Books of local interest loaned well at Shetland Library last year and there was quite a tussle for the top of the Shetland section.
Malachy Tallack's That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz took top spot for physical loans, closely followed by Marianne Brown's The Shetland Way and Jen Hadfield's Storm Pegs. However, all three also had eBook and eAudio loans - if these are added Jen swaps places with Malachy for No.1 Shetland book. In fact, loans for Storm Pegs even beat We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, who was top of the general fiction loans.
Marianne Brown, maintaining a strong second place with her exploration of attitudes to the Viking windfarm said;
"Thanks so much to Shetland Library users for taking an interest in the book. The varying topics of the top three reads, all with a local connection, shows how the library can cater for a range of tastes."
Two other Shetland books which did very well on the list despite not being published till halfway through the year are An Imposter in Shetland by Marsali Taylor and Vod by Christine de Luca. There are also good loans for much older Shetland books such as John Graham’s Shadowed Valley.
In the general collections there is more local and Scottish interest – Finding Hildasay by Chris Lewis is top of general non-fiction for the third year in a row, with a much older book The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd in second place and Ken Smith’s The Way of the Hermit in third. A fiction book lending well is Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen, who visited Shetland last year.
It is notable in the adult fiction chart that books popular with book groups are doing well – these include Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, which has stayed high in the chart for several years. Also starting to loan well is crime author Vaseem Khan who is coming to next year’s Shetland Noir festival.
eAudio continues to grow in popularity, and most of the top books on the list are available on multi-user licences meaning there is no waiting list - Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid takes first place.
Junior fiction continues to be dominated by Jeff Kinney and picture books by Julia Donaldson - The Gruffalo, an enduring favourite, is number one picture book. In the Young Adult chart, Alice Kuipers’ Life on the Refrigerator Door takes top spot after being second last year.
Karen Fraser, Library manager said: “We always find it interesting to sort through our ‘most borrowed’. I think the popularity of eAudio means that some people are finding time to read more books than they might otherwise, and I am not surprised that audio boosted loans for Jen, Malachy and Marianne – they narrated their own books and did so very beautifully.”
The full list of “Most Borrowed 2025” items can be found here.
Jen Hadfield (Credit: Dave Donaldson)
Malachy Tallack
Marianne Brown (Credit: Emma Daniels)