Shetland Library has compiled its ‘most borrowed’ lists for 2022.
Top of the fiction chart is Richard Osman with The Man Who Died Twice, part of his crime series set in a retirement village. Osman’s books have been runaway bestsellers for the past few years and Shetland fans have recently been pleased to hear he is visiting Shetland this summer for the ‘Shetland Noir’ crime festival.
Other popular fiction authors include Elly Griffiths (also coming to ‘Shetland Noir’), Marian Keyes and Delia Owens, while Ann Cleeves is still proving popular with her new series set in Devon.
Online audiobooks have again proved hugely popular with members, with loans on some titles outstripping physical book loans. Marion Keyes tops the audiobook chart with Rachel’s Holiday, which had a revival in popularity after she published the long awaited sequel Again, Rachel last year. Other top audiobook authors include crime writers Marion Todd and Cheryl Rees-Price. The audio versions of the Harry Potter books also remain enduringly popular.
The most popular physical non-fiction book is Miriam Margolyes’ autobiography This Much is True, although when e-loans are factored in she was beaten by a few authors including journalist Gavin Esler who visited last year for Shetland’s literary festival Wordplay – and Sir Randolph Fiennes’ with his new biography of Shackleton.
The top lending Shetland book was The Salt Roads, John Goodlad’s wide ranging history of our cod trade. Many other new local books loaned well, including the memoir Reporter on the Rocks by Jonathan Wills, Aye Someane Deid, Aye Someane Boarn by Barbara Fraser, In Days Gone By by Charlie Simpson and Marsali Taylor’s latest crime thriller, A Shetland Winter Mystery.
The Library also lends online magazines and newspapers. Last year’s most borrowed magazines were BBC Good Food, The Radio Times, Woman’s Own and Auto Express. Top newspaper was the Daily Telegraph, followed by The Guardian and Scotland on Sunday, though the Press and Journal also lends well. The most read international newspaper is currently the Washington Post.