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 Lessons by Ian McEwan (Jonathon Cape, $37)
New novel by the master of literary masters, Ian McEwan. An enticing summary hot off the publisher’s press:
“While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
“Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland’s wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.
“From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love.”
2 Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Picador, $25)
The new Japanese time travel cafe novel in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Inexplicably, everyone is reading it.
3 The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi by Ned Fletcher (Bridget Williams Books, $70)
Legal historian Ned Fletcher spoke about his new book – arguably, the most important read of the year – with the NZ Herald: “It’s a very strong view in our history that the two texts of the Treaty don’t reconcile, that there was a mistranslation, that in all likelihood that that was a deliberate mistranslation and that the Treaty is a fraud.
“My principle point of difference from the mainstream of New Zealand scholarship is that I think the two texts do reconcile, that sovereignty wasn’t this monolithic beast that meant absolute indivisible, thorough-going power but that sovereignty as used in the Treaty was compatible with plurality in government and law and that means that sovereignty or kāwanatanga reconciles with rangatiratanga.
“And on the British side, they were perfectly happy with the idea of Māori continuing to manage their own affairs.”
4 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers, $35)
The winner of this year’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and the just-announced winner of the Allen & Unwin Award for Best Commercial book for adults at the PANZ Book Design Awards. And according to essa may ranapiri, the literary vessel for hot gay sex.
5 First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, $24)
Short stories by the master of magical realism, published after Murakami was poetically dumped by Michelle Langstone.
6 Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen (Vintage, $37)
The bestselling and stirring debut novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settle in New Orleans, leaving one member of their family behind.
7 The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman (Profile Books, $28)
Readers smugly say, “Forget about coffee. This is my new daily pick-me-up.”
8 Yes, Minister: An Insider’s Account of the John Key Years by Chris Finlayson (Allen & Unwin, $37)
Essential reading for the politico in your life. A taster, via Toby Manhire, here.
9 The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury, $25)
A 2011 novel that leaves readers weeping, and has enjoyed a renewed fervour since the phenomenon that is BookTok.
10 Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata (Granta, $33)
Treat time! A book of short stories by Sayaka Murata – author of bestselling Convenience Store Woman – has been freshly translated into English. The publisher describes the stories as “weird, out of this world and like nothing you’ve read before.” One short story is about a girl’s obsession with her curtains, and another is about people eating their dead as a way to honour them… so we’d say, yeah, that sounds about right.
WELLINGTON
1 The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (Viking, $37)
The third book in the Thursday Murder Club series is out, and Wellington is pleased as punch for another dose of these mystery-solving retirees.
2 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)
As shiny and popular as if it were born just yesterday.
3 Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Tor, $38)
The third book in the Locked Tomb fantasy series is out. Publisher’s Weekly called it “characteristically brilliant”.
4 Lessons by Ian McEwan (Jonathon Cape, $37)
5 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf, $38)
Maggie O’Farrell has followed up her historical fiction success Hamnet with a story about the life and suspicious premature death of Lucrezia, the third daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, ruler of Florence. It’s been met with mixed reviews from the Guardian (“melodrama reworked to appeal to a progressive 21st-century audience”) and the New York Times (“ridiculous”).
6 Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients by Adam Kay (Trapeze, $38)
New non-fiction from the author of ultra-bestseller This is Going to Hurt, where Adam Kay told all about his experience as a junior doctor in the NHS. Is Undoctored as good as its predecessor? These folks say yes:
“Brilliant – even better than This is Going to Hurt.” – Jacqueline Wilson
“Every bit as funny as the first one, every bit as powerful, surprising and unflinching.” – David Whitehouse
7 The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi by Ned Fletcher (Bridget Williams Books, $70)
8 We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (Head of Zeus, $37)
A new history of modern Ireland, beginning from O’Toole’s birth in 1958 – the year that the Irish government opened the country to foreign investment. The New York Times writes: “Indeed, it is not a memoir, nor is it an absolute history, nor is it entirely a personal reflection or a crepuscular credo. It is, in fact, all of these things helixed together: his life, his country, his thoughts, his misgivings, his anger, his pride, his doubt, all of them belonging, eventually, to us.”
9 I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster, $56)
iCarly and Sam & Cat actor Jennette McCurdy has released a confessional memoir which has received universal praise. Despite her sobering experience as a child actor – eating disorders, addiction, and a highly dysfunctional relationship with her mother – it’s still a book that is being described as “stingingly funny” by Time, “laugh-out-loud-funny” by Shondaland and “mordantly funny” by the New York Times.
10 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Picador, $20)
The original time travel cafe novel, getting a boost from the release of Before Your Memory Fades.
