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Michael Mosley has notched up his seventh week as the UK Official Top 50 number one, with The Fast 800 (Short) leapfrogging Joe Wicks’ Veggie Lean in 15 (Bluebird). The 800-calories-a-day diet book sold 23,651 copies, beating Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start (Absolute) to the top spot by just under 3,000 copies.
Mosley and Mimi Spencer’s The Fast Diet spent five weeks as the number one across early 2013, shifting 580,144 copies—though despite its sales power, the Fast Diet’s branding was curiously overlooked in favour of “5:2”. Mosley seems to have since learned the power of numbers in the title when it comes to food and diet books—Jamie's 30-Minute Meals, Lean in 15, 5 Ingredients all being prime examples—and has since had success with The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, which has sold 438,932 copies since publication in 2015. He also scored a second number one title in 2017, with The Clever Guts Diet.
Perhaps the punishing nature of Mosley’s latest diet, versus the quick-and-easy Lean in 15 Joe Wicks era, gives an insight into the British bookbuyers’ mindset ahead of Brexit. Then again, in the event of no deal, maybe we’ll all be living on 800 calories a day.
After the previous week’s “New Year, New You” blitz on the charts, a few of the subtler self-improvement titles debuted in the Top 50, such as Anna Newton’s An Edited Life (Quadrille) and Bella Mackie’s Jog On (William Collins). Though vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, such as Veggie Lean in 15, Henry Firth and Ian Theasby’s BOSH! (HarperCollins) and Deliciously Ella: The Plant Based Diet (Yellow Kite) crowded the non-fiction charts, only Wicks’ title was in the top 25, and Rukmini Iyer’s decidedly omnivore The Roasting Tin (Square Peg) leapfrogged its vegetarian follow-up The Green Roasting Tin in the Hardback Non-Fiction top 20.
Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) re-claimed its Mass-Market Fiction top spot from A J Finn’s The Woman in the Window (HarperCollins) for a 14th week in total, edging ever closer to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’s non-consecutive run of 16 weeks.
Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Faber) held the Original Fiction number one for a third consecutive week, leaping 45% in volume the week of its Costa Novel of the Year win. Stuart Turton’s First Novel Award winner The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Raven) jumped 37% to re-enter the Top 50, and Children’s winner Hilary McKay’s The Skylarks’ War (Macmillan Children's) climbed 13 places in the Children’s and Young Adult Fiction chart—as 2018 winner Katherine Rundell’s The Explorer (Bloomsbury Children's) was also boosted back into the top 20.
The nation’s Christmas break Netflix bingeing paid off for the book market. Catherine Kepnes’ stalker-lit You (Simon & Schuster) shot into 42nd place with 3,258 copies sold, and Marie Kondo’s 2014-published bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (Vermillion) charted just outside the Top 50. Josh Malerman’s Bird Box (HarperCollins), now a Netflix film adaptation and a meme, charted seventh in the Fiction Heatseekers chart. Despite a curious absence of the annual BBC Agatha Christie adaptation tie-in in the Top 50—The ABC Murders peaked in 201st place— the impact of scheduled television hasn’t completely disappeared. ITV’s adaptation of Manhunt (John Blake), by the police officer in charge of the Milly Dowler investigation, propelled it into the Paperback Non-Fiction chart, in 13th place.
Craig Smith and Katz Cowley's The Wonky Donkey (Scholastic), fresh from topping the 2018 Picture Book category, claimed its first overall Children's number one, shifting 7,227 copies.
The print market had a healthy start to the year, with a 2.5% increase in value on the week before. It performed steadily against the equivalent week in 2018, inching up in value—by 0.9%—but down in volume by a hair, at 0.7%.