Best Sellers That Woof and Meow

FOUR legs good, two legs bad.

That’s one of the ringing slogans in George Orwell’s 1945 novel “Animal Farm.” Increasingly, it also seems like a motto that may be tacked to the foreheads of executives in Manhattan publishing offices. Animal books are doing very brisk business.

The biggest surprise best sellers of the past two years, in fact — in both fiction and nonfiction — have been about loveable beasts. One is Sara Gruen’s elegiac “Water for Elephants,” a novel about a Depression-era circus and an elephant named Rosie. The other is “Marley & Me,” John Grogan’s sitcom-like memoir about life with a maniacal Labrador retriever. Both books came out of nowhere. Together they have spent nearly 100 weeks on New York Times best-seller lists.

And they haven’t been alone up there…

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Tagged as: Animal Farm, Animal-esque Books, Dogs, Elephants, George Orwell, John Grogan, Labrador Retrievers, Marley & Me, Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

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