Spend enough time in the five boroughs of New York City and you might notice something: each borough can at times feel like a city unto itself (there’s a reason for that). Among the ways that this manifests are the different reading habits of residents of each — and the New York Public Library’s annual rundown of the year’s most popular books from borough to borough always has plenty of insights into what people are reading.
What can we learn from this year’s edition? Plenty — including some revealing information about larger publishing trends as well.
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” Sure Looks Like a Phenomenon
Plenty of the books readers gravitated towards this year were new releases, including Percival Everett’s National Book Award-winning James. But across the city, the book checked out most often in 2024 was Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, about the friendship between a pair of video game designers. First published in 2022, it also finished second on the NYPL’s most checked-out list for 2023. And, yes: a film adaptation is in the works.
Turns Out Brooklyn Loves Britney Spears
Given that 2024 was an election year, you might expect political nonfiction to have impacted these lists. Spoiler alert: that wasn’t really the case. It turns out New York’s readers preferred fiction on the whole. Some nonfiction works did appear on the borough-specific list, including Britney Spears’s memoir The Woman in Me, which ranked fourth overall in Brooklyn. All of which might make it worth revisiting the collaborations that led to the book’s genesis.
Staten Island Enjoys a Good Thriller
Candid memoirs and critically acclaimed novels abounded on the list, but so did some tried-and-true nailbiters. Readeds in the Bronx and Staten Island both prompted John Grisham’s The Exchange: After the Firm to be on the top 10 lists for their respective boroughs. Staten Island in particular seems to enjoy a good thriller: four of the borough’s most checked-out books were novelists by the author Freida McFadden, who’s had a meteoric rise in the genre.
Don’t Underestimate Romantasy
One of the biggest publishing trends in 2024 was the increasing prominence of romantasy — a genre that blends elements of, you guessed it, romance and fantasy. One of the biggest names there is that of Rebecca Yarros, whose novel Fourth Wing was the third most checked-out book across the city. That novel also showed up on four of the five boroughs’ top 10 lists and was joined by another one of Yarros’s novels, Iron Flame, in Queens.
The Bookstore Is Alive and Well in NYC. Here Are Our Favorites.
Find your next great read hereThere’s plenty more to take away from the NYPL’s year-end list. And if you have the time to run through it, you might well find a book that catches your eye — or you might have a better sense of what friends, family or co-workers are reading right about now.
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