Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Review

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Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) ReviewThis book is below the standard of many other volumes in the VSI series, and also a bit shorter (116 pages of text). Early on there's an interesting compare and contrast of the US and UK "bestseller" markets. After some discussion of what is a bestseller, and the history of lists, the bulk of the book is a kind of gossipy recitation or series of capsule descriptions of the main bestselling novels in the US (Chap. 4) and the UK (Chap. 5) during the 20th Century. The focus throughout is on the content and genres of these books. There is a short Chap. 6, about 4 pp., about digitization and e-books.
Notwithstanding that this is a VSI and therefore of necessity concise, there are many unfortunate shortcomings of the approach taken here:
(i) no discussion of other countries' bestsellers, or even of the influence of Anglophone books on the bestseller lists in other EU countries, to say nothing of Japan, Latin America, etc.;
(ii) next to no discussion of the business aspects of bestsellerdom, including, among other topics: agents and advances, the relationship of bestsellers to the backlist, and media tie-ins and merchandising; and
(iii) no discussion of non-fiction. This last is puzzling: since the thesis of the book is that one can learn something about the preoccupations of an era by looking at its bestseling novels, one might think its best-selling non-fiction would be at least as transparent a gauge of the Zeitgeist. And some lines on the history of the self-help and business book genres, for example, would also have been reasonable to include in a book so titled.
All in all, this book might be of most interest to someone looking for a chatty bit of "cultural studies" fluff as a kind of sorbet course between more substantial books. If you're expecting a book about the publishing business, or even a more serious cultural analysis, you will probably be disappointed.Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) OverviewLady Chatterley's Lover. The Blue Lagoon. Portnoy's Complaint. The Da Vinci Code. For the last century, the tastes and preferences of the common reader have been reflected in the American and British bestseller lists, and this Very Short Introduction takes an engaging look through the lists to reveal what we have been reading--and why. John Sutherland shows that bestseller lists monitor one of the strongest pulses in modern literature and are therefore worthy of serious study. Exploring the relationship between bestsellers and the fashions, ideologies, and cultural concerns of the day, the book includes short case-studies and lively summaries of bestsellers through the years: from In His Steps--now almost totally forgotten, but the biggest all-time bestseller between 1895 and 1945--to Gone with the Wind, The Andromeda Strain, and The Da Vinci Code. Discussing both classic and contemporary novels, alongside some surprising titles and long-forgotten names. Sutherland lifts the lid on the bestseller industry, revealing what makes a book into a bestseller and what separates bestsellers from canonical fiction.

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