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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last 15 minutes or so today, we'll do an interview segment about books in two ways. One will hear about the most checked-out books of the year from New York City libraries, and we're inviting you now to call in and say, what's the best book you read in 2022? Simple question and it doesn't have to be a book that was published in 2022, you just have to have read it this year.

Listeners, what's the best book you read in 2022? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet the title and author @BrianLehrer. Maybe it'll even help out some other listeners looking for last-minute holiday gifts. What's the best book you read in 2022? Again, it doesn't have to be a book that was published in 2022, you just have to have read it this year. What's the best book you read this year, folks? Shout it out, 212-433-WNYC, help give others a good read, or possibly a holiday gift idea. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer, and as your calls and tweets come in.

Here to dive into the New York Public Library list of the most checked-out books of the year is Emily Pullen, Reader Services Coordinator for the New York Public Library. Hi, Emily, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Emily Pullen: Thanks so much, Brian. I'm so happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Drum roll. Was there a number one book checked out city-wide in New York?

Emily Pullen: There was a number one book, it is The Midnight Library by Matthew or Matt, it's Matt Haig.

Brian Lehrer: Matt Haig, yes. Oh, that's a ringer. Come on, you got a book about a library to be the number one book checked out from the library.

Emily Pullen: Well, and number two is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. We've also got lessons involved there, so I suppose neither of those should be a huge surprise.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. Let's see, what's chemistry and the Dewey Decimal System, well, never mind.

Emily Pullen: [laughs] I think we're getting a little in the weeds there.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get going. Number three.

Emily Pullen: Number three, The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, who certainly has been on our top checkouts list before with some of his earlier books.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us about these three, we'll see how much time we have for others, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, for people who don't know it, what is that?

Emily Pullen: Well, firstly, I want to jump in and just say that if you, listeners, are anything like me, you absolutely are fascinated to see what books people have with them on the subway. I feel like looking at these lists is a city-wide snapshot of what New Yorkers are reading. That's why I always am excited to see it come out every year.

The Midnight Library is one of these books that has this really fascinating concept of time. It is a woman who and there's this elements of magical realism in it, a woman who essentially discovers this magical library, and each of the books in it essentially is a reworked version of her life. There's a couple of titles in the top 10 for the New York Public Library that has this interesting concept of time, either jumping back and forth or a chance to redo or revisit decisions you've made early in your life.

We've got This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, which was also part of the WNYC Get Lit Series that's also got a time element. I was thinking about it, and thinking that-- I think part of the reason that readers are drawn to this kind of book is because of the era that we're living through. For me, the last three or four years time has just felt weird. It doesn't feel like it's unfolding at a normal pace, it either feels really fast or really slow. I suspect that it might be comforting to immerse oneself in a world where time doesn't quite work the way that you'd expect it to.

Brian Lehrer: One of my producers was looking at the list of most checked out, and so The Midnight Library and The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, and The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley all high on the list, and concluded that in 2022 New Yorkers seem drawn to complex characters and vivid descriptions. Would you put it that way?

Emily Pullen: Oh, absolutely. I think all of the titles that are in these lists have complex characters for sure, very much character driven. I think that also, New Yorkers are very much proud of their individuality. It shouldn't be a surprise that strong characters are a prominent feature in these, both for the New York Public Library and also for Brooklyn and Queens libraries, who also shared their top checkups.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's see what some of our listeners name as their best book of the year, their favorite read of the year, Sue, in Long Hill Township in New Jersey, we're going to try to go real fast through some of these, so Sue, title, author, 15-second blurb.

Sue: The book is Between the Mountain and the Sky by Maggie Doyne. It's about a young woman who does a gap year and then goes to Nepal, and then everything that happens after that, it's just an amazing, incredible story, and very uplifting and just highly, highly recommended

Brian Lehrer: Fiction or non-fiction?

Sue: Non-fiction.

Brian Lehrer: Sue, thank you very much. Mike in Larchmont, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mike. Title, author, 15-second blurb.

Mike: Okay, the author is Dan Brown, it's called The Boys in the Boat. I'm not much of a reader, but this was just an amazing book about the rowers in the 1936 Olympics, the rowers from the United States, just beautifully written, very exciting, and got to it after the first 10 pages.

Brian Lehrer: Mike, thank you very much, more non-fiction. Bennett in Philadelphia WNYC. Hi, Bennett. Title, author, 15-second blurb.

Bennett: Hey, Brian. The author is Richard Kreitner, and his book is Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union, rather than a manual on how to secede, which is in my head all the time. It's more of a history of the imperfect union and the division from the very start of this country, and I actually took comfort in that knowing that it was ever the--

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: A very current topic. How old is the book?

Bennett: Oh, it's only about two years old.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, two years old, all right.

Bennett: It's really well researched, documented, I had to underline a lot, so it took a long time to read. Though my wife is crazy if I'm scratching line after line, but fascinating, and really--

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Susan in Morristown, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan. Title, author, 15-second blurb.

Susan: Good morning. Yes, Horse, Geraldine Brooks, the story of a horse back in the Civil War and following the grooming by a groomer and she had has deals with race, et cetera. Very, very good. Of course, Geraldine Brooks is the best.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, thank you very much. Well, Emily from the New York Public Library, I think one thing we learned from that rental snapshot of that first set of callers, is our listeners read a lot of nonfiction.

Emily Pullen: It's true. I was curious to see it last year for our top checkouts, we had a few nonfiction titles, but this year, amazingly, there are non. I was trying to think about why that might be. I know that within our system, non-fiction, typically, has lower circulation numbers, but that's probably because it's spread out amongst so many different topics, and in order to show up on these lists, they definitely need to have a critical mass. I will mention Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, I believe this is her name.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's a memoir, right?

Emily Pullen: Yes, and that's a memoir. That showed up on some of the borough-level lists within ours, and it's just not the full system. That one is a memoir that is about a woman who has a music career, is pretty well known for that. She is writing more specifically about her relationship with her mother, growing up as a child of immigrant parents, feeling certainly some distance there. Then when she's in her mid-20s, her mother's diagnosed with cancer, so it ends up being one of my favorite genres of non-fiction, which is the grief memoir. That one is the one that broke into our lists this year, last year we had Barack Obama's book. We had Isabel Wilkerson but this year it's mostly fiction.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me more about borough differences. That's intriguing. I see, for example, Colleen Hoover in the Bronx and Queens with romance novelist Emily Henry and Danielle Steele on Staten Island. Was there a particularly strong appetite for romance novelists this year and what else would you say top of list differences between any boroughs?

Emily Pullen: Sure. I think there absolutely is an appetite for romance and in a couple of different ways, I would say more relationships. We've got both ends of the spectrum for relationships. We've got romantic comedies. That's really what Emily Henry's books are even lessons in chemistry number two. Even though it's not technically a romance, it definitely has a similar tone to a romantic comedy. I think that part of the formula for a romance novel is that you're guaranteed a happy ending or at least a happy for now ending. I think that's certainly something that people are craving. I think readers enjoy twists but with a romance novel, you know it's going to end on an upswing and I think people are certainly craving that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's do one more listener set before we run out of time. Greg in Stanford, title author 15-second blurb.

Greg: Anthony de Mello, Awareness. Speaking of getting out of your head and finding some happiness, he's a wonderful guide into living in the moment instead of--

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Gardner in Morristown, you're on WNYC. Title, author, 15-second blurb.

Gardner: Is that me, Gardner?

Brian Lehrer: You, yes.

Gardner: Hey. Sorry. I'm big fan of fiction but this is a non-fiction, The Meat Eater by Steven Rinella. He's a hero of mine. Conservationist with a gun is what he calls himself. He's a hunter. I am actually enroot to one of my trees in New Jersey. I am not a conservationist with a gun but I am a conservationist as an animal lover with a bow.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. There you go. I'm going to leave it at the one book, Donna in Hicksville is going to get the last one. Hi, Donna, you're on WNYC. Title, author, 15-second blurb.

Donna: Hi. Author is Kazuo Ishiguro and the book is Klara and the Sun, a lovely piece of fiction about an artificial friend, [unintelligible 00:12:42]. It's a dystopian novel and it's a wonderful skew on looking at human life at.

Brian Lehrer: I have to leave it there, Donna, because we're out of time but we've got happy endings, we've got dystopian novels. Emily Pullen, reader services coordinator for the New York Public Library with their most checked out books of the year list just out today. Emily, how can people see it?

Emily Pullen: Well, the best way to find it is on nypl.org/topcheckouts2022. You'll also see it if you just come to our homepage.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for coming on. Happy reading.

Emily Pullen: Thank you so much for having me. Take care.

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