Library Committee Update

By Audrey Estebo, Library Committee

The Coffman community is back. We’re having potlucks and sing-alongs, we watch movies together, we meet in person, we are going out to plays and restaurants, and we’re traveling! The Library Committee is thrilled that lockdown is loosening but, honestly, we were maybe just a little concerned that library usage would slip in 2022. Happily, that wasn’t the case. In spite of fewer COVID restrictions and a three-week closure for carpet installation, overall usage of the Library held firm in 2022 at 1,189 checkouts. Sixty-four of the units at Coffman checked out at least one book from our library.

​We keep our Library up to date with monthly book buys, the fall BookFest buy (fifty-five new books last year), and donations. To be sure, we are acquiring the titles you want to read, and the committee likes to take stock of Coffman’s reading habits each year’s end.

So, what did Coffman read in 2022? Fiction! Consistent with prior years, general fiction remains the most popular category, comprising 40% of all checkouts. The second most popular category is mystery/thriller—29% of all books borrowed. Biography/memoir and history make up 9%, down a bit from 2021. The remaining books cover all the other genres, with Ann Patchett’s essay collection, These Precious Days, by itself making up 1% of all checkouts. Unlike 2021, in 2022, young adult and children’s books were popular, likely because grandkids were more frequent Coffman visitors.

What authors are most read? The most popular authors are mystery/thriller authors, due, of course, to the fact that they typically tend to have multibook series. By far, the author checked out the most is Saint Paulite William Kent Krueger. There were thirty-five checkouts across nineteen of his books. Louise Erdrich (another Minnesotan), Louise Penny, and Donna Leon were also in demand.

A couple of series proved very popular in 2022 with more than twenty-two checkouts each. One, Mick Herron’s Slough House books about misfit spies in London, is the basis for the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. There are eight books in the series, and we have them all. (See Is Anyone Ruder Than Jackson Lamb? by Victoria Tirrel, October, 2022 1666 Coffman News). The other series is the Cat in the Stacks mystery series by Miranda James (did you know Miranda James is a pseudonym for Dean James, a medical librarian?).

Two newer series that Coffman readers are enjoying are the Cash murder mystery series by Marcie Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation who lives in Minneapolis, and the Thursday Mystery Club series by Richard Osman, set in an active senior community with no (!) parallels to Coffman.

What are you going to read in 2023? Need ideas? Subscribe to “What’s New at 1666 Coffman Library” (sign up at the Library webpage on the 1666 Coffman website), check the recent and relevant shelves, review the green BookFest list (copies in the library and on the Library webpage), or just wander through the library.

Have ideas for us?  Send suggestions for specific books or types of books that you would like to see in the Library to [email protected]. Happy Reading!