Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022.
The lists are compiled by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, and include sales at Audreys Books and Glass Bookshop in Edmonton.
Readers will notice that Mr. Kerr’s An Explosion of Feathers is No. 5 on the independent booksellers’ non-fiction bestseller list this week. I’m not sure whether poetry belongs on the fiction or non-fiction list – I suppose that depends. In this case, the CBC says, “the poems have a narrative element that connects back to land, place, and the traditional and modern territories that a family finds themselves living on.” Presumably, sad to say, the Book Publishers Association of Alberta must reckon not enough poetry is sold nowadays in this province to justify a bestseller list of its own.
ALBERTA FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. Avenue of Champions – Conor Kerr (Nightwood Editions) *
2. Five Little Indians – Michelle Good (Harper Perennial)
3. What Strange Paradise – Omar El Akkad (McClelland & Stewart)
4. The House in the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune (Tor Books)
5. The Maid – Nita Prose (Viking)
6. Dune – Frank Herbert (Ace Books)
7. It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover (Atria Books)
8. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid (Washington Square Press)
9. Scarborough – Catherine Hernandez (Arsenal Pulp Press)
10. The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman (Viking)
ALBERTA NON-FICTION BESTSELLERS
1. Tipiskawi Kisik – Wilfred Buck (Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre)
2. People Change – Vivek Shraya (Penguin Canada) *
3. Good Enough – Leanne Brown (Workman Publishing)
4. Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions)
5. Life in the City of Dirty Water – Clayton Thomas-Muller (Allen Lane)
6. An Explosion of Feathers – Conor Kerr (BookLand Press) *
7. Atlas of the Heart – Brené Brown (Random House)
8. Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard (Knopf)
9. kayās nōhcīn: I Come from a Long Time Back – Mary Louise Rockthunder (University of Regina Press)
10. The Dawn of Everything – David Graeber and David Wengrow (McClelland & Stewart)
* 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