{"id":127591,"date":"2025-10-17T08:05:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/127591\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T08:05:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:05:19","slug":"this-weeks-bestselling-books-october-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/127591\/","title":{"rendered":"This week’s bestselling books \u2013 October 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

NONFICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Nourish by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)<\/p>\n

Number 1 with a bullet in its first week in the shops, inevitably. ReadingRoom is Team Chelsea, all the way, from way back, from her first happy recipes through to her pious vegetarian plant-based phase and now with her joyous return to recipes with red meat and white meat. She is the biggest-selling, most-loved cookbook writer in the land these past four or five years. She keeps it real. She has had to stand on her own two feet. She\u2019s a free spirit and her mind works in interesting ways. We are devoting all of next week to coverage of Nourish\u2014and we have a free copy up for grabs in this week\u2019s giveaway contest. A signed copy, if you please.<\/p>\n

To enter, write something from the heart about your feelings for Chelsea and\/or her recipes, and send to stephen11@xtra.co.nz<\/a> with the subject line in screaming caps OUT THERE IN THE CHELSEA NIGHTS<\/strong> by midnight on Sunday, October 19. Extra points for identifying the really romantic song in the subject line.<\/p>\n

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2 Nadia\u2019s Farm Kitchen by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55)<\/p>\n

More recipes from the Lim Industrial Rural Complex. A FAQ on her website asks, \u201cCan you offer me some business advice?\u201d Answer: \u201cUnfortunately I don\u2019t have the resource to offer business advice or mentorship, however if you\u2019re interested in learning more about business, I highly recommend checking out my business partners\u2019 website\u00a0The Robinson Duo.\u201d It links to a ghastly looking couple who co-founded Lim\u2019s My Food Bag enterprise.<\/p>\n

3 Lessons on Living by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $39.99)<\/p>\n

4 Perspective by Shaun Johnson (Penguin Random House $40)<\/p>\n

5 The Hollows Boys by Peta Carey (Potton & Burton, $39.99)<\/p>\n

Exciting account of\u00a0the helicopter deer recovery era in Fiordland, told through the lives of three brothers, Gary, Mark and Kim Hollows. There are more than just tales of then-I-shot-this-one and then-I-shot-that-one. In an extract which appeared in ReadingRoom this week, <\/a>Kim Hollows remembered the unpleasant experience of taking his skills to Te Urewera. \u201cWe were there during the roar \u2013 the worst time to be there because all the recreational hunters were on the ground, and all pointing guns and firing shots at you \u2026 The few nights we went out \u2013 they called them clubs not pubs \u2013 I was the only white person there, and everything was plastic in case they stabbed each other \u2026 That was what it was like \u2013 aggravation the whole time we were up there. No one liked us \u2026 I lasted six weeks. That was all. I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going back to Te Anau,\u2019 and so I left.\u201d<\/p>\n

6 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $59.99)<\/p>\n

7 Ara by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)<\/p>\n

8 Saving Elli by Doug Gold (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)<\/p>\n

9 Habits of High Performers by James Laughlin (HarperCollins, $39.99)<\/p>\n

10 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin Random House, $40)<\/p>\n

FICTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngarewa (Hachette, $37.99)<\/p>\n

A free copy of the Taranaki deputy principal\u2019s second novel was up for grabs in last week\u2019s free book giveaway. The book centres on a\u00a0M\u0101ori\u00a0family and is set in 1940s Taranaki. As such, readers were asked to share a story or insight about\u00a0M\u0101ori life\u00a0in Taranaki from a previous decade of your choosing, of the 20th or 19th century. Maybe the question was too narrow or unappealing or something because very few readers entered the contest; and by far the most interesting entry came from Al, who wrote, somewhat meanderingly, \u201cBack in 1973 my partner, a Christ College old boy, fish out of water in Hawera, told a story of how in the changing rooms after a rugby match he mentioned to one of his teammates, a young M\u0101ori lad, that he had seen his name on a nearby country road.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis teammate wryly replied, \u2018Some P\u0101keh\u0101 stole my name\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe greeted clients with \u2018How\u2019s life?\u2019 And yarned about one who replied, \u2018Three square meals and half the bed \u2013 I\u2019m doing all right\u2019; after a quarrel with the missus after getting home late from the pub, he got out his chainsaw and sawed the double bed in half.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huzzah to Al. She or he wins a copy of The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngarewa.<\/p>\n

2 The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (Hachette, $37.99)<\/p>\n

3 Julia Eichardt by Lauren Roche (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99)<\/p>\n

4 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)<\/p>\n

5 1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin Random House, $38)<\/p>\n

6 Eddie Sparkle\u2019s Bridal Taxi by Frankie McMillan (Canterbury University Press, $29.99)<\/p>\n

Sales were evidently brisk when the new collection of strange short fictions was launched at Scorpio Books in Christchurch. Guests were treated to slices of the author\u2019s fruit cake, continuing a trend she\u2019d started with an octopus-themed cake for the launch of her previous book The Father of Octopus Wrestling.<\/p>\n

Her new book includes two stories about fruit cake, including \u2018Emily Dickinson\u2019s Black Cake\u2019, and she made hers using an actual recipe used by Emily Dickinson. The results in full cakey glory are as below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

7 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $26)<\/p>\n

8 Tea and Cake and Death (The Bookshop Detectives 2) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $38)<\/p>\n

9 Where in All the World by Vanessa Croft (David Bateman, $38.99)<\/p>\n

Historical fiction set in the 1890s at a series of vivid locations, from the Rakaia hills to the drawing rooms of London, through the wilds of East Africa and the Congo Free State. Ambitious! Blurbology: \u201cHarriet Watson dreams of a life beyond the Canterbury plains. When a celebrated English explorer sets his sights on her, she is swept into a grand romance and a far greater deception. Determined to make a name for himself, Curtis De Courcey undertakes a perilous expedition across Africa, returning a hero to claim Harriet as his bride. But as whispers of scandal and cruelty gather, Harriet finds herself isolated, controlled and increasingly aware that true happiness may lie far from the direction she was seeking.\u201d<\/p>\n

10 See How They Fall by Rachel Paris (Hachette, $37.99)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NONFICTION 1 Nourish by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $49.99) Number 1 with a bullet in its first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17,50059],"class_list":{"0":"post-127591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-nz-best-sellers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}