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BooksMay 24, 2019

Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 24

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The only published and available bestselling 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  Toll by Luke Wright (Penned in the Margins, $32)

“Part Essex wide boy, part dandy fop, he writes from the sidelines about small-town tragedies and national farce, then performs his work with snarl and spit”: the poet’s website.

2  New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

“While not all New Zealanders are ready to confront our past, this work will serve as a taonga for future generations”: Mihingarangi Forbes.

3  Conventional Weapons by Tracey Slaughter (Victoria University Press, $25)

“It’s probably best described as a bit of heavy artillery – an ode to female adolescence and the ongoing challenges of female embodiment”: the poet, to Stuff.

4  Mondeo Man by Luke Wright (Penned in the Margins, $28)

“Cool poems”: Patti Smith.

5  Attraction by Ruby Porter (Text Publishing, AUS, $37)

New and brilliant; New Zealand, now.

6  This Mortal Boy by Fiona Kidman (Vintage, UK, $38)

Winner of the 2019 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize.

7  Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, $40)

We do have a review in the works, promise.

8  Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crises by Jared Diamond (Allen & Unwin, $40)

“I would estimate the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050”: the author, in New York Magazine.

9  The Overstory by Richard Powers (Vintage, AUS, $26)

Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

10 Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Penguin, $37)

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WELLINGTON

1  The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

2  Grief Almanac by Vana Manasiadis (Seraph Press, $30)

“Vana gives me hope for a new kind of belonging”: Dr Helen Heath, on Twitter.

3  Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, $40)

4  This Mortal Boy by Fiona Kidman (Vintage, $38)

5  Marilyn Waring: The Political Years by Marilyn Waring (Bateman, $40)

The cover photo says it all.

6  Island Time by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

“Life is tough, but for Pacific people life is also good.”

7  Finding France Hodgkins by Mary Kisler (Massey University Press, $45)

“…The difficulty is to be yourself, assimilate all that is helpful, but keep your own individuality, as your most precious possession – it is one’s only chance”: the artist, in a 1903 letter to her mother, quoted in Canvas.

8  Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $23)

She’s ba-ack…

9  Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth (Random House, $28)

In which the planet is a yummy baked good we’re all blithely gobbling up.

10 Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape, $37)

Keep going!