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
- Japanese for busy people I : Kana version / Association for Japanese-Language Teaching. - Tokyo
- Minna no Nihongo . Elementary : translations & grammatical notes in English. - Tokyo
- A woman’s guide to business and social success / by Ruth Tolman
- Li Guang Yao Zhuan Ji = The biography of Lee Kuan Yew / Zhou Guo Can, editor.
- Bangkok. - [Hong Kong] : APA Publications (HK) Ltd.
Fiction
- Harry Potter and half-blood prince / J.K. Rowling. - London : Bloomsbury Pub., 2005.
- Angels and demons / Dan Brown. - London : Corgi Books, 2001.
- Kiss me once, kiss me twice / Kimberly Raye. - New York : Warner Books, c2004.
- A bend in the road / Nicholas Sparks. - London : Bantam Books, 2002.
- Digital fortress / Dan Brown. - New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
Media
- Cosmos [videorecording] : a personal voyage / written by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan & Steven Soter.
- 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.
- Finding the love of your life [sound recording] / Neil Clark Warren.
- Looney tunes golden collection. Volume 2 [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. present a Warner Bros. Cartoon.
- The power of ambition [sound recording] : unleashing the conquering drive within you! / Jim Rohn ; producer, Karen Stelmach.
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Coleman Yee said,
March 9, 2006 at 10:33 am
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.
zac said,
March 10, 2006 at 10:06 am
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.