Book sales have leapt across the country as readers find they have extra time on their hands, with bookshops reporting a significant increase in sales of longer novels and classic fiction.
In the week the UK’s biggest book chain, Waterstones, finally shut its stores after staff complained that they felt at risk from the coronavirus, its online sales were up by 400% week on week. It reported a “significant uplift” on classic – and often timely – titles including Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Waterstones also reported a boost for lengthy modern novels, headed by the new bestseller Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, but also including Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and The Secret History, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Dystopian tales are also selling well, particularly Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Nielsen BookScan, the UK’s official book sales monitor, also reported nationwide increases in sales for War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings and the first instalment of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. (...)
Authors have reported that they are also attempting classic novels for the first time, including Stephen King, who announced on Twitter he had “finally got around” to James Joyce’s notoriously challenging Ulysses. “I understand it better than I expected, but I have to say it’s really fucking Irish,” the horror novelist wrote.
[ed. Ack. I would definitely not read any of these, except for Donna Tartt's Goldfinch and Secret History, and Dave Wallace's Infinite Jest. No to Joyce, Proust, Eliot, Tolstoy (except for Anna Karenina - Pevear/Volokhonsky translation), Marquez, Morrison, Fitzgerald et al. Why put yourself through the pain (though Proust is lovely if you like old French society culture). If you're going to read a big book, find something that'll grab you. Like: Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson), Mortals (Norman Rush), 1Q84 or Wind Up Bird Chronicles (Haruki Murakami), 11-22-63 (Stephen King); The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay or Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon), The Living (Annie Dillard), Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Three Body Problem - especially the second installment - The Dark Forest (Liu Cixin). Any of these would make the time pass so much more enjoyably, believe me.]
In the week the UK’s biggest book chain, Waterstones, finally shut its stores after staff complained that they felt at risk from the coronavirus, its online sales were up by 400% week on week. It reported a “significant uplift” on classic – and often timely – titles including Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Waterstones also reported a boost for lengthy modern novels, headed by the new bestseller Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, but also including Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and The Secret History, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Dystopian tales are also selling well, particularly Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.Nielsen BookScan, the UK’s official book sales monitor, also reported nationwide increases in sales for War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings and the first instalment of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. (...)
Authors have reported that they are also attempting classic novels for the first time, including Stephen King, who announced on Twitter he had “finally got around” to James Joyce’s notoriously challenging Ulysses. “I understand it better than I expected, but I have to say it’s really fucking Irish,” the horror novelist wrote.
by Alison Flood, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features[ed. Ack. I would definitely not read any of these, except for Donna Tartt's Goldfinch and Secret History, and Dave Wallace's Infinite Jest. No to Joyce, Proust, Eliot, Tolstoy (except for Anna Karenina - Pevear/Volokhonsky translation), Marquez, Morrison, Fitzgerald et al. Why put yourself through the pain (though Proust is lovely if you like old French society culture). If you're going to read a big book, find something that'll grab you. Like: Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson), Mortals (Norman Rush), 1Q84 or Wind Up Bird Chronicles (Haruki Murakami), 11-22-63 (Stephen King); The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay or Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon), The Living (Annie Dillard), Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Three Body Problem - especially the second installment - The Dark Forest (Liu Cixin). Any of these would make the time pass so much more enjoyably, believe me.]
