What New Yorkers Were Reading

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. What were New Yorkers reading in 2021 and who do you call when you need an answer to a question? No, not Siri. We're going to ask a librarian. New York City's Libraries released their list of the most checked out books today and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett tops the list for Manhattan and Brooklyn, while The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah won out in Queens, and the Bronx, and Staten Island.

Former President Obama was up there too with his memoir, A Promised Land. To dig in on this list a little bit, maybe your holiday plans just got less crowded and you're looking for a good book to hunker down with or a last minute gift, I'm joined once again by Lynn Lobash, associate director of Reader Services at the New York Public Library. Happy end of the year, Lynn. Welcome back to WNYC.

Lynn Lobash: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: The first three books topping the full system wide New York Public Library list have something in common. They are The Vanishing Half, a novel by Brit Bennett, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Klara and The Son, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, and they were all selections for my colleague, Alison Stewart's All of it Get Lit book club. Can you give us a thumbnail description of those books that Alison seemed to be on the cutting edge with picking?

Lynn Lobash: Yes, great choices, Alison. They're all really great book club choices too, because they're [inaudible 00:01:40] something for everyone to love. They've all got some good characters and good setting, good language, good plot. I'll sum them up really quickly. The Vanishing Half, which is hugely popular, and Allison got to it really early, is the story of two twin sisters, young black girls, who live in a rural town in the South.

They're there until they're teenagers, and then they leave the town. Then flash forward 14 years, one of the sisters comes back to live in the town with her daughter, while the other sister lives in Los Angeles as a white woman. It's got all kinds of themes going on; racism, colorism, family. It's just a really well-put together book. It's parallel narratives and whoever the editor was, or maybe the writer just hit it out of the park, it's just so tightly done.

It's a really great work of fiction. Mexican Gothic is a twist on the classic Gothic tale. It's about a socialite in 1950s Mexico who's sent to check out this mysterious cousin who lives in a remote creepy mansion, so that's super fun. Then Klara and The Sun is really special. Of course, Ishiguro is a wonderful writer, but this one is so interesting, because-- the story, it's about what they call an artificial friend in the book, which is a human-like robot, so it's AI in the near future.

This robot is assigned to go and live with this child, with this child's family. What makes this book so different is that it's told from the point of view of the robot who's naïve or egoless and observing these humans' behavior and trying to figure out what their motives are. It's a really lovely book. It talks about the human condition in a really unique way.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls on this. We want your phone calls on this. What's the best book your book club read this year, if you're in a book club? If you aren't in a book club, we want to know what's the best book you read as an individual this year? 212-433-WNYC.

Very much we want to know, do you pick books in a pandemic year to help you escape from what's going on, or to give you strength or a model for facing it, or to somehow look it in the eye even more than you have to do when you're listening to the news? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet your book clubs or your individual best book of the year and what kind of books you turn to this year @BrianLehrer with Lynn Lobash, associate director of Reader Services at the New York Public Library.

I'm curious how much do book clubs actually-- like media book clubs like Get Lit with Alison Stewart and, of course, there's The Today Show book club and the Oprah Book Club. How much did they drive what you get asked for at the New York Public Library branches?

Lynn Lobash: According to this list this year, the theme that ran through it, 7 of the top 10 for New York Public Library were book club picks. There's an Oprah pick, there's a Reese Witherspoon pick, there's the Jenna pick, and then like you said, four from Alison's Get Lit. A shocking number this year certainly. I think that says something about where New Yorkers were, they were maybe over this isolation and want to come together.

It's great to see also these books are very much-- it's nice that people are talking about books together. It's almost like how everyone watched Succession and was talking about it together, it's really great to see books in that same sort of category. Young people are excited about them, and really discussing them. It's nice to know that people are reading books for fun and pleasure, and it's not associated with eating your broccoli, necessarily.

Brian Lehrer: I was actually expecting to see more popular fiction; not eating your broccoli kinds of books on the list. James Patterson makes an appearance or two I see in the Bronx and Staten Island, but literary fiction seems to drive readers in the other boroughs to the library?

Lynn Lobash: Yes, it's true. If you look at-- there's a lot of breakdowns. New York Public Library put out a breakdown that's like the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan. If you look at those, you'll see in the Bronx and Staten Island, there's a ton of like Danielle Steele, David Baldacci, James Patterson, as you mentioned. Those are the hardcore series readers who just are coming back and back and back to these same series over and over again.

They're super loyal to their detectives, or their protagonists in whatever series that they're reading, and they wait for the next books to come out. They're still out there and reading. I think that it tends to be a little bit more--

There's a couple kinds of users at the library; people who place holds and get on queue to wait for these big books that the publishers are really picking or the books that are getting a lot of press and then there's users who come in and just browse the shelves and grab whatever looks appealing to them at the time. We serve these both of these people in the library, their habits of using the library.

Brian Lehrer: Mia in West New York is in a book club. Hi, Mia, you're on WNYC. What did your book club read this year?

Mia: Hi, good morning. It's a book called A Ghost in the Throat. It's by an Irish woman; she's a poet. When I first read it, because I hadn't read descriptions of it or anything, I actually thought it was fiction. It was only later I realized it's non-fiction. The author's name is Doireann Ní Ghríofa. I'm pronouncing that horribly, I know, but she writes in both English and Irish.

It's this parallel story. It's present day, a woman, a mother with four kids, really busy at home. She's a homemaker. In also taking care of these kids, she becomes obsessed with this noble woman from Ireland from 1700, whose husband was murdered, and she writes this poem of grief back then. In present day, Doireann becomes obsessed with finding out more about this poet and about the poem and everything, but her language is so, so beautiful.

It made the New York Times I think 100, I don't know, best books of the year or something. I was so pleased to see it there because it really deserves to be read. It's just really stunning, really.

Lynn Lobash: That sounds very layered, Mia. That's really nice. One of my favorite books this year was by an Irish author, also Maggie O'Farrell wrote a book called Hamnet, which is about a young-- well, it's really about Shakespeare's wife and he's off to the side during the whole novel in becoming a famous playwright, but it's about Shakespeare's wife during the plague raising their young son.

Again, the language is just so beautiful, I loved it. I push it in everybody's hands.

Brian Lehrer: Janine in Springfield, Virginia is in a book club. Hi, Janine, you're on WNYC. What was your book club reading?

Janine: Hi, Brian. I got to read-- for the Bubble Bath Book Club, which is still going, The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. It's science fiction. I have been doing entertainment journalism, and I got to interview her. She is a fantastic science fiction reader who's won several Hugo Awards, which are the Oscars of science fiction. New York City has actually embodied these five people who have to save it from basically this white being that comes, and it's wreaking havoc on the city.

The way that she writes is just so gorgeous. I lived in New York for several years, for over 20 years, and leaving after COVID, being able to read this book with friends who have also left and also friends who are in the city just helped me to love New York even more, like each city has a personality and it's kind of like superheroes and they're all people of color who are the heroes. Michael B. Jordan, his production company auctioned one of her books and she's rewriting, I think it's her first series, [inaudible 00:10:18] series. It's amazing, I highly recommend.

Brian Lehrer: I'm happy to say we had N.K. Jemisin on when she won the MacArthur Genius grant. Thanks for shouting out The City We Became as one of the greats from your book club this year, Janine. We're gonna go to Debbie in New City whose book book club fell apart, but I guess you're still reading Debbie, right?

Debbie: Yes. We had a nice book club, but little by little, Zoom wasn't working, so the book club kind of dissipated. In the meantime, I had retired and then COVID isolation hits. I decided to explore reading about the Greek and Roman myths. I started to read chapter by chapter Mythology by Edith Hamilton, the old classic. In the meantime, then I picked up Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which was really-- I would highly recommend it.

It's the story of Achilles as starting from the age of 12 and it's really from the point of view of his partner, they grew up together and ended up in Troy and the Trojan war. It's so readable and so enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

Brian Lehrer: What got you interested in the ancients at this moment in time?

Debbie: It's just something I've actually always wanted to read about because I felt in my-- I had a good education in humanities and things like that, but I had never really read a lot about the myths and I always find in movies and in literature, there's so much reference to different things that have happened in the stories of the myths. Different references and I just felt like I wanted to just read a little bit more about the stories themselves.

The old classic Edith Hamilton, it's very old, it's a dated book, but it's really a classic.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Debbie: I started to read the classics from a classic.

Lynn Lobash: Did you also-

Brian Lehrer: Lynn, go ahead.

Lynn Lobash: I was just gonna say, did you also read Circe? Have you read Madeline Miller's Circe yet?

Debbie: I did not, but I am working on [inaudible 00:12:28] .

Lynn Lobash: You're going to love it. It's so good. I'd also really recommend this book called Piranesi, which is by Susanna Clarke, which I adored. It's a little bit [00:12:38] off field, but I think you'll really like it.

Debbie: The author is who?

Lynn Lobash: Susanna Clarke wrote Piranesi and Madeline Miller wrote Circe.

Brian Lehrer: Debbie, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for those other tips, Lynn, in that genre. She went to one genre that we might call the classics and Margie in Pine Bush went to another one this year. It looks like Margie you're on WNYC. Hi.

Margie: Hi. For years, I had tried to read Grapes of Wrath and I never got into it. Then I stumbled upon The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. It was very easy to get into and it was about the same time period, the Dust Bowl and the Great Plains, and just the depth of poverty and the grit needed for survival. Because I read The Four Winds, I had the background knowledge to now read Grapes of Wrath, which I love.

It was the same time period, different characters, but the same human suffering and grit, but without the safety net that we have today and so people were so close to starvation and homelessness.

Lynn Lobash: That's so interesting.

Brian Lehrer: [inaudible 00:14:02] to say the safety net that we have today such as it is, but go ahead, Lynn.

Margie: I couldn't have read Grapes of Wrath without first reading Four Winds.

Lynn Lobash: People are really loving Four Winds. I haven't read it myself yet, but I read her previous book which is called The Great Alone, which is set in Alaska. I really think that Kristin Hannah has such a gift for writing place. I felt like I was in Alaska reading that book and I bet this one has a similar appeal set in like Texas during the dust bowl era, I believe.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Margie. We've got about a minute left. I see that the New York Public Library has a best books list on the website, not just the most checked-out books, which is what we've been talking about. Maybe some of those will make the most checked-out list next year, but how do you pick the best? Do you do a poll of all the librarians, and what are a few picks from it that people might be interested to hear?

Lynn Lobash: Brian, it's so much more in-depth than that. We have reading committees all over the library-- I think there are nine at this point, reading in various genres for different ages. We have a best books for kids in Spanish. We had a romance committee this year. We a horror committee, just to name a few and they read all year long and they pick out their top 10 books at the end of the year. It's amazing. It's one of the best things about working at the library.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Lynn Lobash, associate director of Reader Services at the New York Public Library. Except what are you reading right now? Anything? Is that too personal a question?

Lynn Lobash: No, of course. I'm reading this incredible book called Harrow, H-A-R-R-O-W by Joy Williams. It's a story of these two kids, postapocalyptic, who find themselves living in this sort of community of older people who are taking revenge on the corporations who ruined the environment and it's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks, Lynn. Always great.

Lynn Lobash: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Ryan [inaudible 00:16:22], Zach Gottehrer-Cohen works on our daily podcast. We have Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. Our interns this fall, James O'Donnell and Brenda Choudhry. I'm Brian Lehrer.

 

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