2017 MOST BORROWED BOOKS

It’s always intriguing to find out what London Library members have been borrowing and the list of Most Borrowed Books for 2017 continues to shed interesting light on your reading habits.

The top 20 Non-Fiction List includes seven books written by London Library members, while four members feature in the top 20 Fiction list (remarkably one of those members is Henry James whose Portrait of a Lady, published in 1881, is the 15th most borrowed fiction book for 2017.)

As in previous years, we’ve excluded multi-volume works, collected works and journals, but here’s the Fiction and non-Fiction top 20:

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Fiction

1. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)
2. The Sellout, Paul Beatty (2015)
3. The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes (2016)
4. Anything is Possible, Elizabeth Strout (2017)
5. Days Without End, Sebastian Barry (2016)
6. The End of Eddy, Édouard Louis (2017)
7. All the Light we Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (2014)
8. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (2016)
9. Conclave, Robert Harris (2016)
10. My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout (2016)
11. The Power, Naomi Alderman (2016)
12. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, 2017
13. Mothering Sunday, Graham Swift, 2016
14. The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry, 2016
15. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James, 1881
16. Golden Hill, Francis Spufford, 2016
17. Autumn, Ali Smith, 2016
18. First Love, Gwendoline Riley, 2017
19. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi, 2016
20. Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz, 2016

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 Non-Fiction

1. Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation, James Stourton (2016)
2. Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, John Bew (2016)
3. East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Philippe Sands (2016)
4. Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Pankaj Mishra (2017)
5. The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House between the Wars, Adrian Tinniswood (2016)
6. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, Christopher de Hamel (2016)
7. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman, Minoo Dinshaw (2016)
8. The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, David Goodhart (2017)
9. The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World, Michael Lewis (2017)
10. Victorians Undone: Tales of Flesh in the Age of Decorum, Kathryn Hughes (2017)
11. A Very English Scandal, John Preston, 2016
12. Bosch and Bruegel, Joseph Leo Koerner, 2016
13. Who Lost Russia?, Peter Conradi 2017
14. The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan, 2015
15. The Marches, Rory Stewart, 2016
16. The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray, 2017
17. Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor, 2017
18. Martin Luther, Lyndal Roper, 2016
19. At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell, 2016
20. Man of Iron, Julian Glover, 2017

CELEBRATING WOMEN WRITERS

Every few weeks we display some of the books written recently by London Library members in our Mason's Yard window. This month - coinciding with the celebrations to mark International Womens' Day - we're proud to unveil a selection of recent works by female London Library members. 

Here's the list of what's on display:

Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes

Diane Atkinson

Marking the centenary of female suffrage, this definitive history charts women's fight for the vote through the lives of those who took part, in a timely celebration of an extraordinary struggle

Bloomsbury, February 2018

The White King

Leandra de Lisle

In this portrait -- informed by newly disclosed manuscripts, including letters between the king and his queen -- Leanda de Lisle uncovers a Charles I who was principled and brave, but also fatally blinkered. 

Chatto & Windus, January 2018 

The Century Girls

Tessa Dunlop

A celebration of the one-hundred years since British women got the vote, told, in their own voices, by six centenarians: Helena, Olive, Edna, Joyce, Ann and Phyllis.

Simon & Schuster, February 2018

 Jenny Lind: the Story of the Swedish Nightingale

Sarah Jenny Dunsmure

Jenny Lind was a household name in 1850, renowned not just as a singer but also for her charity and virtuous life. In this fascinating biography, Jenny Lind’s great grand-daughter uncovers an extraordinary story.

Red Door Publishing, 2015

Christmas: A Biography

Judith Flanders

Acclaimed social historian and best-selling author Judith Flanders casts a sharp and revealing eye on the myths, legends and history of the Christmas season.

Picador, October 2017

The Reading Cure

Laura Freeman

A beautiful, inspiring account of hunger and happiness, about addiction, obsession and recovery, and about the way literature and food can restore appetite and renew hope.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, February 2018

Life and work of Thomas Chippendale Junior

Judith Goodison

Chippendale senior's work has been well documented. Chippendale junior's work has never, until now, been thoroughly researched. The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale Junior repairs the omission.

Philip Wilson Publishers, 2017

Leonard Rosoman

Tanya Harrod

Drawing on the artist's substantial and fascinating archive, design historian Tanya Harrod puts into context the many strands of the work of British artist Leonard Rosoman(1913–2012).

Royal Academy of Arts, 2017

European Slver in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen

Kathryn Jones

The Royal Collection contains one of the finest ensembles of pre-twentieth-century European silver in the world. Kathryn Jones, Curator of Decorative Art at the Royal Collection Trust, catalogues more than 350 works in this volume.

Royal Collection Trust, 2017

Highland Retreats

Mary Miers

The story of how incomers adopted the North of Scotland as a recreational paradise and left an astonishing legacy of architecture and decoration inspired by the romanticized image of the Highlands.

Rizzoli International Publications, Incorporated, 2017

Robert Lowell:  Setting the River on Fire

Kay Redfield Jamison

In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of "An Unquiet Mind" brings a fresh perspective to the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell.

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017

Radical Reformers and Respectable Rebels

Jocelyn Robson

The true story of Grace Oakeshoot, an Englishwoman who faked her own death by drowning, leaving a marriage and a successful professional life in England to flee with her lover and re-invent herself in the New Zealand, in the early 1900s.

Springer, 2016

The Burning Time

Virginia Rounding

The Story of the Smithfield Martyrs and the hundreds of men and women in Tudor England who were put to the fire for their faith.

MacMillan, 2017

The Black Watch

Victoria Schofield

Following on from "The Highland Furies", in which she traced the regiment's history to 1899, Victoria Schofield tells the story of The Black Watch in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Head of Zeus, 2017

A Little History of British Gardening

Jenny Uglow

This lively 'potted' history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for decking and ornamental grasses today.

Chatto & Windus 2017

The Odyssey

Emily Wilson

Homer's epic bought to life by Emily Wilson, the first woman to bring out a translation of the work in its entirety.

WW Norton, 2017