THE BOOKS THAT WE BORROW SAY more about our literary tastes than the books that we own. If your bookshelves are anything like mine, they contain several hundred acres of the printed word that will never be read, at least not by me.
There are Christmas gifts that we never wanted but cannot throw away, books we feel that we ought to read but cannot face and the obligatory copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, that will never be opened because life is several aeons too short.
But library books are different. People borrow the library books that they actually want, and then actually read them. Unlike the best-seller lists, they are not an index of fashion, of reviews and book clubs, or of the effects of marketing and advertising. Library books are the works of literature that we want to read but not necessarily to own and keep.
The Public Lending Rights figures for the most-borrowed books, published this week, offer a strange and revealing snapshot of modern Britain. To judge from the statistics, our love affair with romantic fiction has ended; instead, we have taken up with television chefs, crochet-hooks, French people and cricketers.
For 17 years Dame Catherine Cookson, queen of the pot-boiler romance, has reigned supreme in Britain’s public libraries. In 1994, she occupied numbers one to nine in the top ten most borrowed books list, with Barbara Taylor Bradford sneaking into the No 10 spot. Today, Dame Catherine does not figure in the top ten. For the third year running, the most borrowed writer in Britain is the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson. J. K. Rowling, by comparison, limps in at No 74. Of the 20 most-borrowed children’s titles, 16 are by the staggeringly prolific Ms Wilson.
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Casting an eye down the most-borrowed titles list, it becomes clear that there is a special category of book that people like to borrow in huge numbers, but do not wish to possess, just in case the neighbours come round. Trinny and Susannah, Kim and Aggie, Paul McKenna and Gillian McKeith all do well in this category. To borrow and read these books is one thing, but to have them in your bookshelves practically screams: I am a badly-dressed, unhygienic, slightly bonkers person worried about my bodily functions.
The evergreen Official Theory Test for Car Drivers by the Driving Standards Agency comes in at No 19, one below Dave Pelzer’s The Lost Boy. This seems only right, since both are written in the same style: repetitive, glutinous and heart-wrenchingly sad.
Cookery provides another window of revelation. In the country as a whole, we prefer Jamie Oliver’s recipes, but this disguises wide regional culinary-literary variations. Londoners are gorging on Nigella Lawson, but the Welsh prefer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Welsh library habits deserve a study of their own. In dogs, for example, the Welsh look far afield, displaying a particular preference for Yorkshire terriers, despite the national affinity for labradors. Welsh travel reading, however, seems less adventurous. While other parts of the country read about France and Spain, and Londoners dream of Scotland, the favourite Welsh travel book is The Rough Guide to Wales.
Books about moving abroad are being borrowed in record numbers, but luckily we don’t all want to go to the same place. The occupants of the Orkney Islands read about moving to Tuscany; in Devon they imagine buying somewhere in France; in Northumberland they think about heading for the Australian Outback. Most library users imagine moving to somewhere warmer, drier and more interesting, but not in Fife, where they still dream of relocating to Canada.
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Mind you, each region has foibles. By far the most popular pet books nationwide are about tortoises; except in Scotland where, apparently, people much prefer to read about snakes. As for hobbies, while Londoners love to crochet, in the North of England borrowers can’t get enough of “Tea Bag Folded Greetings Cards”, a pastime I have never even heard of before.
The library lists also offer a rough guide to national hypochondria. Overall, the most-borrowed health book is Defying Age: How to Think, Act and Stay Young. It may come as no surprise to discover that the most popular medical book in the libraries of Northern Ireland is Stress and Nervous Disorders; in Wales readers mug up on The Vitamins and Minerals Handbook, while Scottish readers like to relax with a well-thumbed library copy of How to Lower High Blood Pressure, preferably while smoking a fag and eating a deep-fried Mars bar.
The top film, television and music biography last year was Being Jordan by Katie Price, whereas the top historical biography was Claire Tomalin’s superb Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self. This may be a profoundly depressing statement about the contrast between great lives of the past and great lives of the present; on the other hand, I have a suspicion that Pepys and Jordan would have got on rather well.
What we read also reflects what, and how, we like to kill. Our own Jane Shilling’s The Fox in the Cupboard is the most popular British book in the hunting, shooting and fishing category, but in Scotland they prefer The Pigeon Shooter by John Batley, and in Wales David Brian Plummer’s Ferrets.
When the aliens finally land in Britain, they will no doubt head to the local library to mug up on exactly what sort of planet they have come to. There the real Britain will be revealed: a nation of age-defying, fox-hunting, tea-bag card-making, food-loving crochet fanatics most of whom, frankly, would rather be in Tuscany; or, if Welsh, in Wales.
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