AVID READER’S BESTSELLING TITLES OF 2015

It’s hard to believe 2015 is over! We had a great year, full of sold out events, great books (two or three written by our own staff members!) and countless coffees and delicious treats served up from our cafe. Because we love book lists, we couldn’t not put together a compilation of our bestsellers across a number of different categories, as well as the much-awaited 2015 TOP TEN (which you’ll see at the bottom of the page). There’s a great variety across the categories, but we are particularly pleased that so many local authors made the top tens! More analysis coming soon, but for now, let us revel in lists, glorious lists!

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ADULT COLOURING BOOKS:

1. The Mindfulness Colouring Book, Emma Farrarons
2. The Enchanted Forest, Joanna Basford
3. The Little Book of Calm Colouring, David Sinden
4. The Secret Garden, Joanna Basford
5. Colour Me Calm, Lacy Macklow
6. Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom
7. Posh Colouring Book Vintage Designs
8. This Annoying Life, Oslo Davis
9. Fantastic Cities Colouring Book
10. Colour Yourself Calm, Rowan Tiddy

 

 

BIOGRAPHY:

1. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris
2. One Life: My Mother’s Story, Kate Grenville
3. The Anti Cool Girl, Rosie Waterland
4. A Mother’s Story, Rosie Batty
5. Reckoning: A Memoir, Magda Szubanski
6. Through the Wall, Anna Bligh
7. Island Home, Tim Winton
8. Keating, Kerry O’Brien
9. H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
10. M Train, Patti Smith

 

 

CDs:

1. The Gospel Album, Gurrumul
2. Beautiful You, The Waifs
3. The Merri Soul Sessions, Paul Kelly
4. So Frenchy So Chic 2016
5. Gurrumul, Gurrumul
6. Popular Problems, Leonard Cohen
7. Tres Chic!, Various
8. Companion, Jeremy Oxley
9. A Psychedelic Symphony, The Church
10. Simply Classical Chillout, Various

 

 

COOKING:

1. Special Delivery, Annabel Crabb & Wendy Sharpe
2. Community, Hetty McKinnon
3. Plenty More, Yotam Ottolenghi
4. Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi
5. Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi
6. NOPI, Yotam Ottolenghi
7. Cornersmith: Recipes from the Cafe and Picklery, Alex Elliott-Howery
8. Supercharged Food, Lee Holmes
9. Life in Balance, Donna Hay
10. Everyday Super Food, Jamie Oliver

 

 

CRIME/THRILLER:

1. The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
2. The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagercrantz
3. Hades, Candice Fox
4. Skin Deep, Gary Kemble
5. Life or Death, Michael Robotham
6. Bull Mountain, Brian Panowich
7. Even Dogs in the Wild, Ian Rankin
8. Second Life, S J Watson
9. Recipes for Love and Murder, Sally Andrew
10. Land of the Blind, Barbara Nadel

 

 

CULTURAL STUDIES (incl. POLITICS, GENDER STUDIES,
CURRENT EVENTS):

1. Where Song Began: Australia’s Birds and How They Changed the World, Tim Low
2. Australia’s Second Chance, George Megalogenis
3. Worst Words, Don Watson
4. Dreaming Too Loud, Geoffrey Robertson
5. Queensland, Mark Bahnisch
6. Faction Man: Bill Shorten’s Path to Power (Quarterly Essay 59), David Marr
7. A Short History of Stupid, Helen Razer & Bernard Keane
8. The Bush, Don Watson
9. Creating Cities, Marcus Westbury
10. Remotely Fashionable, Nadia Buick & Madeleine King

 

 

DVDs:

1. Bird on a Wire: Leonard Cohen
2. Withnail and I
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. Harold and Maude
5. Powaqqatsi
6. Eraserhead
7. Jules and Jim
8. Betty Blue
9. Diva
10. The 400 Blows

 

 

FICTION:

1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
2. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
3. Swimming Home, Mary-Rose MacColl
4. A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
5. The Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood
6. The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks
7. Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
8. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
9. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
10. The Distant Marvels, Chantel Acevedo

 

 

HISTORY:

1. All Fall Down, Matthew Condon
2. Brisbane Art Deco, Kim Wilson (ed.)
3. Warrior, Libby Conners
4. Three Crooked Kings, Matthew Condon
5. Jacks and Jokers, Matthew Condon
6. Riddledom, David Astle
7. Pacific: The Ocean of the Future, Simon Winchester
8. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
9. The Regent: Brisbane’s Motion Picture Cathedral, Michael T Gillies
10. Girt, David Hunt

 

 

HUMOUR & GIFT:

1. A Treasury of Cartoons, First Dog on the Moon
2. The Wayward Leunig, Michael Leunig
3. Musings from the Inner Duck, Michael Leunig
4. How it Works: The Wife, Jason Hazeley
5. Bum Magic, Claudia Rowe
6. How it Works: The Husband, Jason Hazeley
7. Creative Cursing, Jill Panarese
8. T-Rex Trying and Trying, Hugh Murphy
9. The Very Hungry Bum, Claudia Rowe
10. Where the Wild Bums Are, Claudia Rowe

 

 

MIND/BODY/SPIRIT:

1. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, Marie Kondo
2. Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin
3. The Jihad of Jesus, Dave Andrews
4. The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
5. The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris
6. Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
7. Daring Greatly, Brene Brown
8. The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
9. The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
10. Zen Pencils, Gavin Aung Than

 

 

POETRY:

1. Eating My Grandmother, Krissy Kneen
2. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
3. Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, Anthony & Ben Holden (eds)
4. On Bunyah, Les Murray
5. Sentenced to Life, Clive James
6. Erotic Poems, e. e. cummings
7. Australian Poetry Since 1788, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray (eds)
8. A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver
9. Ariel, Sylvia Plath
10. Aria, Sarah Holland-Batt

 

 

SCIENCE, HEALTH & PSYCHOLOGY:

1. The Brain’s Way of Healing, Norman Doidge
2. Global Megatrends, Stefan Hajkowicz
3. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ, Giulia Enders
4. Eat Think Heal, Margaret Bridgeford
5. Becoming a Mother, Leisa Stathis
6. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
7. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande
8. Adam Spencer’s World of Numbers, Adam Spencer
9. The Brain the Changes Itself, Norman Doidge
10. Thinking Fast and Slow, Rolf Dobelli

 

 

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY:

1. The Martian, Andy Weir
2. Lament for the Afterlife, Lisa Hannett
3. Scarred: The Elm Stone Saga 2, Shayla Morgansen
4. Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson
5. Trigger Warning: Short Fictions, Neil Gaiman
6. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
7. 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
8. Wool, Hugh Howey
9. Three Moments of an Explosion, China Mieville
10. Railsea, China Mieville

 

 

TRAVEL & NATURE:

1. Green Nomads, Bob Brown
2. The Road to Little Dribbling, Bill Bryson
3. Best 100 Birdwatching Sites in Australia, Sue Taylor
4. Take and Walk in South-East Queensland, John & Lyn Daly
5. Swept Away by Wanderlust, Axel & Ash
6. Boots to Bliss, Claude Tranchant
7. Ransacking Paris, Patti Miller
8. Kudelka and First Dog’s Spiritual Journey, Jon Kudelka & First Dog on the Moon
9. Picnic in Provence, Elizabeth Bard
10. Brisbane, Matthew Condon

 

 

AND NOW, THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR…

 

 

OUR BESTSELLING BOOKS OF 2015…

 

 

WHICH ARE…

 

 

DRUM ROLL PLEASE…

 

 

AVID READER’S BESTSELLING BOOKS OF 2015!

1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
2. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
3. Swimming Home, Mary-Rose MacColl
4. All Fall Down, Matthew Condon
5. Brisbane Art Deco, Kim Wilson (ed.)
6. The Mindfulness Colouring Book, Emma Farrarons
7. A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
8. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris
9. The Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood
10. Warrior, Libby Conners

Congratulations to Elena Ferrante (whomever she may be) for smashing sales records and ensuring #FerranteFever continues unabated. The first book of her Neapolitan Quartet has been running out the door! Congratulations also to the four Queensland authors in our top ten. QLD REPRESENT! If you haven’t read any of the books in the above list, may we suggest you do?

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Thank you to everyone who shopped with us, in-store, online or at any of our wonderful out-of-store events last year. Here’s to even better sales in 2016!!!