Remember this? Fanatics celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2007. Fanatics celebrated every fanatical year of their first decade by going back in time, through the Top 10 books from each and every year.
We picked our favourites from the bestselling titles from 1998 to 2007 (We’ve extended this to include the last five years). In these lists Fanatics also included the VIBs (Very Important Books), the cult classics of books as chosen by the Exclusive Books store managers.
What you see below is a combination of books that hit the top sales charts in 1998, and books that captured the imaginations of many, and remain close to our hearts.
Click here to view a full list of top 10’s for 15 years (1998 – 2012)
10. Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets by J.K Rowling
The second novel in the Harry Potter series launched J.K Rowling into the international spotlight. It is Harry’s second year and he returns to Hogwarts School after his holidays and little does he know that this year will be just as eventful as the last – even getting there is an adventure in itself! Horrible and mysterious things begin to happen.
9. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Subtitled ‘An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson’, this is a true story of a man’s discovery of his mentor and an inspirational parable. Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.
8. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
On 8 December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. When he regained consciousness three weeks later, the only muscle left functioning was in his left eyelid although his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been. This is a most remarkable book about the triumph of the human spirit, the ability to invent a life for oneself in the most apaalling of circumstances.
7. Longitude by Dava Sobel
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius. Longitude is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and clockmaking.
6. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
A soldier wounded in the Civil War, Inman begins the journey home to Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the woman he loved before the war began. As he vattempts to make his way across the mountains, Ada struggles to make a living from the land her once-wealthy father left when he died. Neither knows if the other is still alive.
5. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones wants to have it all – and once she’s given up smoking and got down to 8st 7lbs, she will. This book is about a year in the life of a single girl on an optimistic but doomed quest for self-improvement. Acquaint yourself with one of the funniest, most heart-warming young ladies to grave the pages of a book.
4. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernières
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. Ostracised at first, he proves in time to be peace-loving, humorous – and a consummate musician. A burgeoning love with the local doctor’s daughter, whose letters to her fiance – and members of the underground – go unanswered, seems inevitable. But can it survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?
3. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan’s most dramatic history, Memoirs of a Geisha uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation.
2. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums – too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy’s drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster.
1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, this story is set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala. The Novel tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother’s factory, they try to craft a childhood for themselves.
I’ve been wanting to read the Diving Bell and the Butterfly for ages! Just need to get the finances in order.
I’ve read half of this list