Sellers: A Warning / Triggered

A Warning
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Twelve Books
272p

Triggered
Author: Donald Trump Jr.
Publisher: Center Street
304p

1. Two Books

These two books sit at #1 and #2 as we start the last month of 2019 and that feels exactly right.

We have an innate desire to know what goes on behind closed doors. Especially the closed doors of the "important" and "famous". Look at the popularity of celebrity Instagrams. Of Jennifer Garner's pretend Facebook cooking show.

We want to not only see what these people are doing, we want to know the details of how.

This goes double when it comes to how our country is being run.

Even if you are "not political" you probably find the possibility of knowing more about the behind-the-scenes interesting. I don't know how else to explain the success of entertainment like Jack Ryan or 24. I don't know how else to explain the bumper stickers.

I don't know how else to explain these two books.

America is supposedly divided. Very divided. I don't buy it. I think that media is divided. Manipulative. Is actually currently creating multiple realities. We can debate the reality of "truth" but there are things that are real and things that are unreal.

One of these books is about a more real real than the other.

Sidenote: How the fuck are you not political because all things are politics and your very existence depends on the politics of where and who you are.


2. Public v. Private

That there is even a discussion about whether the person who sits in America's White House at the moment is actually fit for the job is perhaps a shocking thing. That this person won an election at all is perhaps shocking.

If you haven't been paying attention to the growing divide in media representation in America over the last 30 years, you would naturally be shocked. Naturally.

That one of these books sits at #2 mainly because political money was used to bulk purchase it feels even more 2019.

That in private Republicans actually seem to have morals that they refuse to express in public...is actually the more shocking thing to me. See, I assume that all of this is a con to gain power money power clout legacy money etc. But I also assume that to be that bald in your ambitions, you would have to be a pretty terrible person.

But a person still.

There are divides. And then there are fences walls purpose built. These two books represent the latter.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.