Vol. 35, No. 4
December 2005

Talking Book Favorites

Library staff traditionally reviews the book collection at the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30 to see what books were most popular with our patrons over the past year.  To no one’s surprise, The DaVinci Code (RC55735) topped this year’s list.  In spite of starting out with 37 copies, the book is still in high demand with every copy checked out.  Other titles on the list are Tony Hillerman’s The Sinister Pig, four different books by Danielle Steel - The Cottage, Safe Harbor, Johnny Angel, and Echoes -, two by John Grisham – Bleachers and The King of Torts -, Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who Talked Turkey, and Fern Michaels’ The Future Scrolls.  Lazy B, Sandra Day O’Connor’s memoir, continued its run on our best-seller list, and the Mountain Man books by William Johnstone proved popular this year with five different titles among the top 35 books.  Nora Roberts, Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and James Patterson were also high demand authors.

Books in the Arizona collection, which are titles recorded in our Arizona studios by volunteers, were also favored by our readers.  The top Arizona book was Ellen Williamson’s When We Went First Class, which has been among the most popular of our local books for three years in a row.  Locally recorded books by Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour and William Johnstone were heavily borrowed, just as they were on the list of National Library Service books.  The J.A. Jance mysteries continue to be requested, and her Outlaw Mountain came in fourth most popular on the Arizona list.  Other titles on the list were These is My Words by Nancy Turner, A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena DeBlasi, and Books 1 and 2 in the Season of the Vigilante series by Kirby Jonas.