
Most frequently checked-out books in the history of the New York Public Library - bookofjoe
https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-are-the-most-frequently-checked-out-books-in-the-history-of-the-new-york-public-library-11578891661
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MBCook
1\. The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats)

2\. The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss)

3\. 1984 (George Orwell)

4\. Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak)

5\. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

6\. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

7\. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

8\. How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)

9\. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)

10\. The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle)

~~~
Thorrez
Weird that I've heard of all of them except #1. In fact I've read 8 of them.

~~~
lacker
FWIW The Snowy Day at #1 is a kids’ book where the protagonist is a positively
portrayed black child, which was quite unique and controversial when it was
written in 1962. If you grew up long after that era it makes more sense to
never have heard of it.

~~~
aaronharnly
It became my 2-year-old’s favorite book for about a month — he asks to read it
again and again and again... It definitely has something wonderful in its
voice and pacing, the social history aside.

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fyp
My theory is that we're just looking at the list of books most frequently
assigned by english teachers. Excluding children books, most of these can be
found in the new york state education department's literature suggestions:
[http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf](http://www.p12.nysed.gov/guides/ela/part1b.pdf).

The exceptions were "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (rank 8) and
"Harry Potter" (rank 9).

I am actually pretty shocked by this. I didn't expect a self-help book (15
million copies sold) to beat harry potter (120 million copies sold, 500
million if you include the entire series, making it the best-selling series in
history). I guess people who love the franchise would rather own the book?

~~~
kick
One was first published before World War II, the other was first published in
the 1990s.

~~~
fyp
Ah I didn't realize they were talking about over the history of the library.
That makes much more sense.

~~~
CrazyStat
Harry Potter checkouts may also have been heavily bottlenecked by the number
of available copies.

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joecool1029
Periodic protip reminder every time the NYPL comes up on HN:

You can get a library card for free as a visitor to the city by walking into
any branch. It's valid for 90 days, but can be renewed anytime you come back
again. This provides full access to normal book borrowing as well as access to
Libby/Overdrive ebook loans (which you don't have to be in the city to use!).

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yagibear
ranked by check outs p.a.:

rank, title, total check outs, date of publication, check outs p.a.

1 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 231,022 1998 10501

2 The Snowy Day 485,583 1962 8372

3 Where the Wild Things Are 436,016 1963 7649

4 The Cat in the Hat 469,650 1957 7455

5 To Kill a Mockingbird 422,912 1962 7292

6 1984 441,770 1949 6222

7 Charlotte's Web 337,948 1952 4970

8 Fahrenheit 451 316,404 1953 4722

9 The Very Hungry Caterpillar 189,550 1969 3717

10 How to Win Friends and Influence People 284,524 1936 3387

Data from
[https://125.nypl.org/125/topcheckouts](https://125.nypl.org/125/topcheckouts)
which mentions other factors, such as shorter books having higher turnover.

~~~
yesenadam
How is 10,000 checkouts a year possible? Do they have 50 copies or something?

~~~
symplee
Exactly. Remember the days of Blockbuster, they'd have an entire shelf
dedicated to 50 copies of a single movie.

Partly to handle actual demand, but, perhaps unlike the library, I imagine it
was also partly to generate _artificial_ demand by signaling: "Hey, you,
undecided wanderer, look here, this is an important movie that everyone else
is renting, you should too."

~~~
topkai22
I remember reading/hearing that blockbuster did that as their competitive
advantage over other video stores- they’d build customer loyalty by definitely
having the latest thing in stock, even if it was a loss leader.

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bookofjoe
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-
york-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/new-york-public-
librarys-most-checked-out-books-say-a-lot-about-what-we-read-and-
why/2020/01/11/c8578174-33d9-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html)

~~~
huhtenberg
Doesn't work, fully paywalled.

~~~
bookofjoe
Better late than never: [http://archive.is/NAhmY](http://archive.is/NAhmY)

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bookofjoe
[http://archive.md/Iu1lO](http://archive.md/Iu1lO)

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mmanfrin
Interesting that Keats is at the top. I'm currently reading (and almost at the
end of) Hyperion, and Keats plays a significant part of the story. One
character proclaims Keats to be the _purest_ poet to have lived.

~~~
screature2
I really enjoyed Hyperion! I think it's referring to John Keats though. Also:
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44473/hyperion)

~~~
mmanfrin
Oop, you are absolutely correct. I assumed they were the same person.
Interesting that there are two prolific poets named Keats.

~~~
soperj
Ezra Jack Keats isn't a poet, he wrote children's books.

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derefr
I would love to see what the top ten would be if you filtered out children's
books and YA fiction. Or, even better, if they made a separate top-ten list
for each demographic.

~~~
elfexec
Or why not release the data so that we can run queries on it ourselves? I
doubt the entire dataset would be larger than a gig. Then we can run queries
on top 10 by genres, by authors, by decades, by age group, gender, etc.
Whatever we want.

~~~
derefr
Librarians are almost-universally hardline privacy advocates. They would be
very unlikely to release a dataset that could be deanonymized.

~~~
sand500
I wonder if they computerized check out history from pre-computer era. i.e.
using paper cards for check outs

~~~
TuringNYC
Im not certain, but I vaguely remember a punch-card type checkout in the
Brooklyn Public Library when I was a child in the 80s. That would suggest the
data is hopefully around and ingestable into a modern system (prob already
done)

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quaquaqua1
1984 in top 3 yet our world is spiraling deeper and deeper into it

~~~
kortilla
The only reason people like to claim we are spiraling into 1984 is _because_
of its popularity. When it comes down to it the resemblance to today is
superficial at best.

~~~
quaquaqua1
We live in a world where Julian Assange is put in prison and tortured for
refusing to confess to his thoughtcrimes and for revealing the thoughts of
others to the public, much to the dismay of the Party, which is all seeing and
all knowing.

For those of us who have read 1984, it will sound more than superficial.

~~~
trianglem
Julian Assange he is the example you choose to bring up in this double speak
world

~~~
quaquaqua1
If you aren't careful, the next example will someday be yourself!

Abstract it if you don't like Assange: anyone who is in prison for telling the
truth... it's not a good thing... history is full of thousands if not millions
who have died for such crimes, some high profile and some unknown

