SubscribeI used to do these charts fairly regularly, but have somewhat fallen out of the habit. However, since the list of Top 100 Bestselling Books in the UK for 2009 is being published, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the Top 20.
1. The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown
2. Eclipse – Stephanie Meyer
3. New Moon – Stephanie Meyer
4. Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
5. Breaking Dawn – Stephanie Meyer (I’m beginning to sense a theme developing)
6. Guinness World Records 2010
7. This Charming Man – Marian Keyes
8. When Will There Be Good News? – Kate Atkinson
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
10. Dreams From My Father – Barack Obama
11. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
12. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
13. The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
14. The Return – Victoria Hislop
15. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher – Kate Summerscale
16. The Secret Scripture – Sebasitan Barry
17. The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
18. The Girl who Played with Fire – Stieg Larsson
19. Twilight – Stephanie Meyer (presumably a different edition to the one at number 4)
20. Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story – Ant McPartlin & Declan Donnelly
So, no surprises really. Dan Brown is in at number one with a bullet, selling about 100,000 more copies than his nearest rival. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself.
Then there’s the Twilight phenomenon. I tried to read the first one and nearly poked my own eyes out, but Eve at Vulpes Libris took one for the team and thus posted the brilliant Why I Hate Twilight. The comments themselves are worth your reading time too. Lots of capital letters.
In fact, the only book I’ve read from this list is number 15, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. I thought it was OK, but deeply flawed – do have a look at my year-old post on it.
The Steig Larsson books have been provoking lots of interest, which much of it centering around whether the books are “feminist” or not. I do own the first book, though haven’t read more than a couple of chapters so far, but The F Word did have this article arguing against the books having feminist credentials. Not having read them, I don’t know whether I agree, but this post is good food for thought at any rate.
I recently read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I have to agree with the assessment of The F Word that “these nods to feminism are not enough to compensate for the book’s graphic and gratuitous violence against women, which is just as gross as anything in Patterson’s novels.” Which is why I won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.