So Publisher’s Weekly made us all aware of what sold the most copies, book-wise, last year. Good for them. I, of course, choose to see this as an invitation to make some sweeping declarative statements about what this all means for us, as a set of people.
But it is 2020, and while the heart of awards season is a tough time for me to declare that I’m going to keep this relatively positive (mostly because the things around it are the Grammys and a bunch of acting awards, which tend to skew negative, for all the obvious reasons), so in saying what this says about the people that buy it, I do not say anything at all about the quality of the books themselves either as reading experiences or additions to the sort of collective of gathered thoughts. Several of them I will read, some of them I have read already, some of them I hold in contempt, but that doesn’t color as much of this particular piece as it sometimes does.
Oh, and also, this is about what people buy, not what people rate or vote for or seek out, so it’s giving us a super weird slice of the book-publishing world, as it’s a pretty straightforward look at what people either 1) want to own or 2) want someone else to own (i.e. by giving it to them as a gift).
A similar post to this one will go up at the end of the month (the Grammys are between now and then) talking about the best-selling comics.
So here we go.
Delia Owens – Where the Crawdads Sing
WHAT IT IS: It’s probably the book that is going to be the best-seller forever, and ever, and ever, given the way its yo-yoed up and down the charts for the last couple of years.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That if you combine a murder mystery, a historical novel, the American South and a roman a clef into a debut novel written by a scientist, everyone is going to buy it. Seriously, this literally looks like the sort of thing a book-marketing staff would dream up as the ideal case for trying to sell a book (with whatever exceptions need to be made after you see below), and here it is. And it’s pretty good, to boot! I guess what I’m saying is: it says that we’re predictable and easy to motivate.
Michelle Obama – Becoming
WHAT IT IS: It’s Michelle Obama’s memoir
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Whatever popularity/marketing touchstones that Where the Crawdads Sing didn’t hit, “a memoir by the first lady just before the current business” is pretty much all of the rest of them. It’ll make you cry for every single reason, also. Isn’t that nice?
Dav Pilkey – Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls
WHAT IT IS: The seventh book by the second series from the Captain Underpants duder.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Kids love these friggin’ things. And they love series, and currently-ongoing series. And also Dav Pilkey is some sort of wizard of getting the hearts minds and eyeballs of the children.
Tara Westover – Educated: A Memoir
WHAT IT IS: An account of a woman whose religious upbringing left her without the usual social groundwork – she didn’t even have a birth certificate – that helps people make their way through life, who managed to overcome all of it and receive the education that she desired.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Stories about overcoming long odds are evergreen, and there’s probably no accident in this story being about someone who comes from being firmly entrenched in one system and essentially drifts over to the other side of several lines from where her beliefs started her out. Probably for some reason this is comforting. And people like to be comforted.
Jeff Kinney – Wrecking Ball
WHAT IT IS: The fourteenth diary of a wimpy kid book. Greg’s family renovates their house in this one.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: I mean, it probably says all the same stuff about series and continuity that I mentioned during the last Dog Man book, but it’s not too much to hope that actually kids just want a gripping, drawing-abetted story about the joys of picking out countertops.
Dav Pilkey – Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild
WHAT IT IS: It’s sixth Dog Man book, the one before the last one I wrote about.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Man, I’m trying, and I just don’t have two things to say abo this series.
Jeff Kinney – Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid
WHAT IT IS:This time, Rowley writes the book about Greg. It’s totally different this way, see.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: There’s been a lot of this stuff as a way to extend popular series. Hell, EL James did it not that long ago. I suppose you could trace the antecedents back to Orson Scott Card (the Bean books take place alongside the Ender books), but I like Jeff Kinney, and wouldn’t dream of saddling him with that comparison. Anyway, it says that people’s attitudes are bottomless for this stuff, and also that kids aren’t immune to the allure of “exactly like all that stuff you already like, only very slightly different”.
Rachel Hollis – Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be
WHAT IT IS: The plain-talking Jesus book that’s got everyone’s attention for its…whatever it is this book has.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: You know what? I’m going to come clean here: I do not get Rachel Hollis’s thing, I do not have anything in common with it from the perspective of someone who reads books. If someone has figured a way to pitch self-help at people who were heretofore underserved by the existing self-help market, then bless ‘em and may they use their powers for good. I am hereby declaring that I have nothing else to say about it. This is not for editorial reasons, it’s because the world that buys these books is not a world of which I am a part, or indeed, even have glancing contact with.
Rachel Hollis – Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be
WHAT IT IS: The plain-talking Jesus book that’s got everyone’s attention for its…whatever it is this book has.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: You know what? I’m going to come clean here: I do not get Rachel Hollis’s thing, I do not have anything in common with it from the perspective of someone who reads books. If someone has figured a way to pitch self-help at people who were heretofore underserved by the existing self-help market, then bless ‘em and may they use their powers for good. I am hereby declaring that I have nothing else to say about it. This is not for editorial reasons, it’s because the world that buys these books is not a world of which I am a part, or indeed, even have glancing contact with.
Rachel Hollis – Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals
WHAT IT IS: The other major Rachel Hollis book.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: See, every year I consider doing this, and many years I elect not to. So this time I’m writing about the best-sellers not out of any particular crushing need to (this could, after all, have been one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pieces, which are popular and much more entertaining), but because this is, as the header will someday say (I’m working on it), largely a blog about things that are popular. I talk a lot here about the things that are receiving awards, or selling copies, or speaking to people in such a way that moves them to spend their time/money/attention on them. This is not because I generally have any affinity for such things as artistic endeavors in and of themselves – my tastes are pretty weird, and run pretty far away from Jesus-flavored jes’ folks plain-speechin’ platitudes, not to mention any of the other dumbshit nonsense I write about in other awards/charts/celebrator contexts – but because I’m genuinely interested in the day-to-day tastes of the bulk of people – the people that buy/attend to/spend time on these things.
What it says to me, then, is that the human endeavor, in all of its messy weirdness, to communicate with each other through the abstracted means of artistic expression is so robust, and so durable, and so unkillable, that even this kind of thing works. And that even in 2020, when the entertainment landscape is giving us so many blocks to having anything in common with anyone, there are still things in common, and occasionally those things are books. I love that, in the main, and knowing that there are people out there going about their lives for whom this book is a part of that going-about process, this book that I find completely inexplicable, un-engaging and essentially meaningless to anything I would do, make, see, experience or even seek out is something that reminds me that the world is a vasty panoply of people and their ideas, and that people are pretty good at finding the things they need to be happy with their own time.
I’m not here for most of this list in general(I can probably count on one hand the number of these books I’m even likely to read at any point), but it’s a useful thing to look upon the list of things that more people let into their lives than any other thing, and, rather than an arrogant, above-it-all casting-down of that sort of thing, to try to get to the bottom of what it is that people are doing here. So it says all that, at least to me, and it says it all even though I haven’t read a word of it, will never read a word of it, will certainly never buy it, and almost certainly don’t know anyone who has. That’s fascinating to me, and it’s fascinating enough that I built a whole website to talk about it. Rachel Hollis might, in fact, be the mascot of this fucking website. I probably have to pay her money. Jesus.
Heather Morris – The Tattooist of Auschwitz
WHAT IT IS: A novel about the guy who tattooed prisoners at Auschwitz. I mean, I do appreciate a good, self-explaining title.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Boy oh boy do we love uplifting stories about the Holocaust. I mean, just endless, bottomless appetite for this stuff. As a culture, I mean.
Dr Seuss – Oh the Places You’ll Go!
WHAT IT IS: Dr. Seuss’s most graduation-gift-able book (true story: my copy was also a graduation gift! Just like yours probably was!)
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That we’re always graduating, and also that people like to apply children’s book wisdom to non children’s book situations.
Dav Pilkey – Dog Man: Fetch-22
WHAT IT IS: The eighth dog-man book
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That our ability to buy Dog-Man books does not respect the order that numbers happen in.
John Grisham – The Guardians
WHAT IT IS:John Grisham’s 40th (!) novel, this one is…..a legal thriller. About lawyers and thrilling stuff. I mean, none of this is a surprise here.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Whatever the code is, John Grisham done cracked it thirty-odd years ago, and here we are still buying the results of his crack as though it was….crack. Yep. I’m calling this wordplay. At least there aren’t any more Dog Man books on here.
Craig Smith – The Wonky Donkey
WHAT IT IS: A picture book with a delightful title.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: I mean, the field of picture books is pretty much wide-open in a lot of ways in terms of sales and readership. The appetite for them is, in one aspect, huge (everybody needs a bunch of picturebooks when they need them) and, in another, super-narrow (you stop needing picturebooks after a few years, generally speaking), so a catchy title and some pretty kicky illustrations are pretty much everything we’ve got here to explain the sales success of this one.
Tom Rath – Strengthfinder 2.0
WHAT IT IS: Sort of at the intersection of self-help, business speak and cryptocult, the Strengthfinder thing is impenetrable to folks such as I, but seems to be about figuring out how best to be managed. By, like, managers.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that a book that is popular enough to sell copies to business retreats, corporate events and all that sort of thing is, by extension, popular enough to be somewhere below the three most recent Dog Man books on the sales charts.
Stephen King – The Institute
WHAT IT IS: A shadowy organization (the one in the title) is kidnapping kids and giving them superpowers. Perhaps it’s making them Breakers? Where my King-heads at? Anyway, on the premise level this seems like one of Unlce Steves trips to the Big Wheel o’ King-isms, but I’m lead to believe this is a particularly good one. I haven’t read it yet. I mean, I’m going to, but I haven’t yet. I want to be clear about that.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Some books are best-sellers because of the book – Where the Crawdads Sing is one of those, as is Strengthfinder 2.0 or The Wonky Donkey. Those are books that sell because those titles have generated their sales momentum for title-specific reasons. There are some best-sellers (this one, the Telgemeier below, the Dog Man books) that are more about the brand of the author/series. Stephen King books tend to wind up more or less in this spot on these lists because Stephen King people (of which I am one, see above) buy them, more or less regardless of whether they are good.
Rainia Telgemeier – Guts
WHAT IT IS:The most recent Raina Telgemeier book. Interestingly, according to my highly-informal data, you either know what that means, in which case you not only already know about this book but can picture the cover, or you have no idea what that means, in which case “sort of pop-literary middle-grade comics” isn’t really going to help you grasp the size of the situation here.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US:The thing that I like, in the abstract, about Raina Telegemeier is how much of her there is in these huge, people pleasing books. They’re very personal, highly idiosyncratic, and generally the kind of thing one wishes existed in the world a little more. I don’t read them, but I’m happy that so many people do.
Eric Carle – The Very Hungry Caterpillar
WHAT IT IS: I mean, it’s the picturebook. It would sell more if someone could convince peopel to give it away as a graduation present, thus selling it to two different groups. I mean, when I went to college I was particluarly hungry. I think this could work.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: The Very Hungry Caterpillar is not only delightful as a piece of work, but also highly memorable in the way that it is presented, fun to read, and easy to understand. It’s basically the perfect picture book, and it’s hard not to appreciate that.
Ree Drummond – The Pioneer Woman Cooks
WHAT IT IS: The Food Network fixture’s ten-year-old collection of recipes.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Ree Drummond’s thing is a real thing. I’m going to link to this Khushbu Shah article and let that do the heavy lifting in terms of what’s going on over there in Oklahoma, but it doesn’t surprise me that her primary book is still a huge seller, even this far after it’s come out.
Jen Sincero – You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
WHAT IT IS: A life coach’s manual for how to help yourself and be your own self-helper and also coach your own life or whatever.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: So I’ve kept this one pretty positive, and I’m not here to yell about people seeking whatever help they need from whatever source they seek it from. I will say that I think the primary audience for this is not necessarily people that want to work on themselves, but people who want to be told that they, in fact, should do less to improve themsleves, and everythign is already done if they just push this one magic button. It infuriates me, and I will nto consider it any further. Stop buying these books, people.
