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The Most Popular Books in U.S. Libraries in 2021

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A Quartz survey reached out to U.S. public libraries for their most checked out titles of the year. 14 responded from across the country, including Seattle, Portland, Denver, San Antonio, Nashville, New York, and Baltimore.

Unsurprisingly, ebooks saw a surge in popularity this year, but that continues a trend of increasing ebook checkouts. The most common ebook checkout of the libraries surveyed was The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, followed by The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. The most popular nonfiction title was Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, and the most popular kids' book was Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End by Jeff Kinney.

Here are the 7 most popular books checked out from these libraries:

  1. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
  2. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
  3. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
  4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End by Jeff Kinney
  5. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
  6. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
  7. A Promised Land by Barack Obama

You can see the other top books at Quartz.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.