Halo: Contact Harvest lands #3 on NY Times list

by Ross Miller { Nov 19th 2007 at 5:55PM }

See, mom? Video games do encourage reading. The novel Halo: Contact Harvest, which was released October 30, has this week landed on The New York Times' Best Sellers list for Paperback Trade Fiction, just behind Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera and Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants.

Contact Harvest was written by Bungie's Joseph Staten and tells of the human race's first encounter with the Covenant. Next week's bestseller list has already been tabulated it seems, as the Paperback Trade Fiction list for November 25 places Contact Harvest in the number four slot, swapping places with Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

Tags: book, bungie, contact-harvest, halo, joseph-staten, new-york-times, novel, nyt

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tom @ Nov 19th 2007 6:02PM

boox r dum

Silent Xenocide @ Nov 19th 2007 6:07PM

Only number 3?

waynski1457 @ Nov 19th 2007 6:11PM

good. i bought it day one and read it day two (i read a lot so books always go fast for me). it wasnt bad, but onyx is still my favorite halo book.

rv @ Nov 19th 2007 6:57PM

Some things were interesting. You learn a lot more about the covies, from why they didn't let the humans join the covenant to the development of the brute chopper. The way the author kept saying br55 started to piss me off. The battle on harvest was disappointing. The best part of the book is the prologue.

Alexisonfire @ Nov 19th 2007 6:13PM

I am America (And So Can You!)

That's all I have to say.

Shmil @ Nov 19th 2007 6:23PM

+1 just don't loan it to anyone

NukeAssault @ Nov 19th 2007 6:28PM

My fiends parents have it. Ive read a little. Good stuff.

Grapefruit Juice @ Nov 19th 2007 6:22PM

"I cant drive and sell books to you rubes all at the same time"

fischju @ Nov 19th 2007 6:41PM

Well, that's rather pathetic

Batzarro @ Nov 19th 2007 6:51PM

Y entonces, Maria, sollozando, se acerco a la puerta donde esperaba, sus sueños y esperanzas en aquel arrabal manchado de sangre, al que nunca volveria. Le pregunto que pasaria si fallaba, si no lograba escapar una vez mas de Macondo, si se unia a la fila de los que habian muerto en aquella guerra.

"I won't"

Sam @ Nov 19th 2007 7:07PM

Well i must say, this news makes me fairly embarassed to be a gamer.

The fact that just because this book is attached to a massively popular franchise, it will sell well enough to make into the NY times best sellers list, despite being a fucking turd of a book (try and disagree with me on that, i dare you. The book was fucking terrible, same as all of the halo books...I've read them by the way).

Seriously. Its silly that such a terrible book can sell so well, just because its being backed by ignorant gamers that wouldn't know the difference between shakespeare and a bumper sticker.

I suppose its like any other fad, if it has the coverage one way or another, it will sell, even if its terrible (da vinci code anyone?). This just seems like a particularly bad case of that fact.

Clack @ Nov 19th 2007 7:19PM

So you're bitching about people buying the book and putting it on the list even though you bought the book . . . ?

Sam @ Nov 19th 2007 7:25PM

I downloaded it off this fancy internets thing.

I wouldn't buy this piece of shit. In fact i wouldn't even read it unless i was horribly bored all day.

Silent Xenocide @ Nov 19th 2007 7:29PM

But you've read all the books? What?

Spartacus @ Nov 19th 2007 7:32PM

You act like this is the only form of media/entertainment that does this.

How many movies have been made from popular books?

How many movies have been made from popular video games?

How many movies have inspired TV spin offs?

How many comic books have been made into movies?

How many movies have been made into books?

Etc, etc. etc...

Mark @ Nov 19th 2007 7:38PM

You're a huge douche. The Halo universe rocks. The books aren't meant to rival Shakespeare you elitist fuck, they're supposed to be entertaining, which they are.

Haterade tastes like piss.

Sam @ Nov 19th 2007 7:57PM

I like the halo universe you idiot. Hence why i've read all the books. Yes i generally have a hard time filling the hours and i wouldn't generally pick this kind of book as a prime time reading for me, but like i said...just filling the hours.

I'm not insulting your precious haloverse okay. I like halo games and the storyline/lore of them as much as the next guy...

I'm just saying the books are a massive pile of shite.

And @ Spartacus. Yeh i know that this happens often, i mentioned this kind of fad in the original post, but this is the most recent and most profound example i can think of....And certainly the first time for a video game book to have such popularity.

Anyway, dont get me wrong, i've nothing against anything other than the book. It (and all the other halo books) were pretty damn terrible and doesn't deserve to be on any best sellers list.

thethirdmoose @ Nov 19th 2007 7:56PM

And you know what piss tastes like why?

Silent Xenocide @ Nov 19th 2007 7:59PM

Ya know, simply because you dislike the books doesnt actually mean they are bad.

Sam @ Nov 19th 2007 8:12PM

I'm sure a certain demographic will enjoy them.

Just because i hate teenage horror films doesn't mean that every pubescent 14 year old wont love them, despite generally being the most tasteless and horribly badly made genre of movie ever concieved.

dan stabbingworth @ Nov 19th 2007 10:16PM

Wow, you hated it enough to steal it, read it, then shit on it. Way to be a dick.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Nov 19th 2007 10:31PM

Hey dipshit guess what???

YOU HAVE A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually do like the books since they do offer alot more background on the halo universe.

James @ Nov 19th 2007 7:08PM

Are the books like the game, in that there's no intelligent story to speak of? Does it manage to interest the (in this case) reader?

Karen @ Nov 19th 2007 7:44PM

I had to read the books to find out what was going on in the games. Once I did I can now understand what was happening and enjoyed the games more. I don't know if others would enjoy the books if you don't like Sci-fi. Just don't read the second book based on the first Halo game (it's boring). Check your local library to see if they have the books to borrow, I was shocked to find mine did.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Nov 19th 2007 10:37PM

same here. If you read the books, you appreciate the storyline alot more.

And saying the plot is unintelligent is pretty harsh. Sure it may not be as good as an rpg, but it's story is defiantly of a higher caliber than most FPS games.

samfish @ Nov 19th 2007 11:28PM

"Sure it may not be as good as an rpg, but it's story is defiantly of a higher caliber than most FPS games."

Sadly, that isn't exactly saying much. That goes for all games, too, for the most part.

My dream is to see a video game with a story line that aspires to be more than a generic summer action movie but is still excellent and engaging. I'm kind of hoping that this Ghostbusters game will be the first to do it, as it has probably more potential than any game we've seen in a damn long while.

Nintendo has the potential to do it with Zelda, too (given it's history), and put it on the scale of the LotR movies, but Nintendo is a bunch of retards like that and they wouldn't do it if you paid them.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Nov 20th 2007 7:56AM

or maybe that's because that would be dumb? Last thing I need is a blatant LoTR rip-off in mah zelda.

Hashbrown_Hunter @ Nov 19th 2007 7:54PM

Anybody read Fall of Reach?

I didnt even play Halo before I read that and I thought it was a pretty decent novel (besides the painfully obvious spelling errors). Good, entertaining read.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Nov 19th 2007 10:44PM

agreed. Fall of Reach was a damn good book.

monkey3 @ Nov 19th 2007 7:55PM

Despite the fact that I don't like or read novelizations, I will say this; People are allowed to read whatever they damn well please. It does not bother me in the least that the Halo books are selling well, or even that they made it to the NYT list. There are all kinds of readers out there and that is why books stores don't have only one section. The fact that there are so many literate Halo players who actually enjoy reading makes me feel better about the gamer community. Plus, if someone gave me a Halo novelization as a gift, I would read it.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Nov 19th 2007 10:45PM

Someone give this man/woman/thing? a handshake!!!

monkey3 @ Nov 20th 2007 10:04PM

heh. I am a Male. Some would argue whether I am a "man" though.

Ed @ Nov 19th 2007 9:28PM

Good news aside, how the hell did this happen? o_0

samfish @ Nov 19th 2007 11:18PM

Proof that reading books does not necessarily make you smarter.

Oh well. If it makes even one person want to read more in general, I suppose it can't be that bad.

Age @ Nov 20th 2007 1:44AM

Well thats fan boys for you. Just because people buy tons of cow poo doesnt mean its awesome!

For the record i read Fall of reach and felt dirty after having wasted my time reading it, i just found it wasnt engaging. I don't think i will give this a try since Joe Staten can't write for shit (ref: halo2 and 3 story line, where's the punch from halo:CE?)
ahh, i hold such a grudge to the guy