The Sunday Times - UK (2021-12-19)

THE

SUNDAY

TIMES

BESTSELLERS

GENERAL HARDBACKS

last

week

weeks in

top 10

1

Windswept & Interesting

Billy Connolly

(two Roads £25)

memoir by the comedian who rose to

fame after an appearance on Parkinson

(37,105)

19

2

Diddly Squat/Jeremy Clarkson

(m Joseph £16.99) stories of agricultural life from

the broadcaster’s farm in the cotswolds (34,475)

35

3

And Away.../Bob Mortimer

(simon & schuster £20) the Shooting Stars and

Gone Fishing funnyman’s autobiography (31,740)

213

4

The Storyteller/Dave Grohl

(simon & schuster £20) the nirvana and Foo

Fighters rock star shares stories from his life (22,435)

410

5

This Much is True/Miriam Margolyes

(J murray £20) the Bafta-winning star of stage and

screen reflects on her life and career (21,690)

512

6

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse/Charlie

Mackesy (ebury £16.99) An illustrated

fable containing gentle life philosophy (17,080)

64

7

Celebrating the Seasons with the Yorkshire

Shepherdess/Amanda Owen (macmillan £20)

stories, photographs and recipes (15,350)

87

8

Will/Will Smith and Mark Manson

(century £20) the actor and musician charts his rise

to the top of the film and music industries (13,315)

75

9

Big Panda and Tiny Dragon/James Norbury

(m Joseph £14.99) illustrated, mindful tale of

friendship inspired by Buddhist philosophy (10,610)

10 6

10

Mental Fitness/Ant Middleton

(harpercollins £20) the former soldier’s principles

for maintaining a healthy mind and body (9,995)

93

GENERAL PAPERBACKS

last

week

weeks

in top 10

1

The Power of Geography

Tim Marshall

(elliott & thompson £9.99)

An examination of ten regions that could

define global politics in the future

(8,075)

111

2

Entangled Life/Merlin Sheldrake

(vintage £10.99) Biologist’s examination of the fungal

world and its importance to the planet (5,790)

215

3

The Last Days of John Lennon/James Patterson,

Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge (Arrow £7.99)

lennon’s life and his assassination (4,780)

33

4

What If?/Randall Munroe

(J murray £9.99) the creator of the XkcD webcomic

answers hypothetical science questions (4,760)

926

5

Tall Tales and Wee Stories/Billy Connolly

(two Roads £8.99) A selection of anecdotes

and illustrations from the popular comedian (4,465)

733

6

Interesting Stories for Curious People/Bill O’Neill

(lak £10.95) Random facts about numerous subjects

from the paranormal to popular culture (4,330)

11 3

7

Empireland/Sathnam Sanghera

(viking £9.99) the British empire and its

fundamental influence on modern Britain (4,295)

510

8

Gone Fishing/Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse

(Blink £8.99) comedians’ love letter to the joys

of angling, inspired by the BBc2 series (4,160)

45

9

12 Rules for Life/Jordan B Peterson

(Penguin £10.99) Psychologist’s set of principles

for a responsible and meaningful life (3,750)

16 21

10

Good Vibes, Good Life/Vex King

(hay house £10.99) how positive thinking, self-love

and overcoming fear lead to lasting happiness (3,695)

895

all for coming out, and let’s

give another round of

applause for the winner, Luke

Kennard.” Kennard is famous

for writing poems of Larry

David-ish awkwardness. It all

felt strangely apt.

Peterborough column,

The Daily Telegraph

Unreadable sentence

of the year

From Incarnation by Tom

McCarthy, who was shortlisted

for the Booker prize in 2015:

They claimed to have verified

from Nadine Dorries on

gay marriage

Best awards cock-up

The Forward Prizes (known

as “the Poetry Oscars”)

descended into La La

Land-style farce on Sunday

night [Oct 24] as their

founder, William Sieghart,

mixed up his cue cards and

forgot to announce the winner

of the main £10,000 award. He

instead went straight into his

closing script, telling the

baffled audience: “Thank you

Hatchet job of

the year

The Sunday

Times’s Camilla

Long on The

Bench by the

Duchess of Sussex:

When you read [Meghan’s]

new children’s book, The

Bench, the first thing you think

is: well, she has simply gone

for the least dangerous thing,

hasn’t she? No difficult themes

in benches; no risk

of alienating parents. It is

gobsmackingly lazy, the

cultural equivalent of tofu...

Enter... the arid, intellectually

dead world of The Bench

and you will encounter a

frictionless non-universe

created with fragile men-

children like Prince Harry in

mind. The whole book seems

to be addressed to a weeping

simpleton who doesn’t quite

understand fatherhood or,

for that matter, park benches.

Punchiest political tweet

I have dragged my sorry ass

across the earth for 64 years,

only to find this woman

appointed Secretary of State

for Culture.

From @Robert_Harris,

who pointed to a 2013 tweet

Kepler’s hypothesis, or at least

its mechanical possibility, by

recording, by means of a

vane whose impedance at

attachment point into wet

clay was ZM(12/11)2 (groove

modulation velocity thereby

being set at vg = 2 pS/

(ZM(12/11ss)), their own voices

singing “Ja, ma han leva” (it

was Engström’s birthday),

and then subsequently

reviving these voices with a

custom-made tone arm and

off-the-shelf Euphonics U15P

pick-up.

Classics trigger warnings

Even the least well-read could

probably surmise that Robert

Louis Stevenson’s novel

Kidnapped involves an

abduction, but academic chiefs

have nonetheless cautioned

undergraduates that the

19th-century classic “contains

depictions of murder, death,

family betrayal and

kidnapping”. The so-called

trigger warning was issued by

the University of Aberdeen,

which also told students that

Julius Caesar... features “sexist

l the christmas bestsellers

seem all but fixed, with very

little movement in the charts

this week. except, that is,

for the new Pinch of Nom

cookbook, a newcomer and

this week’s bestseller, shifting

119,400 copies. Perhaps we

shouldn’t be surprised: in

2019 the first Pinch of Nom

slimming book sold 210,506

copies in its first three days.

l we’ve also seen the return

of Delia owens’s 2018

word-of-mouth hit novel

Where the Crawdads Sing.

this close to the big day, you

need a reliable present.

The lists are prepared by and

the data is supplied by (and

copyrighted to) Nielsen BookScan,

and are taken from the TCM for

the week ending 11/12/21.

Figures shown are sales for

the seven-day period.

What

made

us laugh

From caustic reviews to literary

gobbledegook, John Dugdale

rounds up the very best of...

Bored Boris Johnson Long and pink superworm

BOOKS

32 19 December 2021