So What Are You Reading This Year?

By Susan Stanton, Technical Services Coordinator

September 7, 2005

Natrona County ’s adult library patrons love mystery/suspense fiction, while teens adore graphic novels, children like funny picture books, and everyone enjoys family films and TV series on DVD, according to a statistical report the library ran recently.

Because of software limitations, the report counted only checkouts-per-title for the approximately 20,000 new items added to your library collection during the 2004-2005 fiscal year – not all 514,951 check-outs. Unfortunately, this left out some slightly older items – such as Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” – that may have circulated more than the newly-added materials.

Mark Spragg was the big winner last year, with his new novel, “An Unfinished Life,” clinching the top fiction spot at 257 circulations and his autobiography, “Where Rivers Change Direction,” garnering the number-one nonfiction spot with 119 check-outs.

Rounding out adults’ preferred popular fiction was Sue Grafton’s “R is for Ricochet,” Patricia Cornwell’s “Trace,” Janet Evanovich’s “Metro Girl” and John Grisham’s “The Broker,” at 204 to 134 check-outs each.

Your favorite magazines are People Magazine, with 310 check-outs, followed by The New York Times magazine, Time magazine, The Nation, and The New Yorker, at a lower but still robust 132 to 87 check-outs each.

“The Lion King 2: Simba's pride” overwhelmingly won first place among DVDs at 259 checkouts, with “Six Feet Under, 2 nd Season,” earning second at 173 check-outs. They were followed by “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Wonder Woman, 1 st Season,” and “I, Robot.”

Juvenile readers’ top choice was “David Goes to School” (sequel to “No, David!” featuring a dangerously mischievous small boy) with 56 check-outs. Rounding out children’s selections were: a two-way tie between “The Toughest Cowboy” and “Arthur's Thanksgiving,” and a two-way tie for third place between “Who Wants a Dragon?” and “The Polar Express.” The board book “How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?” and new copies of Eric Carle’s classic “The Very Busy Spider” were fourth and fifth top choices.

Teen readers proved enthusiastic fans of manga – multi-volume Japanese graphic novels that read back to front – with almost all of their favorite selections falling into that genre. Their top choices (ranging from 38 to 35 checkouts each) were: “Ranma 1/2,” vol. 26; “Rurouni Kenshin,” vols. 1 and 2; “FLCL,” vol. 1, “Ragnarok” vol. 2, and the book “Girls in Pants: the Third Summer of the Sisterhood.”

After Spragg’s biography, the other top choices of adult nonfiction readers, ranging from 39 to 33 checkouts, were: “The Greatest Baby Name Book Ever,” “Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” “The Family: the Real Story of the Bush Dynasty,” and “ America (the Book): a Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.”

In audio recordings, patrons’ top choice was “Shrek 2: Party CD” at 39 check-outs. Other top selections, ranging from 29 to 26 checkouts, were “Mega Movie Mix,” Lemony Snicket’s “The Reptile Room,” “Trace,” the classic “Little Women,” and Linda Palmer’s “Love is Murder.”

If these selections don’t reflect your tastes, don’t despair – with 120,000-plus items we probably have what you want. If it’s not here, let us know – your suggestions help make your library better.

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