Book lover on your Christmas list? Check out these titles
It's looking like the Year of the Adult Colouring Book
Christmas shopping is in full swing. From dystopian fiction and colouring books to seasonal reads and Giller Prize winners, Waterloo book shop owner Mandy Brouse has compiled this list of potential gifts for readers on your list.
CBC Radio's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris spoke with Brouse, the co-owner of Words Worth Books, about some titles that could make great gift options for under the tree.
"Generally, it was a great year in publishing — it really was," Brouse said. "We saw some great books published. We saw some amazing authors republish and we're really happy with it."
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What are people looking for this year? Well, it depends who you ask.
"People want the exact book that they think the person that will be receiving it really wants to read and so we're very highly aware of that," Brouse explained, adding there is a "wide variety of books" that are popular this year.
"There's an ongoing trend for a lot of dystopian fiction," she added, referencing Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last and Erin Bow's The Scorpion Rules, which are both selling well in Kitchener at the moment. There's also the 2014 Giller Prize winner, Us Conductors by Sean Michaels, which remains a strong seller this holiday season, according to Brouse.
Other fiction titles selling well at Words Worth Books include The Illegal by Lawrence Hill, Poles Apart by Terry Fallis, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and don't forget about this year's Giller Prize winner: Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis.
But there are many more pages flying off book shelves than just fiction titles.
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Some of the best-selling non-fiction of 2015 include History's People: Personalities and the Past by Margaret MacMillan and The Reason You Walk by Wab Kinew, which is an autobiography that Brouse said is outselling another recognizable Canadian name.
"Unfortunately, the Trudeau autobiography didn't sell as well as we thought," Brouse acknowledged.
But grab your pencil crayons because adult colouring books are absolutely exploding in popularity this year, the book store co-owner noted. Adults say these black and white booklets help them relieve stress, which is helping to increase demand.
Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer is a quirky pick this holiday season. For young readers, Kenneth Oppel's The Nest joins Bow's aforementioned book as top-selling options.
Looking for something more seasonal? The Smallest Gift of Christmas by Peter Reynolds is a good choice if you like to give back; profits from books sold until the end of 2015 will go toward helping Syrian refugees.
And if you're already planning on what to buy in 2016, some highly-anticipated books include The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel, The Naturalist by Alissa York, How Can I Help? by David Goldblum, Amulet Book 7 by Kazu Kibuishi and Playing from the Heart by Peter Reynolds.