It would be stretching a point to suggest Kristin Hannah was wearing her heart on her sleeve when writing her bestselling novel, “The Women.”
Truth be told, it was on her wrist.
As a 10-year-old girl living in Garden Grove, California, Hannah began wearing a bracelet bearing the name of a good friend’s father, then missing in Vietnam.
“The idea was you wore the bracelet until he came home,” she would say later. “I wore that thing for years … but he never did.”
Those memories lingered a long time, five decades to be exact, but they became the seeds for a remarkable book about the Vietnam War.
Library cardholders checked out “The Women” a total of 6,624 times in 2024.
Released in February of last year, “The Women” has been on The New York Times bestseller list ever since, and the Pima County Public Library confirmed last week that it also won the library’s unofficial “readers’ choice award” as the book most often requested in 2024.
People are also reading…
Library cardholders borrowed print, e-book and audiobook versions of “The Women” a total of 6,624 times, a number that easily outdistanced “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros and “The Edge” by David Baldacci.
Fourth was “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese, while Freida McFadden’s “The Teacher” ranked fifth.
The No. 1 book among nonfiction titles was “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy.
The most popular children’s book was “Cat Kid Comic Club: Influencers” by Dav Pilkey.
All in all, checkouts across all formats totaled 4.5 million books … an average of more than 10 for every library cardholder.
The annual checkout list is compiled each January by its Collection Development team, which is managed by Victoria Salajko and staffed by selectors Jessica Pryde, Elizabeth Taylor, Michelle Creston and Sara Vega.
It is their job to identify tomorrow’s hits today, ordering books 4-6 months before their scheduled release dates. Later, they monitor checkout and hold lists to right-size the collection, depending on public demand.
In a sense, the annual summary of checkouts is a report card on how well they have done, and by all accounts, they again passed with flying colors.
Pryde, who reviews upcoming titles in adult fiction, said the process is equal parts science, art and intuition.
“We usually start seeing lists from our vendors about six months before release dates,” she said. “There is definitely some guesswork involved, but we can see how many copies the publisher will print. We know how many are being ordered by other libraries. We also know the authors and how well they’ve done in Tucson before.”
Jessica Pryde reviews upcoming titles in adult fiction for the Pima County Public Library.
At the same time, selectors are reviewing suggestions from library cardholders, who are invited to submit requests in person or from their library accounts online.
The trick isn’t knowing which books to buy, Pryde said. It’s knowing how many — and how to mix the purchase of printed books, E-books and audiobooks, numbers that are restrained both by budget and shelf space.
“Normally, because we’re trying to spread our budget as far as we can, we’ll start low. Then we’ll watch the hold numbers after a book goes into our catalog. If the number starts to rise beyond 10 per item, we’ll start ordering more.”
By way of illustration, “The Women” first appeared on a library look list in August of 2023, six months before its scheduled release date of Feb. 6, 2024.
The initial order of 90 print books was placed on Aug. 14. Forty-five e-books were ordered on Dec. 4, followed shortly by a back-order of audiobooks.
“Kristin Hannah has an incredibly large readership here,” Pryde said. “We have a lot of her books, and lots of copies of each. When we first heard about this one, we knew it would be popular, but I’m not sure anyone was ready for this.”
“This” has been a steady demand since the book was released last February. At one point, the library had as many as 140 books in circulation. Even now it has 87, with 236 people waiting to get one. There are 80 audiobooks, and a wait list of 508.
“It’s been big,” Pryde said. “We keep getting more and more copies, and they keep finding more and more readers.”
The library’s 2024 best-loaner list confirmed several trends that have emerged over the last five years. Most obvious is the continued growth of digital and audio reading, particularly audiobooks.
E-books and audiobooks now account for about half of all checkouts, and they were key to Hannah’s No. 1 standing.
“We actually had more e-book and audiobook requests for ‘The Women’ than print book requests,” Pryde noted. “It did well across all the formats we have.”
The growing number of digital and audio readers is also fueling the rising popularity of fantasy and romantasy books, the standard-bearer now being Rebecca Yarros.
And while true that digital and audiobooks are bringing a younger audience to the library, the youngest audience remains unconvinced. Print books continued to dominate the checkout list for children.
The biggest thing to be taken from this year’s library Top 10s?
“Tucson is such a diverse place. Our cardholders are interested in just about everything,” Pryde said. “Our job is to make sure they can find it at the library.”
Benjamin Reynoso shelves books at the W. Anne Gibson-Esmond Station branch of the Pima County Public Library in Vail on June 17, 2022.
Pima County Public Library's top 10 checkout lists in 2024
All Books
- “The Women” by Kristin Hannah (6,624)
- “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros (5,410)
- “The Edge” by David Baldacci (4,785)
- “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese (4,428)
- “The Teacher” by Freida McFadden (4,317)
- “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett (4,175)
- “Resurrection Walk” by Michael Connelly (4,149)
- “The Exchange” by John Grisham (4,118)
- “Three-Inch Teeth” by C.J. Box (4,114)
- “Iron Flame” by Rebecca Yarros (3,979)
Children’s Books
- “Cat Kid Comic Club: Influencers” by Dav Pilkey (1,726)
- “Dog Man: 20,000 Fleas Under the Sea” by Dav Pilkey (1,115)
- “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down” by Jeff Kinney (952)
- “The Pigeon Will Ride the Roller Coaster” by Mo Willems (934)
- “Cat Kid Comic Club: Collaborations” by Dav Pilkey (931)
- “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck” by Jeff Kinney (814)
- “The Chalice of the Gods” by Rick Riordan (795)
- “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown” by Jeff Kinney (765)
- “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel” by Jeff Kinney (758)
- “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw” by Jeff Kinney (728)
Print Books
- “Resurrection Walk” by Michael Connelly (2,396)
- “The Edge” by David Baldacci (2,249)
- “The Secret” by David Baldacci (2,146)
- “Three-Inch Teeth” by C.J. Box (2,108)
- “A Calamity of Souls” by David Baldacci (1,954)
- “Cat Kid Comic Club: Influencers” by Dav Pilkey (1,726)
- “Think Twice” by Harlan Coben (1,656)
- “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese (1,628)
- “The Women” by Kristin Hannah (1,588)
- “Blessings of the Lost Girls” by J.A. Jance (1,506)
E-Books
- “The Women” by Kristin Hannah (3,275)
- “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese (2,209)
- “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros (2,163)
- “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt (1,962)
- “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver (1,952)
- “The Exchange” by John Grisham (1,899)
- “The Edge” by David Baldacci (1,820)
- “Resurrection Walk” by Michael Connelly (1,753)
- “None of This is True” by Lisa Jewell (1,741)
- “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus (1,740)
Audiobooks
- “The Teacher” by Frieda McFadden (4,141)
- “Iron Flame” by Rebecca Yarros (2,948)
- “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas (2,121)
- “Never Lie” by Frieda McFadden (1,10)
- “Happy Place” by Emily Henry (1,825)
- “The Women” by Kristin Hannah (1,761)
- “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy (1,749)
- “The Coworker” by Freida McFadden (1,641)
- “The Berry Pickers” by Amanda Peters (1,611)
- “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett (1,484)
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