Best Seller Round-Up

"Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books."

- Charles Caleb Colton.

I. The New York Times.

Published June 12, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: Skin Trade, Laurell K. Hamilton.

Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Liberty and Tyranny, Mark R. Levin.

II. Los Angeles Times.
Published June 14, 2009.

Fiction Paperback: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Fiction Hardcover: The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 5) Rick Riordan.
Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell.

III. Northern California Independent Booksellers.
For the week ending June 7, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: The Scarecrow, Michael Connelly
Nonfiction Paperback: When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell.




IV. Heartland Indie Bestseller List.
Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association
For the week ending June 7, 2009.

Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows.
Fiction Hardcover: Shanghai Girls, Lisa See.
Nonfiction Paperback: Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Nonfiction Hardcover: Horse Soldiers, Doug Stanton.

Highly Recommended: "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge is a jewel of a book. In each of this novel's 13 chapters, author Elizabeth Strout tells a story about people living in a small town in Maine. Appearing in each chapter, sometimes as the central figure and other times in just a cameo role, is Olive Kitteridge. Olive is a school teacher, although in much of the book she is retired. But having held that job makes her a character that knows many people in her small hometown, and makes her known to many.

What a lot of these people know about Olive is that she is at times unpleasant. How, they wonder, can her husband Henry stand being married to her? Strout's outstanding writing and brilliant organization of this book shows how their marriage is woven together and why she is someone Henry could love and that we grow to like.

Other characters also grapple with the twists and turns of marriage or of having not married. Grim matters that arise in a life - loneliness, insecurity, unpleasant surprises, death - all make an appearance but the book is not over worked or overly sentimental. Instead, events are vivid. Strout creates people who look ordinary, who even seem flat on the exterior, and then reveals an amazingly clear picture of their interior life as they try and cope with new information and circumstances. These portraits really shine, which is what makes Olive Kitteridge a jewel.





For more information about Olive Kitteridge, check out Melissa Bank's positive review of the book on NPR's You Must Read This.

Highly Recommended Reading: "Beat the Reaper" by Josh Bazell

What is Beat the Reaper like? Take a look at its cover art. The folks who put that together for Josh Bazell's novel perfectly captured this book's tart and frenzied essence.




Author Josh Bazell, according to this wild book jacket, holds an MD and is currently working as a resident at the University of California, San Francisco. In Beat the Reaper, Bazell draws on his medical knowledge to create protagonist Dr. Peter Brown, an intern at a chaotic hospital in Manhattan.

Dr. Brown, it turns out, packed-in quite a bit of living before turning to a career in medicine. Brown was Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwa, a hit man for the Mafia. The book is about how Brown/Brnwa got drawn into life as a hit man, and what happens when his life in the Mafia and at the hospital intersect.

Bazell wonderfully twists the mob and medical genres together. Beat the Reaper is an original, fast-paced, and funny book that frequently offers story elements which are gross, crude, or juvenile. At the same time, it offers material that is oddly informative, and smart observations about people and institutions. Somehow, this all works.

Beat the Reaper is to reading what biting into a fresh, tart apple is to eating: it's not going to make up your entire diet, but it's good even while being a bit of a shock -- and you'd like some more, please.