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BooksMay 26, 2017

The Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending May 26

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The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in Christendom.

WELLINGTON UNITY

1 Balancing Acts: Reflections of a NZ Diplomat by Gerald McGhie (Dunmore Press, $35)

Forty years a diplomat! He was New Zealand’s last ambassador to the Soviet Union, and he was also posted to Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and most dangerously of all, Wellington.

2 Leadership Material: How Personal Experience Shapes Executive Presence by Diana Jones (Hodder & Stoughton, $30)

Thirty years a trusted leadership advisor and executive coach!

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

Winner of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for fiction.

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

Winner of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for non-fiction.

5 The New Zealand Project by Max Harris (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

Winner of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for non-fiction, possibly.

6 Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, $45)

So now the world’s most conflated author thinks he’s Hemingway. He’s not Hemingway.

7 Portholes to the Past by Lloyd Geering (Steele Roberts, $25)

“Unlike some recent biography, matters like sexual awareness and first romances are given a brief matter-of-fact treatment, while decisions about pacifism, career choices, personal freedom and the role of Christianity are explored in some depth. The clergyman who emerged from the early part of his journey shows a wealth of liberal humanitarianism and common sense and, at least for this book, the heresy charges of the 1960s are put to one side”: Jim Sullivan, Otago Daily Times.

8 How Did We Get into This Mess: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot (Verso, $22)

Yes but as Harry Styles instructs, what’s more important is that we’ve got to get away from here.

9 Heloise by Mandy Hager (Penguin, $38)

Some background: in 2014, Hager followed a five-year obsession and went in search of a twelfth-century French nun. She spent her time in Menton chasing the footsteps of Héloise d’Argenteuil, trying to get close enough to her subject to introduce her to a new generation of readers

10 Tax & Fairness by Deborah Russell & Terry Baucher (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

Oxymoronic.

 

AUCKLAND UNITY

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

Thank You for Being Late has two overt aims. First, Friedman wants to explain why the world is the way it is — why so many things seem to be spinning out of control. And then he wants to reassure us that it is basically going to be ok”: New York Times.

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

“What are we without memories? What are we without children to give them to?…Completely absorbing”: Kim Hill, the Spinoff Review of Books.

3 Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $30)

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself”, and other homilies.

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

5 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari (Vintage, $30)

Popular non-fiction.

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

Popular literary fiction.

7 The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hashim Matar (Penguin, $28)

A memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father’s disappearance; winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for autobiography.

8 Portholes of the Past by Lloyd Geering (Steele Roberts, $25)

9 Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping Our Future by Ashlee Vance (Virgin, $28)

Is he, though? Is he really?

10 The Thirst by Jo Nesbo (Harvill Secker, $37)

Inspector Harry Hole hunts down another serial killer.

Keep going!