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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN September 19, 2004 Issue 
What People Read This Summer Traditionally, those sultry and languid summer days when students are out of school and gainfully employed people head for all-too-brief vacations, have been considered good for reading. But there is no way to gauge if today people read more or less on holiday, as many pass on relaxing vacations in favor of vacations loaded with activities. Bestseller lists indicate what books people have bought during a certain week or a month. Sophisticated library technology now makes it possible to track what books are borrowed the most during any given week or month. After compiling the results of a nationwide survey, "Library Journal" recently published a list the most borrowed books from American libraries during the month of July. Some startling differences emerged in the comparison of the July L. A. Times bestseller lists with the lists for most borrowed books from American libraries and from our own San Bernardino Public Library during the month of July. In the fiction category Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" tops every list. In our own library it ranked fifth as the most borrowed book. Bill Clinton's "My Life" tops the non-fiction list for both - bestsellers and most borrowed books in U.S. libraries but curiously, it does not appear on the list of the top 30 most borrowed titles from the San Bernardino Public Library. Although high on the bestseller list, books such as Plum Sykes' clever and sarcastic but silly "Bergdorf Blondes," Stephen King's "The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah," Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons" and Laura Schlessinger's misguided "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" are no where to be found on the list of most borrowed books from libraries. On the other hand, "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation" by Cokie Roberts, a well researched tribute to the greatness of the uncommon women who made it possible for the Founding Fathers to make revolutions and engage in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, is no where on the bestseller lists but ranks 14th on the list of most borrowed non-fiction books from libraries. What amusing cultural and sociological inferences could come out of such lists! They raise all sorts of questions: Do book buyers and book borrowers belong to different socioeconomic and cultural groups? Who sets the reading trends - book buyers or book borrowers? And what are the education levels of each group? What percentage of the people who buy books actually read them? After all, there is a perception that many people buy books just for decoration. But then there are also the book packrats, into whose category I may fall. These are people obsessed with hoarding books, people who must have say, every biography and fictionalized account of a favorite personage, the works of a little known author with cult-like following, everything written in a certain genre or everything written by a certain writer, travel guides for every place visited or hoped to be visited, and so on ad infinitum. Book packrats never get to read all the books they've hoarded but they live with the illusion that some day they would get to every single book. I frequently reread as a cautionary tale an article that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in July of 1997 - "Bookworms' lairs overflowing in New York," by New York Times writer Janny Scott. It is the story of obsessive book buyers who have to stash their books in bathtubs, under beds and even on their beds while they sleep on a couch. "Books are," writes the author, "essential to many a New Yorker's self-image: The appeal is sartorial as well as cerebral. In certain circles, there seems to be an assumption that intellectual tonnage correlates with linear footage of books." In spite of these dangers and the fact that I have access to any book I might want to read, I can't curtail my own book-buying obsession. For me the proximity of available books is tantalizing. How could I possibly pass up buying a copy of yet another biography of Josephine Bonaparte for only .50 cents at the Friends Book Sale! Occasionally we read stories about people who have amassed tons of library books in their garages or basements. Stolen books. No one really knows why they do it. Is it because they can't afford to buy books? Or do they think they are keeping the knowledge in these stolen books just for themselves? But back to the lists of bestsellers and most borrowed books from libraries. The most startling aspect of these comparisons is the list of the most borrowed books in the month of July from the San Bernardino Public Library (SBPL). "The Da Vinci Code" and Sue Grafton's "R" Is For Ricochet" are the only two books that appear on our library's list as well as on the other two lists. The rest of the books most borrowed from SBPL are - surprise - mostly children's books: five Harry Potter books top the list, further down are two Shel Silvestein favorites - "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Light in the Attic" - and two beloved Dr. Seuss "Cat in the Hat" books as well as books with awesome titles with which I was not familiar - "Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space" and "Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman" both by Dav Pilkey. Incredible! The children of San Bernardino out read the city's adults this summer! That is because July comprised four of the six weeks of the Summer Reading Game at the library. During that six week period 3,020 children and teens read 53,118 library books. I am not going to even try and analyze the cultural and sociological implications of this phenomenon. Instead I would try to find time to settle in my hammock (well, actually Zack's hammock) with chocolates, coffee and later on in the twilight, with wine and the sprit of my erstwhile cat and reading companion Mephistopheles, and start reading those enticing children's books on our library's most borrowed books list. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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