What’s India Reading? Introducing India’s own NYT list

So many books and so little time. And we don’t even know the half of it. We live in a period of surplus—more books are being published every day, and the process of deciding which one to read is getting trickier. You can always browse the best sellers at your local bookstore, the new arrivals on Amazon, or ask a friend for a recommendation, but the truth is, this method of discovering new books is limiting.

Take Amazon, for instance. You’re bombarded with sales, offers, and books promoted by the website when simply browsing for a book. Private retailers may cater to your specific requests, but their only motivation is profit when it comes to pushing new books. After all, these are businesses looking to make a sale.

The Himalayan Writing Retreat has released a list of bestselling books in India. This allows young readers, who might be more familiar with international names, to discover the creativity and ingenuity of Indian writers.

What we need is the book equivalent of a Top-40s radio playlist. The west relies on the New York Times list, and now India has one too. The Himalayan Writing Retreat has released a list of bestselling books in India. This allows young readers, who might be more familiar with international names, to discover the creativity and ingenuity of Indian writers. Readers also have the opportunity to find the books they truly seek by relying on the buying patterns of fellow Indians.

Readers can understand what others are reading. They can discover authors like Toshikazu Kawaguchi, whose novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold just entered the Fictional Top 50 list. A closer look at the fiction list also tells us that A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman jumped up a few spots on the list. A Man Called Ove is something we recommend as well, especially if you’re looking for a tender story about love, loss, friendship and the magic of being alive.

If one follows the list regularly, one would also notice that The Silent Fiction by Alex Michaelides maintained its position. Clearly, this isn’t a book that’s sold well one week on a fluke, but a book that has earned its position on the list. If you were craving something in the crime and thriller genre, now you know what to read.

Ultimately, this list isn’t a recommendation but a first step to discover new authors.

On the flipside, Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter went down a few spots. Your first instinct might be to think that this means the book isn’t well written, but a quick google search reveals that the book was originally published in 2016. So the fact that the book has made its way to the Top 50 list over half a decade later indicates the level of interest it has garnered. Ultimately, this list isn’t a recommendation but a first step to discover new authors.

And it’s not just readers who benefit. Most of the books on the Top 25 Children and Young Adult list shows that Children’s books are far more popular than Young Adult. Writers and publishers can use this knowledge to decide if they want to create a niche in the YA genre or avoid it altogether.

The Himalayan Writing Retreat’s Bestseller list is pure data, with no other agenda. The HWR list collects data from Nielson, covering physical books stores and online sellers, including Flipkart, Amazon sellers like Cloudtail etc. HWR updates the list weekly, compared to Amazon’s hourly update, which is too much of a blur to be reliable. Books are not the internet. If anything, they are the antidote to the internet—Slow and relaxed. So now that you know how to find your new favourite book, what’s it going to be?