Hate the Game, Not the Player

Ernest Cline has the #2 book in the country with Ready Player Two. It’s the sequel to his blockbuster 2011 debut, Ready Player One, which has sold 1.7 million print copies and spawned a 2018 movie adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. The new book hasn’t been a critical favorite, but first-week sales were brisk, and compared with its predecessors, Two got the high score.

Winner’s Circle

On November 18, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for Fiction, with the judges’ citation calling it “by turns hilarious and heartbreaking” and “a bright, bold, gut-punch of a novel.” It originally pubbed in January, and the trade paperback edition, which was released the day before the all-virtual National Book Awards ceremony, debuts at #17 on our trade paper list in its second week on sale.

Folk Tales

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black alights at #5 on our children’s fiction list. The illustrated story collection is a companion to her Folk of the Air trilogy, which has sold 330K print copies. In a prepub q&a with PW, Black explained the lure of dangerous, magical realms: “Everything is so beautiful [in Faerie] that anything afterward might feel dull. You probably shouldn’t go, but that beauty and magic makes for something that is really appealing, even though you might get eaten or wind up doing something you don’t want to do.”

NEW & NOTABLE

MODERN WARRIORS
Pete Hegseth
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction
Fox & Friends Weekend cohost Hegseth gathers personal histories and photos from 15 U.S. military veterans in the first title from Broadside’s new Fox News Books imprint.

STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW
Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
#7 Hardcover Fiction
The hosts of the SYSK podcast, both writers for How Stuff Works, bring their brand of deep-dive fun facts to print. For instance, they track the decades-long history of Mr. Potato Head, which in 1952, when the polio epidemic kept many children indoors, became the first toy to be advertised on TV.

THE AWAKENING
Nora Roberts
#3 Hardcover Fiction
“Roberts launches a fantasy trilogy with this heartwarming story of a woman finding her true self across parallel worlds,” our review said. “This enjoyable installment has its flaws, but it also promises good things to come.”

All print unit sales per npd bookscan except where noted.