Book News
Meyer’s quick million
Harry Potter is still king, but the final book of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series did manage a million-selling debut.
“Breaking Dawn,” the fourth of Meyer’s sensational teen vampire series, sold 1.3 million copies in the first 24 hours after its midnight Aug. 2 release.
Publisher Little, Brown Books for Young Readers announced Monday that it has gone back for 500,000 more copies, making the total print run 3.7 million.
The numbers for “Breaking Dawn” are comparable to the openings of a pair of famous memoirs: former President Clinton’s “My Life” and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Living History.”
But they don’t approach the unveiling of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” The seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours in the United States alone. The Associated Press
First Lines
The White Mary by Kira Salak
“The black waters of Elobi Creek show no sign of current. It is another dead waterway, Marika tells herself, one that will breed only mosquitoes and crocodiles. Another waterway that somehow reflects — in the darkness of the water, in its stillness — all of her failings. These waters, this breathless heat, seem to be waiting for a response from her, a call to action. But she has no answers. And if she’s to be honest with herself, she never had any. Things will unravel. They will fall apart.
“If she is to be honest with herself — and the pain from self-honesty, but the duty of it, too — she must admit that this time she seems to have started something that is beyond her ability to stop. It is as if the dominoes of her life have begun to fall and she can only watch each moment disappearing in the futile fractions of a second. She is still looking for her ghost. Nearly three months spent in Papua New Guinea, and no sign of him. Does Robert Lewis know that she has given up everything to find him? More to the point, would he care? She ought to go home. Go back. Call this for what it is: a failure.”
Top sellers at independents
Fiction
1. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
2. Moscow Rules, by Daniel Silva
3. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer
4. The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie
5. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
Nonfiction
1. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
2. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
3. Goodnight Bush, by Erich Origen and Gan Golan
4. The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer
5. My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor
indiebound.org
