We can't put down the Summer Issue of Bookforum, especially their special section on "Best Sellers." 
Author commentary by Claire Messud, Patrick McGrath, Joshua Cohen and others on Rebecca, Love Story, Valley of the Dolls and other blockbusters reminded us of beach reads, tear-jerkers, and up-all-night books from our past, while longer essays from Mike Dirda, Ruth Franklin, Gerald Howard and Stuart Kelley made us think about what "best sellers" really say about the publishing business, literary culture, history past and present, and ourselves. We love Dirda's proposal that "a writer can only be on the best-seller list once," thus freeing up space (and "New York Times Best Seller" naming rights) for newcomers, and his admonishment to "think outside the list" and "break away from reading only the season's most obvious writers and books. " And Ruth Franklin's sobering deconstruction reminds us that "regardless of what the books contain, a list composed almost entirely of mainstays is a depressing marker of national conservatism and complacency."
Speaking of "thinking outside the list," a quick look at our own list of top-selling books for the month of June might encourage you to "be brave," as Dirda writes, and try a little something off the beaten path:
1. Corporate Culture, by Eric G. Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle 
2. Embedded Sustainability, by Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembeyeva
3. Ordinary Egyptians, by Ziad Fhamy
4. Homo Sacer, by Giorgia Agamben
5. Gender and Islam in Africa, edited by Margo Badran
6. Minority Business Success, by Leonard Greenhalgh and James H. Lowry
7. Bootstrapping Democracy, by Gianpaolo Baicchio, Patrick Heller, and Marcelo K. Silva
8. Law and Long-Term Economic Change, edited by Deborah Ma and Jan Luiten van Zanden
9. The Oil Prince's Legacy, by Mary Brown Bullock
10. Golden Arches East, edited by James L. Watson
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