Bestselling books the week of 2/16/12, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.

3. TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht, Random House
 2. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, Mariner
 3. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, Berkley
 4. The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomons, Plume
 5. A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan, Anchor
 6. Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell, Vintage
 7. The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown, Berkley
 8. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese, Vintage
 9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John le Carré, Penguin
 10. A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness, Penguin
 11. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, Harper
 12. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, Vintage
 13. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson, Vintage
 14. Dreams of Joy, by Lisa See, Random House
 15. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, Random House

ON THE RISE:
 19. Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson, Harper
 Watson's enthralling novel is about a woman whose memories are all forgotten every time she falls asleep.

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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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