Michelle Obama memoir tops US book charts

Michelle Obama’s Becoming sold almost nine copies per second on its first day on sale in North America to become the fastest-selling book of the year so far, while in the UK, the memoir is close to the top of the book charts, the Guardian reports.

Published last Tuesday, the former first lady’s autobiography has been warmly greeted by both the media and the public. The New York Timescalled it a “polished pearl of a memoir”.

With a first print run of 1.8m copies in the US and Canada, publisher Penguin Random House has already ordered an additional 800,000 hardbacks of Becoming. On Monday, the company said that the memoir had sold more than 725,000 copies in its first 24 hours on sale, making it the biggest single-day seller of the year. Chief executive Madeline McIntosh called the response “extraordinary”.