East Bay Bestsellers lists this month’s top-selling books as reported by independent bookstores in the East Bay, including: Avenue Books, Black Oak, Cody’s, Collected Thoughts, Diesel, Pegasus, and Walden Pond.
NONFICTION
1. 9/11, by Noam Chomsky (Seven Stories, $8.95). Chomsky out-Chomskys himself, blaming America for the September 11 attacks and branding it a “terrorist nation.”
2. STUPID WHITE MEN, by Michael Moore (Regan Books, $24.95). Comic iconoclast Moore skewers and barbecues the Washington power elite.
3. FAST-FOOD NATION, by Eric Schlosser (Harper Collins, $13.95). Feces in the meat and the unsavory secret of Secret Sauce are but two of the revelations sizzling herein.
4. A BEAUTIFUL MIND, by Sylvia Nasar (Touchstone, $16). The Oscar-winning film about schizophrenic genius John Nash is based on this insightful biography.
5. SEABISCUIT, by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $24.95). A horse is a horse, of course — but no horse could ever run like this champion.
6. NEW BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY, by Greg Palast (Stylus, $25). Corruption, greed, and economic atrocities on a global scale are exposed to the harsh light of day.
7. NEW PIANO SHOP ON THE LEFT BANK, by Thaddeus Carhart (Random House, $13.95). An American expatriate in Paris discovers a world of quaintness in a Rive Gauche piano atelier.
8. THE TIPPING POINT, by Malcolm Gladwell (Back Bay, $14.95). It’s The Hundredth Monkey all over again, as the author reexamines the causes of fads and trends.
9. WHAT WENT WRONG?, by Bernard Lewis (Oxford University, $23). A noted British historian traces what he calls Islam’s “downward spiral.”
10. ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, by David Sedaris (Little, Brown & Co., $14.95). The NPR autobiographer’s comic essays poke fun at life as an expatriate in Paris — without the pianos.
FICTION
1. THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, by Michael Chabon (Random House, $26.95). Berkeley author’s swashbuckling tale of two cousins who create a comic-book hero.
2. ATONEMENT, Ian McEwan (Doubleday, $26). Booker Prize-winner McEwan’s latest epic examines the nature of perception in this intimate character study.
3. THE DEATH OF VISHNU, by Manil Suri (Norton, $24.95). A Bombay handyman lies dying as dramas unfold among the neighbors and gods who surround him.
4. MY DREAM OF YOU, by Nuala O’Faolain (Riverhead Books, $14). A lonely, Irish expatriate in London reconnects to life while researching a long-gone romance.
5. BEE SEASON, by Myla Goldberg (Knopf, $13). After a nine-year-old wins a spelling bee, she realizes that nothing will ever be the same again.
6. LAST REPORT ON THE MIRACLES AT LITTLE NO HORSE, by Louise Erdrich (Harper Collins, $26). Sex and sainthood make an intriguing brew on the Ojibwa reservation where a priest has secrets to reveal.
7. BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS, by Dai Sijie (Knopf, $10). During China’s Cultural Revolution, two boys whose lives have been turned upside down discover literature and love.
8. NEW THE PEPPERED MOTH, by Margaret Drabble (Harvest Books, $14). Generations of women in a Yorkshire family struggle to overcome the provincialism that’s bred into their very genes.
9. PRODIGAL SUMMER, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial, $14). A summer in the Appalachians is by twists and turns fruitful and frustrating.
10. WHEN WE WERE ORPHANS, by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage, $14). A British detective returns to Shanghai to search for his parents, who vanished there long ago.
