What Canadians were reading in 2017

Female writers dominate fiction sales north of border.

The Star’s year-end bestseller lists rank the books that flew off the shelves at Canadian bookstores in 2017. They serve as useful tip sheets about books you may have missed in areas that interest you.

And taken together they offer insights into the passions and preoccupations of our times.

The fiction list reflects our need to escape into a good story with strong characters. It is dominated, as usual, by thrillers and crime fiction by such reliable practitioners as John Grisham, Ken Follett and Dan Brown — this year eclipsed by Ruth Ware and her blockbuster, The Woman in Cabin 10.

From a Canadian perspective, there were three big fiction winners in 2017, all women.

The phenomenon known as Rupi Kaur released her second poetry collection, The Sun and Her Flowers, in early October, yet in that brief period secured the No. 3 spot for the entire year on the original fiction list, which includes all hardbacks and paperback originals available in North America, and the top spot on the list of books by Canadian writers; her first collection, Milk

and Honey, ranks in the No. 3 spot. The second is Shari Lapena, who is No. 10 on the original fiction list and No. 5 on the Canadian list for her domestic thriller A Stranger in the House; her previous novel, The Couple Next Door, is still selling briskly at No. 10 on the Canadian list.

Finally, the redoubtable Margaret Atwood occupies three spots on the Canadian Top10 list, for two editions of The Handmaid’s Tale and one of Alias Grace, each of which found a vigorous second life on television.

The non-fiction list tends to be idiosyncratic and this year is no exception. But who could have predicted that the big non-fiction book of the year would be basically a science text, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Not all non-fiction is reflected in the original list. We cull books from secondary categories — business, cooking, self-help and the like — and publish those lists on rotating weeks. The Top 10 books in each of those categories is listed here.

And would you like to know what single book sold best in 2017 across all categories of fiction and nonfiction? It is a self-help book that perhaps reflects our urgent desire to survive this crazy year: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.