DES MOINES, Iowa — Central Iowa libraries have released their top requested items of 2023, and there are a few titles that come as no surprise.
Colleen Hoover is staying booked and busy as her works continue to stay on the top ten lists for general fiction and overall picks for Ankeny, Altoona, Des Moines and West Des Moines public libraries. Sarah J. Maas' "A Court of Thorns and Roses" and "Throne of Glass" series also top the list. Hoover's and Maas' books are popular on BookTok, a community on TikTok focusing on books.
Local 5 spoke with Kelly Marble, Des Moines Public Library's digital media specialist, about BookTok and other popular novels.
"When you hear someone talking about a book that they love, and you hear over and over people talking about it, that gets you excited to read it," Marble said. "And so I think the thing that's been fun about seeing BookTok and Bookstagram, where people are really having spaces to share what they love reading, is that it elevates these books."
And those conversations, sharing in the works, is part of why Marble thinks these books stay on the charts.
"When I read 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo', I remember thinking that it was so propulsive that I couldn't put it down, and I just wanted to pass it off to my sister so she could read it and we could talk about it," she said. "A lot of those books that do well on BookTok, especially, are the books that have those kind of propulsive plots that people just don't want to stop reading."
Other books this year making their way to the charts included those seeing television or movie adaptations. "Lessons in Chemistry" has an Apple TV show, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," prequel to Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy was in theaters in November and Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" premiered at the end of the year on Disney+.
One library, however, prioritized staff picks over number of check-outs. Urbandale Public Library's "Best of Year" list didn't distinguish between most requested items, and staff favorites.
"Categorizing items as 'most checked out' or 'most requested' is tricky, because some titles are very popular, but came out later in the year and don’t have as high of circulations," said Assistant Director Leslie Noble in an email. "Our most checked out adult title of 2023 is "Spare" by Prince Harry, but it was published on January 10 and has had all year to circulate."
"Spare" topped many libraries' lists for 2023. Ankeny, Altoona and Des Moines libraries all had it topping their Adult Non-fiction lists, and Pleasant Hill's director, John Lerdal, told Local 5 it was noted as a popular book in 2023, though they did not share numbers.