Oct
05
2009
This Week's Bestsellers
There were five new books added to the bestseller lists this week. There was a strange diversity in those five titles. It’s interesting to note that in the top five books there are four new titles.
Rocketing straight to the top position is Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots. It looks like it will be pretty standard Beck fare–interesting, informational and at least a little bit obnoxious and overstated. The book shows a lot of creativity in its formatting (it kind of looks like a scrapbook) so even if much of the information is “same old,” the book itself is at least plenty different.
Arriving at #3 on the list is Mackenzie Phillips’ much-discussed memoir High on Arrival. Phillips has been making plenty of media appearances including an appearance on Oprah in which she revealed that she had an affair with her own father. The book is a tell-all memoir about her family, her childhood and her long years of drug addiction.
At #4 is American on Purpose by comedian and television host Craig Ferguson. This, like High on Arrival, is a celebrity memoir about finding success after a life of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.
#5 brings us the latest book by famous scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins. The Greatest Show on Earth looks to nature to find evidence for evolution. This is a direct counterattack against those who advocate intelligent design.
And finally, arriving at #10 on the list is Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God. Armstrong is a former nun who, in this book, looks to rescue the idea of God not only from today’s New Atheists but also from religious believers who are just a little too literal-minded.
I expect High on Arrival and American on Purpose to be grueling reads (especially the former). The Case for God will probably make me a whole lot angrier than The Greatest Show on Earth and Arguing With Idiots will, I expect, not teach me a whole lot that I haven’t already learned. I’d better stop writing and start reading!