Multitudes tackle mighty read
Herald on Sunday Jan 5, 2014
Award-winning tome features in pre-Christmas buying frenzy.
Sales figures provided by Nielsen Bookscan show a sharp surge in demand for Eleanor Catton's Man Booker Prize-winning tome The Luminaries - the longest winner ever - as people rushed to buy it as the perfect Christmas present.
In the commercially sensitive, competitive world of selling books, getting an accurate picture of sales is tricky. Nielsen counts more than half of retails sales but not those of Whitcoulls. Nielsen said 7100 copies sold the week before Christmas, a 260 per cent increase on a month earlier.
Whitcoulls is careful not to reveal exact sales figures and couldn't respond in time for this article, but The Luminaries was the top-selling title in New Zealand last year with 42,000 sales in New Zealand alone, by Neilsen figures.
It carried its considerable weight internationally, too. Nielsen tallied 200,000 worldwide, including 60,000 in the UK, 56,000 in the US and 38,000 in Australia.
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2 comments:
Am I the only New Zealander who:
• Bought a copy of The Luminaries soon after it was published;
• Loved the first two or three chapters so much . . .
• I bought three more copies as Christmas presents . . .
• Continued to enjoy most of the rest.
• And then became completely disappointed in the last 100 or so pages?
I'm still not certain where I started to miss the plot. Or think I did.
Twelve men in a room unknowingly yet serendipitously interrupted by a thirteenth; was this meeting written in the stars?
Though long at over 800 pages, the story and the pace of the writing never slows down. The characters are well fleshed out and the prose is brilliant.
Though I enjoyed the book, I bought it as a combo offer on all the Booker Prize Nominees Flipkart had. I was more moved by We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo and A Tale for the Time Being by Rugh Ozeki. Had I read this as a stand-alone book perhaps, I'd have been more impressed.
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