The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending January 29

A person reading in a hammock, limbs akimbo

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  Aroha: Māori wisdom for a contented life lived in harmony with our planet by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30) A surprise … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending January 22

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  When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (Pushkin Press, $37) Maths, cyanide, suicide, gardening; ye gods. The … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending January 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  Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37) If you’re in any way unsure about Stephen Fry … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the year ending now

Pōhutukawa blooming against a blue sky

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. Today’s charts cover the whole of 2020, up until the end of Sunday, December 20.  A note on Auē – we’re pretty … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending December 4

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  Hiakai: New Māori Cuisine by Monique Fiso (Godwit, $65) Meri kirihimete! 2  A Promised Land by Barack Obama (Penguin Random House, … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending November 20

Doug Stuart on big screen during Booker Prize 2020 ceremony

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 Promised Land by Barack Obama (Penguin Random House, $70) If you see Danyl Mclauchlan not reading this memoir over the … Read more

Victory Park is the book you’ll want to give to the ones you love

Cover of novel Victory Park with lights draped behind

Victory Park is the first novel from Mākaro Press since August 2019, when they put out a little book called Auē. I remember what it felt like to finish Becky Manawatu’s Auē, which went on to win last year’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Electric. Elating. An in-my-bones knowing that this story mattered. Victory … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending September 25

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  Rage by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, $55) “A better title for Rage, perhaps, would be Rabid … He remains … Read more

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending September 11

Monique Fiso and others shovelling dirt onto a hangi pit

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  Ottolenghi: Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage (Ebury, $60) “Every time we publish a book, it feels like the … 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

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 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 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

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 rise and triumphant rise of Mākaro Press

Mary McCallum found out last night that Becky Manawatu’s novel Auē, published by her tiny press, had won the richest prize in New Zealand literature.  Three of the best nights of my life have been at this country’s national book awards. The first time was 2008 when my novel The Blue, published by Penguin, was … Read more

The ghost of love will have her way: a poet responds to Auē

An essay-review of Becky Manawatu’s novel Auē, one of four finalists for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the most prestigious of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.  There are ghosts. They are real. You are born with them. You will die with them. They are your inheritance and will be your legacy. Cest … 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

A day’s grace: an essay for the new year, by Becky Manawatu

Auē author Becky Manawatu picks holes in her mahi and then starts to sew them up again, in this essay about colonialism and tikanga and the smoke in the sky. A wise woman once tweeted to me that “explaining is losing”, yet here I am. Explaining. Because when the world is on fire, we’re losing … Read more

A books editor confesses: I haven’t read the Booker shortlist. Any of them

On the eve of the announcement of the winner of the 2019 Booker prize, Spinoff books editor Catherine Woulfe outs herself as a giant know-nothing.  Booker time. Tomorrow morning I will sit there refreshing Twitter like the drinking bird on The Simpsons. A winner will be announced. And I’ll be gripped by a compulsion to … Read more