Sales Snapshot

The Brightest Night, the graphic novel adaptation of the fifth entry in Tui T. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire series, is the #1 book in the country. The Comfortable Kitchen by Alex Snodgrass, #2 in the country and a “versatile collection of nourishing dishes that never fall short on flavor,” per our review, enjoyed particularly strong sales in the South. Other regional picks include the TikTok hit It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover—#1 in the Middle Atlantic and #3 in the country—and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project, a November release and the week’s favorite in New England.

Remembering Joan Didion

Acclaimed journalist and novelist Joan Didion died on December 23, sparking renewed interest in her best-loved books.

A 2007 trade paperback edition of her National Book Award–winning The Year of Magical Thinking, which our starred review called a “taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief,” sold 13K copies the week after her death, almost five times as many copies as the week before.

When Didion’s first essay collection, 1968’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, received its paperback reissue the following year, PW deemed the “essays by a young, cool, hip writer... very good indeed and expressive of many new trends in American life.” A 2008 edition sold about 6,500 print copies this week, more than three times as many as it sold the week before.

NEW & NOTABLE

HERE'S TO US
Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
#6 Children’s Fiction
This is the follow-up to 2018’s What If It’s Us?, which our starred review called “a charming, sweet-natured love story between two very different boys,” and which has sold 142K print copies. The authors both are bestsellers in their own rights; Albertalli is the author of 2015’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and Silvera’s previous books include the TikTok favorite They Both Die at the End, a 2017 title that sold 18K print copies this week alone.

STACEY'S EXTRAORDINARY WORDS
Stacey Abrams, illus. by Kitt Thomas
#5 Picture Books
“With warmth and candor,” our review said, “politician and voting rights activist Abrams tells a fictionalized story of her first spelling bee, emphasizing the value of education, of focusing on effort over result, and of standing up to bullying.”