The Best Seller List

Every week I read the NY Times best seller list, the Wall Street Journal's and the Boston Globe's. Frequently, these lists exhibit no signs of books in common. Boston is always more independent, and one frequently finds a literary novel or two. The WSJ must get its stats from airport book stores, and the Times is kind of a cross between the two.

As a writer who would really like to sell a novel or three, I peruse these lists with an analytical eye. Thriller, romance, a bit of fantasy, a soupcon of mystery, and the occasional "literary" novel, just to keep things honest. For example, John Updike has a genre bender in his new novel, The Terrorist, which was #5 on the times list on July 2nd.

Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell, Douglas Preston, Jeffery Deavy, John Sandford, Elizabeth Lowell, and Lee Child I am lumping together into thrillers. Updike is also a crossover here.

James Patterson (Beach Road) covers all bases with thrillers, romances and mysteries, and I'm not sure what Beach Road is. Maybe an excuse to write off a summer in Easthampton. God knows, I wouldn't mind that at all. This #2 is one of the many books he writes with a co-author, which seems to be a new trend.

Blue Screen, (Robert Parker # 6 is a mystery. Alan Furst writes literate historical thrillers, which I would not lump together with the other "thrillers." Not sure I'd even call them thrillers but he' s a good writer. Larry McMurtry, who in another lifetime graded my English papers, has a "romantic western." Not too many of those on the list.

The stand alone chick lit novel is Baby Proof.

I'm not sure what The Sabotuers is: historical adventure from the sound of it. Can this be the same category as Furst? Dunno.

Then there's The Rapture, which is fantasy, or time travel, or something or other.

Now a confession: of all the writers on the list, I've only read Updike, Parker, Child, Furst and McMurtry. And Cornwell off and on serialized in the Times. Tried to read Patterson once and people were hacking each other up with machetes in the first chapter and that was a very short relationship.

Months ago, women authors had the majority of the list, and now I notice they are a minority. Hope it's not a trend. There is no getting around that thrillers dominate the list and men mostly write thrillers and I don't want to scare the bejesus out of myself sitting down here in the home office and writing guts, gore and serial killers. Grapeshot is a wuss psychologically incapable of writing a thriller. Murder, sure, adventure yes, mystery yes, a little sex, mais oui, but torture and maiming and the world coming to an end? Not my style. I love to insert a little humor, a few puns, some romance, all the stuff anti-thetical to thrillers.

So you won't see my name of the Best Sellers any time anon.

Alas,

Grapeshot