Friday, January 2, 2009

Brookline Booksmith's Bestselling Books of 2008

Happy New Year Blogsmith readers! With no further ado I present to you our list of the past year's top selling titles.

25. Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
24. Boston Restaurants 2008-2009 by Zagat
23. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
22. The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
21. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
20. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
19. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
18. Better by Atul Gawande
17. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
16. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
15. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
14. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
13. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
12. What Is the What by David Eggers
11. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Our top ten...
10. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
9. The Gathering by Anne Enright
8. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
6. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
5. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
4. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
3. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
2. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

and our top seller of the year...
1. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

If you'd like to see how this compares to last year's list, you can check it out here. You'll see we have a few repeats: Three Cups of Tea, Eat, Pray, Love, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Gathering, Water for Elephants, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Road, and Zagat's Guide.

Of note for me this year are our triple doubles--two titles each from President-Elect Obama, Michael Pollan, and Stephenie Meyers (Why is it that New Moon, her second book, outsold Twilight, her first? Curious. Perhaps because there are multiple editions of Twilight out there? Hmm, something to check.).

Thank you so much to all of our wonderful customers and friends. Here's to another fantastic year of great books!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be surprised if the number one top selling book had something to do with the fact that the BHS students had to choose between that and the McCain book for summer reading.

Brookline is very democratic.

Lori said...

Hi Anon! You are certainly right that a lot of students bought Dreams From My Father over the summer as part of their required reading (it's what propelled Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun onto our bestseller list of 2007) but for what it's worth I can tell you that even if you take out ALL our sales from May, June, July, and August it would still be our #2 book. And you could not say anywhere near the same thing for any other book on this list (and certainly not for Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun last year).