Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021.
The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books in Edmonton and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton.
I suppose there are a couple of grounds for wondering about the placement of the NIV Gift & Award Bible on the non-fiction list this week. Why now? And what will the person or people giving that book as a gift or award make of the fact that both How to Avoid a Climate Disaster and The Body is Not an Apology lead it on this list? Of course, there are also those who might suggest it ought to be on the other list, in which case it might have placed higher or lower, but that would be a provocative argument, and the purpose of this weekly listing is surely not to provoke. This list is based on a small sample, but as it is mostly made up of residents of a province that has fewer than a dozen independent bookstores selling new books, readers of AlbertaPolitics.ca know who they are, indeed may know many of them personally, and that is part of charm of the feature and the delight in its occasional surprises.
ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. The Midnight Library – Matt Haig (HarperCollins)
2. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – Charlie Mackesy (HarperCollins)
3. The Midnight Bargain – C.L. Polk (Erewhon Books) *
4. Butter Honey Pig Bread – Francesca Ekwuyasi (Arsenal Pulp Press)
5. Hench – Natalie Zina Walschots (William Morrow)
6. Jonny Appleseed – Joshua Whitehead (Arsenal Pulp Press) *
7. The Push – Ashley Audrain (Penguin Canada)
8. How to Pronounce Knife – Souvankham Thammavongsa (McClelland & Stewart)
9. The Four Winds – Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Press)
10. Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart (Grove Atlantic)
ALBERTA NON-FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster – Bill Gates (Knopf)
2. Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)
3. Coconut – Nisha Patel (NeWest Press) * +
4. The End of Alzheimer’s – Dale Bredesen (Avery)
5. The Body Is Not an Apology – Sonya Renee Taylor (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
6. NIV Gift & Award Bible (Zondervan)
7. Lands of Lost Borders – Kate Harris (Vintage Canada)
8. Home Body – Rupi Kaur (Simon & Schuster)
9. Two Trees Make a Forest – Jessica J. Lee (Hamish Hamilton)
10. Fabric of the Game – Chris Creamer and Todd Radom (Sports Publishing)
* Alberta Author + Alberta Publisher
The independent bookstores contributing to this weekly list are:
Audreys Books, Edmonton
Cafe Books, Canmore
Drawn to Books, Edmonton
Glass Bookshop, Edmonton
Monkeyshines Books, Calgary
Owl’s Nest Books, Calgary
Pages on Kensington, Calgary
Shelf Life Books, Calgary
The Next Page, Calgary
Three Hills Books, Three Hills