Best Seller Round-Up

"Everything popular is wrong." - Oscar Wilde

The New York Times

1. Fiction Paperback (Mass Market): The Appeal by John Grisham.
2. Fiction Hardcover: Scarpetta, by Patricia Cornwell
3. Nonfiction Paperback: Marley & Me by John Grogan.
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
5. Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Shack by William P. Young.

Note: Last Sunday, December 28, Marilyn Stasio wrote a short review of Scarpetta in TBR's Crime column.

The Los Angeles Times

1. Fiction Paperback: New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
2. Fiction Hardcover: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
3. Nonfiction Paperback: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

Norther California Independent Booksellers Bestsellers

1. Fiction Paperback (Mass Market): The Appeal by John Grisham.
2. Fiction Hardcover: A Mercy by Toni Morrison.
3. Nonfiction Paperback: Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama.
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
5. Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz.

Under Children's Titles, N. California Independent Booksellers has The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, by Lemony Snicket and Lisa Brown. What a great book title!

San Francisco Chronicle
Bay area best sellers.
1. Fiction: A Mercy by Toni Morrison
2. Nonfiction: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

The Washington Post's on-line edition is still showing its best seller list from the week of December 14. I've sent an email to the paper inquiring as to why this is so.

Bestseller Round-Up

Yippie-ki-yay, cowgirls and cowboys! Here are the books coming in at number one today from various best seller lists. Caveat: Just remember what your mama (might) have said: Popularity isn't everything.

Washington Post
Washington Area Best Sellers for the Week Ending 12/14/2008.
1. Fiction Paperback: The Appeal by John Grisham.
2. Fiction Hardcover: Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
3. Nonfiction Paperback: Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama.
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

The New York Times
For the week ending 12/20/2008.
1. Fiction Paperback (Mass Market): The Appeal by John Grisham.
2. Fiction Hardcover: The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe and Jason Wright.
3. Nonfiction Paperback: Marley & Me by John Grogan.
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.
5. Fiction Paperback (Trade): The Shack by William P. Young.

The Los Angeles Times
From the 12/28/2008 edition.
1. Fiction Paperback: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
2. Fiction Hardcover: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer.
3. Nonfiction Paperback: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
4. Nonfiction Hardcover: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

San Francisco Chronicle
Bay area best sellers. From the 12/28/2008 edition.
1. Fiction: A Mercy by Toni Morrison
2. Nonfiction: Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

2008 Holiday Books

From NPR, books recommended for the 2008 holidays.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, coffee table books for the holidays.

From Publishers Weekly, best books of 2008.

From the Austin Public Library, best fiction of 2008.

Robert Silvers of the New York Review of Books

Robert Silvers, co-founder and editor of the New York Review of Books, is interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. The November 20th edition of the NYRB marks its 45th anniversary.

The NYRB was born in 1963, during a city-wide newspaper strike in New York. Silvers told the Chronicle:

"'We felt you had to have a political analysis of the nature of power in America - who had it, who was affected," he recalled. "It's hard to sum up a paper. We published thousands of articles of many kinds. But the current running through from the beginning was - here we were, editors of this paper in New York. We had control. We could do whatever we wanted, if we could pay the printer.' By the third year, they were in the black.

"'It struck us that in so many parts of the world - under the Shah or under Brezhnev - people could be punished for publishing what they believed,' Silvers said. In response, the Review has continuously published in-depth interviews with political dissidents, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel."

Writing and Publishing: A means of speaking truth to power.