Driver’s guide No. 1 borrowed book
Thrillers, mysteries, Giller winner among Top 10 library picks This chart from the Toronto Public Library shows the most borrowed books in 2018.
So did you have a hold on Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square or Linwood Barclay’s Parting
Shot at the library? You’re not alone. They are on the Toronto Public Library’s Top 10 most borrowed books list for 2018.
And Torontonians borrow a lot of books. In 2017, the library’s physical circulation — including print books, CDs, DVDs, magazines and so on, but not ebooks — was the highest in North America for systems serving over a million customers: 24,459,477 items, said Wendy Banks, who promotes the Toronto Public Library’s (TPL) collections online. (Ebooks are tracked separately, although borrowing is up on those, as well; in the summer, for the first time, the TPL’s digital loans surpassed five million, the first library system in the world, Banks believes, to do so.) But you might not have guessed the library’s single most borrowed book: The Official MTO Driver’s Handbook, with 4,665 copies borrowed in 2018. The book sells for $14.95.
“It’s a utilitarian thing; people are coming in to build up their life skills, and this is one of the ways they’re doing that,” notes Banks. It’s not the first time it’s topped the list — in fact, according to the library “it’s an open secret (that it’s) the most-borrowed book pretty much every year ... we have multiple copies of the handbook in pretty much every branch.”
Origin, the latest blockbuster thriller by Dan Brown, was solid in second place with 4,120 copies borrowed. Behind it, the Giller Prize effect sprinkled its magic once again: the 2017 winner, Bellevue Square, was the third-most-borrowed book in the system at 4,033 — the only literary novel on the list. (TPL says that last year, the 2016 Giller and Governor General’s Award-winning book, Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, was equally sought after.)
If, like me, you look at people’s bookshelves when you go to their homes, you probably see lots of the genre Torontonians really love: thrillers and mysteries. John Grisham shows up twice on the TPL’s 2018 list with The Rooster Bar in fourth place (3,640) and Camino Island in 10th (3,055); Into the Water by Paula Hawkins was the sixth most borrowed at 3,289.
Oakville author (and former Toronto Star writer) Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot came in at No. 7 with 3,189 copies; Quebec writer Louise Penny’s Glass Houses at No. 9 with 3,058.
“Thrillers and mysteries are probably the top category of fiction book (in terms of sales) and it’s the same thing for lending,” says Banks.
The only nonfiction book on the list was Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, which commanded fifth spot with 3,547 copies borrowed.
While adults seem to want to be entertained, the top Young Adult books borrowed deal with serious issues: a teen living with obsessive-compulsive disorder; the police killings of unarmed Black people; a dystopian future where residential schools are brought back. Teens and young adults also really like American author John Green.
Those top five titles are: Turtles All The Way Downby Green with 1,536 copies borrowed; The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (1,351); The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (1038); The Marrow Thieves by Toronto’s own Cherie Dimaline at 1,001; and The Fault in Our Stars, also by Green (990).
Young people and children are often the ones we most associate with using the library and the expectation is perhaps for the numbers to be higher in those categories. But, as Banks points out, “Youth is fleeting … there are just more adults around reading books. That’s my theory, anyway.”