Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Can you guess which title was the number one bestseller for the first half of 2007?
Did you guess A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hoseini? That would have been my answer also and it is wrong!
It is the second place title on the list. (Did you click over to the Library catalog and see the 92 holds? Don't be dismayed, the Libary has 27 copies.)

According to Nielsen BookScan, the number one bestseller for January through June 2007 with 2.3 million hardcover sales and 372,000 audio copies sold was The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
This is the book in which you will learn to use The Secret in every aspect of your life, according to the publisher. Money, health, relationships, happiness- it's all yours once you understand the untapped power within you. This follows in a long tradition of similar books- Many by Wayne Dyer, the classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson and The Science of Getting Rich written by Wallace Wattles in 1910.

Nielsen BookScan operates the first continuous retail sales monitoring service for books; each week information on sales of over 300,00 different titles is collected and analyzed.
Here are the other top sellers on the list for the first half of 2007:
3.Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards(paperback)
4.You: on a Diet by Mehmet Oz
5.Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
7. The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene
8. Forever in Blue: the fourth summer of the sisterhood by Ann Brashares
9. Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
10. Step on a Crack by James Patterson

It wouldn't be a bestseller list without the ubiquitous Mr. Patterson!