This seems a good time to share which ten (physical) books and five e-book and e-audio books have been the most popular and the most borrowed from Lewisham Libraries during 2020. You may like to consider this list as a recommendation from the hundreds of people who borrowed them.
This last year the most borrowed adult fiction book in Lewisham Libraries has been Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. This is the sequel to the Handmaid's Tale. (The Handmaid's Tale was third most borrowed novel). The popularity of these dystopian books seems very appropriate at this weird time of lockdowns and restrictions.
Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie was the second most borrowed novel and won best fiction at the British Book Awards 2020.
See our interview with Candice Carty-Williams on our face book page in Lewisham Voices. As a young south London girl she used Lewisham Library as a retreat. Lewisham Voices
Lewisham readers do seem to like their prize winning novels as Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other is our fourth most borrowed novel. It follows the lives of twelve very different characters over decades - mostly women, black and British. This won the Man Booker Prize 2019 (joint winner with Atwood’s The Testaments).
Milkman by Anna Burns was the Man Booker Prize winner in 2018 and Normal People by Sally Rooney won best fiction at British Book Awards 2019. Incidentally they are both Irish authors. Normal People was made into a really good BBC TV adaptation series – one to watch if you missed it.
Kate Atkinson is a great story teller and who doesn’t love Jackson Brodie – her flawed but very appealing detective. Big Sky is our seventh most borrowed novel. Wych Elm, a psychological mystery by Tana French comes next before the second novel by Kate Atkinson a British spy novel – Transcription which is 9th.
You have to reach the 10th most borrowed novel to find a male author. George Orwell with his classic dystopian science fiction novel 1984 and his creation 'Big Brother' then appear.
And what is the 50th most issued book? Revenge by James Patterson - a page turning murder.
But what about the most borrowed authors?
James Patterson need not worry as he is still at the top of the list of most issued authors in Lewisham – indeed he is the most borrowed author in UK libraries and has held this title since 2006/7. Well he does write so very many books, (and he has so very many friends to help him).
The ever popular, peculiarly English crime writer Agatha Christie comes in second place and Danielle Steel writing pure romance comes third.
Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other was also the most borrowed e-book and e-audio book.
The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason - an inventive and entertaining edge-of-your-seat Victorian thriller set in London came in the top five of both e-book and e-audio book borrowing.
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, endorsed by Barack Obama as 'A moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple' was the second most listened to e-audio book.
Hilary Mantel's final book in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy The Mirror & the Light - a whopping 882 pages - may explain its popularity as a e-book... so much lighter to carry around.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris was the fifth most borrowed e-book - this biographical fiction based on a real man in the Holocaust, was one of the books chosen by the Digital Reading Group.
The ever popular Agatha Christie appears at number four and five in the e-audio book list with Five Little Pigs and a poisoning to solve for Hercule Poirot and the Adventure of the Christmas Pudding... are you sure you really want to risk finishing off that last piece?
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