2006

The problem with these more recent years is too much information. Here’s a few various US lists, but let’s start with our friends in the UK and see what the difference is in reading tastes across the pond.

Top books in the UK according to The Guardian

1. Labyrinth, Kate Mosse 1,670 copies on LT
2. The Island, Victoria Hislop 285 copies
3. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka 1,485 copies
4. The Sounds of Laughter, Peter Kay 114 copies
5. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown 21,610 copies
6. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown 12,060 copies
7. I Know You got Soul, Jeremy Clarkson 127 copies
8. The Undomestic Goddess, Sophie Kinsella 1,700 copies
9. My Best Friend’s Girl, Dorothy Koomson 117 copies
10. Guinness World Records: 2007 62 copies

In the US according to Amazon

1. Cesar’s Way, Cesar Millan 394 copies
2. The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman 4,633 copies
3. State of Denial, Bob Woodward 653 copies
4. Ultra Metabolism: The Simple Plan For Automatic Weight Loss, Mark Hyman 93 copies
5. Twelve Sharp, Janet Evanovich 1,802 copies
6. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan 2k,713 copies
7. Fiasco: American Military Adventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks 635 copies
8. The End, Lemony Snicket 1,518 copies
9. I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron 669 copies
10. American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips 542 copies

From Coverbrowser

1. The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama 1,548 copies
2. State of Denial: Bush at War Part III, Bob Woodward 653 copies
3. The Innocent Man: Murder and Justice in a Small Town, John Gresham 961 copies
4. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins 3,837 copies
5. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket 2,780 copies
6. For One More Day, Mitch Albom 1,340 copies
7. Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris 944 copies
8. Culture Warrior, Bill O’Reilly 155 copies
9. Ageless: The Naked Truth about Bio-identical Hormones, Suzanne Somers 20 copies

From Bookbrowse

1. Marley and Me, John Grogan 2,543 copies
2. The Innocent Man: Murder and Justice in a Small Town, John Gresham 961 copies
3. The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman 4,633 copies
4. Twelve Sharp, Janet Evanovich 1,802 copies
5. Eldest, Christopher Paolini 3,809 copies
6. The End, Lemony Snicket 1,518 copies
7. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards 4,340 copies
8. Freakonomics, Steven Levitt 8,221 copies
9. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown 21,610 copies
10. The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd 2,156 copies

Contrary touchstones today.

Interesting! I've read three of the 10 UK bestsellers (or really 2 1/2 -- I gave up on Labyrinth half way through), but only one of the 30 US bestsellers (although my son has read a couple of them, so they are in my library.) This in spite of the fact that I live in the US, not the UK.

My wife read Kate Moss Labyrinth, a Series of Unfortunate Events, Twelve Sharp, The Mermaid Chair, and Eldest (I couldn't get through all of Eragon. I think she looked at Mark Hyman's "Ultra Metabolism : the simple plan for automatic weight loss", and dismissed it.

I've read parts of Freakonomics and the World is Flat.

We both read the two Dan Brown novels.

I'll probably get to the Omnivore's Dilemma in about 9 months.

That Amazon list cannot be right, can it? LOL Only one of those is fiction!

I did some googling and for 2006 I found a bunch of different lists. Sheesh.

On publishers weekly I found this info:
Best selling Fiction of 2006:

1. For One More Day by Mitch Albom, Hyperion
2. Cross by James Patterson, Little, Brown
3. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks, Warner
4. Next by Michael Crichton, HarperCollins
5. Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, Delacorte
6. Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, Scribner
7. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich, St. Martin’s
8. Cell by Stephen King, Scribner
9. Beach Road by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge, Little, Brown
10. The Fifth Horseman by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, Little, Brown

Best selling non-fiction:

1. The Innocent Man by John Grisham, Doubleday
2. You: On a Diet—The Owners Manual for Waist Management by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., Free Press
3. Marley & Me by John Grogan, Morrow
4. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, Crown
5. Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly, Broadway
6. Guinness World Records 2007, Guinness Publishing
7. The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene, Simon & Schuster
8. Cesar’s Way: The Natural Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peltier, Harmony
9. The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
10. State of Denial: Bush at War Part III by Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster

Lemony Snicket books won't show up on Publisher's Weekly or New York Times lists, as they have separate lists children's books. some books become evergreens and then are dropped from the lists. I don't whether the rules are consistent or random. I don't know whether Canadian sales are included in any of these lists.

The same goes for the Harry Potter books. Their sales would have knocked many of these out if they had been counted.

It's true there are so many lists for 2006 it's hard to choose. I wish there were for earlier years. I guess we are in information overload.

Plus, I hear that many of the publishers don't accurately report their sales numbers, so there really is no way to ever know actual counts.
It's just like our election results. ;o)

Nielson has some means of doing it through book scans from check out counters, but you have to have a subscription to their service to get the info.

Here is the Campbell family bestseller list for 2006. This was done by finding all the 2006 books in the vpfluke LT catalog, and then sorting them in order of what is shared among LT catalogers. V is my wife Valerie.

1. Water for Elephants: a novel by Sara Gruen - 4241 owners, 220 reviews. I'll have to find out whether V liked this, I didn't read it.

2. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See - 2506 owners, 118 reviews. V only got a ways through this one.

3. Gilead: a novel by Marilynne Robinson - 2385 owners, 22 reviews. Excellent, I read it, and so did a group at our church. Actually, the hardbound came out in 2004.

4. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse - 1683 owners, 63 reviews. Neither of us got through to the end.

5. Mayflower: a story of courage, community, and war by Nathaniel Philbrick - 1226 owners, 31 reviews. V got it through a book club.

6. Olympos by Dan Simmons - 853 owners, 17 reviews. I read it, pretty good. It's SF with Greek Gods playing a major role. Quasi-homage to Homer.

7. Break no bones by Kathy Reichs - 705 owners, 15 reviews. V likes the Temperance Brennan mysteries; we even watch Bones on Fox TV from time to time.

8. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior by Temple Grandin - 586 owwners, 25 reviews. This is likely to become a clssic in the animal psychology field.

9. The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer - 452 owners, 20 reviews. Didn't know we had this book.

10.The Wizard of London byMercedes Lackey - 419 owners, 3 reviews. V has read most of the Lackey books.

11. Empires of the World: a language history of the world by Nicholas Ostler - 377 owners, 9 reviews. Excellent book. I first heard about on BookTV.

I wonder about Labyrinth I have yet to hear anyone say anything good about it. Most are in your situation, unable to finish it. How did it become a bestseller?

As I got to the end of my list, all the Toucstones began to bounce around.

I'll try Nicholas Ostler again. (had to do it on last name)

Then Mercedes Lackey.

Kate Mosse's name won't work.

varielle,

Massive hoodwinking. The labyrinth invited us in, then we got lost, bored a hole though the ceiling, and got out.

>9 vpfluke:
That's a nifty idea. My Top 5 for 2006 looks like this:

The God delusion by Richard Dawkins - TBR

Artemis Fowl : the lost colony by Eoin Colfer - son's book

Predator by Patricia Cornwell - former airport purchase, given to me to put on BookMooch

Letter to a Christian nation by Sam Harris - TBR

Serenity : those left behind by Joss Whedon - TBR

From the publisher's weekly list I've read -

4. Next by Michael Crichton, HarperCollins
5. Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, Delacorte
6. Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, Scribner

8. Cell by Stephen King, Scribner

Lots of lists here. I'll use the first.

A short history of Tractors in the Ukraine: Haven't read it, but that's a great title, esp. because I have a Ukrainian neighbor who believes Ukraine was the beginning of civilization and contributor of many things wise and wonderful.

Saw the DaVinci Code movie and found it dull, like a cheap knockoff of National Treasure, a much better movie. I remain flabbergasted at the book's popularity (the movie tanked). Dan Brown must've done something right, but I won't be reading him.

The Da Vinci Code as a book was quite a bit better than the movie. Towards the ed of the book, when Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland comes into play, the description of it in the book and the pictures I found on the web were more enticing than then what we saw in the movie. I would actually like to travel there. Lots of people don't like the book because of its negative portrayal of Christianity, particularly the Catholic church; and you do get into both faith and factual issues.

Although I'm a Catholic, the negative portrayal of of the Catholic Church in The Da Vinci Code didn't bother me ~ after all, it's fiction. The reason I loathed the book is that the writing was execrable.

#17 - Wait, aren't you the one who's admitted to reading those Left Behind books? You must like reading 'execrable' writing almost as much as you like using the word...
;o)

*ducks head and shuffles feet*

Yes, I know. Sad, isn't it.

Nah. Just means you're human. ;o) I suspect we all have our weaknesses when it comes to certain books or genres.

I read Fiasco last month, and it was scary. Very well written and well defended argument.

I read Freakonomics and the two Dan Brown books a couple years. My family listened to The DaVinci Code on a car trip more recently, and I will say that book doesn't hold up on rereading.

I read Angels and Demons and kind of enjoyed the page-turner aspect of it, but in the end I thought it was so silly that I didn't bother to read The Da Vinci Code.

I read them both and I'm glad I read The Da Vinci Code first, because if I'd read A & D first I certainly wouldn't have bothered with Code. Code was the better book, IMHO. Oddly, one of my older brothers used to be a Catholic priest, and he insists that Angels & Demons is the more realistic of the two books. I just thought the ending of it was over-the-top.

I think the mistake is looking for realism in Dan Brown to begin with.

Although Dan Brown is not a great writer, he is good at writing a page turner, particularly if you suspend some belief in reality. This is a book that spread considerably by word of mouth. I wonder if people haven't given up on Brown while waiting for Solomon's Key to be published.

It's amazing, but The Guide to Dan Brown's The Solomon Key was published 2 1/2 years ago! Note, I put the wrong title in my above message.

I have read books from some of the lists

Gilead
Da Vinci Code
Freaknomics

Such a recent list, and I only have one. Picked up Fiasco on a remainder table a while back, but haven't found time to read it.

Browsed Freakonomics, The World is Flat, and The Da Vinci Code to see what all of the buzz was about, but none of them passed the 50-page test. Actually, Da Vinci Code was so bad, it didn't pass the 10-page test!

For Freakonomics and The World is flat I've heard both Steven D. Levitt and Thomas L. Friedman enough times on shows like Charlie Rose that I figured I didn't have to dip too much into the books. So, I guess I'm not the only one who did not seriously read them.

I read The World is Flat and felt that, while I didn't agree with Friedman on many points (open-mouthed admiration of WalMart? Um, no.) and was even ahead of him here and there (Open source software! Who knew?), I did gain some ideas to think about.

I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and found it to be, for the most part, very good.