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The people of Chicago have spoken — with their book-buying dollars. This week's Crain's Chicago Business is chock-full of charts and graphs and information in its Market Facts 2008 feature.

Among the findings under "Media & Culture," the mag lists the top five best-sellers in Chicago since Jan. 1, 2008. It's a curious little all-nonfiction list. Not surprising is that the No. 1 spot is an Oprah's Book Club selection.

1. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle (paperback)

2. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow

3. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (paperback)

4. Strengths Finder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's 'Now, Discover Your Strengths' by Tom Rath

5. Eat This Not That: Thousands of Simple Food Swaps That Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds — or More! by David Zinczenko (paperback)

Do you think The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the best book of the last 25 years? Where do you think Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes ranks? Or The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown? According to Entertainment Weekly magazine, they rank No. 1, 36 and 96, respectively.

For the magazine's 1000th issue, the folks at EW came out with a bunch of lists they're calling "The New Classics," broken down into the 100 best movies, TV shows, albums and books, among other things.

I would argue that the books list would have been the most difficult to compile as many, many more new books come out in a given month than movies, TV shows and albums. And given that such lists are heavily subject to the tastes of those making the list, don't be surprised if your favorite from the last quarter-century didn't make it. That said, it's fun to read.

This is what EW's had to say about its No. 1 selection, the barely 2-year-old The Road: "We don't need writers of Cormac McCarthy's caliber to inform us of looming planetary catastrophes; we can read the newspaper for that. We need McCarthy to imaging the fate of the human sould if the worst really does come to pass."

No. 1: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
No. 100: America (The Book) presented by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Interspersed throughout the list are little breakouts, such as "The 10 Longest Books," "Oprah Blessed Titles" and "Five Memoir Shockers," to name a few. EW.com's poll to elicit readers' favorite authors of the last 25 years ended up with:

1. (surprise!) J.K. Rowling (46 percent)
2. Stephen King (30 percent)
3. John Grisham (10 percent)
4. Cormac McCarthy (8 percent)
5. Toni Morrison (6 percent)

Here is my own Top 5 culled from EW's Top 100 (EW's ranking in parentheses):

1. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (No. 73)
2. Cathedral by Raymond Carver (No. 75)
3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (No. 15)
4. Possession by A.S. Byatt (No. 27)
5. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (No. 11)

Read the entire list of 100 Best Books of the Last 25 Years.

If you were a kid in the mid-'70s, it's likely you collected Wacky Packs, as we all referred to them. (Officially they were/are Wacky Packages.) They came packaged like baseball cards — complete with the not-so-fresh, sugar-coated stick of bubble gum — and for a short time were more popular.

The famed Series One through Series Seven (from 1973-74) have been put together in book form to celebrate the phenomenon's 35th anniversary. Wacky Packages (Abrams, 239 pages, $19.95) will perhaps take you back to a time when you started looking at life askance — and never looked back.

As you can see here, the Topps company tapped into our most depraved sensibilities with their product parodies. And the accompanying artwork by guys like Norm Saunders, Bill Griffith, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman and Chicago artist Jay Lynch became embedded in our brains.

Spiegelman and Lynch provide the introduction and afterword, respectively. "The dopey gags came easily. This was a dream job," writes Spiegelman. "Yessirree — I am proud to have been a worker in the debased basement of the great temple of commerce that is America's popular culture."

Lynch sums it up: "Thirty-five years later, they're still funny. What more could we hope for?"

Indeed.

Peace, brother. Keep the peace. Peace and quiet. Peace, baby. Peace be with you. Let there be peace on earth. There are two, count 'em, two books out now to mark the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol: Peace: 50 Years of Protest by Barry Miles (Reader's Digest, 250 pages, $29.95) and Peace: The Biography of a Symbol by Ken Kolsbun with Michael S. Sweeney (National Geographic, 176 pages, $25).

Here's a review of the latter...

Check this out. Bikini-clad Pamela Anderson is caught on camera reading local author Anne Elizabeth Moore's book, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity.

LONDON — The desk and chair Charles Dickens used while writing Great Expectations will go up for auction in June at the London auction house Christie’s.

The furniture is expected to sell for between $100,000 and $160,000.

The mahogany desk dates to the mid-19th century and bears a bronze plaque describing its appearance in Luke Filde’s drawing, ‘‘The Empty Chair.’’ The author’s oldest daughter, Mamie, wrote in her memoirs that Dickens used the walnut chair and desk the night before he died in 1870. The desk has been in the family ever since.

The money raised will go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Dickens spoke at the hospital’s first fundraising Festival Dinner 150 years ago and was a close friend of its founder, Charles West. Great Ormond Street Hospital is also linked to playwright J.M. Barrie, who donated his ‘‘Peter Pan’’ copyright to the hospital in 1929.

The desk and chair were on display for 40 years at Dickens House Museum in London.

AP

Christie's auction house worker Laura Castelbarco poses at a writing desk
once owned by Charles Dickens, who used it while writing
Great Expectations. (Lefteris Pitarakis~AP)

Today's book is Do Dead People Watch You Shower? And Other Questions You've Been All But Dying to Ask a Medium (HarperCollins, 288 pages, $13.95) by Concetta Bertoldi, whose bio lists her as a full-time medium who consults reguarly with members of Britain's royal family, American celebrities and politicians.

In answering the title question, Bertoldi writes: "Sure they do! They see us in the bathroom and they see us in the bedroom! But who cares? They're dead! Who're they gonna tell?"

Are we in America what we eat, wear, touch, listen to, watch on TV? Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride Through The Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture (Universe/Rizzoli, 350 pages, $60), by fashion guru Tommy Hilfiger and ad man George Lois, gives us a modern look at Americana and its meaning in our everyday lives.

The Reverend Guppy’s Aquarium (Gotham Books, 266 pages, $20) is a curious title for a book. The subtitle — From Joseph P. Frisbee to Roy Jacuzzi, How Everyday Items Were Named for Extraordinary People — tells us more.

Strangely my Book Room copy — sparkling new in hardcover — has a completely different cover design than the one on both amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Here they are, side by side, my copy to the left, the other to the right:

Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed (The Lyons Press, 320 pages, $13.95) by Cynthia Ceilan is one of those quirky little books you see in book stores, pick it up, page through it and say to yourself, "Who would buy this?"

The thing is, it's full of stories, true facts and observations about death. Sounds a little grim, I agree, but much of it is pretty amusing. Here's a random sampling ...