15 Dec 2010 02:02:26
It isn’t a secret that on the eve of Christmas there is a panic in the bookshops. People don’t want to experiment that is why trying to take book of the author that they hear about. At Foyle's, web editor Jonathan Ruppin said the left-field of the Christmas market was being dominated by Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes, beautifully published by US art house Visual Editions, with a different die-cut on each page. The story itself takes Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles and pulls out words and phrases to leave the reader with an alternate narrative. But it's the book's identity as a physical object that is really getting book-buyers hooked, Ruppin said: "When you pick it up, it's such fun and such an intriguing thing." And on a sillier note, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel is doing "fantastically well" with Foyles buyers, added Ruppin.
Jaffe and Neale's in Chipping Norton is having a hit with Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will, Judith Schalansky's intricately designed love letter to the distant places that she dreamed of as a child growing up on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. And at the Totnes bookshop in surf-loving Devon, all-conquering Jamie Oliver is being given a run for his money by Martin Dorey and Sarah Randall's The Camper Van Cookbook, while local poet Matt Harvey's "very funny" illustrated collection Where Earwigs Dare is the top-selling title, said manager Nigel Jones. Meanwhile at Waterstone's, it's the third year in a row for EH Gombrich's A Little History of the World to clean up as "the thinking man's stocking-filler", as spokesman Jon Howells puts it.
There are some clear favourites among the alternative bestsellers. Edmund de Waal's family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes is mentioned everywhere, as is Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects, which some booksellers are selling so fast they say they're struggling to keep it in stock. Clive Aslet's The Villages of Britain and Ben McIntyre's Operation Mincemeat are among the other non-fiction favourites this Christmas, while Rene Redzepi's Noma, based on the famous Copenhagen restaurant, and Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty are further alternative cookbook hits.
Jaffe and Neale's in Chipping Norton is having a hit with Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will, Judith Schalansky's intricately designed love letter to the distant places that she dreamed of as a child growing up on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. And at the Totnes bookshop in surf-loving Devon, all-conquering Jamie Oliver is being given a run for his money by Martin Dorey and Sarah Randall's The Camper Van Cookbook, while local poet Matt Harvey's "very funny" illustrated collection Where Earwigs Dare is the top-selling title, said manager Nigel Jones. Meanwhile at Waterstone's, it's the third year in a row for EH Gombrich's A Little History of the World to clean up as "the thinking man's stocking-filler", as spokesman Jon Howells puts it.
There are some clear favourites among the alternative bestsellers. Edmund de Waal's family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes is mentioned everywhere, as is Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects, which some booksellers are selling so fast they say they're struggling to keep it in stock. Clive Aslet's The Villages of Britain and Ben McIntyre's Operation Mincemeat are among the other non-fiction favourites this Christmas, while Rene Redzepi's Noma, based on the famous Copenhagen restaurant, and Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty are further alternative cookbook hits.
