Each year, at around this time, we embark upon the strangely fascinating task of compiling the list of bestselling books through the Guardian bookshop over the previous 12 months. What we end up with is always a top 10 that varies wildly from every other UK book retailer, and a unique insight into the tastes and enthusiasms of Guardian readers. For the first time, we’re sharing these insights with you. Whether you use it to select your next bedtime read, or whether it just confirms everything you always thought about the Guardian, we hope you find it as interesting as we do.
1.We’re ready for revolution.
We’re interested in big politics and prepared to put our money behind our consciences. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, a call to arms about the climate crisis, Russell Brand’s Revolution and Owen Jones’s revealing look at The Establishment soared high in the charts.
2. We’re into our food … especially from the Middle East.
We’ve stocked our pantries with tahini and pomegranate molasses and we’re ready to take on Middle Eastern cuisine. We loved Honey & Co’s new cookbook and Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour. But it was Plenty More that really flew off of our virtual shelves, making Yotam Ottolenghi our king of the cooks.
3.We’re fond of cats.
Our favourite cat book this year was animal behaviouralist, John Bradshaw’s, Cat Sense, a truly scientific yet deeply affectionate look at the our feline companions. A surprise fiction hit was The Guest Cat by Takeshi Hiraide. Translated from Japanese, this moving novel is a treat for felinophiles.
4. Sex sells (even to Guardian readers)
One of the books that soared to the top of the charts in October took us all a bit by surprise. Following an article in the Family section, hundreds of Guardian readers’ shelves are now proudly displaying Ann-Marlene Henning’s Sex and Lovers. As a Danish sexologist, she is on a crusade to give the internet generation a porn-free sex education, with a little help from her teenage son. It does, ahem, contain graphic images.
5 … and we’re into rock’n’roll too.
Several music greats featured among our most popular books of 2014. Gabrielle Drake’s Remembered for a While, about her brother Nick, Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now and Viv Albertine’s excellent story of her time in The Slits, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, were the biggest hits. No signs of One Direction on this list!
6. We love the British countryside …
Before we get elegiac and misty-eyed, let’s admit the truth: the British countryside is cold and wet. But we don’t care. We love The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane, and the combination of memoir and falconry in H is for Hawk. Whether Walking the Border or exploring The Moor, it’s a blissful escape from families, cities and the rest of daily life.
7… almost as much as we love our capital city.
Oh, London, how do we describe you? Yes, you suck the life out of the country … but as Nairn’s London shows, you are full of soul. Yes, your future is uncertain and confusing, but your history, part of it captured in the photographs of Spitalfields Nippers, is just as complicated. Whatever the reason for our love – one thing’s for sure, you captured our readers’ interest.
8. We like prize-winning fiction.
Trashy crime and steamy erotica are fine for other people, but not for us, thank you very much. We like our literature with a capital L. Two-time Booker winner Hilary Mantel topped our fiction bestsellers with her short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Prizewinners A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing, The Goldfinch and The Narrow Road to the Deep North followed close behind. After all, who wouldn’t want to read the very best?
9. And we love non-fiction about football.
We like our beautiful game to be beautifully illustrated (The Age of Innocence: football in the 1970s) and beautifully written, with plenty of psychology (Twelve Yards) and social history (The Game of Our Lives). Quite right too. Football, as Bill Shankly would tell you, is far too important to be treated with anything less than the utmost seriousness.
10. But above all, we’re Guardian through and through.
Of course we are – and we’re proud of it. But not all Guardian readers are alike. Some love Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files; others prefer the gentle delights of the crosswords. Whatever sections, writers or stories you love the most, you can find them all in our annual, The Bedside Guardian.
The top 10 sellers:
1. The Snowden Files by Luke Harding
2. Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi
3. The Establishment by Owen Jones
4. This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
5. The Secret Footballer’s Guide to the Modern Game
6. How to be a Husband by Tim Dowling
7. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
8. Revolution by Russell Brand
9. This Boy by Alan Johnson
10. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
Save at least 20% off RRP on all these titles from the Guardian bookshop. Visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p on online orders over £10. A £1.99 charge applies to telephone orders.
