Taiwan’s largest online bookstore, Books.com.tw, on Wednesday announced its top 10 best-seller list for the first half of the year, and analyzed popular topics and genres among readers.
The bookstore said that the COVID-19 pandemic greatly increased the demand for reading, as more people stayed home, and children’s books, books on financial management and manga topped sales charts.
Books.com.tw attributed the growth in sales of children’s books to parents trying to keep their children occupied while cooped up at home, and financial management sales rose as global finances have gone for a roller-coaster ride during the pandemic, it said.
Photo courtesy of books.com.tw via CNA
Manga, particularly the series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅之刃), have seen increased sales throughout the pandemic, the bookstore said.
At the top of the best-seller list, under the self-help genre, is The World’s a Drag, But You Shouldn’t Be (這世界很煩,但你要很可愛), which the bookstore said showed that readers required a motivational boost to weather the dullness of staying at home.
Second on the list is Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (原子習慣) by James Clear, followed by books for the new Test of English for International Communication, it said.
Fourth on the list is a book about an Internet-streamed reality TV show, followed by a book on astrological signs by astrologist Jesse Tang (唐綺陽).
From Nos. 6 to 10, in descending order, are Me, and Everything Not Me, (我與我之外) written by Japan’s top male host Roland; How I made NT$4 Million With ETFs in Five Years After Graduation (我畢業五年用ETF賺到400萬); The Mamba Mentality: How I Play (曼巴精神), written by the late Kobe Bryant; The Old Days (後來的你,好嗎); and Learn FQ with ZRBros — Be Your Own ATM (跟著柴鼠學FQ做自己的提款機).
People under the age of 30 were the largest group buying the top four best-selling books, indicating a spike in young book buyers, Books.com.tw said.
It also shows that younger people are anxious during the pandemic and are seeking a distraction by learning how to invest, learning languages or reading motivational books, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching