What are Singaporeans reading?

Actually, this list is not a Singapore-wide list. It is drawn from the “Top 20 Hot List” in my institution’s library. So the readership is basically 17 to 20 year-olds and then 35 to 60 year-olds.

The list is

based on the highest number of loans transacted for lifestyle lending, lifestyle fiction & lifestyle AV for books, fiction & media respectively for each month.

An interesting insight into what the interests are, especially Japanese, and Cosmos…

Books

  1. Japanese for busy people I : Kana version / Association for Japanese-Language Teaching. – Tokyo
  2. Minna no Nihongo . Elementary : translations & grammatical notes in English. – Tokyo
  3. A woman’s guide to business and social success / by Ruth Tolman
  4. Li Guang Yao Zhuan Ji = The biography of Lee Kuan Yew / Zhou Guo Can, editor.
  5. Bangkok. – [Hong Kong] : APA Publications (HK) Ltd.

Fiction

  1. Harry Potter and half-blood prince / J.K. Rowling. – London : Bloomsbury Pub., 2005.
  2. Angels and demons / Dan Brown. – London : Corgi Books, 2001.
  3. Kiss me once, kiss me twice / Kimberly Raye. – New York : Warner Books, c2004.
  4. A bend in the road / Nicholas Sparks. – London : Bantam Books, 2002.
  5. Digital fortress / Dan Brown. – New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Media

  1. Cosmos [videorecording] : a personal voyage / written by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan & Steven Soter.
  2. Rowan Atkinson is Mr. Bean [videorecording] : the whole Bean / producer, Sue Vertue ; directed by John Birkin and Paul Weiland ; written by Richard Curtis, Robin Driscoll, Rowan Atkinson.
  3. Finding the love of your life [sound recording] / Neil Clark Warren.
  4. Looney tunes golden collection. Volume 2 [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. present a Warner Bros. Cartoon.
  5. The power of ambition [sound recording] : unleashing the conquering drive within you! / Jim Rohn ; producer, Karen Stelmach.

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Posted in Learning, Travel & Culture - March 9th, 2006.

2 Comments on “What are Singaporeans reading?”

  1. Coleman Yee Says:
    9 Mar 2006 at 10:33 am Link to this comment

    The book only needs to be borrowed more than once in that month to make it onto the list, so I don’t usually take the list too seriously.

  2. zac Says:
    10 Mar 2006 at 10:06 am Link to this comment

    If you think about it, most people would keep books for the allowed one month, and many would extend.

    The list should be a “moving total” – something like the most borrowed in the previous 6 months – to have some sort of meaning. And even then, people borrow books, get busy and don’t read them.

    So as usual, statistics are a lie, exceot that Dan Brown and Japanese langauge books have been regular on these lists.

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