Rare Book Monthly
Articles - September - 2008 Issue
BookFinder Announces the Most Sought After Books of the Year
There is another repeat atop the Top 10 for Crafts, Hobbies and How-To. This is Steve Belichick's Football Scouting Methods. Three hundred pound men attempting to crush each others' skulls is an odd craft or hobby, but enormously popular in America, especially when viewed on TV from the safety of your living room. Runners-up include two titles about knitting, and the ever popular Woodwork Joints by Charles Hayward. Further down the list we find more works on knitting, backpacking, magic, and returning to the Top 10 after a year's absence, horror actor Vincent Price and his wife Mary's A Treasury of Great Recipes. Where better to add a touch of arsenic?
There are no changes atop the list for Fiction and Literature this year. Once again, John L. Parker's tome on running, Once A Runner, is number 1, again followed by Nora Roberts' Promise Me Tomorrow. New at number 10 is the Autobiography of Howard Hughes, one of those rare autobiographies not written by its subject. The whole thing was a fraud perpetrated by Clifford Irving.
In History, last year's number 1 was the story of a short-lived Manhattan Restaurant - Flash in the Pan, by David Blum (now number 4). This year it is the story of a New Orleans hotel famed for fine cuisine: French Quarter Royalty: The Tumultuous Life and Times of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel, by food writer John DeMers. Runner-up is Tom Lea's 50-year-old book about South Texas' enormous King Ranch, larger than the state of Rhode Island.
Four other categories of books are listed, with the top sought books ranging from Carl Sagan's musings on space to Lindsey Williams' conspiracy theories of The Energy Non-Crisis, that claims there is 200 years worth of oil and gas readily available in Alaska. For a complete look at these interesting lists, go to http://report.bookfinder.com/2008.
