Since November, D.C. Public Library has kept literary discussions alive with a simple hashtag: #BrownBagDC, asking locals what they’re currently reading, regardless of whether they love it or hate it.
And, on Thursday, DCPL released its list of the top books of 2019, based on which titles were borrowed the most. Of the nearly five million titles reserved this year, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere takes the top spot for fiction, while Educated by Tara Westover was the most popular nonfiction book. And, of course, Michelle Obama made the list with Becoming, a memoir that took the former First Lady to a sold out Capital One Arena and Politics & Prose.
Are there any books you wish made the list? How many of these books did you read this year? Here’s the list of chart-topping fiction and nonfiction books:
Top 10 Fiction Books
- “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
- “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens
- “An American Marriage: A Novel” by Tayari Jones
- “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
- “There There” by Tommy Orange
- “Circe” by Madeline Miller
- “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee
- “Normal People” by Salley Rooney
- “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman
- “The Underground Railroad: A Novel” by Colson Whitehead
Top 10 Nonfiction Books
- “Educated: A Memoir” by Tara Westover
- “Becoming” by Michelle Obama
- “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyrou
- “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean
- “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” by Trevor Noah
- “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe
- “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis
- “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann
- “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
The full list, which includes audiobooks, ebooks, and magazine downloads can be found in this press release.
Elliot C. Williams