With the second floor closed for renovation, the majority of our non-fiction collection has been stored offsite this year. When the books moved out of the building this past June, we pledged to fulfill your requests for these items within two to three days of your holds being placed. We’ve delivered (literally) and we’ve had lots of compliments and praise for this consistent turnaround period. Our ability to keep to this timeline during the upcoming holidays will be challenging, but as always, we’ll do our best to get you what you want to read in a timely manner. With several facility closings due to the holidays, there will be a reduced opportunity to retrieve your books. We’ll be taking a necessary break from retrieving non-fiction books from the offsite storage between December 22, 2016 and January 2, 2017.
It’s interesting to see which non-fiction topics interested our community this year. Cardholders placed over 2,400 holds for books from our adult non-fiction collection in 2016, and of these, the 15 most popular titles requested were:
- “When Breath Becomes Air” Paul Kalanithi
- “Between the World and Me” Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up : the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” Marie Kondō
- “The Boys in the Boat : Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics” Daniel Brown
- “Hillbilly Elegy : a Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” J. D. Vance
- “Lab Girl” Hope Jahren
- “In Other Words” Jhumpa Lahiri
- “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” Carlo Rovelli
- “H is for Hawk” Helen Macdonald
- “Alexander Hamilton” Ron Chernow
- “Being Mortal : Medicine and What Matters in the End” Atul Gawande
- “Spark Joy : an Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up” Marie Kondō
- “Dark Money : the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” Jane Mayer
- “The Gene : an Intimate History” Siddhartha Mukherjee
- “Just Mercy : a Story of Justice and Redemption” Bryan Stevenson
- “SPQR : a History of Ancient Rome” Mary Beard
Half of the list contains 2016 titles and can be found on our new non-fiction, Book Group, or Library Reads shelves. Not surprisingly, when you review the list, the other half of these titles were a bit older and therefore retrieved from storage (and because they are popular, we’ve kept these in-demand copies stocked in the Quiet Room for browsers).
We were curious about which non-fiction titles from storage were requested the most. This list reflects a practical side of our non-fiction collections. Folks have been studying up this year!
- The Princeton Review Cracking the GRE
- The Princeton Review Cracking the GMAT
- GRE Verbal Workbook
- “The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up : the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” Marie Kondō
- “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” Edward Gibbon
- “The Princeton Review Verbal Workout for the GRE“
- “Being Mortal : Medicine and What Matters in the End” Atul Gawande
- “Zillow Talk : the New Rules of Real Estate” Spencer Rascoff
- “The CollegeBoard College Handbook”
- “New Jersey Driver Manual“
- “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” Thomas S. Kuhn
- “The Fiske Guide to Colleges“
- “Writer’s Market : Where & How to Sell What You Write“
- “Conversations with God : an Uncommon Dialogue” Neale Donald Walsch
Lastly, we know you’re looking for gifts this season, so our Adult Services and Youth Services staff have created wonderful and unique book lists to help. Check out Book-Giving: Fiction Aficionados, Book-Giving: Books for Everyone and Book-Giving: Help Yourself. If you’re shopping for children and teens, check out Give the Gift of Books: Young Adult, Give the Gift of Books: Middle Grade and Give the Gift of Books: Young Readers. You can access all of these holiday book suggestions on our Holiday Book Selections page.
There’s always time to take a moment and celebrate with a good book. Happy reading!