Bookend
The Christmas bookselling season has produced few real surprises and that is the least surprising thing of all. The DBC continued to dominate with its battery of books-of-the-programme — notably America, The Ascent of Man (both for the third year running) and the newcomer Spirit of the Age. Agatha Christie once again provided the topselling Xmas novel with Curtain, her 25-year-old story of Poirot's last case — the first Poirot book, incidentally, to reach the top of the American bestseller lists too.
The "top thirty" December bestsellers listed by the Bookseller underline more than ever the British taste for British nostalgia. Memoirs by Margot Fonteyn, David Niven and Lord Hailsham; biographies of Richard Dimbleby and Mr Macmillan's Past Masters; retrospective of fashion (In Vogue) and India (Plain Tales From the Rai). So far as I can tell, every single title in that "top thirty" was of British rather than foreign origin.
I began to feel disturbed. Was this a clue to our national malady? Did it not illustrate our square-eyed insularity, our unwavering resolve
to the present and take refuge in the past? Perhaps it did. But then I took a look at the American bestseller list, as compiled by New York's Publisher's Weekly. At the top of the non-fiction section last month was something called Sylvia Porter's Money Book, followed at number six by J. K. Galbraith's Money. Separating these books were Power: How To get It, How To Use It and Winning Through Intimidation. To help those lacking the energY ' to do either, there was Total Fitness in Thirty Minutes a Week number eight or the secrets of TM: Discovering Energy and Overcoming Stress (number nine). For anyone driven to despair by such thoughts, remedies were offered in The Relaxation Response (number five). And for those driven to drink of gluttonY there was, in tenth position, The Save-YourLife Diet.
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