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Melania Trump and Santa Claus (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Melania Trump and Santa Claus (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

BooksNovember 30, 2018

Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending November 30

Melania Trump and Santa Claus (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Melania Trump and Santa Claus (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Only 25 shopping days till Xmas! Prepare NOW by windowshopping the week’s bestselling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland.

WELLINGTON UNITY

1 Becoming by Michelle Obama (Viking, $55)

“I love it because it faithfully reflects the woman I have loved for so long”:  Barack Obama.

2 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33)

We look forward to the forthcoming review in The Spinoff Review of Books by Kim Hill.

3 Cuba Street Project: Place, food, people by Beth Brash and Alice Lloyd (Random, $55)

More, apparently, than just the bucket fountain and the never-ending, suffocating, jagged, claustrophobic suspense of inevitably bumping into someone who you hate/used to love/are afraid of/just not in the mood for/etc in New Zealand’s narrowest urban pedestrian thoroughfare.

4 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber, $33)

“One of the things that marks this novel’s exceptional calibre is that it improves upon second reading; digressions are never as they appear but soaring loops always stitched perfectly back into the novel’s fabric, the seeming circuitousness actually more tightly plotted than most thrillers…. I acquired the book from Anna’s deeply enthusiastic literary agent, David Grossman, just as soon as I was able”: Louisa Joyner, Anna Burns’s editor at Faber.

5 Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press, $60)

We look forward to the forthcoming review in The Spinoff Review of Books by Linda Burgess.

6 Scenic Playground: The story behind New Zealand’s mountain tourism edited by Peter Alsop, Lee Davidson & Dave Bamford (Te Papa, $80)

“This collection of a century of posters, glass slides, brochures, advertisements, paintings, photochromes and lithographs is a beautifully produced ode to photography, hand lettering, graphic design and illustration”: Jenny Nicholls, North & South.

7 Spy and the Traitor: The greatest espionage story of the Cold War by Ben MacIntyre (Viking, $40)

“The best true spy story I have ever read”: John Le Carre.

8 Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown, $25)

One of the most popular novels of 2018.

9 Shit Towns of New Zealand by Anonymous (Allen & Unwin, $25)

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10 Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking (John Murray, $35)

“String theory remains his favourite theory of everything. Also called M-theory, it conjectures that reality is made of infinitesimal strings, loops or membranes wriggling in a hyperspace of 10  dimensions. Noting that, according to quantum mechanics, empty space seethes with particles popping into and out of existence, Hawking suggests that the entire universe began as one of these virtual particles. The universe is ‘the ultimate free lunch,’ he says, and our universe may also be just one of many. M-theory, quantum mechanics and inflation, a theory of cosmic creation, all suggest that our cosmos is just a minuscule bubble in an infinite, frothy ocean, or ‘multiverse'”: Scientific American.

 

AUCKLAND UNITY

1 Becoming by Michelle Obama (Viking, $55)

2 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber, $33)

3 This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay (Picador, $23)

A UK comedian’s memoir about his gruelling years as a junior doctor.

4 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury, $22)

“A politically and psychologically acute novel about two British Muslim sisters and their jihadist brother”: New Statesman.

5 Flame by Leonard Cohen (Canongate UK, $45)

I said to Hank Williams

How lonely does it get?

Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet

6 Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press, $65)

7 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson (MacMillan, $35)

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8 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber $33)

9 Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking (John Murray, $35)

10 Sapiens: A brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Vintage, $30)

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The Spinoff Review of Books is proudly brought to you by Unity Books.

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