Bestselling Books of 2008

I hope this is okay: I originally posted this on the Books thread but didn't want to clog up that great thread with this question:

How many of these have you actually read?

The sales figures are from Bookscan (Nielson ratings for the publishing business), which accounts for roughly 75% of total sales, give or take:

1 Breaking Dawn Meyer, Stephenie 3,310,000
2 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 3,175,000
3 A New Earth Tolle, Eckhart 3,146,000
4 The Last Lecture Pausch, Randy 2,705,000
5 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 2,667,000
6 Eclipse Meyer, Stephenie 2,563,000
7 The Shack Young, William 2,551,000
8 The Tales of Beedle the Bard Rowling, JK 1,822,000
9 Brisingr Paolini, Christopher 1,312,000
10 Eat, Pray, Love Gilbert, Elizabeth 1,274,000
11 Three Cups of Tea Mortenson, Greg 1,099,000
12 The Appeal Grisham, John 954,000
13 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 890,000
14 The Secret Byrne, Rhonda 828,000
15 The Host Meyer, Stephenie 794,000
16 The Audacity of Hope Obama, Barack 764,000
17 Diary of a Wimpy Kid Kinney, Jeff 721,000
18 Eat This Not That! Zinczenko, David 706,000
19 Rodrick Rules Kinney, Jeff 696,000
20 The Friday Night Knitting Club Jacobs, Kate 683,000
21 Dreams from My Father Obama, Barack 680,000
22 Water for Elephants Gruen, Sara 638,000
23 The Kite Runner Hosseini, Khaled 602,000
24 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 584,000
25 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Wroblewski, David 580,000
26 The Lucky One Sparks, Nicholas 575,000
27 Skinny Bitch Barnouin, Kim 565,000
28 Playing for Pizza Grisham, John 493,000
29 The Power of Now Tolle, Eckhart 489,000
30 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 479,000
31 When You Are Engulfed in Flame Sedaris, David 477,000
32 Cross Country Patterson, James 474,000
33 Fearless Fourteen Evanovich, Janet 472,000
34 The Christmas Sweater Beck, Glenn 469,000
35 Nineteen Minutes Picoult, Jodi 461,000
36 The Pillars of the Earth Follett, Ken 456,000
37 Dewey: The Small-Town Library Myron, Vicki 449,000
38 Marley & Me Grogan, John 444,000
39 7th Heaven Patterson, James 441,000
40 Audition: A Memoir Walters, Barbara 437,000
41 The Hollow Roberts, Nora 9780515144598 427,000
42 Twilight (with poster) Meyer, Stephenie 425,000
43 Outliers Gladwell, Malcolm 420,000
44 90 Minutes in Heaven Piper, Don 418,000
45 Strengths Finder 2.0 Rath, Tom 399,000
46 A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity O'Reilly, Bill 387,000
47 Sail Patterson, James 383,000
48 The Battle of the Labyrinth Riordan, Rick 382,000
49 Gallop! Seder, Rufus Butler 379,000
50 The Alchemist Coelho, Paulo 377,000

 

I read two - and Pillars of the Earth came out a long time ago - and bought the Sedaris book for a friend.

I read at least 100 books a year but I had never heard of many of those authors, including the Meyer woman with several in the top 10.

 

I read "Too Fat to Fish" by Artie Lange, which was released too late to make that list, but debuted at No. 1 on the NYT list. I also read Barbara Walter's Audition.

 

I feel good about having read none of those. Or even heard of most.

 

Zip. Nada.

 

Not entirely shocked that seemingly half the list is the Twilight series books. I tried starting the first one and it just wasn't my cup of tea. But clearly she's doing something right! *Also a tad surprised there are still people out there who haven't heard of her... ;-)*

 

Just the Obama books.

Also, I believe that Stephanie Meyer's books are essentiall TrueBlood if TrueBlood took itself about 1,000 times more seriously.

 

Now, I really enjoyed the books that TrueBlood is based on. Those had far more appeal to me than the Twilight series. But they are targeted at different audiences, so I guess that's to be expected. Even with the similar concepts.

 

I thought there were only four Twilight Books. Damn.

 

I've also read Dreams of My Father and The Secret, but neither of those came out in 2008.

 

I want to know how many of those 50 were featured on Oprah in some capacity, either the book club or the author as a guest. I'm guessing 15-20 would fall into that category, which is amazing.