Bestsellers

Scoring system:10 points for first place down to 1 for 10th on the American Booksellers Association list (independent, sometimes highbrow bookstores), The New York Times list (4,000 bookstores, plus wholesalers), the USA Today list (3,000 large-inventory bookstores), and Amazon.com (Web purchases). 1 It's Not About the Bike Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins

30 points (ABA: 5th; NYT: 1st; USA Today: 7th; Amazon.com: 1st)

GIST "When I was 25, I got testicular cancer and nearly died...." Lance Armstrong didn't die. His memoir describes well his cancer and cycling battles. Readers looking for a testimony to God's grace will instead find dismissal.

WORLDVIEW Humanism.

CAUTION Foul language, description of dangerous childhood pranks.

25 points (ABA: 5th; NYT: not listed; USA Today: 1st; Amazon.com: 2nd)

GIST In the parable, cheese makes us happy. We get accustomed to it, develop an entitlement attitude toward it, and don't notice when it begins to smell bad or disappear. The parable, however, doesn't show how to discern when it is wise or necessary to resist change to uphold a higher principle.

WORLDVIEW Relativism.

CAUTION N/A

21 points (ABA: 2nd; NYT: 1st; USA Today: 2nd; Amazon.com: 8th)

GIST Morrie Schwartz, dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, probes Mitch Albom's motivations: "Are you giving to the community? Are you at peace with yourself?"

WORLDVIEW Chasing material things is shallow; the answer lies in a mix of Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism.

CAUTION N/A

20 points (ABA: 2nd; NYT: 7th; USA Today: not listed; Amazon.com: 4th)

GIST Autobiographical essays find humor in the perversities of his family. He writes about his childhood speech therapy class-full of lisping, unathletic boys-and imagining future homosexuals. He'd like to be an artist, he thinks, because he'd have a studio full of naked men.

WORLDVIEW Naturalism.

CAUTION Foul language, foul ideas.

15 points (ABA: 4th; NYT: 8th; USA Today: not listed; Amazon.com: 6th)

GIST Nathaniel Philbrick writes of a whaling disaster that became the basis for Melville's Moby Dick. Philbrick brings his tale to life by skillfully weaving in information about sailing, current research on starvation, and other survivor stories.

WORLDVIEW Naturalism.

CAUTION N/A

Although he appeared in over 50 films and 75 plays (and won an Oscar for his part in Bridge on the River Kwai), the late Sir Alec Guinness was perhaps best known for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy. Guinness was uncomfortable with this notoriety; when a 12-year-old Star Wars fan, accompanied by his mother, boasted to him that he had seen the movie more than 100 times, Guinness asked the boy to promise never to see Star Wars again. The boy burst into tears and the mother lectured Sir Alec, but Guinness hoped the point he was trying to make got through: Real life has more to offer than "a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities." Guinness, a believing Catholic, opposed abortion and was married to his wife for more than 60 years. His last book, an unstructured journal aptly titled A Positively Final Appearance, is full of observations about life as an octogenarian, an actor, and an Englishman. His cultivated taste and intelligence allow him to hold forth on subjects as varied as the Labour Party, Charles Dickens, and dogs, while his self-deprecating humor keeps the reader comfortable. Although the discursive nature of the book may lose some readers, overall it is a revealing picture of a man who was much more than an empty brown robe.