Christmas predictions: Anne Barnetson from Collins Booksellers in Perth

2 November 2018 Books+Publishing

In the lead-up to Christmas, the busiest time of year on the bookselling calendar, Books+Publishing is asking booksellers across the country to predict their biggest sellers and ‘surprise sellers’.

In our first instalment for the 2018 Christmas period, Collins Cottesloe bookseller Anne Barnetson offers her Christmas predictions.

Fiction

The new Haruki Murakami Killing Commendatore (Harvill Secker) makes a handsome gift, as do hardcovers like Di Morrissey’s Arcadia (Macmillan) and blockbuster authors like Jane Harper and John Grisham. We’re also hand-selling a lot of Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Abacus) and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)—neither are new but they’re safely good reads.

Nonfiction

I know we’ll be shifting heaps of Peter FitzSimons’ new book Mutiny on the Bounty (Hachette) and Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Jonathan Cape), and I’ll be recommending Leigh Sales’ Any Ordinary Day (Hamish Hamilton), which keeps selling out.

Cookery

Ottolenghi Simple (Yotam Ottolenghi, Ebury)! Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Samin Nosrat, Canongate) because there’s a Netflix series of it, and The Village by Matt & Lentil (Plum). Permaculture, sustainability and community are pretty trendy right now, as well as foodie science ones like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and Lateral Cooking by Niki Segnit (Bloomsbury).

Art & design

Kassia St Clair’s The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (John Murray) is another good one for hand-selling. We just took Resident Dog: Incredible Homes and the Dogs That Live There (Nicole England, Thames & Hudson) out of the box and had a good ‘Aww!’ The paperback edition of Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art (Ian McLean, Reaktion) will suit the coffee table crowd.

Children

Wundersmith (Jessica Townsend, Lothian), the second ‘Nevermoor’ book, will go well even though it’s a sequel. In terms of picture books, any of the ‘Pig the Pug’ (Aaron Blabey, Scholastic) books are a solid prediction. Guinness World Records 2019 (Guinness) too!

Surprise sellers

I think Black Snake: The Real Story of Ned Kelly (Leo Kennedy with Mic Looby, Affirm), as well as Gideon Haigh’s new book on cricket, Crossing the Line: How Australian Cricket Lost its Way (Slattery Media Group)—that’s one’s distributed by Australian Fishing Network and looks pretty unassuming—will be sneaking into the top ten. Stephen Fry’s latest one Heroes (Michael Joseph) will be good for adults as well as older kids, and same with Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City (A&U).

Category: Daily Newsletter Feature