The combination of murder and libraries – such a cliche of detective fiction that Agatha Christie has a character declare: “bodies are always being found in libraries in books” – continues to tighten its grip on the nation’s library-goers, with all but one of the top 10 most borrowed books last year a murder mystery.
Lee Child’s peripatetic hero Jack Reacher is on the hunt for a killer who has taken a shot at the French president in Personal, the year’s most borrowed title, new figures from Public Lending Right (PLR) reveal. In Never Go Back, the second most popular book for the UK’s library-goers, Reacher is accused of a historical homicide. A mix of death and destruction from authors including Peter Robinson, Robert Galbraith – the pseudonym for JK Rowling – and James Patterson help fill out PLR’s top 10 most borrowed titles.
Gillian Flynn’s tale of a darkly dysfunctional marriage, Gone Girl, is in seventh place, with the first non-crime novel to appear, Jeff Kinney’s comic children’s novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid, in 10th. When only adult titles are considered, all of the top 10 are crime and thrillers, with Ian Rankin’s Saints of the Shadow Bible now finding a place.
“Overall, crime fiction and thrillers are hugely popular with UK library borrowers,” said PLR, which tracks borrowing around the UK. Established by act of parliament in 1979, PLR gives authors the right to payment from the government each time their books are loaned through the public system.
According to PLR, in the year to June 2015, American thriller writer Patterson was the most-borrowed author from UK libraries overall, with an astonishing 10 novels in PLR’s top 100 most borrowed titles list. This marks Patterson’s ninth year running in the top spot. MC Beaton, author of the Agatha Raisin crime novels, was in fifth, and Child in ninth.
Agatha Christie herself also makes PLR’s list as the third most borrowed classic author, behind Roald Dahl in first place, and Enid Blyton in second. The queen of crime’s most popular novel was not, disappointingly, The Body in the Library, in which a corpse is found in the library of Colonel and Mrs Bantry. Instead, borrowers plumped for Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly.
Along with the UK’s predilection for thrillers, the new PLR figures reveal the popularity of children’s fiction in libraries, with five children’s writers in the list of the top 10 most borrowed authors. Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo, is in second place overall, behind Patterson, with Rainbow Magic brand Daisy Meadows in third, and Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon in fourth. All four saw their books loaned more than 1m times in the year ending June 2015.
Comedian and children’s author David Walliams has also shot up the charts, now the 41st most borrowed author, up from 157th place in 2012. PLR noted that his book Awful Auntie was the most borrowed title in libraries in Northern Ireland.
“What fantastic taste the children of Northern Ireland have,” said Walliams in response to the news. “I am beyond delighted. Libraries are vital for children and adults to discover a wide variety of books. Long may they live.”
The PLR figures reveal intriguing regional variations: the nation’s favourite cookery book was Jamie Oliver’s Save With Jamie – except for Northern Ireland, where borrowers plumped for Mary Berry Cooks the Perfect. Berry was also the nation’s most borrowed non-fiction author overall.
When it came to books about the home, Andy Blackwell’s Home Plumbing Manual proved popular in Scotland and the south east, while in the south west and eastern regions, borrowers were taking out Ian Rock’s Home Extension Manual.
And although the most borrowed humour title overall was Matt Groening’s Bart Simpson: Big Shot!, borrowers in the south east went for Jeremy Clarkson’s Is It Really Too Much To Ask? while Welsh library visitors preferred Richard Porter’s Top Gear Epic Failures.
This year’s lending figures also included audiobooks for the first time, with Lesley Pearse’s saga Without a Trace in top spot, ahead of a number of children’s titles, from Rowling’s Harry Potter audiobooks to Walliams’s Demon Dentist and Ratburger.
Funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport through the British Library, Public Lending Right will this month pay out £6m to 22,347 authors, illustrators, photographers, editors and narrators, at a rate of 7.67 pence per loan. Authors can receive a maximum of £6,600 from PLR, with 202 authors making that amount this year.
Despite the popularity of crime, Catherine Cookson remains the UK’s most borrowed author over the last 20 years, according to PLR, with her books borrowed more than 32m times between 1995 and 2015. Danielle Steel is in second place in the 20-year list, and Patterson in third.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion