It's always interesting to learn what books in our subjects have the greatest current appeal to our readers. The most striking thing about this list of most borrowed books is the high percentage are the high number of memoirs by women - 12 out of 20 titles.
The Boys in the Boat isn't a surprising title for the list -- it is presently ranked at number 2 on the San Francisco Chronicle's best-selling nonfiction titles. Patti Smith's books, Just Kids and M Train, remain popular. Interest in Tina Fey's Bossypants has never died down and her friend Amy Poehler's Yes Please tops the list. Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, now in its 6th edition, and H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, reissued in a 25th anniversary edition, are a perennial favorites.
Perhaps the most unexpected title here is The Art of The Con, which brings the true crime genre to the fine art marketplace. Bohemian Modern is new book on interior design, a genre that always circulates well. The list is rounded out with Barbarian Days, a surfing memoir partially set in San Francisco.
1. Yes Please by Amy Poehler (Dey St., 2014).
2. Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann (Little, Brown and Company, 2015).
3. M Train by Patti Smith (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).
4. Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling (Crown Archetype, 2015).
5. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics by Daniel James Brown (Viking, 2013).
6. Reckless: My Life as a Pretender by Chrissie Hynde (Doubleday, 2015).
7. Bossypants by Tina Fey (Little, Brown and Co., 2011).
8. The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World by Anthony M. Amore (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
9. Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco, 2010).
10. Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon (Dey St., 2015).
11.Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music by Greil Marcus, revised 6th edition (Plume, 2015).
12. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir by Carrie Brownstein (Riverhead Books, 2015).
13.Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger, 25th anniversary edition (Da Capo Press, 2015).
14. Always Pack a Party Dress: And Other Lessons Learned from a (Half) Life in Fashion by Amanda Brooks (Blue Rider Press, 2015).
15. Bohemian Modern by Emily Henson, photography by Katya de Grunwald (Ryland Peters & Small, 2015).
16. Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art by Nancy Princenthal (Thames & Hudson, 2015).
17. The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education by Peter Coyote (Counterpoint, 2015).
18. Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them by Nancy Marie Brown (St. Martin's Press, 2015).
19. I'll Never Write My Memoirs by Grace Jones as told to Paul Morley (Gallery Books, 2015).
20. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (Penguin Press, 2015).
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