ATHABASCA – Athabascans spent more time reading in 2024 than they did in 2023, according to year-end stats from the Alice B. Donahue Library and Archives and the Northern Lights Library System (NLLS).
In total, 14,103 visits were made to the Athabasca library; 33,109 pieces of media were circulated amongst the 1,178 registered patrons (an average of 28 items per person), and the library’s collection grew to 21,388 items.
The most popular book of the year was Sandra SG Wong’s In The Dark We Forget, this year’s One Book, One Community (OBOC) title. It was a massive outlier, thanks to the library’s extra copies and community drive, circulating 98 times across the region; due to the library’s three-week rental period, 18 circulations is normally the largest they see.
The most popular book outside of OBOC was Chris Bowman’s book, White-tailed Deer, a junior non-fiction book featuring full-page photos and an introduction to one of Alberta’s most common fauna that circulated 17 times over the year.
Second up was a graphic novel, Spider-Man: Animals Assemble, written and illustrated by Mike Maihack. 16 different superhero fans in Athabasca flipped through the novel’s pages, which feature Spider-man’s heroic efforts to rescue the rest of the Avenger’s pets during yet another Marvel crisis.
Fiction remained the most popular genre overall in the library’s stacks, thanks to an apparent love of romance novels and thrillers
Kristin Hannah’s The Women, a historical fiction about a Vietnam War-era nurse and her deployment and reintegration into society, was the most popular fiction of the year. After blowing up on Tik-Tok, the novel debuted in the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, and was one of the most borrowed books across North American libraries.
Despite its popularity on social media, critics panned the novel for its use of cliché and at times heavy-handed political messaging but Hannah presumably didn’t mind; the novel’s movie rights were purchased by Warner Brothers before it was ever published.
There was a five-way tie for the second most popular fiction of the year, split between: Bride, by Ali Hazelwood, The Edge, by David Baldacci, None of This is True, by Lisa Jewell, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, by Hwan Bo-Reum, and Yours Truly, by Abby Jimenez.
Bo-Reum’s book is perhaps the most unique of Athabasca’s top reads. The slice-of-life novel follows a burnt out Korean business woman as she quits her career, divorces her husband, and opens a bookstore in a quiet neighborhood outside the city —the dream of millennials everywhere.
While all of the fiction novels had been written in the last two years, older classics were still finding new readers; Calvin and Hobbes – Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, one of Bill Watterson’s beloved comics, was published in 1994 and still drew in 12 families in 2024. Watterson’s work was tied with Kwame Alexander’s This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets for the most popular non-fiction book, showcasing the range of taste in the library's patrons.
Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, first published in 1954, was one of the library's two most popular large print novels — David Baldacci appeared again in this category with his 2024 work A Calamity of Souls, drawing in 16 readers.
Lastly, a pair of mid-1980’s pieces drew in readers in some of Athabasca’s less popular genres, despite their age.
Contact, a 1985 book from Carl Sagan — the renowned astrophysicist and science educator — was checked out six separate times, and Last of the Breed, a 1986 western novel about a Native American United States Air Force Pilot who’s captured by the Soviets during the Cold War, was signed out five times.
What’s ahead?
If you found yourself making the ubiquitous New Years Resolution to, “read more,” the Alice B. Donahue Library has the program for you! The Winter Reading Program has started, and reading logs are available at the library. Between Jan. 2 and Feb. 28, track your time spent reading — anything counts, from novels to comics, and presumably, even your local newspaper — and submit the reading log here to be entered into a NLLS-wide draw for a prize. There’s also an intra-library competition going on between NLLS to see which communities read the most, with the winners getting bragging rights.
The library’s annual survey is also ongoing — book aficionados, movie-lovers, and board-game enjoyers can have a say in what items the library picks up in 2025, and also weigh in on how well-served they feel by the local librarians.
