Sunday Salon: Bestsellers around the World

Welcome back to another post in my series, Bestsellers Around the World, where I pick a country and have a look at the bestseller lists and compared it to the Australian list.

As I was trying to decide which country to have a look at this month, I did contemplate trying to lookat the bestseller list from Greece, but I couldn't get very far with it so instead I am looking at the bestseller list from America. First though, here is the current Austalian bestseller fiction list from betterreading.com.au

1. All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton 
2. The Survivors by Jane Harper 
3. The Godmothers by Monica McInerney 
4. Honeybee by Craig Silvey 
5. The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult 
6. The Coast-to-Coast Murders by James Patterson 
7. A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin 
8. The Return by Nicholas Sparks 
9. Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith 
10. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan 

And here is the New YorkTimes combined print and ebook list

1. A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
2. The Return by Nicholas Sparks
3. The Searcher by Tana French
4. The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
5. Troubles in Paradise by Elin Hildebrand
6. The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult
7. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by VE Schwab
8. Return to Virgin River by Robyn Carr
9. Jingle All the Way by Debbie Macomber
10. Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell

Let's have a look at the similarites. There are two big name authors that appear on both lists - fNicholas Sparks and Jodi Piccoult. I must confess I have never read a Nicholas Sparks book, although I have watched quite a few of the movies based on them. I did read Jodi Piccoult years ago, but I think I felt a bit betrayed by one of the books I read so haven't gone back again since. There was a really interesting story to read and then the ending, well, let's just say that wallbanger is a good description for that ending.

On the US list, I was curious to see genre authors like Debbie Macomber and Robyn Carr on the list. I am really looking forward to reading Return to Virgin River, and clearly lots of other people were too. I do intend to read Elin Hildebrand at some point too. VE Schwab is an author who gets a lot of love but I haven't read her. I do think that this book might be the one that I do read.

Turning my attention to the Australian list, I mentioned last month that there were some big name Australian authors who were about to have books released, and this has born out on this month's list with new releases from Trent Dalton, Jane Harvey, Monica McInerney and Craig Silvey filling out the first four place on the list, and then another Australian author, Richard Flanagan, rounding out the list.

I was curious to see that there was no Where the Crawdads Sing on either list. It is at number 15 on the NY times list, having been on the list for 109  weeks. No other book in the top 20 comes close to that duration. I do expect that we will see it rise again as we get closer to the release the movie. There was news this week that Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People has been signed to play Kya, which I do think is a pretty good casting.

I am interested to see that the Debbie Macomber on the US list is a Christmas book. I don't really buy Christmas themed books. so I will be interested to see whether we end up seeing more Christmas books on the lists over next couple of months.

Is there anything on these lists that catches your attention?