This Week's Bestsellers: October 23, 2017

Out of His Shell

Our starred review called Turtles All the Way Down—YA author John Green’s first novel since 2012’s The Fault in Our Stars—a “deeply empathetic novel about learning to live with demons and love one’s imperfect self.” It’s the #2—and #4—book in the country: the author signed 200K copies of the novel; more than 82K copies of the signed edition, plus another 47K unsigned copies, sold in one week.

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

Popular History

Ron Chernow was a well-regarded—and bestselling—historian before Lin-Manuel Miranda tapped his biography Alexander Hamilton as source material for the blockbuster musical. That book debuted at #15 in the U.S. in 2004; Chernow’s new doorstopper, Grant (as in, Ulysses S.), charges in at #7 in the country.

Bringing Back the Magic

The Rules of Magic is Alice Hoffman’s prequel to 1995’s Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. The book debuts at #6 in hardcover fiction, with the best first first-week print unit sales the author has seen recently.

She’s Crafty

A pair of instructional guides—one on knitting, the other on watercolor—debut in trade paper.

At #14, Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible is the first book by Hitomi Shida—“one of Japan’s best-known hand-knitting designers,” per our favorable review—to be translated into English. The title is “most assuredly not for the beginner,” our review continues, but rather for “intrepid knitters looking for a challenge.”

By contrast, Everyday Watercolor by Jenna Rainey, #16, aims squarely at newbies with the subtitle “learn to paint watercolor in 30 days.” Rainey’s Mon Voir illustration and design agency has 125K Instagram followers.

New & Notable

Rhett & Link’s Book of Mythicality
Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction, #8 overall
The comedy duo, with 20 million subscribers across four YouTube channels, put what the subtitle calls a spirit of “curiosity, creativity, and tomfoolery” to page, in chapters including “Invent Something Ridiculous” and “Throw a Party That Doesn’t Suck.”

Basketball (and Other Things)
Shea Serrano, illus. by Arturo Torres
#3 Trade Paperback
The author and illustrator pair behind 2015’s The Rap Year Book, which has sold 74K print copies, turn their attention to hoops history, trivia, and passionate, stats-fueled debates on subjects including “What year was Michael Jordan the best version of Michael Jordan?”

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.