The authors of Imagining Decolonisation (Photo: Supplied)

BooksJuly 29, 2022

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending 29 July

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The authors of Imagining Decolonisation (Photo: Supplied)

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 Blue Blood by Andrea Vance (Harper Collins, $37)

A cornucopia of coverage is available to you right on this here Spinoff: a special edition of the Gone by Lunchtime podcast; a write-up slash review (by Toby Manhire) of same; an excerpt.

2 Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathon Cape, $35)

“bleak godless manipulative mindfuck! 🙏🏽” – Zoe on Goodreads

“riveting, haunting, primal” – etherealacademia on Goodreads

“It has been several weeks since I finished it. Allow me to say:

Genuis, genius girls love Moshfegh. Moshfegh girls are the most unhinged girls in the chicken coop. I love you. You love me. We love Moshfegh, la-di-de-da, la-de-da, la-de-da, la-de-da. Moshfegh queens are Moshfegh fiends. And Moshfegh fiends get the greens. So read your Moshfegh, and you’ll be feral. Mhhhmm, I love Moshfegh. BYE.” – Jackson Basham on Goodreads

3 The Promise by Damon Galgut (Arrow Books, $26)

The New York Times begins its very positive review thusly:

“For three decades the South African writer Damon Galgut has been assessing his country through scrutiny of its white people. His prior novels include the Booker Prize finalist The Good Doctor, set at a clinic in one of apartheid’s forlorn ‘homelands,’ and The Impostor, an account of a poet self-exiled to the lonely countryside. Galgut’s new work, The Promise, studies the Swart family, descendants of Voortrekker settlers, clinging to their farm amid tumultuous social and political change – ‘just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans,’ he writes, ‘holding on, holding out.’”

4 Atomic Habits by James Clear (Random House, $40)

Instead of a bio on the Penguin website, Clear has a bunch of numbers:

“James Clear is an expert on habits and decision making. He made his name as the author of one of the fastest-growing email newsletters in history, which grew from zero to 100,000 subscribers in under two years. Today, his newsletter has over 400,000 subscribers, and his articles at jamesclear.com receive 10 million hits each year. His work frequently appears in publications including the New York Times, Forbes and Business Insider.”

5 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia, $35)

A warm welcome home to Kura, who’s been off these lists for a little while waiting for a reprint.

6 The Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott (Hutchinson, $40)

For eight years a New York Times reporter followed a young girl growing up poor in Brooklyn. She just won a Pulitzer for it. Here’s an excerpt:

“Even Dasani’s name speaks of a certain reach. The bottled water had come to Brooklyn’s bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. Who paid for water in a bottle? Just the sound of it – Dasani – conjured another life […] Dasani shares a twin mattress with her closest sister, Avianna, whose name was inspired by the pricer Evian brand of water.”

7 Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Text, $40)

Blurb, in part: “One year after the death of his beloved musician father, 13-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house – a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn’t understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain.”

8 Circe by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury, $22)

The BookTok-driven resurgence rolls on.

9 Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Picador, $23)

The Booker Prize committee, on longlisting Ishiguro: “What stays with you in ‘Klara and the Sun’ is the haunting narrative voice – a genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear.”

10 An Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (Penguin, $24)

Look closely at fungi, writes the Guardian reviewer of this 2020 nonfic hit, and you’re hit with “large, unsettling questions.”

“Merlin Sheldrake, a mycologist who studies underground fungal networks, carries us easily into these questions with ebullience and precision. His fascination with fungi began in childhood. He loves their colours, strange shapes, intense odours and astonishing abilities, and is proud of the way this once unfashionable academic field is challenging some of our deepest assumptions. Entangled Life is a book about how life-forms interpenetrate and change each other continuously. He moves smoothly between stories, scientific descriptions and philosophical issues. He quotes Prince and Tom Waits.”

WELLINGTON

1 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15)

Congratulations team.

2 Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi (Allen & Unwin, $30)

From the blurb, a work of art in itself:

“Eddy Smallbone (orphan) is grappling with identity, love, loss, and religion. It’s two years since he blew up his school life and the earthquakes felled his city. Home life is maddening. His pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling – in unexpected form.

As Eddy navigates his way through the Christchurch suburbs to Christmas, juggling competing responsibilities and an increasingly noisy interior world, he moves closer and closer to an overdue personal reckoning.”

3 You Probably Think This Song Is About You by Kate Camp (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

“Most people who do IVF don’t get pregnant, but you don’t hear about that much. Every story you hear is about how awful it was, how difficult, how the embryos died and the sperm wasn’t viable and the relationship was strained and then, and then, it happened, and here they are, with their miracle baby, their miracle family. I never understood the true meaning of love until I had children. It’s something people say all the time. And I always think Yeah, fuck you too.”

4 Aroha: Māori Wisdom for a Contented Life Lived in Harmony with Our Planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin, $30)

Elder has a second book coming in October ie to your Christmas stocking. Wawata, Penguin promises, “shows us how to reclaim intimacy with others, with ourselves, and with our planet, using the energies of Hina, the Māori moon.”

5 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday, $37)

The Guardian, in raptures:

“Every now and again, a first novel appears in a flurry of hype and big-name TV deals, and before the end of the first chapter you do a little air-punch because for once it’s all completely justified. Lessons in Chemistry, by former copywriter Bonnie Garmus, is that rare beast; a polished, funny, thought-provoking story, wearing its research lightly but confidently, and with sentences so stylishly turned it’s hard to believe it’s a debut.”

6 Wellington Architecture: A Walking Guide by John Walsh & Patrick Reynolds (Massey University Press, $25)

Left foot, right foot …

7 Grand: Becoming My Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, $35)

“She wonders how none of her colleagues noticed what a mess she was; well, they would have, but you can make up for a lot with a lilt and a laugh and a wardrobe of Miss Crabb. Also: addicts lie” – us, in a Dracula-heavy review a while back.

8 Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathan Cape, $35)

9 Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Hachette, $38)

A novel about, you’ll never guess…

10 Regenesis: How to Feed the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot (Allen Lane, $37)

Does this placement have anything to do with the fact we raved about Regenesis in our latest Book Report? Maybe! “Science that reads like hope,” we said.

Keep going!

orange backgrounds with john grisham and michelle obama books with angel wings

Their catalogue records burned out long before their legends ever will (Image: Tina Tiller)

BooksJuly 27, 2022

Where do library books go to die?

Alex Casey

Senior writer

Their catalogue records burned out long before their legends ever will (Image: Tina Tiller)

Every year libraries are forced to cull thousands upon thousands of books to make room for new stock. Alex Casey investigates their final resting places.

Everyone wants John Grisham until they don’t. There are currently more than 100 copies of his 2021 legal thriller The Judge’s List throughout Auckland City Libraries, but you only need to look to history to see how dramatically those numbers will dwindle in coming years. For example, his 2019 outing The Whistler – “a high-stakes thrill ride through the darkest corners of the Sunshine State” – now has only 28 copies available, and 2009’s The Associate – “if you thought Mitch McDeere was in trouble in The Firm, wait until you meet the associate” – has a mere five.

Anyone familiar with op shopping will know that popular titles dominate the book section, meaning it is a rare experience to enter any store in the country without encountering The Da Vinci Code, The World According to Clarkson, or Fifty Shades of Grey. And our libraries are facing the same issue. Every year, libraries across Aotearoa have to deselect thousands upon thousands of books to keep up with demand for new titles and maintain storage space.

As necessary as it is – Tāmaki Makaurau alone purchases about 386,000 new items a year – Auckland Council head of library and learning services Catherine Leonard says that it is a part of the job that never gets any easier. “We really do have to steel ourselves,” she says. “For us, it is not just the book itself but the work that has gone into acquiring it, describing it, cataloguing it, and shelving it – it really feels like it has a bit of a life.”

Although she finds it sad, Leonard says this is the reality of the library book life cycle. Libraries in Tāmaki Makaurau contain over 3.2 million items, clearing out an average of 10 per cent a year, or 320,000 items. “As with all public libraries, we are in a continuous cycle of renewing collections to keep them fresh and engaging for our customers,” Leonard explains. “When we see that items are no longer in demand, we will look at the number of copies and decide if we keep a small number or maybe just one for the whole region.”

Grisham aside, another recent title she says has found itself on the chopping block is Michelle Obama’s 2018 autobiography Becoming. “When that came out we couldn’t keep up with the demand and we ended up with over 100 copies, says Leonard. “But once the demand dies off it is a question of ‘do we really want to try and store 100 copies of this?’”

Michelle Obama seated in front of a huge shelf stacked with copies of her memoir. She's clasping her hands together and looking ... pensive, maybe? — You can actually pinpoint the second when her heart rips in half (Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

When it looks like a library book’s life is coming to an end, Leonard says there are strict assessment guidelines in place to ensure libraries are being “responsible and consistent” with how they are operating. Books are not only assessed on reader demand, but on what could be useful for future research or heritage purposes. “We’re really dubious of getting rid of the final copy of anything,” says Leonard. “Even if the condition is so poor that we couldn’t have it in the lending collection, we would still put it in the back catalogue and attempt to find replacements.”

Alas, there are some items that are simply too tatty, too damaged, too out of date or simply too prolific to warrant a spot backstage. These unlucky books face three possible fates – book sale, donation or recycling. Leonard says the community library book sale has been an exceptionally useful way of shifting old stock, with the Central Library Friday morning sale garnering lines out the door. Unfortunately since the arrival of Covid-19 in 2020, Auckland libraries haven’t had their regular book sales. “It just didn’t feel very appropriate for the times.”

Although Covid has meant that fewer library books are being sold off to the public, it has strengthened a new weapon in the ongoing storage battle. “The use of our ebooks has significantly increased in the lockdowns, so that’s been huge for us,” says Leonard. In the second long lockdown, there was a dramatic spike in children’s ebooks being hired out compared to the first. “It was really gratifying to see that people were making use of our children’s online collections to keep their kids entertained and reading,” says Leonard.

Given that ebooks require no shelf space and do not have to be returned – they simply disappear from your device when the time is up – Leonard says they can be a useful solution to a lack of physical storage. That is, they can add an extra link to the chain between purchase and disposal. But popular ebook titles have to face the same brutal guidelines when their time in the sun is up. “The supply of ebooks really is a copy per customer, so we have to do the same sort of balancing act when it comes to demand for our ebooks as we do with our physical books, which sounds weird when you are talking about something digital.”

Photograph of a bookshelf in an op shop, crammed with Lee Child and Jodi Picoult et al, knick knacks all along the top shelf — Where Jodi Picoult, Lee Child, Kate Atkinson et al go to die (Photo: Catherine Woulfe)

The next avenue libraries go down is donation. Auckland libraries have arrangements with a number of organisations including Auckland City Hospital, Mt Eden Prison, Women’s Refuge and a selection of local rest homes. “As you can imagine, we have to think carefully about what is appropriate for each of those. For instance, we wouldn’t want to donate a medical text with outdated information to the hospital, whereas Women’s Refuge is very interested in children’s material.”

Corrections’ chief custodial officer Neil Beales says book donations from both libraries and the public are a hugely important educational tool in prison facilities across the country. “The prison libraries are well utilised, and we’ve found people in prison have extremely positive experiences,” he explains. Genre reads such as fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, crime and thrillers are all in high demand, as is non-fiction based on New Zealand and Māori history.

He cites one example from the book club run in Rimutaka Prison, where one participant enjoyed the Paul Woods book How to Escape from Prison so much that he didn’t want to give his copy back to the library. “This is the first book that the man had ever finished and he felt that by giving it back he was losing a friend,” says Beales. “This particular book club participant is now studying for NCEA level one.” (NB The book is about mentally freeing oneself from prison).

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Joel MacManus
— Wellington editor

If the deselected books can’t be sold off or donated, it is – prepare yourself – into the bin with them. The plastic covers are removed, the barcodes are cut off, and the unwanted books cascade into their papery mass grave in what Leonard describes as “just your regular big recycling bins”. Auckland Council does not have data on items donated or disposed of, but assures that “all withdrawals are done in accordance with our assessment and disposal guidelines”.

The death of a library book remains a thing that some librarians have a harder time with than others. “Some are grateful to be able to create some space for the new books that are coming in,” says Leonard. “Others can feel like it’s not just the pages and the print, it is the ideas and the stories inside them that you are disposing of.” That reminds me, I’ve got a pristine copy of Michelle Obama’s Becoming that I feel bad about getting rid of. Would the library like it?

“No thank you,” says Leonard. “We’ve got quite enough.”