Non-fiction: Obama follow-up fails to trouble top five

Guinness World Records 2023 (GWR) soared 31% in volume week on week to end the four-week run of Colleen Hoover’s It Starts with Us (S&S) in the Official UK Top 50 number one spot. The latest Guinness World Records title sold 24,644 copies last week, rising to the overall number one for the first time.

The race for Christmas Number One is looking a little sluggish this year, and at any time before 2019, Guinness World Records 2023 would surely be odds-on for the festive top spot. But, with Kay and Kate Allinson’s newest Pinch of Nom title due to hit the tinsel-bedecked shelves in mid-December, it looks most likely that 2022 will be the second year on the trot to see a diet book claim the Christmas Number One. The food-blogging couple’s Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food (Bluebird) swiped the 2021 pole, pipping Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice (Penguin) by just over 1,000 units. 

Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry (Viking) was the highest new entry, selling 15,111 copies, and claiming the runner-up spot. Of course, the former First Lady’s memoir Becoming was a blockbuster hit in late 2018, spending the entirety of December in the number one spot before claiming the Christmas pole—making Obama the first ever author of colour to do so. On 781,204 copies sold in total, Becoming easily outsold the (admittedly lockdown-affected) A Promised Land, authored by Obama’s not-as-successful husband. However, The Light We Carry is probably not going to repeat Becoming’s performance, with the new title’s launch around 50,000 units down on its predecessor’s first-week sale.