Our lives are an open book

By Jackie Blais and Anthony DeBarros, USA TODAY

USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list reflects not only the blockbusters but also the rhythms of daily life.

One truth: The Cliffs Notes version of The Scarlet Letter outsells the real book 3.6 to 1.

1.Diet books are the new self-help books.Ten years ago, we began to soothe our souls with books like the Chicken Soup series, Life's Little Instruction Book and Codependent No More. These days, we're more interested in physical well-being. With Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution leading the way, diet books took 9% of sales in 2003 while self-help dropped to 2% — down from a high of 12% in 1997.

2.On Mother's Day, moms take the cake.The end-of-year holidays are a big deal for cookbook sales, but there is one other time when a book like The Cake Mix Doctor seems the perfect present (or, at least, the gift of last resort): Mother's Day. In each of the last 10 years, cookbooks — from Dr. Atkins recommending low-fat cooking to Martha Stewart's fancy hors d'oeuvres — have seen a perceptible bump as the second Sunday of May draws near.

3.We're losing our sense of humor.Sitcom stars Tim Allen (Home Improvement), Paul Reiser (Mad About You), Ellen DeGeneres (Ellen) and Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld) all had best sellers in the early years of the book list. So did humorists Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck. But where have the laughs gone? Humor books have shrunk to just 0.6% of list sales, down from a high of 5.3% in 1995. Some still carry on: David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day), DeGeneres (The Funny Thing Is . . . ), Bill Cosby (I Am What I Ate and I'm Frightened) and the staff of The Onion, always ready to parody the news.

4.If you're buying a dictionary, it's probably in August.Want to know when summer's over? It's when dictionaries show up en masse on the best-seller list, signaling the end of long, lazy nights and a return to the schoolhouse grind.

5.September brings 'The Scarlet Letter.'A staple of high school American lit classes, Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of adultery faithfully returns to the best-seller list every fall. So does the Cliffs Notes version — which outsells the real book 3.6 to 1.

6.Movies sell books.When Hollywood hypes a movie, you can bet that the book it's based on will climb the best-seller list. More than a year before the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the big screen, sales of the books skyrocketed. Just in the last year, Academy Award best-picture nominees Seabiscuit and Mystic River helped their authors climb the list.

7.'Harry Potter' redefines the meaning of best seller.How big is the Harry Potter phenomenon? Big enough to be its own category. Between 1999 and 2003, sales of J.K. Rowling's magical tales accounted for 7.7% of all sales tracked by the list — even more than the fast-growing diet and health genre.

8.The longevity award goes to . . .What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg and Sandee Hathaway, which made the top 150 list 523 out of 532 weeks from the start of the list to the end of 2003. (And even in the nine weeks the maternity guide didn't make the top 150 list, it registered as one of the 300 books USA TODAY compiles each week.) Other contenders: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (449 weeks in the top 150) and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (441 weeks in the top 150).

9.John Grisham spends more weeks at No. 1 than anyone.Through 2003, legal legend John Grisham spent 90 weeks at No. 1, nearly double J.K. Rowling's time atop the list. One reason: Grisham has been around longer. He had three titles in the top 50 when the list began in 1993. Since then, 11 of his hardcovers have debuted at the top. Only Bleachers, a non-legal thriller, started at No. 2 in September 2003 (trumped by Dr. Phil's The Ultimate Weight Solution). That's quite a testament.

10.Chances are, you've given this as a gift.Each spring, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss' classic book of encouragement, climbs the top 150 list as students everywhere prepare to move on to a new stage of life (and parents prepare to help them along). May and June account for 68% of the book's annual sales tracked by USA TODAY's list.Other perennial best sellers have a reputation for being the right gift for the right occasion. Some favorites: Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (for babies) and Robert Munsch's Love You Forever (whose sales rise for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day).