Library Blog

The 2022 Hit Parade: The Most Circulated Books of the Year

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

The year's circulation data has been extracted and crunched and thoroughly reviewed by a team of independent auditors, and we are pleased to present our Top Ten lists for 2022. The lists below include checkouts for all formats: print, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Anne Tyler's French Braid was the clear winner by a fairly wide margin, which is no surprise: Tyler is a perennial favorite at the Society Library (17 other Tyler books were checked out this year). But Shy, Mary Rodgers' memoir, was a surprise hit, popular with members immediately after its release and tying for the overall number three spot with Hernan Diaz's Trust, and placing at number one among Nonfiction. While the lists are full of familiar names (Colm Tóibín, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, etc.), several authors make their debut on our most-circulated lists: Hernan Diaz, Paul Vidich, Geraldine Brooks, Claire Keegan, Olga Tokarczuk, and Sulari Gentill. The Mysteries & Crime Fiction lists sees three debut novels from Harini Nagendra, Eva Jurczyk, and Nita Prose. It is worth noting that Donna Leon appears on the Mystery list for the remarkable seventh consecutive year with a new book in her Inspector Brunetti series (another 36 titles in the Brunetti series were checked out from our stacks during the year), and that Elizabeth Strout appears on the Hit Parade with two books: Oh! William (2021) and Lucy by the Sea (2022) appear consecutively on our fiction list. 

If you are an ebook reader or enjoy audiobooks, look for these titles on the "Most Popular Books of 2022" shelf in the Cloud Library.

THE TOP TEN 

  1. Tyler, Anne - French Braid
  2. Towles, Amor – The Lincoln Highway 
  3. Díaz, Hernán - Trust | Rodgers, Mary - Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (With Jesse Green)
  4. Tóibín, Colm - The Magician | Foley, Lucy - The Paris Apartment
  5. Brooks, Geraldine - Horse | Brown, Tina - The Palace Papers: Inside the House Of Windsor—The Truth and the Turmoil
  6. Egan, Jennifer - The Candy House
  7. Keegan, Claire - Small Things Like These
  8. Patchett, Ann - These Precious Days: Essays
  9.  Tokarczuk, Olga - The Books of Jacob (translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft)
  10. Strout, Elizabeth - Oh William! | Ephron, Delia - Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir

Honorable Mention: Lucy by the Sea / Elizabeth StroutOur Country Friends / Gary Shteyngart; A Line to Kill / Anthony Horowitz; The Maid / Nita Prose; Give Unto Others / Donna Leon; The Woman in the Library / Sulari Gentill; In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss / Amy Bloom; Love Marriage / Monica Ali; The Bangalore Detectives Club / Harini Nagendra

NONFICTION

  1. Rodgers, Mary - Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs Of Mary Rodgers (With Jesse Green)
  2. Brown, Tina - The Palace Papers: Inside the House Of WindsorThe Truth and the Turmoil
  3. Patchett, Ann - These Precious Days: Essays
  4. Ephron, Delia - Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir
  5. Bloom, Amy - In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss
  6. Calhoun, Ada - Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me
  7. Bruni, Frank - The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found
  8. Jähner, Harald - Aftermath: Life in The Fallout of The Third Reich, 1945-1955 (translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside)
  9. Denk, Jeremy - Every Good Boy does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons
  10. Ferrante, Elena - In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing (translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein)

Honorable Mention: After The Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War / Helen RappaportConstructing a Nervous System: A Memoir / Margo Jefferson; All About Me!: My Remarkable Life In Show Business / Mel BrooksConfidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America / Maggie Haberman; Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom / Carl Bernstein; The Dawn Of Everything: A New History of Humanity / David Graeber & David Wengrow

FICTION 

  1. Tyler, Anne - French Braid
  2. Towles, Amor The Lincoln Highway
  3. Díaz, Hernán - Trust
  4. Tóibín, Colm - The Magician
  5. Brooks, Geraldine - Horse
  6. Egan, Jennifer - The Candy House
  7. Keegan, Claire - Small Things Like These
  8. Tokarczuk, Olga - The Books Of Jacob (translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft)
  9. Strout, Elizabeth - Oh William!
  10. Strout, Elizabeth - Lucy by the Sea

Honorable mention: Our Country Friends / Gary ShteyngartMercy Street / Jennifer Haigh; The Promise / Damon Galgut; Fellowship Point / Alice Elliott Dark; The Anomaly / Hervé Le Tellier (translated from the French by Adriana Hunter); Lessons In Chemistry / Bonnie Garmus; The Postmistress of Paris / Meg Waite Clayton

MYSTERIES & CRIME FICTION 

  1. Foley, Lucy - The Paris Apartment
  2. Horowitz, Anthony - A Line to Kill
  3. Prose, Nita - The Maid | Leon, Donna - Give Unto Others | Gentill, Sulari - The Woman in the Library
  4. Nagendra, Harini - The Bangalore Detectives Club
  5. George, Elizabeth - Something to Hide: A Lynley Novel
  6. Silva, Daniel - Portrait of an Unknown Woman
  7. Le Carré, John - Silverview
  8. Winspear, Jacqueline - A Sunlit Weapon
  9. Todd, Charles - A Game Of Fear | Jurczyk, Eva - The Department Of Rare Books and Special Collections
  10. Vidich, Paul - The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin

Honorable mention: Sparring Partners / John Grisham; The Shadow Of The Empire / Qiu Xiaolong; The It Girl / Ruth Ware; The Berlin Exchange / Joseph Kanon; The Dark Hours / Michael Connelly; The Lady In The Silver Cloud / David Handler; The Bullet That Missed / Richard Osman; The Sentence / Louise Erdrich

Digging deeper into the year’s circulation activity reveals some interesting reading trends among our members.

Unsurprisingly, our unbeatable crime fiction collection sees a lot of stacks action, and the long runs of authors on our shelves are irresistible to insatiable mystery readers. What author had the most individual items checked out from our stacks in 2022? Agatha Christie with 67 books. Rex Stout with 55 placed second, and Georges Simenon and Robert Parker tied for third with 41 individual items each. Other mystery writers with impressive showings include John Le Carré (27 items checked out), Charles Todd (26), Donna Leon (36), Peter Lovesey (30), Alexander McCall Smith (30), plus Lawrence Block, Victoria Thompson, Lisa Scottoline, the list goes on.

Outside of mysteries, our members turned to perennials and classics like Henry James (36 books), P.G. Wodehouse and Edith Wharton (29 each). Other noteworthy performances included NYSL favorites like Barbara Pym, Hilary Mantel, Elizabeth Taylor, Penelope Lively, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Roth, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Somerset Maugham, and, of course, William Shakespeare.

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