Me Versus the Public Library

I don’t know if Seattle Public Library usually does this. But this was the first year that I saw their year-end roundup of most popular reads. The library is an important part of my reading life; my borrowing history shows that I checked out 37 books in 2022. So I thought it would be fun to see how my library usage compared with everyone else’s.

THE LIBRARY’S TOP GENRES

1. Detective & Mystery
2. Graphic Novels
3. Thrillers
4. Historical Fiction
5. Cookbooks

Versus Me

I love genre fiction, but mystery has always been low on my genre list. I mostly only enjoy mystery when it’s covered in something else. But in recent years I’ve picked up a few more mysteries than before. I do love Phryne Fisher, and there are so many Holmes spinoffs and reboots these days I’m making an effort to get familiar with the source material.

Never a comic book reader as a child, I dove into graphic novels in a big way when my kids were in elementary school. I’ve slowed down a lot, but graphic novels are a big part of my library usage because they cost so much and read so fast. The series I checked out this year include Fables and Fence. For anime series, there’s the current Rumiko Takahashi series Mao, Spy Family, Way of the House Husband, Horimiya, and the one-shot Kasesan and Morning Glories. Hm. Maybe I haven’t slowed down that much.

Meh. Thrillers.

Historical fiction has always been one of my go-to genres, but I actually haven’t read a lot of it in recent years. This year I checked out Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree after seeing it in the gift shop at the Alhambra (no room in my suitcase to buy it). I guess Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is technically historical fiction, too, since it’s set during the colonization of Africa. Steinbeck’s first novel, Cup of Gold was a pirate story. I’m sure I read more, but that’s all I got from the library.

I don’t cook, so cookbooks aren’t even on my list.

THE LIBRARY’S 10 MOST POPULAR ADULT FICTION PHYSICAL BOOKS

1. The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
2. The Maid, by Nita Prose
3. Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
4. The Final Case, by David Guterson
5. The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka
6. Book Lovers, by Emily Henry
7. One Italian Summer, by Rebecca Serle
8. This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub
9. Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt
10. The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan

Versus Me

Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite writers – according to Goodreads, I’ve read 11 of her books – but I didn’t get around to reading The Sentence this year. I will eventually though. Book Lovers is on my list, too. Beyond that, it appears that my fiction reading is out of sync with the library-going public. I have not read any of the books in the top 10 and have only even heard of a couple of them.

THE LIBRARY’S 10 MOST POPULAR ADULT FICTION E-BOOKS

1. The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea
2. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr
3. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave
4. Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty
5. The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
6. Anxious People, by Fredrik Bachman
7. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by Victoria Schwab
8. The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah
9. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
10. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Versus Me

Checking out e-books on Kindle is kind of a pain in the ass. Every time I do it, I have to figure out how it works all over again. Plus, I like the exercise I get walking up the hill to the library. So I only check out e-books when a physical copy is unavailable. Even so, I have not read any of the books on this list in any format. I want to read the Midnight Library (I’m a sucker for books about books, bookstores, and libraries) and think Seven Husbands sounds interesting. My youngest kid did check out one of them – The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Unfortunately, their adolescent time management skills have not developed sufficiently for them to actually read the book they checked out at least twice.

THE LIBRARY’S 10 MOST POPULAR ADULT NONFICTION PHYSICAL BOOKS

1. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brené Brown
2. The Weekday Vegetarians, by Jenny Rosenstrach
3. From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, by Arthur C. Brooks
4. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari
5. Happy-Go-Lucky, by David Sedaris
6. Secret Seattle: An Illustrated Guide to the City’s Offbeat and Overlooked History, by Susanna Ryan
7. Korean American: Food that Tastes Like Home, by Eric Kim
8. Crying in H Mart: a Memoir, by Michelle Zauner
9. Grains for every Season: Rethinking our Way with Grains, by Joshua McFadden, with Martha Holmberg
10. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, by Sasha LaPointe

 Versus Me

I think of myself as a fiction reader first, but Goodreads says 15 of the nearly 100 books I read in 2022 were nonfiction (which is a lower proportion than previous years). And this nonfiction list does resemble my TBR more closely than the others. I’ve been meaning to get to Crying in H-Mart for a while. Secret Seattle and From Strength to Strength also looks interesting. But the only book on the list that I read was Red Paint. It had a lot of my catnip – local setting, involved music, indigenous POV – but alas, I didn’t actually enjoy it very much.

THE LIBRARY’S 10 MOST POPULAR ADULT NONFICTION E- BOOKS

1. Crying in H Mart: a Memoir, by Michelle Zauner
2. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb
3. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brené Brown
4. Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover
5. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah
6. Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, by James Clear
7. I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jeanette McCurdy
8. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, by Mary Roach
9. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessell A. Van Der Kolk
10. The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis

Versus Me

Repetition is making me more curious about that Atlas of the Heart book. Aside from H-Mart, I have been meaning to read Educated and Fuzz. I actually did read Born a Crime, and it was quite good. My daughter read I’m Glad My Mom Died – and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s comforting or concerning that she did so and even asked me to pick it up at the library for her.

THE LIBRARY’S MOST POPULAR E-AUDIOBOOKS

1. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (read by the author)
2. 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think, by Brianna Wiest (read by Abby Craden)
3. Dune: Dune Series, Book 1, by Frank Herbert (read by Scott Brick)
4. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (read by Cassandra Campbell)
5. Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr (read by Marin Ireland and Simon Jones)
6. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, by Mark Manson (read by Roger Wayne)
7. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave (read by Rebecca Lowen)
8. The Guest List, by Lucy Foley (read by Jot Davies and others)
9. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, by James Clear (read by the author)
10. Anxious People, by Fredrik Bachman (read by Marin Ireland)

Versus Me

I have never listened to an audiobook. I tried once, on a road trip, to listen to The Chronicles of Narnia, but heard two lines of Aslan’s voice and rode my Nopetopus right back to the radio. Even as a kid, I never asked people to read me a story once I could pick up a book and read it on my own. But the books other people choose to listen to have some appeal. I read and loved Braiding Sweetgrass in 2021. I liked so much I bought my mom a copy and found a way to squeeze it into a resource list in a client newsletter. I read the first Dune book years ago (though confess to not continuing with the series).  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck remains on my TBR but definitely sounds like my jam and I confess to an affinity for philosophical essays.

So What?

So the evidence supports my theory that my flow is not quite part of the mainstream. But I’m glad to live in a city where lots of people read and use the library. Seattleites checked out 11/1 million items from the Seattle Public Library (and that is almost completely separate from the suburban King County system). Even if they don’t read quite the same books as me, I’m not entirely outside the Venn diagram of books people read in Seattle. Maybe in 2023 I’ll find more opportunities to talk with people about the books we’ve read in common.