The list of the most borrowed books of the year at the Grande Bibliothèque is a bit like a selfie: anecdotal, tightly framed and ultimately revealing little of the full extent of the landscape. And always fun. Take a look at this bookish Polaroid, where names are particularly repeated this year.
What titles did we grab in 2022 at the library on rue Berri in Montreal? From the known. The share of books by Quebec authors remains substantially the same as in the winners of the two previous years, but there is less diversity of voices, because the same names appear there – Michel Jean, JK Rowling, Asterix. This 2022 list retains a strange familiarity with that of 2021.
In novel “for adults”, Michel Jean holds the premiere with his most recent Tiohtiá : keand the third position with kukumwhich has only fallen by one step on the podium since 2021.
The anomalyby Hervé Le Tellier, also present in 2021, takes second place, and forest woman by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, the fourth. their domainby Jo Nesbø, in 5e place, completes the top of the list. In the list of the first twenty novels, eight books are signed by women and five are detective novels.
The most borrowed novels from the Grande Bibliothèque
In this ranking, Where I landby Caroline Dawson; Everything is oriby Paul Serge Forest; paper towns, by Dominique Fortier; and The enigma of room 622by Joël Dicker, who were there in 2021, persevere in the top 20. Ken Follett also remains, but with a new title this year, For nothing in the world.
Essays and comics
Do you feel like everyone you know has taken a trip to Portugal this year? In the prize list of essays and documentaries, the guide The backpacker. Portugal throne. Jung. A journey towards oneselfby Frédéric Lenoir, follows in second place. retirement at age 40. How to outsmart the system to achieve financial freedomby Jean-Sébastien Pilotte, comes next.
It is later that literary essays appear, with The habit of ruins. The coronation of oblivion and ugliness in Quebecby Marie-Hélène Voyer and Coffee with Marieby the late Serge Bouchard.
The most borrowed documentaries in 2022 at the Grande Bibliothèque
In comics, The little astronaut, by Jean-Paul Eid, was the most borrowed. Then find themselves, in disorder, the works of Riad Sattouf, Michel Rabagliati and two Asterix.
The ranking of digital books is, as always, very different from that of borrowing paper books. “Only five of the most borrowed digital books in French also appear in the lists of paper books,” notes librarian Véronique Parenteau. They are those of Michel Jean, Alain Farah, Serge Bouchard, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny, and that of Pierre-Yves McSween and Paul-Antoine Jetté.
The vast documentary collection of the Grande Bibliothèque allows older titles to live for a long time. The novelties do not erase them. The parent who has been marked by a title makes his child discover it.
“On the other hand, authors like Lisa Jewell and Camilla Läckberg – present here respectively on three and two occasions – or even Julia Quinn and Louise Tremblay-D’Essiambre are absent from the paper charts”, notes Ms.me Parenteau. Detective and suspense novels win 11 titles out of 20 on this digital chart.
Youth side
In children’s books, Quebec cartoonists do not reach the top of the charts. Asterix wins all of the first five places. Jane, the fox & meby Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt, manages to slip in, but only at the 11e position.
In the youth novels, it’s a bit the same portrait: Harry Potter’s mother, JK Rowling, occupies the top 3 as well as the fifth place. The little Princeby Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, breaks this monopoly by seizing the 4e square.
You have to wait for the 9e place to see a Quebec author in this list for young readers, and with a surprise: Bryan Perro, with volume 1 of his Amos Daragon series, released in… 2003. Why? Claire-Hélène Lengellé, from the communications department of the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec, puts forward a hypothesis: “Probably for the same reasons that Tintin, Asterix or JK Rowling remain popular and last over time: the vast documentary collection of the Grande Bibliothèque allows older titles to live for a long time. The novelties do not erase them. The parent who has been marked by a title makes his child discover it. »
The most borrowed children’s novels from the Grande Bibliothèque
Élise Gravel is in this ranking in 13e position (Olga and the thing that stinks) and Catherine Girard-Audet, in 16e. The Grande Bibliothèque announced on Monday that children’s books would be added to the list later, and that Quebec books were well represented there.
In children’s documentaries, the video game kidnaps the attention. The guidebooks of Minecraft and of Pokemon are scattered all over the charts. My first cookbook, by Ricardo, is in second place. The biography Jean-Michel Basquiatby Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, in third place, and Our heroinesby Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, in fifth place.