As I noted last week, despite all the self-righteous ranting associated with a well orchestrated backlash aimed at Jeanine Cummins and her novel American Dirt, the book continues to sell well. Tomorrow's New York Times Book Review is going to announce that the novel is the number one bestseller on both the "Combined Print and E-Book Best Sellers" list and the "Hardcover Best Sellers" list. The novel reached number one on both lists last week for the first time.
Longtime bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, is still going strong but has slipped to number four on the combined list while hanging on strong to the number two slot on the hardcover list.
In addition, to these two lists, I see that this week's review includes a list of "Audio Monthly Best Sellers," monthly being the key word in that title. On this list, American Dirt is number six and Where the Crawdads Sing is number two. Now that American Dirt has started to sell so well, it will be interesting to see where it places on the monthly listing of audiobook bestsellers next time the list is published.
So the reader backlash against the original (and questionable) book backlash continues. And I still believe that's a good thing.
Read American Dirt and decide for yourself.
For your convenience, here is a quick link to "American Fatwah," a previous post that tells the whole story as I understand it.
I think it's a good thing, too.
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