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 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)
“Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.” Read more over on Kirkus Reviews, here.
2 The Mermaid Chronicles: A Midlife Mer-Moir by Megan Dunn (Penguin, $35)
A stunning new book from one of the strongest and most surprising voices writing in New Zealand today. The Mermaid Chronicles cover motherhood at age 40, daughterhood at middle-age, the ongoing battle to survive as an artist and as someone who is simultaneously curious about the world and worried for it. And mermaids. Read Dunn’s essay on why she wrote this book, here.
3 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari (Penguin, $45)
“NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.” Happy Halloween.
4 Message: Writing and the World by Ta-Neshisi Coates (Hamish Hamilton, $40)
This book by one of the great thinkers of our time sounds like essential reading. Here’s the blurb: “Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories – our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking – expose and distort our realities.
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist – and named for Nubian pharaoh – Coates had never set foot on the African continent until finally he travelled to the coast where the enslaved were transported to a new world. Everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people.
In Palestine, he discovers the devastating gap between the stories we tell ourselves and the vivid reality on the ground. He travels the singular landscape and meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians – the old, who remember their dispossession, and the young who dream of revolution.
The final essay takes place in the USA – in Columbia, South Carolina, where Coates visits a school district in the process of banning one of his books. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened and her community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the ‘racial reckoning’ of 2020.”
5 What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci (Fig Tree, $50)
I’ll always think of Stanley Tucci as Puck in that film version of A Midsomer Night’s Dream with Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania. But here he is telling us what he eats at home, in restaurants, on film sets and on holidays.
6 War by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster $60)
Trump’s face is on the cover of the book which might make you flinch. But this is a hellishly insightful book about US political relationships and these tumultuous times.
7 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38
This book has a very good shot at the Booker Prize this year. We will be tuning in on November 12 to find out who will win out of this hefty shortlist.
8 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35)
Could go nicely with number 5, above.
9 Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador, $38)
Hollinghurst fans rejoice! A precise and moving writer, it sounds like Our Evenings holds true to the voice we know and love. Here’s an excerpt from the review in the Guardian: “Our Evenings forms a deep pattern of connection with its predecessors, while being an entirely distinct and brimming whole. If it’s a long solo, it is a various and populated one. Happily echoing with voices, it stays clear of pastiche. Its chapters feel inhabitable: places to which you might return for sustenance on ‘little mental occasions’ as yet unknown. Hollinghurst is precise about sentiment in ways that put loose sentimentality to shame. And he is above all an appreciator, taking pleasure in the inexhaustible particularity of what people do and make and see. That capacity for appreciation acquires new emotional and political meaning here, in the finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time.”
10 Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin, $38)
Giving joy and comfort at this alarming moment in history.
WELLINGTON
1 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)
2 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)
Manawatu’s sequel to her award-winning novel, Auē, was reviewed for The Spinoff by Jenna Todd, who wrote: ‘The natural environment cradles the narrative and our characters as Manawatu’s effortless figurative language is intertwined with the languages of science: lush ecology, resources and knowledge sits in the deep fabric of the environment. There is poetry in lines like this: ‘Meaty rain clouds wring the mountains’ necks, but the sky near the coast is bright white and light gold.'” Read the rest of the review, here.
3 Invasion of Waikato / Te Riri ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
Read the introduction to this book on The Spinoff, here.
4 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
“I don’t want to say that Delirious is the pinnacle of what Damien can do because that would be like putting a curse on his future work,” wrote Elizabeth Knox, “But I am going to say it’s almost impossible for me to imagine how he could do better. I think this is a great book – Great with capital G.”
5 Jewish, Not Zionist by Marilyn Garson (Left of the Equator, $30)
“I wrote Jewish, not Zionist to tell one story of Aotearoa’s liberatory Jewish community. Far from feeling threatened by the rights of Palestinians, we regard justice as our common cause. We are tangata Tiriti, committing also to the long work of justice at home.” Read more from Garson’s op ed on The Spinoff, here.
6 Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
“There are two signs of a great novel, for me. One is that I can’t stop reading it, and absolutely must blast through it in one sitting. Those are the kinds of novels that envelop you in a voice, in a world, in the vision of the author, and to break free of that space feels like a violation of the reader’s contract. For a few blessed hours, I am under an author’s spell and there’s nowhere I’d rather be.” So goes the start of Sam Brooks’ review of this brilliant debut novel. Read the rest, here.
7 The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, $35)
Look out for an essay by Gnanalingam on The Spinoff this weekend in which he reveals what real life politician sparked this latest, searingly good novel with its finger down hard on the pulse of 2024.
8 Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders & the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell (Abacus, $40)
Sounds much like the first one.
9 Dear Moko: Maori Wisdom for Our Young Ones by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin, $30)
From the bestselling author of Aroha and Wawata, comes this beautiful book of wisdom for our young ones.
10 Wild Robot by Peter Brown (Piccadilly, $19)
The book taking the world by storm thanks in part to the film adaptation that looks delightful, too. Here’s the blurb:
“When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island. Why is she there? Where did she come from? And, most important, how will she survive in her harsh surroundings?
Roz’s only hope is to learn from the island’s hostile animal inhabitants. When she tries to care for an orphaned gosling, the other animals finally decide to help, and the island starts to feel like home. Until one day, the robot’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her…”