Michelle Obama's Becoming, which was the bestselling book in Canada last year, remained the bestselling English-language print book of 2019 through December 1, according BookNet Canada (BNC) SalesData. Obama's book was trailed by Dav Pilkey's For Whom the Ball Rolls and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. Atwood's Booker Prize winning novel sold more copies in the first week it went on sale, in September, than any other book since 2005 when BookNet began recording sales. The bestselling nonfiction book by a Canadian author in 2019 was Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.
BookNet also noted that several other backlist titles were among the most popular books , including Educated by Tara Westover, Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey, and The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris—all published in 2018—as well as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, originally published in 2016.
A full breakdown of the top 10 fiction and nonfiction titles, as well fiction and nonfiction titles by Canadian authors is available online.
BookNet also released a list of the bestselling books of the decade in Canada; the list was led by E.L. James' Fifty Shades series: Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, followed Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Love You Forever by Robert Munsch (which is the only Canadian-authored title on the top 10 of the decade list), The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, the first book in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series; The Help by Kathryn Stockett; The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson; and Michelle Obama’s Becoming.
The bestselling Canadian-authored book of the decade is Love You Forever, written by perennial favourite Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sheila McGraw. The other titles in the Canadian top five are: Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield; The Looneyspoons Collection by Janet Podleski and Greta Podleski, and The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon.
