Presenting our 2009 best-sellers

Always a fun exercise around the new year here: checking out what sold best last year. 77 new books sold over 75 copies each. The #1 item was McSweeney's Panorama. Should we count a literary journal's one-off newspaper as a book? Either way, we sold 273 in a matter of days and probably could have sold 500 or more if we'd had it longer.


The top ten books of 2009 at Green Apple are:
10) The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a 2006 book about the American food system that's a favorite of many staff members (and customers, clearly)

9) If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland, a 1938 manual for writers that has been on our staff favorites display for a very long time

8) The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, a French novel in translation

7) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, the first in a crime trilogy by the late Swedish author

6) City of Thieves by David Benioff, the paperback edition of our June 2008 Book of the Month

5) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, the Indian novel that won the 2008 Man Booker Prize

4) Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, a splendid book about a Syrian immigrant in NOLA during and post-Katrina (and we currently have signed copies!)

3) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by a Dominican-America author

2) Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, my personal favorite book of 2007, a quiet yet powerful novel

1) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, the self-explanatory sensation (which is on hand despite what our site says--I'm working on it).

Come in and start elevating your next favorite book to best-seller status. We have, oh, tens of thousands to choose from.