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Lisa Taddeo attends In goop Health Summit Los Angeles 2019 at Rolling Greens Nursery on May 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for goop
Lisa Taddeo attends In goop Health Summit Los Angeles 2019 at Rolling Greens Nursery on May 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for goop

BooksAugust 2, 2019

Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending August 2

Lisa Taddeo attends In goop Health Summit Los Angeles 2019 at Rolling Greens Nursery on May 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for goop
Lisa Taddeo attends In goop Health Summit Los Angeles 2019 at Rolling Greens Nursery on May 18, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for goop

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  Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury, $35)

Long may they reign.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23)

Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney

3  An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Vintage, $37)

Winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

4  A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Windmill Books, $26)

“At one point, I got teary-eyed because one of the characters gets hurt and must go to the hospital” – Bill Gates.

5  Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Sandstone, $27)

Winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.

6  Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber & Faber, $33)

Winner of the other 2019 Man Booker Prize.

7  Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers edited by Witi Imihaera and Whiti Hereaka (Penguin Random House, $38)

“This is where we start. We are creatures of words. We are creatures of imagination. We live on the edges of dreams and the margins of thought. We live in the whisper of the page.” – Whiti Hereaka, prologue.

8  The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

See also: Our trail of tears: the story of Ihumātao. 

9  Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Windmill Books, $28)

Auckland City Libraries got in a ridiculous, astonishing 120 copies of Educated – and there’s still 403 people ahead of us in the queue.

10 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Noah Yuval Harari (Vintage, $30)

Algorithms, big data, eternal robot life, etcetera

 

WELLINGTON

1  Brain Connections: How To Sleep Better, Worry Less & Feel Happier by Giresh Kanji (Pain Publications, $36)

Oh god is the answer quitting sugar? 

2  Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby, and Piripi Walker (Lift Education, $20)

“Toby approached me to read a few early drafts… and I was struck by how simple you could make the language around this difficult subject. We over-complicate things as adults, our judgement gets clouded by guilt and prejudice” – Ātea editor Leonie Hayden

3  The Occasional Demon by Primo Levi, edited & translated by Marco Sonzogni & Harry Thomas (The Cuba Press, $30)

Thirty-six poems by the great science writer, memoirist and Holocaust survivor. Read one of the poems here.

4  The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40)

5  Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury, $35)

6  Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, $38)

“Atkinson’s genius for plotting, combined with an acute sympathy for the inner lives of her characters, has created what she likes to call ‘a genre of Jackson Brodie’ (her publishers plump for ‘literary crime novel’)” – the Guardian

7  How to Escape From Prison by Paul Wood (HarperCollins, $38)

“My fifth temporary release was for 24 hours… At one point as we were walking along, Chris stopped to roll a cigarette. I felt an acute awareness of the space behind me, such as in the mess or thoroughfares in prison, and I found a concrete wall so I could stand with my back to it.”

8  From Strategy to Action: A Guide to Getting Shit Done in the Public Sector by Alicia McKay (Alicia McKay, $35)

Oh, Wellington.

9  Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate, $25)

You have to be in a particular mood for this one. Kinda zany and loose? Extremely tired also works.

10  No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference by Greta Thunberg (Penguin Books, $8)

Let’s hope not. Tautoko, Greta.

Keep going!