East Bay Best-Sellers lists this month’s top-selling paperbacks and hardcovers as reported by independent bookstores throughout the East Bay, including Black Oak, Cody’s, Diesel, Lafayette Books, Pegasus, Rakestraw Books, and A World of Books.
NONFICTION
1. Sandy Koufax, by Jane Leavy (HarperCollins, $23.95). A hero-worshipping look at the ups and downs of the pitcher whom many claim to be baseball’s greatest southpaw.
2. Fast-Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser (Harper Collins, $13.95). Feces in the meat and the unsavory secret of Secret Sauce are but two of the revelations sizzling herein.
3. stupid white Men, by Michael Moore (ReganBooks, $24.95). Comic iconoclast Moore skewers and gleefully humiliates the Washington power elite.
4. NEW Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rodgers and Gerald Asher (Norton, $35). The chef-owner of San Francisco’s tony eatery offers beaucoup blueprints for Mediterranean-inspired treats.
5. Longitudes and Attitudes, by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26). Insightful analysis of post-9/11 global politics by a respected columnist who says we’re already fighting WWIII.
6. NEW My Losing Season, by Pat Conroy (Doubleday, $27.95). In his first nonfiction work in thirty years, the author of The Great Santini recounts what he learned losing at college hoops.
7. NEW Bush at War, by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, $20). The old pro offers an insider’s blow-by-blow of what our commander-in-chief et al. did during the three months after 9/11.
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Owl, $13).A middle-class author pretended to be poor so as to describe the struggles of the underprivileged to mainly middle-class readers.
9. Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand (Ballantine, $15). A horse is a horse, of course — but no horse could ever run like this champion.
10. NEW Picturing Berkeley, by Burl Willes (Berkeley Historical Society, $35). Over four hundred reproductions of early-20th-century postcards, many in full color, reveal a city much changed yet much the same.
FICTION
1. NEW Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (Harvest, $14). The author of this lively Booker Prize winner about a boy and a beast surviving a shipwreck admits he “borrowed” the idea from a 1981 Brazilian novel.
2. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown, $24.95). Narrated by a murdered girl, this debut effort plumbs the outer reaches of emotion.
3. Summerland, by Michael Chabon (Miramax, $22.95). Adults are snapping up this self-conscious, baseball-themed Narnia knockoff, seemingly unconcerned that it’s a children’s book.
4. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett (Harper, $13.95). This offbeat epic follows a band of South American terrorists who seize an embassy and an opera singer.
5. You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s, $22). This self-published epic sees two grieving globetrotters doling out piles of unwanted cash.
6. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie (Anchor, $10). During China’s Cultural Revolution, two boys discover literature and love.
7. NEW Caramel0, by Sandra Cisneros (Knopf, $24). A family saga that draws its title from a grandmother’s rebozo has a big cast of characters and wends its sensual way from Mexico to the United States.
8. NEW Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende (Harper Perennial, $13.95). Independent women, idiosyncratic grandparents, and long journeys — did someone say “family saga”?
9. The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt (Knopf, $26). Tartt’s long-awaited second novel, in which kids try to solve a murder, reads like a Nancy Drew mystery ghostwritten by Tennessee Williams.
10. Atonement, by Ian McEwan (Doubleday, $26). Booker Prize-winner McEwan’s latest epic examines the nature of perception.
