Its time for the 2009 bestseller list. These are books purchased last year through this website from readers either going through the Amazon portals on the page (more about which later) or clicking on Amazon links appearing in many of the posts when books are mentioned. As always, these are all the books purchased that are not books MD and I wrote or co-wrote.
The number one winner going away was Lierre Kieths brilliant The Vegetarian Myth. If you havent read it, grab a copy ASAP. For those of you who don’t know, Lierre was recently the victim of an assault at a San Francisco reading. Masked thugs came out from behind the stage and smashed her in the head and face with pies laced with cayenne pepper. After the assault took place, while Lierre was trying to get the burning pepper out of her eyes, the audience (of mainly vegetarians) cheered. It was truly disgusting. Richard Nikoley and Tom Naughton reported on the assault here and here. Jimmy Moore has a interview with Lierre about the attack here. Tom Naughton proposes a rationale for such behavior here.
It appears that militant vegans have secured Lierre’s name and other versions of her name on Twitter and are mounting a vicious smear campaign against her. Purchase her book to fight back. Success is her best revenge.
Here are the books in descending order.
#1 The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Kieth. My review here.
#2 Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. My review here.
#3 Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. My review here.
#4 Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson. My review here.
#5 Control Theory by William Glasser My review here.
#6 The Brain Trust by Larry McCleary, M.D. My review here.
#7 500 Low-Carb Recipes: 500 Recipes from Snacks to Dessert, That the Whole Family Will Love by Dana Carpender
#8 Natural Hormone Balance for Women by Uzzi Reiss. A mention here.
#9 How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. MDs review here along with her entire list of essential cookbooks.
#10 Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson et al. My review here.
#10 Primal Body-Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas
#10 The Great Cholesterol Con by Malcolm Kendrick. My review here.
#10 The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt My review here.
The last four books on the list sold exactly the same number of copies, so they all tied for 10th on the list. I listed them alphabetically.
Although not a book, sales of the DVD of Tom Naughton’s brilliant film Fat Head would have put it at #2 on the list. If you haven’t seen this film, order it today. Here’s my review.
I want to thank all of you who have ordered not just books but all kinds of things through this site. And I want to encourage you to continue. The small commission I make on each order helps underwrite the maintenance on this site, which is much higher than I would have thought it would be. Plus, Im still paying off the recent redesign.
For those of you who dont know what Im talking about, any time you order a book or a DVD or a CD or anything (groceries, supplements, tee-shirts, whatever) through Amazon.com, I get a small commission on your order. But I get this only if you go through one of the Amazon portals on this blog or MDs blog or anywhere on the website. What is an Amazon portal? If you click the picture of The Six-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle at the upper right of this post, you will be taken to the Six-Week Cure page on Amazon. If youre looking for something else, just type it in the search window, click the Go button to the right, and you will be taken to wherever you want to go, and anything you purchase once you get there will earn me a tiny commission.
This whine for help with Amazon is my own version of those awful PBS fundraising telethons. The difference is that here it doesnt cost you anything; you simply have to purchase whatever you were going to purchase through Amazon anyway by going through one of the portals on this blog. And your free programming will continue.
As some of you may have noticed, I finally removed the tacky Google ads that were at the bottom of each post. I didnt even realize they were there until I was having lunch with Mark Sisson one day, and he asked me what my relationship with Atkins Nutritionals was. I told him I had no relationship with them. He told me he figured I did because a fairly prominent banner ad for Atkins Nutritionals appeared at the bottom of each of my posts. I checked myself, and, sure enough, there were the ads. I looked into it and found out that I was making about $45 per month for these ads (not all were Atkins, but most were) so I ditched them altogether. Had I been making $1500 per month on these ads, I may have had second thoughts, but as it was, I had no problem giving them the ax.
So, at this point, no ads are cluttering the pages of my blog or MDs blog. Other, of course, than those for our own books, which are the previously mentioned Amazon portals. Order early and order often.