Jumping on the Bandwagon...

The end of a year brings a truly overwhelming number of "Best-of" lists, often arbitrary, pretty much always spiced with the list-maker's personal opinions.  This is all well and good, but I have to admit to finding these lists to be little more than a way to get people to argue in a blog's comments and tell the list-maker that they have no idea what they're talking about and should probably dash out their eyes, etc.  This stuff gets pretty heated.  Combine that with the fact that we're closing down a decade and the lists and the ridicule pile up.  I personally find these lists useless, often self-serving, and rarely even remotely close to what I would personally choose...and therefore, well, wrong.  Heh.

All that being said, we thought maybe we could throw out a moderately self-serving Top 10 Books of the Decade list.   My favorite characters in novels are often those who are walking examples of Kris Kristofferson's "walking contradiction." So... why the heck not?  Everyone else is doing it.

Gonna do something a little different, though, and give you the top 10 bestselling books at Maria's Bookshop for the last decade.  Nothing arbitrary, nothing judgmental, just stats, baby.  This is pretty much the list of Durango's favorite books of the last decade-- and that's a list we can get behind.

Without further ado, we give you:

Maria's Top-Selling Books of the... 2-Aughts (or whatever we're calling them)

10) The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  You know this one.  If you were in a reading group, you read it, you loved it, you bought 10 for your friends, tried to get your husband to read it, failed, but convinced him to go watch the film at the Abbey and cried the entire time, while he covered his tears with mumbles about allergies.  Not a surprise, this one.

9) Durango by Maureen Keilty.  A local publication by a great local lady, this book is an homage to the quirkiness of Durango and tourists love it.     

8) Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  You may not recognize this title since when you came in and asked for it, you said, "Cake, Salmonella, Hula Hoops" and we nodded knowingly and handed you this one.  It's so popular, and has been for the last few years, that you can come in and say "Camels, Shoe Polish, Karate" and you'll walk out smiling with Eat, Pray, Love...exactly what you asked for.  This one always cracks me up. 

7) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.  The presence of this book on this list just warms our hearts.  This book, above all others, you could have very easily bought for a ridiculous discount from, well, pretty much everybody.  It's virtually impossible for us to discount books like this and keep our doors open for you, but the fact that this book is on this list says so much about the amount of support Durango gives its local businesses.  Our Potter Release Party raised a ton of money for our great local library, too, and that's all 'cuz of you.

6) Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Truly, the quintessential Durango-dweller novel. Action-packed, philosophical, humanitarian-minded, quasi-Buddhist... It has it all, including what may well be the most gripping opening paragraph of all time.  

5) The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  Judging from the number on this report it would appear that you already own one of these and have bought a few for friends.  Wow.  This one makes sense, though, from what I know of my fellow Durangotangs.  We live here to be free of certain societal trappings, a decision that doesn't leave us with much of a map.  You eschew the capitalistic urge to own and obtain and your life goals become harder to measure, etc. and henceforth.  

4) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. There was a period of time in which it felt appropriate to just hand a copy of this book to every person who walked into Maria's, since they were looking for it anyway.  This was, for me, one of those books that I started around bedtime and finished in the wee hours, out of breath, stunned and achy-eyed.  Judging from the passionate love so many of you have for this book, I'm guessing that I wasn't alone.

3) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.  Durango embraced this book and the mission of its author so passionately that he was compelled to write about his visit here in his latest book, Stones Into Schools.  Mortenson gained well over $100,000 in donations, based merely on the strength of this one book, on the strength of this one guy's amazing story.  Incredibly, incredibly inspiring.

2) Fire in the Sky: Colorado's Missionary Ridge Fire by The Durango Herald.  All right, so this one right after the last one kinda just got me kind of teary-eyed.  I moved to Durango the year of the big fire and I was stunned by how this community came together to help the hundreds of people who lost their homes, to feed and shelter the firemen who saved hundreds more... I think this book is on the list merely because so many of us had a hard time believing that this thing had ever happened and we needed documentation, proof, that it was real, that when nature exerts its force, our humanity huddles together in a protective circle until it passes.

1) Hiking Trails of Southwestern Colorado by Paul Pixler and John Peel.  Pretty sure all locals have this book, and the active tourists who come through each Summer and Fall have their copies, too.  A testament to our active population and to the beauty of our place, this book is BY FAR our biggest seller, and we love that it is.

And there it is, the list built by our customers over the course of a heckuva decade.  Thanks once again for choosing to buy your books locally.