MADreads

What’s everyone REALLY reading in Madison?

October 30th, 2009 Molly - Central

Well, I’m not 100% sure about that, but I can tell you which books at the Madison Public Library have been checked out the most times over the last 15 years.  Our library automation department can run these really cool reports that tell us which books might need to be replaced or removed depending on how many times they have been checked out over the years and I thought y’all might be interested to know which books have circulated the most here in Madison.  You might think that the lists include big books like The Kite Runner or Water for Elephants, but you would be wrong.

See for yourself what people are finding at the library:

Fiction

1. 1st to Die: A Novel by James Patterson.
2. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
3. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.
4. A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks.
5. Keeping Faith: A Novel by Jodi Picoult.
6. The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy.
7. Paper Money by Ken Follett.
8. Her Father’s Daughter by William Coughlin.
9. Desire and Duty: A Sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by Ted and Marilyn Bader.
10. Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg.

Nonfiction

1. The Pokemon Trainer’s Guide.
2. The Snoopy Festival by Charles M. Schulz.
3. Japanese Style by Susan Slesin.
4. The World of LEGO Toys by Harry Wiencek.
5. Batman, from the 30s to the 70s by E. Nelson Bridwell.
6. Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee.
7. Son of Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee.
8. Color Style: How to Identify the Colors that are Right for Your Home by Carolyn Warrender.
9. The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live by Sarah Susanka.
10. A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara G. Walker.

The books in the top ten spots in the fiction category have gone out an average of 14.5 times per year, and the books in the top ten nonfiction category have gone out an average of 13.64 times per year, which is more than once a month!  This is fantastic considering that the loan period is 28 days.  1st to Die gets checked out an average of 17.69 times a year!

I consider myself to be a “big reader” but I’ve only read one book from each list:  The Handmaid’s Tale, which was assigned reading for a Women’s Studies class at the UW nearly twenty years ago, and The Snoopy Festival (I love Joe Cool!).  Something that I found very interesting about the nonfiction list is that once you get into the top 50, there are a ton of cookbooks.  They just never go out of style.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird do show up in the top 100 fiction titles, but so does Forever by Judy Blume, Bridget Jones Diary and almost everything by John Grisham.

Looking at the number of times these books get checked out, we know one thing:  Madison likes to read!

Entry Filed under: General, Literary Fiction, Nonfiction