Most Popular Items of 2022

What did City of Parramatta Libraries members enjoy reading, watching & listening to in 2022? We have put together a list of City of Parramatta Libraries most-borrowed items of 2022!

Our list, includes the top five most popular titles in adult fiction, adult nonfiction, junior fiction, eBooks, eAudiobooks, and DVDs (both adult & junior titles).

Have fun exploring!

Top 5 Fiction Books

  1. Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens
  2. Exiles by Jane Harper
  3. The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
  4. It ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
  5. Better off dead by Lee Child

Top 5 Nonfiction Books

  1. Atomic habits by James Clear
  2. The subtle art of not giving a f*ck by Mark Manson
  3. The psychology of money by Morgan Housel
  4. The happiest man on earth by Eddie Jaku
  5. Becoming by Michelle Obama

Top 5 eBooks (adult)

  1. Before you knew my name by Jacqueline Bublitz
  2. The man who died twice by Richard Osman
  3. Klara and the sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  4. Still life by Sarah Winman
  5. Worth dying for by Lee Child

Top 5 eAudiobooks (adult)

  1. Atomic habits by James Clear
  2. Where the crawdads sing by Delia Owens
  3. A Promised land by Barak Obama
  4. Apples never fall by Liane Moriarty
  5. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Top 5 DVDs (adult)

  1. Game of thrones (Season 8)
  2. Star wars – The last Jedi
  3. Spider-man Homecoming
  4. Avengers Endgame
  5. Dune
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Book Review Good girl, bad girl

Good girl, bad girl by Michael Robotham

Summary

Evie Cormac is a girl without a past. Six years ago, filthy and half starved, she was discovered hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a shocking crime. She had lived for weeks in the murder house, sneaking out at night to steal food, hiding from the ‘faceless men’.  Six years later, still unidentified and given a new name, this same girl is living in a secure children’s home when she launches a court action, demanding that she be released as an adult. Forensic psychologist, Cyrus Haven is called upon to decide if Evie is ready to go free, but he discovers a girl unlike anyone he’s ever met. Damaged, destructive, and self-hating, yet possessed of a gift that makes her both fascinating and dangerous to be with—the ability to tell when someone is lying.
Meanwhile, Cyrus has another crime to investigate – the death of champion figure-skater Jodie Sheehan. The two cases are soon interwoven, drawing him into a world of secrets where nobody is telling the truth and only one person knows who’s lying.

Comments

This is now the second book we have read by this author that we have thoroughly enjoyed. The story follows forensic psychologist, Cyrus Haven, 

as he investigates the murder of a school girl figure skater, while also taking Evie Cormac into his care.  While we wanted to find out whodunit, we were equally,

if not a little more, intrigued in Cyrus and Evie’s past.  We loved the way the narrative was split between them, alllowing both side of the story to be told. 

Between the murder and murky pasts of the main characters we were turning pages, eagerly trying to find out more about Evie and how she came into Cyrus’ care. Wonderfully written. Loved all the characters and cannot wait to read the other books in this series.  Definitely recommend this one. Would make a great summer read. 

Read by Cultcha Club

Book Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Summary

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

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Book Review – Salt Creek

Salt Creek by Lucy Trealor

Summary

Salt Creek, 1855, lies at the far reaches of the remote, beautiful and inhospitable coastal region, the Coorong, in the new province of South Australia. The area, just opened to graziers willing to chance their luck, becomes home to Stanton Finch and his large family, including fifteen-year-old Hester Finch.

Once wealthy political activists, the Finch family has fallen on hard times. Cut adrift from the polite society they were raised to be part of, Hester and her siblings make connections where they can: with the few travellers that pass along the nearby stock route – among them a young artist, Charles – and the Ngarrindjeri people they have dispossessed. Over the years that pass, and Aboriginal boy, Tully, at first a friend, becomes part of the family.

Stanton’s attempts to tame the harsh landscape bring ruin to the Ngarrindjeri people’s homes and livelihoods, and unleash a chain of events that will tear the family asunder. As Hester witnesses the destruction of the Ngarrindjeri’s subtle culture and the ideals that her family once held so close, she begins to wonder what civilization is. Was it for this life and this world that she was educated?

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