The best-selling books this Easter at the two Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington.
AUCKLAND UNITY
1 Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Victoria University Press, $36)
Essays edited by two lecturers in religious studies at Victoria University. Chapters include “Remembering Jesus on Anzac Day” and “African Pentecostals in New Zealand”.
2 Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat (Canongate, $55)
The cookbook everyone is talking about and buying.
3 The Power by Naomi Alderman (Penguin Random House, $26)
Best-selling US fantasy fiction; the prescient metaphor for #MeToo.
4 Rather His Own Man by Geoffrey Robertson (Knopf, $50)
Memoir of a lawyer who once went out with Nigella Lawson.
5 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (Allen Lane, $40)
If contemporary PC culture is a sickness, Peterson’s book is the cure.
6 Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Penguin Random House, $30)
A best-seller for over a year, and still going strong.
7 Autumn by Ali Smith (Penguin Random House, $26)
Gloomy English novel. The sequel, Winter, is even more depressing.
8 Baby by Annaleese Jochems (Victoria University Press, $30)
Shortlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand national book awards for the fiction prize; boisterous, fun adventure, partly set in the Bay of Islands. A perfect Easter read.
9 Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Penguin Random House, $38)
The new memoir to buy. “Westover was born to Mormon fundamentalist parents in Idaho, the youngest of seven. Her father Gene was the prophet of their small family, convinced the world was going to end at the stroke of the millennium…Life is grim in all the ways one might expect. Money is a constant struggle; Gene works largely in scrap metal but it isn’t enough. Cars driven by exhausted family members crash during long drives, but hospitals and western medicine are forbidden so injuries persist and fester. An amazing number of freak accidents befall the male Westovers: leg shreddings, burnings. The author herself is repeatedly beaten and abused by an elder brother who charges into her room while she’s sleeping and fastens his hands around her throat, calling her a whore because of her friendship with a local boy…Westover has a story to tell that shouldn’t be ignored”: The Guardian.
10 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)
Publisher’s blurbology: “Frances is a 21-year-old college student who devotes herself to a life of the mind – and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband, Nick. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expects.”
WELLINGTON UNITY
1 Terry’s Dumb Dot Story: Treehouse Tale by Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton (Pan Macmillan, $2)
Yes, really: $2!
2 Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat (Canongate, $55)
3 Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, $45)
One of the great modern works of New Zealand memoir by the much-loved Listener writer, who lives in Devonport.
4 Way With Words: A Memoir of Writing & Publishing in NZ by Chis MacLean (Potton Burton, $50)
A book about making books by the veteran author and publisher, who lives in Waikanae.
5 Vanishing Act by Jen Shieff (Mary Egan, $30)
Crime novel, set in Auckland in the 1960s, told through a feminist and lesbian lens.
6 Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton, $45)
The new novel to buy. “Hide yourself away and read it now”: The Australian.
7 Educated by Tara Westover (Hutchinson, $38)
8 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B Peterson (Allen Lane, $40)
9 Cuba Street: A Cookbook by Liane McGee, Niki Chu & Anna Vibrandt (Fortyfive Design, $50)
A cookbook.
10 Dear Oliver: Uncovering a Pakeha History by Peter Wells (Massey University Press, $40)
“Dear Oliver is a story framed by the decline and the death of Peter’s mother, Bess, a few days short of her 101st birthday in a Napier rest home. Written from the point of view of a loving son, it does not flinch from the truth of age and dementia”: David Herkt, Stuff.
The Spinoff Review of Books is proudly brought to you by Unity Books.