We do not want to waste our time on a book that never grabs our attention or is a struggle to get through, that's why we have a New York Times Bestseller List. This list is constantly changing and keeps us up to date on the best books of the moment. Since 1931, this list has been updated weekly. The longest rein of a book was Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan which was on the Children's Series list for 287 weeks!
Listed below are a few books that have spent a lot of time on the New York Times Bestsellers list as well as a Reader Recommendation. Do you have any recommendations for me? Email mkotelchuck@whatsupmag.com with your most recent read and a quick review about it to be featured!
Reader Recommendation: Autobiography
Last week, we touched on some can't miss autobiographies. Another memoir recommended by one of our readers is Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones. Jim Henson is an American puppeteer and filmmaker who created the Muppets of both television and motion pictures.
"I love biographies and have been reading Jim Henson's. He lived in Hyattsville and went to UMD so is somewhat of a local figure. The history of the Muppets is fascinating and with You tube we can see his first creations. The library is a great place to acquire his movies and the beloved Muppet Show. Hope you get a chance to enjoy his story if you haven't already." - Sharon Zingler
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: 34 weeks on the list
It took The Vanishing Half just one short month of being published before it was put on the list, currently, it is first on the Hardcover Fiction list.
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins."
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens: 125 weeks on the list
Since being published at the in the summer of 2018, Where the Crawdads Sing has been a constant on the NY Times Bestseller list.
"For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world–until the unthinkable happens.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures."
Firefly Lane by Kristen Hannah: 32 weeks on the list
Firefly Lane was actually published in 2008 but has recently secured a spot on the list since Netflix made it into a single season show.
"In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.
From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.
Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend. . . .
For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test."
