Sharing the Usage Stats for 2024!

By Audrey Estebo, originally published in the February 2025 issue of the 1666 Coffman Newsletter

​As I sit down to write about 2024 Coffman library usage, the forecast for the next seventy-two hours ranges from a high of 9º to a low of -17º. This is Minnesota winter. This is when we stay in and read. Two authors said it well:

“Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.” Sinclair Lewis

“Shut the door, not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the coziness.” Mark Twain

​It all brings me to this: how lucky that Coffman’s original organizers gave us this Library and how lucky that for the past forty years, Coffman residents have preserved and supported it so that we can read through the winter cold.

At year end, the Library Committee takes stock of its year. What was popular? Did our book of the month purchases click with our readers? Did the early summer/fall book order titles fly off the shelves? It seems we were pretty successful in 2024. The majority of our new acquisitions were checked out multiple times each—not bad considering our loan period is a full month, and books are purchased as published throughout the year. In 2024, our most popular titles were these:

1. James by Percival Everett
2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
3. Tied: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus,  The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
4. The Lede by Calvin Trillin
5. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Our taste in reading stayed stable. Seventy-four percent of loans were fiction and mystery/thriller compared to 73% in 2023. Biography/memoir and history made up 12%, and poetry made up 2%—all very similar to prior years. The total number of loans? Again, 2024’s 1,307 is similar to the past four years, which range from 1,189 to 1,457. And who is reading? Women made up 80% of the loans. Finally, a whopping 73% of the units checked out at least one book.

Our readers were drawn to new releases but also to the backlists of popular authors. As was true in 2023, Saint Paul’s William Kent Krueger and his Cork O’Connor series topped the most checked out author list with twenty-eight loans of fifteen books. Donna Leon was second with twenty loans of twelve books. They were followed by fiction authors Colm Toíbín and Louise Erdrich, and mystery/thriller authors Anthony Horowitz, CJ Box, John Sandford, Richard Osman, John le Carré, and Louise Penny.

Finally, a personal recommendation. If during these long winter months, you dream of escaping to the south of France, you could do worse than to pick up A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France by Shoreview’s own Steve Hoffman. Hoffman is a tax preparer who grew up in Roseville, but after spending a formative year in Paris, was “desperately and pretentiously” in love with France. He finally returned with his family—not to Paris or to Provence—but to Languedoc, the “other southern France” of the title. This book tells how he came to love the food, the wine, and the people of the region and became a better person himself. Named one of The New York Times Five Best Wine Books of 2024, you can find it in our library to read during these winter months.