The Unity Books bestseller chart for the strange week ending August 28

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle (Allen & Unwin, $33) “We are left, breathless, at the last, game-changing sentence.” … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the strange week ending August 21

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND First, a word from the team at Unity Auckland: This second week of Lockdown 2.0 has seen us readjust nicely into … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the strange week ending August 14

Before we get to the top 10s, a note from the good folk at Unity Auckland:  Wednesday, first thing, we found people knocking on the shop door before we had a chance to flick the lights on. This time around folk were not going to be without their reading materials. There was lovely Judith, who … Read more

This children’s book awards speech is the happy cry you need right now

Announcing the winners of the 2020 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.  The supreme prize of the night, the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award, goes to Selina Tusitala Marsh for her super-personal picture book, Mophead. Mophead is memoir and clapback and wild doodle; it’s the story of what it felt … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending August 7

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump (Simon & Schuster, … Read more

The Unity children’s bestseller chart for the month of July

What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. AUCKLAND 1  Sleepy Kiwi by Kat Merewether (Illustrated Publishing, $20, 0-3) Black-and-white board book by the author/illustrator of all the Kuwi books. Tiny bubs love to look … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 31

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump (Simon & Schuster, … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 24

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  How Do We Know We’re Doing it Right? Essays on Modern Life by Pandora Sykes (Penguin Random House, $40) I’m … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 17

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin DiAngelo (Penguin Random House, $28) … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 10

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24) Joint winner of the 2019 Booker prize. That was in October … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 3

The world-famous best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $34) This is the one that kicks off with the essay about the Tongan boys, which … Read more

The Unity children’s bestseller chart for the month of June

What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. AUCKLAND 1  Mophead by Selina Tusitala Marsh (Auckland University Press, $25, 5+) A finalist in this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 26

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Know Your Place by Golriz Ghahraman (HarperCollins, $40) A memoir. Ghahraman wrote an essay for us when it released last week … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 19

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24) Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This week it became the … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller list for the week ending June 12

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Auē by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press, $35) Winner of the 2020 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. You can watch … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending 5 June

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24) Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. The other day, Evaristo tweeted: … Read more

Behold! The finalists of the 2020 Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

The embargo on this year’s list has just been lifted. Here are all the books in the running for a gong. Huge caveat: we are yet to read them all. We’re working on that, snarled-up postal system permitting. So please consider these initial thoughts. We’re very chuffed to see Our Toby (Morris) in there with … Read more

The Unity Books children’s bestsellers for the month of May

What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. AUCKLAND 1  The Noisy Book by Soledad Bravi (Gecko Press, $25, 0-2) An unusually long board book. What this means is it’ll take your toddler an entire … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 29

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the most prestigious prize … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 22

Lisa Simpson reading The Bell Jar

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Auē by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press, $35) Elating, awful and true in all the ways that matter. Winner of the … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 15

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Newly anointed winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. The judges were … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 8

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1  The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, $50) The author, to Vulture: “When I got towards the … Read more

‘It brought tears to our eyes’: A warm-fuzzy update from Unity Books

Like bookstores across the country, Unity Books opened for online orders on Tuesday morning not quite knowing what to expect. Everyone across both teams is so wildly busy doing God’s work – getting books to where they need to be – that we can’t bring you a bestseller chart based on actual data this week. … Read more

The Unity Books chart for the strange week ending April 24: Short and snappy

Week five, somehow, of these lockdown lists, compiled by the staff of Unities Auckland and Wellington. On the back of widespread reports that brains across the country have turned to custard, the theme this week is “books you can knock off in no time”. And speaking of no time: we are inexorably hurtling towards Tuesday … Read more

The Unity Books chart for the strange week ending 17 April: Sweetness and light

Somehow we’re up to week four of these lockdown lists. What is time.  The theme this week is, essentially, “carbs in book form”. Ease. Enjoyment. The anti-ennui. Put together, as previously, by the wonderful teams at Unities Auckland and Wellington. But just quickly first, a couple of local recommendations from our resolutely lowbrow books ed … Read more

The Unity Books chart for the strange week ending 10 April: Other worlds

Week three of our lockdown Top 10s – books about elsewhere, brought to you by the good humans of Unity Books. A reminder that these lists are completely unshackled from space and time and what’s happening in the world of books right now. Take no notice of the numbers, either – we just like the … Read more

The Unity Books chart for the strange week ending April 3: The wild west

Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns. AUCKLAND All by Jo McColl: … Read more

No shops, no launches – but the NZ book scene is finding new ways to reach people under lockdown

Books editor Catherine Woulfe takes an energising walk around the lockdown block of New Zealand books.  When the bubbles settled over us they settled over the books too. Libraries were the first to shut down, then the physical bookstores and finally, the hammer blow: online sales and indeed any notion of benevolently posting books about … Read more