five star rating.” But Chrystal’s one star comes with, “I wanted to like this book. There’s actually really good concepts hidden in this book. Unfortunately the author extended the book about 3 times longer than needed.”

2 The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides (Michael Joseph, $40)

Billed as ‘The final, fatal adventure of Captain James Cook”, Sides’ bestseller is a fictionalisation of Cook’s final voyage and eventual death. For another angle on this topic, see this poem by Tusiata Avia.

3 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)

Short, succinct guide to Aotearoa’s founding document. Goes well with the rest of the resources on this handy list.

4 The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Granta, $28)

Simply one of the greatest novels of the last 20 years. A burning, delicate story of resistance.

5 We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida (Doubleday, $36)

Another bestselling Japanese novel translated for our reading pleasure. Here’s a snippet from the publisher’s blurb:

“On the top floor of an old building at the end of a cobbled alley in Kyoto lies the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Only a select few – those who feel genuine emotional pain – can find it. The mysterious centre offers a unique treatment for its troubled patients: it prescribes cats as medication.

Get ready to fall in love:
– Bee, an eight-year-old female, mixed breed helps a disheartened businessman as he finds unexpected joy in physical labour;
– Margot, muscly like a lightweight boxer, helps a middle-aged callcentre worker stay relevant;
– Koyuki, an exquisite white cat brings closure to a mother troubled by the memory of the rescue kitten she was forced to abandon;
– Tank and Tangerine bring peace to a hardened fashion designer, as she learns to be kinder to herself;
– Mimita, the Scottish Fold kitten helps a broken-hearted Geisha to stop blaming herself for the cat she once lost.”

6 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)

Last year’s Booker Prize Winner about astronauts looking at the whole of Earth from their space windows.

9 Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (Picador, $38)

The eighth novel from bestselling French author irked NY Times reviewer, Dwight Garner. Here’s a wedge of what he served:

“The plot of Annihilation grows in so many directions that it is like a tree without a trunk. This novel describes sophisticated terrorist attacks meant to destabilize capitalism and the West. These attacks give Paul a chance to utter this ur-Houellebecqian line: “If the terrorists’ goal was to annihilate the world as he knew it, to annihilate the modern world, he couldn’t entirely blame them.”

10 The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa by Catherine Comyn (ESRA, $30)

An absolutely ingenious piece of scholarship: goes well with item 3, above. Here’s the full blurb:

“Finance was at the centre of every stage of the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Maori lands and the emigration of early colonists to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial governance. This book tells the story of the financial instruments and imperatives that drove the British colonial project in the nineteenth century. This is a history of the joint-stock company, a speculative London property market that romanticised the distant lands of indigenous peoples, and the calculated use of credit and taxation by the British to dispossess Maori of their land and subject them to colonial rule. By illuminating the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, this book not only reframes our understanding of this country’s history, but also the stakes of anti-colonial struggle today.”

WELLINGTON

1 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House, $32)

2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)

3 Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)

A beautiful, energising and far-ranging debut collection of poetry that spans prose-poetry and small but striking images, like this:

Salani

A tidal pool
fenced with mangroves
is a buoyant graveyard
for tens of thousands of
empty water bottles.

4 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Press, $25)

5 The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Granta, $28)

6 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)

“Becky Manawatu’s extraordinary debut novel Auē knocked me for six and I didn’t think it would be possible to love the sequel even more than that special book,” wrote WORD Christchurch’s Kiran Dass in The Spinoff’s best books of 2024. “Yet here we are. Revisiting the Te Au whānau, Kataraina is a refined and evocative novel written with such hospitable, attentive delicacy, steeped in the natural world, Te Ao Māori, kai, women as the bracings of family and community, and it chimes in the key of the Kāi Tahu dialect. Manawatu’s writing is as intensely beautiful as it is diamond hard.”

7 Futures of Democracy, Law & Government: Contributions to a Conference in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Palmer edited by Mark Hickford & Matthew Palmer Snr (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $70)

A collection of papers written for a Symposium held at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington in October 2022 in honour of Geoffrey Palmer and to mark the University’s Governing for the Future strategic theme in the 125th year since the Victoria College Act 1897. “In the essays in this book, eminent judges, scholars and politicians discuss themes that have animated his career in public affairs, including: constitutional government; democracy and its integrity; indigenous-state relations and te Tiriti o Waitangi; the environment and climate change; law reform and human rights.”

8 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4^th Estate, $35)

“Eating gets sexy in this offbeat confidence tale.” Read the full review over at Kirkus.

9 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38)

For many, the novel that should have won the Booker Prize in 2024.

10 Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A Family Story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi (Penguin, $40)

No better time than right now to support Palestinian writers. Samah Sabawi shares the story of her parents and many like them who were born as their parents were being forced to leave their homelands. Sabawi’s father was Abdul Karim Sabawi, a celebrated poet and novelist who was exiled from Gaza in 1967 for his part in the Palestinian resistance in the Six Day War.

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Antony Elworthy, illustrator, animator (Isle of Dogs, Kiri & Lou) and children’s book author of The Strange and Unlikely Tale of Montgomery, the Mysterious Bird of Mystery. 

The book I wish I’d written

Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. I wish I could write something so profound, in so few words. And his illustrations are timeless.

Everyone should read

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, because it’s a great achievement. To read it, I mean. It’s like climbing a mountain, and everyone should climb a mountain.

The book I want to be buried with

I guess the point of being buried with a book is to take it with you to the afterlife. So something that would withstand infinite re-readings would be a good idea: a choose-your-own-adventure story for instance. I loved choose-your-own-adventure stories when I was young. Reading them was a thrill, like walking a tight rope – one wrong move would send you plummeting to an unhappy ending.

The first book I remember reading by myself

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, by Dr. Seuss. I’m still a fan – I’ve never really grown out of Dr. Seuss. He wrote a story about a spooky pair of pants that still haunts me.

Utopia or dystopia?

Dystopia, of course. Utopia leaves nothing to desire, and life without desire would be boring.

Fiction or nonfiction?

I prefer fiction. A good storyline will keep me hooked right through a book. Good fiction is profound and meaningful – real life, on the other hand, is chaotic and arbitrary. I don’t like it when real events are twisted into the shape of a story, it always feels false. However, I do love non-fiction books about mushrooms and gold-diggers.

It’s a crime against language to…

When my editor got hold of my manuscript, she swept away several thousand commas. Apparently, I was a chronic over-user of the comma. Now, I am a little sensitive, to too many, commas.

The book I regret reading

I don’t regret reading any book, ever, even those books that I haven’t particularly liked. There have been plenty of books that I have abandoned part way through, and I don’t regret that either.

The book that made me cry

Old Huhu by Kyle Mewburn. Absorbing the loss of a treasured person is so hard, at any age. This sensitive story shows, in a beautiful way, a child coming to terms with the death of his grandfather.

The book that made me laugh

The Mr Gum series by Andy Stanton. I normally prefer a story that follows at least some laws of reason, but these books are a law unto themselves. One of the characters is a gingerbread man called Alan Taylor, who is able to function thanks to his electric muscles. And there’s a gin-swilling old lady called Old Granny – when she was young, she was a gin-swilling child called Old Granny.

The book I never admit I’ve read

I’m not telling.

The book I wish would be adapted to film or TV

I wish my book was adapted for film. That would be nice. Maybe one day.

Greatest New Zealand writer

I love all authors by the name of Maurice. New Zealand has produced a number of great Maurices.

But Maurices aside, I choose Margaret Mahy. She has fired the imagination of generations of Kiwis, she is a true inspiration.

The Strange and Unlikely Tale of Montgomery, the Mysterious Bird of Mystery by Antony Elworthy is available for purchase from Unity Books. Antony is taking part in the Auckland Writers Festival Schools programme in May 2025, details online here.