Top 10 bestselling books: June 14
The New Zealand books we've been buying this week. Photos / Supplied
1. (NEW) A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin)
The former PM's memoir, the first such account since Jim Bolger, has leapt straight to the top of the bestsellers, and is unlikely to be dislodged for some time.
The book generally found favour among reviewers, including
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The Spinoff
14 hours ago
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 20
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) Spot New Zealand's former prime minster on this week's New York Times bestseller list. 2 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The un-put-downable alternate history that explores some of life's biggest questions, including what does it mean to have a soul? Can a human ever not have one? 3 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30) Auckland really loves this hectic mother-son roadtrip novel. 4 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) Everett's biggest book yet is his stunning, funny and profound retelling of Huckleberry Finn. 5 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum (Bloomsbury, $25) Cosy and charming and perfect for a long Matariki weekend. 6 The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin, $26) This year's winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction. One of the most exquisite novels you'll read this year: it is moving, sexy and surprising. 7 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35) The smash hit novel based on a true crime story of a serial killer who lured her victims in with stunning food. 8 A Dim Prognosis by Ivor Popovich (Allen & Unwin, $38) An utterly gripping, energetic memoir from Dr Popovich. Revealing! See The Spinoff this weekend to read an excerpt from this brilliant book. 9 Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Random House, $38) Vuong's second novel. 10 King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby (Hachette, $38) A fiery crime novel. Here's the blurb: 'Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident. When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals. And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything. A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It's a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all. As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counselled them from birth, nothing lasts forever. Everything burns.' WELLINGTON 1 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) 2 Towards Modernism: Walter Cook Collection at Te Papa by Justine Olsen (Te Papa Press, $75) This handsome new publication celebrates the Walter Cook Collection of Decorative Arts (held at Te Papa) and the ceramic, glass and metal objects therein. 3 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 4 It's A Bit More Complicated Than That by Hannah Marshall (Allen and Unwin NZ, $25) A brilliant new YA novel from a huge new talent. Here's the blurb: 'Zelle and Callum used to be best friends, but they haven't spoken in three years: not since the tragedy that wrenched them apart, and Zelle moved away. But now Zelle is back, and their lives are about to get a whole lot more complicated. Zelle is in denial about her alcohol use that threatens to spiral out of control, and she's deeply annoyed at having to leave the city. Callum's future is thrown into jeopardy after both a disastrous uni interview and his budding romance turning sour. But they can't keep running from the past forever, and circumstances force them to examine their grief and guilt and find a way through.' 5 A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan (Allen and Unwin NZ, $37) 'Trevelyan's narrator is 10 years old. She's unnamed until the very end of the book (I won't reveal it here: best to find out for yourself). It's this naive perspective that makes A Beautiful Family both easy to read and impossible to put down. The narrator's innocence is pitted against several disturbing factors, all orbiting her summer in various shapes and shades, and it's that persistent dance of disturbances that creates the sustained and unrelenting tension in the novel.' Read more of Claire Mabey's review on The Spinoff, right here. 6 The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin, $26) 7 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 'I don't want to say that Delirious is the pinnacle of what Damien can do because that would be like putting a curse on his future work. But I am going to say it's almost impossible for me to imagine how he could do better. I think this is a great book – Great with capital G.' Even before Delirious won this year's Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, Elizabeth Knox was rapturous about Wilkins' beautiful novel. 8 Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq (Scribe, $37) Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. 'In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it's in her characters – the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India's most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.' 9 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 10 The Māori Millionaire by Te Kahukura Boynton (Penguin, $35) 'Te Kahukura Boynton is Māori Millionaire, and her debut book is here to help. Learn how to make money by clearing debt, saving for an emergency, finding work and increasing your salary, and even starting your own business and investing in shares and yourself. With tips on building better habits with your money and your life, Māori Millionaire is the positive mindset change you might be missing.' So goes the blurb.
NZ Herald
7 days ago
- NZ Herald
Top 10 bestselling books: June 14
The New Zealand books we've been buying this week. Photos / Supplied 1. (NEW) A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin) The former PM's memoir, the first such account since Jim Bolger, has leapt straight to the top of the bestsellers, and is unlikely to be dislodged for some time. The book generally found favour among reviewers, including
The Spinoff
06-06-2025
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 6
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 A Different kind Of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) From Oprah to Colbert, Insta reels to #booktok, former prime minister Jacinda Ardern has joined the ranks of hard-working celebrity memoirist who must engage in a hefty and relentless media campaign to shift that stock. Ardern's book and its message of kindness as a governing value for politics is a timely amulet for global market in a fraught political environment: publishers have banked on the fact that readers will snatch up her story to wave in the face of rising fascism, inequality and xenophobia. But what does the memoir genre really offer a former politician? The best memoirs are exposing, probing, and lend their readers a way to interrogate their own life decisions through the lens of another. The Spinoff's editor Mad Chapman reviewed A Different Kind of Power and addressed the tightrope that Ardern's attempt was always going to have to tread: 'I figured A Different Kind of Power would either veer political and therefore be cloaked in Ardern's usual restraint as a prime minister or it would veer celebrity and reveal the full emotion and drama behind the politician while conveniently brushing over policy and legacy,' wrote Chapman. 'Somehow it did neither.' 2 Air by John Boyne (Doubleday, $35) The final in Boyne's bestselling elements quartet. 3 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The 2025 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner. Wilkins' novel is the story of Mary and Pete, their great loves, their great losses. Beautiful, funny, and somehow both complex and refreshing like a walk through the New Zealand bush. 4 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) The poetic Booker Prize winner of 2024. 5 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 'With James, Everett goes back to Twain's novel on a rescue mission to restore Jim's humanity. He reconceives the novel and its world, trying to reconcile the characters and the plot with what now seems obvious to us about the institution of slavery. The result is funny, entertaining and deeply thought-provoking – part critique and part celebration of the original.' Read more of Marcel Theroux's review of James on The Guardian, here. 6 Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown & Ngarino Ellis with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Auckland University Press, $100) The winner of the illustrated nonfiction category in this year's Ockhams and a major publication for Aotearoa for a long time to come. 7 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Hugely popular novel that is, curiously, not particularly popular in Yuzuki's home country of Japan. 8 Murriyang: Song of Time by Stan Grant (Simon and Schuster, $47) Here's the publisher's blurb for beloved Australian journalist and broadcaster, Stan Grant's latest book: 'Murriyang, in part Grant's response to the Voice referendum, eschews politics for love. In this gorgeous, grace-filled book, he zooms out to reflect on the biggest questions, ranging across the history, literature, theology, music and art that has shaped him. Setting aside anger for kindness, he reaches past the secular to the sacred and transcendent. Informed by spiritual thinkers from around the world, Murriyang is a Wiradjuri prayer in one long uninterrupted breath, challenging Western notions of linear time in favour of a time beyond time – the Dreaming. Murriyang is also very personal, each meditation interleaved with a memory of Grant's father, a Wiradjuri cultural leader. It asks how any of us can say goodbye to those we love.' 9 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Random House, $38) Here's a lively snippet from Andrea Long Chu's review of Vuong's second novel: 'It is a sweet, charming, conventional novel whose ambition does not outstrip its ability. The young Hai is a suicidal college dropout stuck in the economically depressed but whimsically named town of East Gladness, Connecticut. 'If you aim for Gladness and miss, you'll find us,' the narrator says before directing our attention to Hai, who is about to jump off a bridge. But before he takes the plunge, the boy is flagged down by Grazina, a zany Lithuanian immigrant with dementia. Still unable to face his mother, who believes he is off at medical school, Hai moves in with Grazina, effectively becoming her live-in nurse, and seeks employment at the local HomeMarket (a thinly disguised Boston Market). Hai's co-workers are quirky, Wes Anderson–esque eccentrics who prove just as batty as Grazina: the manager, an amateur pro wrestler; the cashier, a Hollow Earther; Hai's cousin Sony, an autistic Civil War buff in denial about his father's death. Yet the delusions of others, instead of isolating Hai, end up pulling him out of his grief and into a provisional world of shared experience that, at least for a while, makes life worth living. What a pleasure to be given characters and a plot!' 10 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Sinister and magnificent. Catherine Chidgey's latest novel is an absorbing, gripping alternate history. Read The Spinoff's review, right here. WELLINGTON 1 A Different Kind Of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) 2 The Midnight Plane: New and Selected Poems by Dame Fiona Kidman (Otago University Press, $40) A gorgeous new collection of Kidman's poetry beautifully published in hardback and with an arresting cover image taken from the documentary about Kidman that premiered last year and was reviewed by The Spinoff, here. 3 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 4 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) Haymitch's time to shine in The Hunger Games. 5 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 6 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 7 Māori Made Easy: Workbook Kete 1 by Scotty Morrison (Penguin, $25) The indomitable Scotty Morrison is back with another brilliant aid for learning te reo Māori. 8 Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson (Profile Books, $55) Klein and Thompson's highly anticipated roadmap for fixing housing, healthcare, infrastructure and innovation. 9 Slowing the Sun | Essays by Nadine Hura (Bridget Williams Books, $40) A stunning series of essays. Here's the publisher's blurb: 'Overwhelmed by the complexity of climate change, Nadine Hura sets out to find a language that connects more deeply with the environmental crisis. But what begins as a journalistic quest to understand the science takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother. In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost? Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism. Slowing the Sun is a karanga to those who have passed on, as well as to the living, to hold on to ancestral knowledge for future generations.' 10 Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin, $65) Wonderful to see that Aotearoa poet Hana Pera Aoake wrote about rivers from a te ao Māori perspective for The Serpentine gallery in London. Widely beloved nature writer Macfarlane comes at rivers from a very different perspective in this latest, already bestselling book.
