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To be sure, holiday gift buying has a strong impact on book sales. There are two Christmas-oriented tomes in this week's fiction top 10, and that perennial favorite The World Almanac is a winner on the trade paperback list. But at the end of the day (or the year, as the case may be), it's going to be the zeitgeist-tapping, thrill-producing Michael Crichtons of this world who bring home the booksellers' bacon. After all, he's one of the few authors whose control tower -- um, publisher -- is perfectly confident ordering up a 2-million-copy initial pressrun: the largest first printing in Knopf's history.
FICTION WEEKS ON LIST 1 AIRFRAME Michael Crichton, Knopf, $26 2 2 THE CHRISTMAS BOX Richard Paul Evans, Simon & Schuster, $14.95 14 3 EXECUTIVE ORDERS Tom Clancy, Putnam, $27.95 18 4 THE FALLEN MAN Tony Hillerman, HarperCollins, $24 4 5 SILENT HONOR Danielle Steel, Delacorte, $24.95 6 6 THE NOTEBOOK Nicholas Sparks, Warner, $16.95 10 7 THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN Jacquelyn Mitchard, Viking, $23.95 15 8 THE LAWS OF OUR FATHERS Scott Turow, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.95 9 9 M IS FOR MALICE Sue Grafton, Holt, $25 7 10 THE CHRISTMAS TREE Julie Salamon, Random House, $12.95 2
NONFICTION
1 A REPORTER'S LIFE Walter Cronkite, Knopf, $26.95 2 2 MY SERGEI: A LOVE STORY Ekaterina Gordeeva, with E.M. Swift, Warner, $18.95 8 3 ANGELA'S ASHES Frank McCourt, Scribner, $24 14 4 DOGBERT'S TOP SECRET MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK Scott Adams, HarperBusiness, $16 9 5 EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION David Brinkley, Knopf, $20 5 6 SIMPLE ABUNDANCE Sarah Ban Breathnach, Warner, $17.95 39 7 THE DILBERT PRINCIPLE Scott Adams, HarperBusiness, $20 35 8 MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS John Gray, HarperCollins, $23 193 9 MAKE THE CONNECTION Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey, Hyperion, $18.95 14 10 FOREVER, ERMA Erma Bombeck, Andrews & McMeel, $22.95 5
TRADE PAPERBACKS
1 THE ENGLISH PATIENT Michael Ondaatje, Vintage, $12 6 2 CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE WOMAN'S SOUL J. Canfield, M.V. Hansen, J. Read Hawthorne, and M. Shimoff, Health Communications, $12.95 10 3 THE BOOK OF RUTH Jane Hamilton, Anchor Books, $9.95 4 4 SONG OF SOLOMON Toni Morrison, Plume, $11.95 9 5 SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS David Guterson, Vintage, $12 63 6 IT'S A MAGICAL WORLD: A CALVIN AND HOBBES COLLECTION Bill Watterson, Andrews & McMeel, $14.95 14 7 THE WORLD ALMANAC AND BOOK OF FACTS 1997 Edited by Robert Famighetti, World Almanac Books, $9.95 3 8 CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen, Health Communications, $12.95 125 9 A CIVIL ACTION Jonathan Harr, Vintage, $13 16 10 FUGITIVE FROM THE CUBICLE POLICE: A DILBERT BOOK Scott Adams, Andrews & McMeel, $12.95 13
