To be fair, the discussion of which books deserve more attention is, I think, entirely valid. I just have trouble framing it around the idea of bestseller status as something that any given author deserves or doesn't deserve.
While I agree with the above, I'm going to disagree, for the sake of lively threads, with this:
I could name a book that I don't think it very well-written, but does that necessarily make it so? What if that book, which I think is such a piece of crap, has millions of fans who love, love, LOVE it? Are they wrong?
Quality of writing and how satisfying or enjoyable a book may be to millions of fans are two separate things, IMO. While I acknowledge that there is SOME lack of agreement (such as whether adverbs are permissable or not), I don't accept the idea that there are are no commonly agreed standards on what quality writing is or is not. I think we CAN generally agree on books that are well or poorly written. There is actuallly much more agreement on what constitutes literary value than there is disagreement. But STORYTELLING ability -- which is what tends to make bestsellers -- and WRITING ability are two separate things. (If they weren't, verbal storytelling couldn't exist, but it predates writing.) And a book that has strong storytelling can sell well regardless of the quality of its writing. The reverse is almost never true.
Books that have a high literary quality *can* (not must... but frequently) be seen by readers as harder to read simply because they rely more on techniques such as symbolism, allusion, patterning, understatement, meta-fiction techniques, etc. to carry the meaning -- rather than pure narrative. (And the mere fact that they DO use some of these other techniques can be both what helps elevate their writing quality and makes them "harder.") But that often results in those books feeling less satisfying to anyone not willing to make that effort or who has never learned how to do it, or had much practice.
So anyway, rant over, but I'd nominate:
- Jenny Moss' TAKING OFF
- Many National Book Award nominees, such as Laini Taylor's LIPS TOUCH. (Just because you've heard of a book doesn't make it a bestseller. Editors say that award recognition in general, and NBA recognition in particular, rarely has much impact on sales. There are plenty of award-winning books that don't sell well. This is the crux of our awards vs. bestselling dichotomy.)
- I'll assume it'll be a bestseller if it's not already, and I've already raved elsewhere, but Maggie's The Scorpio Races.