I am writing this on Thursday and that is the day of the week that I get an email from Amazon about their Charts. There are four charts: what is most bought and what is most read, in both fiction and non-fiction. Just because others buy a book doesn't mean it will be something that holds my interest or yours. You may have heard of the trouble with comments and long strings of statements that a given book is a good read: There may be manipulations and statements by people who are asked or paid to say it was fine. Besides praise that isn't authentic, there is sometimes a problem with the opposite of praise that is just supposed to be funny or is the result of prejudice or a campaign against an author or a group.
As I wrote just about a year ago, the following of Harry Potter books is amazing. https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2018/03/still-bought-and-still-read.html
I feel that I get some notion of the following by comparing what is bought and what is read in fiction. The leading purchased fiction has been Where the Crawdads Sing while the leading books read are Harry Potter books. We read Crawdads a few weeks ago and I do think it is a good piece of fiction, even though I read mostly non-fiction.
The charts have been including audiobooks for the last few months. Audible.com is a branch of Amazon.
Looking at the charts is a good way to see what is getting attention. When I open a Kindle, I don't know if Amazon computers can tell what page I am on or not. I like to make highlights of comments that strike me as interesting or memorable and I know that anyone who looks at my Twitter account could follow the quote and see where it occurs.
At the top of the Charts page, there are usually three article links. The first one today gave books to read after reading "Educated". We read that aloud and I strongly recommend it. It has been #1 or nearly that rank for quite a while. It's the true story of an living American young woman born to a fundamentalist family. The father thought that the school system would lead his children away from God's path. It is moving and thought-provoking. The books The Glass Castle, Heavy, North of Normal and The Unwinding of the Miracle are listed and all sound quite worthwhile.
The other two links lead to memoirs of stars and the editors' choices for good February books.
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