Most borrowed authors from UK public libraries, 2005-06

[wellinghall]

1. Jacqueline Wilson C
2. James Patterson A
3. Josephine Cox A
4. Danielle Steel A
5. Ian Rankin A
6. Janet & Allan Ahlberg C
7. Mick Inkpen C
8. Roald Dahl C
9. John Grisham A
10. Nora Roberts A



1. James Patterson
2. Josephine Cox
3. Danielle Steel
4. Ian Rankin
5. John Grisham
6. Nora Roberts
7. Agatha Christie
8. Bernard Cornwell
9. Katie Flynn
10. Patricia Cornwell

I am familiar with two of these authors, and have read a couple of books by two others.



1. Jacqueline Wilson
2. Janet & Allan Ahlberg
3. Mick Inkpen
4. Roald Dahl
5. Lucy Cousins
6. Lucy Daniels
7. Eric Hill
8. Enid Blyton
9. Francesca Simon
10. Nick Butterworth

I am familiar with two of these authors.



1. Roald Dahl
2. Agatha Christie
3. Georgette Heyer
4. C S Lewis
5. Beatrix Potter
6. Charles Dickens
7. Jane Austen
8. J R R Tolkien
9. William Shakespeare
10. A A Milne

I am familiar with six of these authors.

Published by Public Lending Right, Richard House, Sorbonne Close, Stockton-on-Tees TS17 6DA, www.plr.uk.com

Comments

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Nice to see that somebody (other than us, of course) is acknowledging Tolkien as a classic author. Just a shame that people seem to think that Dickens is more appealing. Blegh!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what "classic" means in this context. "Dead", maybe?

[tree_and_leaf]

Given that Roald Dahl is classed as such despite having only been dead five minutes, I think so, yes.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Ah, but these are library books. Therefore, they are books that people quite like enough to pick up and read once or twice, but are not so fond of that they actually want their own copy. I think this may explain the lack of Pratchett and Rowling, for example.

I used to try to borrow Pratchetts from the library because I'm not actually that huge a fan, but the new ones flew out and didn't come back for months, so I resorted to buying them instead.

Borrowing Tolkien from a library is vexed with woe, because the three books can be borrowed independently and the one you need is *never* there. The most ardent library enthusiast, having read to the end of Two Towers, will surely crack and buy ROTK rather than wait for some other dilatory person to bring the end of the damn book back.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

.. at least, such was my experience when I used to borrow LOTRs from the public library in Oxford, so we'd have more copies for Dramatic Reading purposes.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

In my early days of reading Tolkien I existed on library books of LotR, Silmarillion and UK. Some of those were school library copies, but I did also borrow from public libraries too.

[sally_maria]

Especially if the person with RotK was me, who had a one-volume edition but used to borrow the last book at least once a year so I could read the Appendices, which my copy didn't have. It would be the one book on my library ticket that didn't get returned within days so I could read something else.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

It doesn't mean it's more appealing necessarily, for example, maybe Dickens is borrowed because it's a set text for things (if, for example, I shortly go and borrow Of Mice and Men it's not because I "want" tobut because I need to), or perhaps more people buy Tolkien and borrow Dickens? Also, look at the ratios of number of publications from each author. There are many explanations. Although, maybe Dickens is just more popular among library users, nothing inherently wrong with that IMO.

Sorry, I'll stop being a stats geek for a minute now.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are very probably right. However, I would argue that Dickens is tedious and boring and not worth reading, whereas Tolkien isn't tedious or boring and is well worth reading. Just my opinion, of course. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah me to. I was just trying to find reasons to believe Dickens isn't that popular after all ;) dj