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BooksFebruary 22, 2019

Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending February 22

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The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 best-seller list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in Willis St, Wellington and High St, Auckland.

WELLINGTON UNITY

1 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33)

“I read a few pages of the Sally Rooney book. It may say things that millennials want to hear reflected back at them, but it’s very simple stuff with no literary ambition that I can see”: Will Self, Twitter.

2 Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press, $60)

Cookbook.

3 Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression & the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury, $25)

His book challenges the story he believed for so long: that depression is simply a chemical imbalance in the brain that can be fixed with more serotonin.

4 The Fast 800 by Michael Mosley (Simon & Schuster, $35)

“It’s obligatory, when reviewing a diet book, to try some of its suggestions and recipes. I made The Fast 800 hummus recipe, and it was easy and delicious. I fasted for 24 hours – with no food except a couple of long blacks with cream, maybe 80 calories all up, from one dinner to the next”: George Henderson, The Spinoff Review of Books.

5 Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Windmill, $28)

“Her story is a kind of gasoline gothic, punctuated with tour de force descriptions of horrific accidents that should have culled her survivalist family, and all of them involved cars. On the way back to their Idaho home from Arizona, where the sun has jolted her father out of his depression, the car leaves the road and Tara’s mother suffers a serious brain injury. Another crash leaves Tara paralysed and in pain for weeks….Engrossing”: Kim Hill, The Spinoff Review of Books.

6 Tane Mahuta Has a Forest (He wao ta Tane Mahuta) by Rebecca Larsen (Imagination Press, $20)

Sing-along Kiwi adventure book about that tree.

7 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber, $33)

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker prize for fiction.

8 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (Jonathan Cape, $38)

Thoughts.

9 Hello Darkness by Peter Wells (Mighty Ajax, $40)

The author’s funeral will be held at St Matthews-in-the-city, Auckland, on Monday at 10:30am.

10 Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Michael Joseph, $38)

We look forward to the forthcoming review by Brannavan Gnanalingam at the Spinoff Review of Books.

AUCKLAND UNITY

1 Four Walls and  a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession by Reiner de Graaf (Harvard University Press, $72)

Architecture.

2 Birthday Girl by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, $6)

Short stories.

3 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (Allen Lane, $40)

Instructions for living.

4 The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson (MacMillan, $35)

Instructions for living.

5 Auckland Architecture: A Walking Guide by John Walsh & Patrick Reynolds (Massey University Press, $20)

Architecture.

6 Becoming by Michelle Obama (Penguin Random House, $55)

Woke lit.

7 Patterson: Houses of Aotearoa by Andrew Patterson (Thames & Hudson, $95)

Architecture.

8 Hello Darkness by Peter Wells (Mighty Ajax, $40)

9 A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Windmill Books, $26)

Popular fiction.

10 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Vintage, $30)

Keep going!