From Overdrive:
To celebrate National Book Lovers Day, we thought it’d be fun to look at the audiobooks and ebooks that have been checked out more than any others since Libby was launched.
Audiobooks
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Educated by Tara Westover
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’engle
Ebooks
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Educated by Tara Westover
Becoming by Michelle Obama
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
The Whistler by John Grisham
Link to the rest at Overdrive
For those who may be unfamiliar with Libby, it’s a program used by many public library systems to facilitate ebook and audiobook lending.
I took a few minutes and visited the amazon pages for most of the books on the ebook list. These are books you also see on best seller lists and the front page of book sites. What impressed me is how popular misery porn is. Other than Asians, Grisham and Michelle Obama, the books are about women in peril and suffering. Why is that?
One might suspect Pandemic influences, which have ballooned audio and ebook sales, but Libby has been running since 2017, so it would take a pretty large COVID bulge to impact the ranking of that many books.