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 Zest: Climbing From Depression to Philosophy by Daniel Kalderimis (Ugly Hill Press, $40)

Kalderimis is a Wellington-based litigation lawyer who fell into depression in his 40s. Zest is a set of six beautifully written essays offering insights into philosophy and literature and how they can be tools to reframe how to approach life. Kalderimis spoke to Nine to Noon earlier in the week if you’re keen to hear more.

2 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)

“A new Sally Rooney book means it’s time for everyone to deliver their hot takes, as sadly for the author many people around the world have made both liking and disliking her work part of their personal brands. No one (besides poets) thinks that anyone gets into writing literary fiction for the fame and money but in this rare case this is what has happened to this author, for better or worse. Will Intermezzo receive the same level of acclaim and derision as 2018’s Normal People or is that a height that is never to be scaled again?” Read more of Rebecca K Reilly’s take on Rooney’s latest on The Spinoff, here.

3 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26)

The Booker Prize winner 2024! Orbital is a slim novel (only 136 pages) about a day in the life of six fictional astronauts on an International Space Station. Chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, said about Orbital, “Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity, Harvey makes our world strange and new for us.”

Harvey is the author of five novels The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief, The Western Wind and Orbital; as well as a memoir called The Shape of Unease, about insomnia. Long-time fans of Harvey are rejoicing at this long-awaited recognition of her talent.

To all the book festival programmers out there: please can we have Samantha Harvey and Pip Adam, author of Audition, on stage together? Thank you.

4 Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (Picador, $25)

Good Readers are typically varied in their response but this five-star review is pithy and quite lovely: “The style is superb, as always, but the content much less depressing than usual with this author. Houellebecq becomes mellow with actual love playing an important role in the story. Nevertheless, he remains one of my favourite authors.”

5 There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking, $37)

The latest epic from Turkish writer Elif Shafak.

6 Women Living Deliciously by Florence Given (Octopus, $40)

“How to fall in love with your life.”

7 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)

The stunning sequel to Auē. Read Jenna Todd’s review on The Spinoff, here.

8 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38)

Not the Booker Prize winner! But still enjoying the benefits of the shortlist (and is a wonderful novel regardless of prizes).

9 Juice by Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton, $55)

“Juice is a hefty book, in terms of pages and the future it sets out, and it keeps delivering. Sympathies move to the most surprising quarters. Perhaps the most affecting of the protagonist’s stories belong to the clans’ foot soldiers, and to the woman who entrusted him with the child. To reveal more would be a spoiler – suffice to say that Winton sees hope in reaching across lines that seem to divide.” Read the rest of this review of Winton’s post-apocalypse novel on The Guardian, here.

10 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum (Hamish Hamilton, $25)

Charming, cosy, summery read.

WELLINGTON

1 The Royal Free by Carl Shuker (Te Herenga Waka University Press $38) 

The latest novel from superb Aotearoa writer, Carl Shuker who is also a superb reader (see this week’s Books Confessional).

Here’s the blurb: “James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical editor tasked with saving the ‘third oldest medical journal in the world’, the Royal London Journal of Medicine, from the mistakes no one else notices – the misplaced apostrophes, the Freudian misspelling, the wrong subtype of an influenza strain (H2N1 or H5N1?). His job is utterly boring, but – or so he tells himself – totally crucial: the Royal London is a stronghold of care for the human body, a bastion of humanism in a disintegrating world. In the London outside of the office, the prognosis for the body politic is bad: civic unrest is poised on the brink of riots.

Attempting to grieve for his lost young wife, while haunted by a group of violent North London teenagers in a collapsing city, James is brought to crisis.”

2 Wild Wellington: Nga Taonga Taiao: A Guide To The Wildlife & Wild Places Of Te Whanganui-a-tara by Michael Szabo (Te Papa Press $45)

A leafy little guide to the wild places in our lush capital.

3 Odyssey by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $40)

Fry was in Wellington this week which explains the double-hit on the list.

4 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)

5 Mythos: Illustrated by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $95)

See number 3, above.

6 Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $37)

7 Ootlin by Jenni Fagan (Hutchinson Heinemann, $40)

A phenomenal memoir from Scottish writer Jenni Fagan, tracing her years of living in state care. The writing is alive, poetic, and pulls no punches. Fagan was in Wellington over October-November as part of a new writers residency initiated by Verb Wellington, called Island to Island in which an Aotearoa writer travels to Scotland, and a Scottish writer travels to Aotearoa.

8 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)

Already touted as a New Zealand classic, Wilkins’ latest novel is a triumph.

9 Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngahuia te Awekotuku (Harper Collins NZ, $40)

Te Awekotuku spoke with Patricia Grace and Matariki Williams in the opening event at Verb Writers & Readers Festival last week. It was an astonishing conversation, drawing on photos by John Millar to illustrate key events in Te Awekotuku and Grace’s lives.

Here’s a snippet from Matariki Williams’ review of Hine Toa on The Spinoff: “First let me state, this isn’t the autobiography I expected to read. I have encountered Ngāhuia’s work through art criticism, history, anthropology, museology, and at symposia related to any of the many subjects in which she is expert. While I’m very interested in Ngāhuia’s scholarship, I’m glad this book is not that, and instead focuses on where it all bubbled up from. We begin with a cautionary tale set in Maketū wherein the kaitiaki tuatara Kiriwhetū, with whom Ngāhuia’s whānau has a reciprocal relationship, enacts utu upon an abusive Pākehā man. From this kōrero emerges threads that are picked up throughout the book: whānau, the sisterhood of wāhine, abuse and protection, love, and the persistence of justice.”

10 How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Harvill Secker, $26)

Irish novelist and poet was also in Aotearoa for Verb Readers & Writers Festival last weekend and won over audiences who lined up to purchase this Booker long-listed novel about a boy, and a family and a community (and a boat).