Despite a late surge, Victoria "I'm not shedding any tears over that" Gallagher and her The Triumphant Ten finished third overall. Tommy Tivnanananan's Some Books ARE Just for Christmas took second position. Which means...
Catherine Neilan's When the Cat's Away... is the winner of the 2009 The Bookseller Fantasy League.
Congratulations to her.But how did she do it?
Well...having the two bestselling books over Christmas in your squad certainly helped (Guinness World Records and Poo Brown's The Lost Symbol), but they played for Tom Tivnan's team also.
The two The Bookseller hacks also shared the late Steig Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who Played With Fire and Then Kicked a Hornets' Nest the Stupid Girl.
The Tivmeister General picked Where's Stig?, the runaway "sleeper hit" of 2009 most definitely, but it couldn't compete with the double-whammy of Martina Cole's Hard Girls (sales were up a third on her previous hardback), and Willie Shawcross' Queen Mum biography picked by Neilan.
As such, Neilan's team scored an impressive 2,500,276 points, to Tivnan's 2,467,757.But, just to prove we've all got room for improvement, even those at the top, the best team you could have picked would've scored you an eye-popping 3,003,582 points, and it would have looked a little something like this...
Never heard of him. Or it.
The Stats
The Stieg
The Secrets
From the Time Traveler woman
Big Ears' book
I neither know nor care.
Oooh, Vampire. Phwoar, sexy, buff. And all that. Innit.
The "I want a knighthood" book
The menu at Norwich FC
So, congrats to Catherine. Congrats to Tom and Victoria for being the best losers. And to everyone else (including myself), don't even bother entering next year—you are all clearly useless.
Til next time...
Ta Ta!
Horace.
