The National Post Bestseller List is reported weekly by a different Canadian bookstore, featuring local favourites alongside national hits.
This week’s list is courtesy of Munro’s Books (1108 Government Street Victoria, BC).
FICTION
1 Pharos Gate: Griffin and Sabine’s Lost Correspondence by Nick Bantock (Chronicle)
2 The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes (Random House Canada)
3 The First Little Bastard to Call Me Gramps by Bill Richardson (House of Anansi)
4 The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s)
5 The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly)
6 Barkskins by Annie Proulx (Scribner) “Barkskins is a disquietingly beautiful book. Proulx writes evocatively, with keen sensory detail immersing the reader in any given scene, as comfortable describing a white pine forest or daily life in a logging camp as she is describing the stately homes and well-appointed meeting rooms.” Robert J. Wiersema, Weekend Post
7 The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (Knopf Canada)
8 The Course of Love by Alain De Botton (Signal)
9 Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay ( Viking)
10 Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Y. K. Choi (Touchstone)
NON-FICTION
1 Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of failure and the Importance of Imagination by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown)
2 Dull Men of Great Britain: Celebrating the Ordinary by Leland Carlson (Ebury)
3 The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
4 Staking Claims to a Continent: John A. Macdonald, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and the Making of North America by James Laxer (House of Anansi) “One of the virtues of Laxer’s book is that it reminds us of how uncertain this all was, and how it nearly all fell apart. There was nothing inevitable about the triumphs of either the Union or Canadian Confederation.” Andrew Preston, Weekend Post
5 Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner
6 The Time Traveler’s Handbook: 18 Experiences from the Eruption of Vesuvius to Woodstock by James Wyllie (Harper Design)
7 Why Save the Bankers? and Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis by Thomas Piketty (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
8 Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet by Cathy Converse (TouchWood)
9 The Wild in You: Voices from the Forest and the Sea by Lorna Crozier (Greystone/ David Suzuki Institute)
10 Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing edited by Anne and Nicholas Giardini (Random House Canada)