LA Public Library: Top Tens: The Most Popular Titles Of 2021

Los Angeles CA

29 December, 2021

10:22 AM

Description

Press release from the Los Angeles Public Library: Christina Young December 28, 2021 It's that time again where we roll out our top ten lists of the most popular titles checked-out by our very own library patrons. With over 16 million items borrowed, and nearly 800,000 items of digital content consumed, let's look back and discover what clicked with readers, listeners, and viewers! The top movies streamed on Kanopy ran the gamut, from documentaries to classics to horror. Our patrons' eclectic taste holds true for the music category. Popular musical artists like Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and perennial favorite Taylor Swift were streamed and downloaded on hoopla and Freegal right along with calming piano instrumental, jazz, and meditation albums. For the most part, old favorites filled the top reads for kids and teens. Young readers were wanting a return to a familiar friend in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, following Greg Heffley's misadventures. A return to Hogwarts was also on call, putting the Harry Potter series in heavy rotation. Teens showed appreciation for escapism with Leigh Bardugo's fantasy Shadow and Bone: The Grisha Trilogy, with the series taking over much of the library's top teen reads for 2021. A number of this year's top titles in fiction and nonfiction carried over from 2020, perhaps unsurprisingly as 2021 continued to be a difficult and frustrating year for many. With this in mind, Angelenos looked to the library for both entertainment and solace. Overdrive was in overdrive (if you'll forgive the pun), as e-media check-outs continued to soar. Overall, readers chose books that explored issues of identity, race, immigration, and class. Self-help and mental wellness were big ones for the nonfiction category. Fiction readers opted for hopeful feel-good stories that were still grounded in the strength and compassion of the human spirit. We may not know what 2022 will bring, but we do know that books, stories, and the library will always be with us to offer reflection, insight, comfort, and joy. Here's to even more literary discoveries as we march forward towards new possibilities. This press release was produced by the Los Angeles Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.