2009 Bestsellers at Broadway Books

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel-in-short-stories Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, topped the list of bestselling books at Broadway Books in 2009. The list of our top 25 bestselling titles includes 18 novels and 3 memoirs and seems heavily influenced by book clubs and our staff favorites. Quite happy to see so many local authors represented on this list as well. How many of these have you read? I'll post some genre-specific 2009 bestseller lists in a day or two.

1. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
2. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. The Opposite Field, Jessie Katz
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
6. The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch
7. The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
8. The Stubborn Twig, Lauren Kessler
9. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
10. My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
11. The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss
12. Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes
13. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
14. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
15. Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson with David Oliver Relin
16. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
17. Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
18. Run, Ann Patchett
19. White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
20. Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
21. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
22. Lavinia, Ursula LeGuin
23. Twilight, Stephenie Meyers
24. The Book Thief, Mark Zusak
25. Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama

Bestselling Fiction Thus Far in 2009

Here are the bestselling novels in January and February at Broadway Books:

1. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery


2. Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier


3. The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss


4. White Tiger, Aravind Adiga


5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz


6. Run, Ann Patchett


7. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks


8. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson


9. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese


10. Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo


11. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates


12. Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips


13. Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinski


14. The Last Chinese Chef, Nicole Mones


15. The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch

How many of these have you read? Which were your favorites?

Top Young Adult Books for 2008

Not too surprisingly, the four books from the Twilight series topped our list of young adult best-sellers for 2008: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn -- and we still have all of them in stock if you're missing one or two or haven't yet started the series! Two of my favorites from the top ten list are the ones by China Mieville and Sherman Alexie -- the latter the winner of the National Book Award for young readers. Here they are:

Twilight

New Moon

Eclipse

Breaking Dawn -- all four by Stephenie Meyers

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

The Book Thief, Mark Zusak

Brisingr (The third installment in the Inheritance series), Christopher Paolini

Slam, Nick Hornby

Un Lun Dun, China Mieville

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

I'd also like to give a shout out for The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. She is the author of the Underland Chronicles series about Gregor the Overlander (a series for younger readers), and this is her first YA novel. The subject is a bit creepy -- a boy and a girl from each district are chosen by lottery to come together for a fight to the death. I know, creepy. But well written, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Mystery Bestsellers

Here are the fifteen top-selling mystery books for the store in 2008.The best seller is the first book in a series by Julia Spencer-Fleming, based on an ex-army-helicopter-pilot-turned-Episcopalian-priest, who solves crimes in a small upstate New York village with the local police chief, and perhaps some canoodling -- or thoughts thereof -- ensues. Two of the other authors on the list are people I used to work with, which I think is particularly exciting: Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs series (based in post-WWI London), and Maggie Barbieri, author of the Murder 101 series (a contemporary sleuth who is an English professor at a college just north of New York City). As with the fiction titles noted earlier, most of these authors have additional books that can help you to pass the bleak midwinter hours in Portland.

In the Bleak Midwinter, Julia Spencer-Fleming

In the Woods, Tana French

Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear

Heartsick, Chelsea Cain

The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill

An Incomplete Revenge, Jacqueline Winspear

The Last Kashmiri Rose, Barbara Cleverly

The Salaryman's Wife, Sujata Massey

The Best American Mystery Stories 2008, edited by George Pelecanos

Suffer the Little Children, Donna Leon

Borderline, Mark Schorr

Murder 101, Maggie Barbieri

The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Alexander McCall Smith

Ratking, Michael Dibdin

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie King

Top-Selling Nonfiction in 2008

Because it's the New Year, it's time for the annual Broadway Books Bestseller lists! If you come to the store, you will see our window filled with the 40 best-selling books of 2008. But on the blog I'll break it into finer detail. So, to start (a little drum roll, please), here are the fifteen top-selling nonfiction books at the store this year:

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

Goodnight Bush, Erich Origen & Gan Golan

Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama

A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama

The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan

Child of Steens Mountain, Eileen O'Keefe McVicker & Barbara J. Scot

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Barbara Kingsolver

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

Wild Beauty, John Laursen and Terry Toedtemeier

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

Portland City Walks, Laura O. Foster

The Zookeeper's Wife, Diane Ackerman

It's That Time Again!

Yes, it's that time of year when all of the major publications start issuing their "best of the year" lists. In January we will announce the Broadway Books Bestsellers list for 2008, but in the interim these will have to suffice. We'll start off with the Ten Best Books of 2008 according to The New York Times:

FICTION:

1. Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories, Steven Millhauser

2. A Mercy, Toni Morrison

3. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill

4. 2666, Roberto Bolano

5. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

NONFICTION:

1. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, Jane Mayer

2. The Forever War, Dexter Filkins

3. Nothing to be Frightened of, Julian Barnes

4. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust

5. The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, Patrick French

Personally I've never understood how people can come up with a "best books of the year" list, particularly narrowing it down to ten or even fewer, but I'm glad they're willing to try! The books I read are so varied and dependent upon my mood -- although good writing is good writing, darn it! But I tend to be overly influenced by what I've read most recently. Call me shallow. Right now I'm reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, by Jon Meacham, and I'm liking it just fine.