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BooksMarch 24, 2017

The Unity Books best-seller list for the week ending March 24

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The week’s best-selling books at the best bookstores in the known world.

WELLINGTON UNITY

1 Hit & Run: the New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the Meaning of Honour by Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson (Potton & Burton, $35)

“The allegations in Hit & Run are shocking on a human level, but the notion of vengeful soldiers accidentally killing civilians and their military and political masters covering it up is such a depressingly credible claim that their greatest risk is probably not disbelief but indifference. Defence officials will be hoping that the public will accept that such things happen in war and move on. They might not be wrong”: Danyl McLachlan, The Spinoff.

2 Can You Tolerate This by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, $30)

3 Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury, $30)

Vidar is the god of revenge and silence.

4 Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo (Particular Books, $40)

The stories of 100 great women in history from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams.

5 As Much Gold As An Ass Could Carry by Vivienne Plumb and Glen Otto (Split Fountain, $38)

Verse with pictures.

6 Māori Oral Tradition: He Kōrero nō te Ao Tawhito by Jane McRae (Auckland University Press, $45)

Story, waateanews.com: “A rich stream of Māori literature has been revealed in a new book on Māori oral traditions. Former Auckland University Māori studies lecturer Jane McRae says the writing of He Kōrero nō te Ao Tawhito was sparked by a project she did under Professor Anne Salmond that involved a lot of reading of 19th century Māori manuscripts. She learned to spot the documents where people were writing down for the first time the words passed down by their tupuna. It was a time when writing became another form of remembering. ‘There were also ways in which they recorded the oral tradition. Carving is one example. Patterns in artworks. Aspects of the landscape speak to Māori, the names on the landscape, but mostly in the time of an oral society when there is no writing you depend on memory to pass on things that are vital to you, your knowledge and your histories and your philosophies and customs,’ she said.”

7 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Vintage, $28)

In the beginning.

8 Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25)

Verse.

9 Essential: Best Ever Meals For Busy Lives by Annabel Langbein (David Bateman, $65)

Incorporates new ingredients such as sriracha,  aquafaba, and sloppa.

10 The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Piatkus, $28)

Fiction.

 

AUCKLAND UNITY

 1 Hit & Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the Meaning of Honour by Nicky Hager & John Stephenson (Potton & Burton, $35)

2 Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, $30)

3 The Wish Child by Catherine Chidgey (Victoria University Press, $30)

Fiction.

4 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture by JD Vance (William Collins, $35)

“Raw…visceral…confounding”: Josh Hetherington, The Spinoff Review of Books.

5 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Bloomsbury, $33)

“Audacious…Saunders reminds us of ­fiction’s possibilities and pleasures, the great adventure of reading”: Paula Morris, the Listener.

6 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Harvill Secker, $38)

7 Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman (Allen Lane, $40)

“An honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats”: the failing New York Times.

8 Idaho by Emily Ruskovich (Chatto & Windus, $37)

Publisher’s blurbology: “One hot August day a family drives to a mountain clearing to collect birch wood. Jenny, the mother, is in charge of lopping any small limbs off the logs with a hatchet. Wade, the father, does the stacking. The two daughters, June and May, aged nine and six, drink lemonade, swat away horseflies, bicker, sing snatches of songs as they while away the time. But then something unimaginably shocking happens, an act so extreme it will scatter the family in every different direction.”

9 The North Water by Ian McGuire (Scribner, $23)

Fiction.

10 The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Oneworld, $28)

Novel.

Keep going!