Bestselling books the week of 10/24/13, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best at independent bookstores across America.

4. TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, Vintage
2. Orange Is the New Black, by Piper Kerman, Spiegel & Grau
3. Unlikely Loves, by Jennifer S. Holland, Workman
4. Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, M.D., S&S
5. Quiet, by Susan Cain, Broadway
6. Brain on Fire, by Susannah Cahalan, S&S
7. Far From the Tree, by Andrew Solomon, Scribner
8. The Old Farmer's Almanac 2014, by Old Farmer's Almanac
9. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, by Timothy Egan, Mariner
10. How Music Works, by David Byrne, McSweeney's
11. The Best American Essays 2013, by Cheryl Strayed, Robert Atwan (Eds.), Mariner
12. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, S&S
13. The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brene Brown, Hazelden
14. How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, Mariner
15. Wreck This Journal, by Keri Smith, Perigee

On the Rise:
20. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Tim Folger (Eds.), Mariner
 The year's top science and nature writing from journalists delivering must-read articles from a wide array of fields.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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