Twelve New Books On Paperback List

Bob Woodward has finally knocked Barack Obama out of the #1 slot on the nonfiction list. But the most interesting section this week is the paperback list, which is often clogged with titles for months at a time. This week, 12 titles debut on the chart, which has to be close to a record. Most of them are romances and, curiously, a number of THOSE are reprints. Bestsellers like Nora Roberts pair up older titles (like two novels about chefs in love) and repackage them and resell them and people buy them (sometimes, I assume, all over again). Why romance readers would be more willing to buy reprints than others is beyond me, though I assume it's because romance writers typically write so MANY titles that everyone but the most ardent fan can't keep up with them all, so often these titles are new to them. Still, 12 new titles is pretty amazing. It's quicker just to tell you what remained from last week: "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards (on the charts for 37 weeks and at #3 this time), "True Believer" by Nicholas Sparks (on the charts for 9 weeks and at #11 today) and "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coehlo (this edition has been on the charts for 10 weeks and is at #15 and if anyone can explain to me why the umpteenth edition of this 14 year old title has charted -- I suppose it's the paperback version of the gift edition -- I'd be beholden. Personally, I still can't get through "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." But then, I have no heart.)