Check out our "best sellers" from 2016!

Every year we like to share our "best sellers" list from the year before-- the top ten most checked out books in the city of Richmond from 2016. Last year's numbers were interesting for a variety of reasons, especially for the fact that two locations were closed for half the year.

If we look at check-outs at all the branches together, our top ten looks like this:

1. The girl on the train : a novel / Paula Hawkins
2. All the light we cannot see / Anthony Doerr
3. The nightingale / Kristin Hannah
4. No more Mr. Nice Guy : a family business novel / Carl Weber
5. The nest / Cynthia D'Aprix
6. The life-changing magic of tidying up / Marie Kondo
7. Carl Weber's Kingpins. Cleveland / Brandi Johnson
8. The last mile / David Baldacci
9. Go set a watchman / Harper Lee
10. Carl Weber's Kingpins. Philadelphia / Brittani Williams

However, each of our branches serves a community with their own distinct reading preferences. Click a pin on the map below to see how your neighborhood read last year:

Richmond is for readers!

YA Reads for 2016

A Big Dose of Lucky by Marthe Jocelyn 

Malou is a sixteen-year-old mixed race girl who has no family and has been living in an orphanage all her life. She has the desire to search for her family and find her roots. After her orphanage burns down, Malou receives some hints that she may have been born in Ontario’s cottage country and goes on a mission to find out where she comes from. This novel is set around the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination, continuous racial tension, social and sexual inequalities. A Big Dose of Lucky is part of a seven book series, but the series can be read in any order.

Juba! A Novel by Walter Dean Myers 

William Henry Labe, also known and Master Jubba, was a free slave and a dancer who danced in America and England in the 1840s. In his final novel, Walter Dean Myers captures the light of a person who helped influenced today’s tap, jazz, and step dancing.  

Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom 

Parker Grant does not allow her vision disability to define her while balancing her life as a normal teen. In her short life, Parker already dealt with a lot of tragedy. She lost her mother and sight at an early age and her father died when she started her junior year of high school. To add to all the problems weighing on Parker’s shoulders, her ex boyfriend, Scott Kilpatrick, resurfaced after breaking her heart when she was thirteen. Parker is a strong individual who has set a ground rule for no one to treat her any differently just because she's blind, and never take advantage. There will be no second chances. But when her ex tries to reach out to her, she tries hard to stick to her rules, which makes her second guess them.

Yo, Miss A Graphic Look at High School by Lisa Wilde 

This graphic memoir is told from the point of view of the author, who is also a teacher at John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy. Wildcat Academy is a school in New York City to give teens who have been suspended, had issues with the law, and even teen parents, a second chance at an education.Wilde's graphic novel was inspired by portraits she created during her lunch break as well as poetry created by some of her students.  

"Suffering Sappho!" Resolve to read The [awesome] Secret History of Wonder Woman this year

Comic book nerds? Book nerds? History nerds? Pop culture nerds? Nerd nerds? Not a nerd? Or are you one of those persnickety, tough-to-please folks who sniff at my recommendations? Have I got a book for all of you.

It is the 2015-2016 selection for Virginia Commonwealth University's  Common Book Program: The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. The idea of the Common Book Program at VCU is to "support and stimulate the academic and intellectual culture of VCU through a common reading experience". This is why people seek out book clubs--for that wonderful feeling that comes from sharing a reading experience with others, and the opportunity to discuss ideas and what we learned, what may have challenged us to think in new ways. When a book thrills you, don't you immediately want other people to read it too? Wouldn't it be great if we had a huge, city-wide book discussion? A Super Book Club, perhaps? This book has something in it for everyone. Let's join in on the conversation happening at VCU about this marvelously compelling, thought-provoking book.

This story is fun and outrageous, almost unbelievable, and bawdy at times. Jill Lepore stays true to her subject by styling the book as a superhero origin story. The heroes in this case are many and the personalities are huge. Among the heroes are Margaret Sanger and her sister, Sanger's niece Olive Byrne, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, Wonder Woman of course, and at the center of our story is the fantastic and flawed hero William Moulton Marston, a fascinating and complicated man and a study in contradictions. He was a champion of women's rights (before it was cool), inventor of the lie detector test, charlatan, and polygamist. Lepore deftly uses Wonder Woman and Marston as the narrative connection between the Suffragists in the beginning of the 20th century and the women's movement decades later, making for an all around thrilling history of popular culture and American heroes.

There is something for everyone in this swift, engaging read. To be honest, I hadn't thought much one way or the other about Wonder Woman before reading this, certainly not much about her creator. I found the women behind the man behind The Woman to be especially intriguing, and although I've never really read superhero comics, I could not get enough of Wonder Woman's story. I found so much in the book to talk about that I want you all to read it too.

Run to your local library (or independent bookstore if you simply must own it) and check this one out. Join in on the conversation!

Another of Marston's contributions.