This week’s best-sellers

ReadingRoom

The week’s biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias

FICTION

1 Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi (Allen & Unwin, $29.99)

“A love story, and a coming-of-age story. As well, it’s a reminder of the importance of recalling the past and facing past griefs. Eddy’s final revelation is shattering but it’s also redemptive. Subtle, intense, very funny and very sad, this is a richly layered novel written with elegance, style and love”: from a rave review  by Paddy Richardson, this week at ReadingRoom.

2 Harbouring by Jenny Pattrick (Penguin Random House, $36)

Historical novel.

3 The Slow Roll by Simon Lendrum (Upstart Press, $39.99)

Crime thriller set in Auckland. From a review by Louise Ward, in Hawkes Bay Today: “O’Malley is a gambler with a side interest in finding stuff out. He’s gained a reputation as an amateur but reliable sleuth..When a distraught father comes to him for help in finding his teenaged daughter, O’Malley agrees. to help. This leads him straight into a situation he was not expecting involving gangsters and a teenaged boy named Jesse who has watched too much Breaking Bad…There are car chases, guns, shivs, underworld crime and intrigue. It’s a page-turning read.”

4 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers, $35)

Historical novel, sort of.

5 Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin Random House, $36)

6 Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press, $37)

In an annus mirabilis for really good historical novels, Sanders’s historical novel is one of the year’s very, very best historical novels. Cover design by Sarah Bolland.

7 The Leonard Girls by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $36.99)

Historical novel.

8 Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

9 To Italy, With Love by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $24.99)

10 How to Loiter In a Turf War by Coco Solid (Penguin Random House, $28)

NON-FICTION

1 Blue Blood by Andrea Vance (HarperCollins, $36.99)

Number one in its first week, deservedly so; Vance’s anatomy of the National Party’s leadership crisis is solidly reported, full of gossip and comedy, and populated by many, many wretches. From my review at ReadingRoom: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts, imaginatively; the Roman emperor Elagabalus (203–222 AD) smothered chosen guests to death beneath piles of rose petals. The exercises and abuses of power in Blue Blood are generally very petty although Collins, true to form, contrived to make everyone around her miserable. It’s a book of unhappiness. No one achieves greatness. No one maintains any dignity. Few had any to begin with; Hamilton East MP David Bennett appears throughout the book as a low-hanging villain, punished by Key for ‘alleged late-night antics in the Beehive’s third-floor bar’, dismissed by Chris Finlayson as a moron, and caught replying to a constituent who urged the party to roll Bridges, ‘Yeah, working on it.’ Aides and sources and staffers and even people with names toil in the background, maddened by their masters. There scuttles Matthew Hooton, Muller’s blundering amanuensis; there sighs Janet Wilson, who went to work for Collins, and foolishly offered the very thing Collins has always loathed: sound advice. All the while, the vultures in the Press Gallery keep their beady little eyes on the thing they want most in life: scalps.”

2 Everyday Favourites by Vanya Insull (Allen & Unwin, $39.99)

Over 70 recipes in one of the best cookbooks of 2022; garish cover.

3 A Quiet Kitchen by Nici Wickes (David Bateman, $45)

The very best cookbook of 2022; meals for one, as prepared by a food writer for Viva and the Woman’s Weekly, who lives by herself in a small rural community, and writes, “I bought my little bach seventeen years ago, and I still live there now. The very day I moved in, I became aware of someone shouting at me from the neighbouring property. I went out to find a tall weather-beaten man leaning over the fence and muttering gruffly, ‘Thought you might like something for your dinner,’ as he passed over a small packet of locally caught whitebait. When I went back inside, surrounded by boxes yet to be unpacked, I cried grateful tears that I’d moved to a place where people gave you whitebait! It seemed the epitome of living in rural Aotearoa New Zealand. I’ve carried on this simple tradition of gifting little packets of whitebait to new neighbours over the years, though with whitebaiting becoming so questionable in the sustainability stakes I’m going to have to find another welcome gift, I think.”

4 No Excuses by Dave Letele (Penguin Random House, $40)

5 Yum! by Nadia Lim (Nude Food Inc, $55)

Writer, comedian and gourmand  Gonzalez-Macuer is right now cooking up recipes from one of the best cookbooks of 2022 and composing a review for ReadingRoom.

6 The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)

7 The Boy from Gorge River by Chris Long (HarperCollins, $39.99)

8 Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle & Bianca Elkington & Moana Jackson (Bridget Williams Books, $14.99)

9 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)

10 Simple Wholefoods by Sophie Steevens (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)

Plant-based recipes in one of the best cookbooks of 2022.