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These Are the Books Everyone Read From the New York Public Library in 2016

By Nicole Levy | December 28, 2016 1:54pm
 Readers with cards for the New York Public Library borrowed Paula Hawkins'
Readers with cards for the New York Public Library borrowed Paula Hawkins' "The Girl on the Train" more than any other book in 2016.
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Readers borrowing books from the New York Public Library's 92 branches and e-book catalog in 2016 didn't shy away from facing some hard truths.

A memoir exploring race in America and another reflecting on man's mortality ranked second and third respectively on the NYPL's 2016 list of most checked-out books across Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx, posted by the library Wednesday. 

The only book to outstrip Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me," the National Book Award winner that tackles racial injustice, and Paul Kalanithi's "When Breath Becomes Air," a meditation on facing terminal illness as a doctor trained to treat the dying, was Paula Hawkins’ best-selling mystery, "The Girl on the Train."

The psychological thriller made its silver screen debut this year, with Emily Blunt starring in the lead role.

Other tomes to crack the top-10 list include: Harper Lee's beloved novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," and its controversial prequel, "Go Set a Watchman"; the literary fiction favorites Donna Tartt's "Goldfinch" and Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See"; and star-powered books by entertainers Mindy Kaling and Aziz Ansari, "Why Not Me?" and "Modern Romance," respectively.

Breaking down the tallies by borough and excluding e-book downloads, "Between the World and Me" captivated Manhattan readers more than any other library selection, and "NYPD Red 4," the fourth installment in James Patterson's crime series about a special police task force, logged the most check-outs at libraries in The Bronx and Staten Island. (The latter should surprise no one, considering "NYPD Red 3" topped Staten Island's rankings last year.)

Wading deeper into the library's catalog of the most popular selections at individual branches, we've come to suspect there's a band of video gamers in South Beach, Staten Island determined to outdo the precedents detailed in "Guinness World Records 2016: Gamer's Edition."

We've also concluded that apartments on Roosevelt Island tend toward messiness, because patrons at the neighborhood library borrowed Marie Kondo's "The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up" more than any other book.

In Eastchester in The Bronx, readers frequenting the local branch would appear to be very keen on diving the future, their favorite book a new translation and interpretation of Nostradamus' predictions. 

Browse the map below, courtesy of the NYPL, to see which books were most popular at each branch in 2016: