WSL's Top Check Outs of 2020
Interested to see what your neighbors read or watched this year? Here are the most checked out items by Whitinsville Social Library patrons in 2020.
Top 20 Books
- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
- Far From the Tree by Robin Benway
- American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
- 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
- The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
- Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel
- What Happens in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand
- The Night Fire by Michael Connelly
- Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
- The Guardians by John Grisham
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
- Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life by Kate McDermott
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
- Educated by Tara Westover
- The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
- What You Wish For by Katherine Center
Due to the pandemic many new books that had been scheduled to be released in spring and summer were postponed by their publishers. This helps explains why many of the Top 20 Books were not released in 2020. Our patrons do continue to enjoy beach reads, memoirs, domestic fiction, and the suspense genre. It's great to see several books on this list were books discussed in either our Memoir Book Club or Cookbook Club or the Northbridge Senior Center's book club.
The most popular book for teens was the Northbridge High School summer reading book Far from the Tree by Robin Benway. This is the first year a Young Adult book was in the top 20 overall.
The top children’s book checked out this year was a book published 50 years ago: Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel. Mo Willems was also very popular with Are You Ready to Play Outside? and Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late rounding out the top three in this category.
The most popular magazine this year was People. Followed by This Old House and Country Living. Be sure to check out Overdrive to see what magazines are offered to read online.
The top movies were A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Joker, and Frozen 2. Game of Thrones was by far the most popular TV show this year. All eight seasons checked out 70 times!
It should come as no surprise that the most popular discount pass with Northbridgians this year was DCR’s Massachusetts State Parks parking pass. Patrons checked out these passes to get discounted parking at State Parks all over the commonwealth.
We have several unusual items that we circulate from a collection we call the Library of Things. The most popular “thing” you checked out in 2020? Tote bags! Second place goes to our collection of puzzles.
We hope being able to offer our patrons entertainment and education during this year helped get you through these hard times. Thank you all for using and therefore supporting your public library. Here’s to 2021!