You have to know how to vary the pleasures. So, once is not customary, we are not going to talk to you (or at least very little) about the entrants in our charts for this week from May 20 to 26, but we are going to focus on the works that are playing overtime. Let’s start with fiction.
Big winner, with 37 weeks of presence, the 2023 Goncourt prize, Jean-Baptiste Andrea, with his novel Watch over her (The Iconoclast). A very beautiful Goncourt, it is true, released on August 17, which is close to 540,000 copies sold. Behind him, one of the queens of romance, Morgane Moncomble, whose volume I of the series Seasons, An autumn to forgive you (Hugo Roman) has been in our charts for 29 weeks and has sold more than 190,000 copies.
Then comes the big surprise of this 2024 school year, the art historian and writer Thomas Schlesser with his “intergenerational” novel. Mona’s Eyes (Albin Michel), which has sold nearly 195,000 copies since January 31. Finally, still in our Top 20, two great regulars in the best-seller (and long-seller) circle: Joël Dicker and Guillaume Musso. The first, with 13 weeks of presence since February 27 for A savage animal (Rosie & Wolfe), wins with nearly 300,000 copies sold; the second, 3rd in our list, has been there for thirteen weeks now with Someone else (Calmann-Lévy) which sold some 270,000 copies. Not bad too…
Note that two representatives of romance, soft or dark, appearing in the Top 30 best sellers: Ana Huang and Sarah Rivens, also demonstrate great longevity with respectively 20 and 18 weeks of presence for Twisted Love (Hugo Roman) and Lakestone (HLab). Let’s now take a quick look at the two new releases of the week, namely the arrival in 10th position of the American Jennifer L. Armentrout with volume IV of her series Blood and ashes titled The War of the Two Queens (From Saxus). I’ll let you guess what genre this novel falls into… And Jean Reno’s first novel, Emma (XO) which took 14th place.
© / The Express
As for documents and essays, the long occupations of the field are fewer, the register being, as we know, much more volatile than that of fiction. In this case, only two authors recorded more than ten weeks of presence. Starting with Philippe Boxho, the resurrected one. Indeed, while his books published by Kennes date from June 2022 (The dead speak) and June 2023 (Interviews with a corpse A forensic doctor makes the dead speak), the sparkling director of the Forensic Institute of the University of Liège has only appeared in our list “only” a few weeks ago (18 for the first, 19 for the second). But he is not about to leave, placing his two booklets in 1st and 2nd place.
The other big name in our Top 20 this week in terms of longevity is the American Army Ranger David Goggins who, in Nothing can hurt me anymore. Master your mind and defy destiny, published at the end of September 2023 by Nimrod, “entrusts readers with the keys to his resilience and the recipes that allowed him to face adversity”. Advice that hopefully pleases readers… Obviously, if we go down to 24th place, we come across Natacha Calestrémé, The Key to your energy (Albin Michel), great record holder in our list with 131 weeks on the clock, capitalizing at least some 465,000 copies sold since January 8, 2020.
And the entrants of the week? Here they are: Michel Onfray, in 9th place, with Lightning rules the world. Hedonistic diary (Albin Michel), Annick Cojean, in 11th, with We were there. 18 veterans recount hour by hour about D-Day (Grasset) and Alain Bauer, in the 19th, with The stupidest laws, decrees & orders in history (First).
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