The bestsellers list for the two weeks ending 23 January has just been released, and in the New Zealand Fiction for Adults chart, Maurice Gee’s The Scornful Moon has completely dropped off the radar. The new number one is By Bread Alone by Sarah-Kate Lynch.

Whale Rider, Bone People and Sky Dancer occupy the next three spaces, with The Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick making a re-appearance.

The Penguin History of New Zealand remains at the top of the Non Fiction chart, but we have three re-entries: A Portrait of New Zealand by Warren Jacobs at #3, the Edmonds Cookery Book Revised Edition at #4, and M.I.L.K. Good Friends at #7. Making its first appearance at #10 is The Best of Wellington edited by Sarah Bennett.

Incidentally, Keri Hulme, author of The Bone People, is a guest columnist on Public Address, with a piece called Where Life Is. After describing her hometown of Okarito, she questions the motives of developers who want to move in:

… other people see the place and dont think, Ah tranquility. They think, Money to be made here. Look at all that unoccupied land...

and

They don't appear to consider beauty, or fitted-scale operations (i.e tiny here). They don't appear to consider that humans are temporary transient beings and don't have an intrinsic right to befoul a place, and - especially- that tourist & housing booms - bust. They bulldoze ahead.