The Most Circulated Art, Music & Recreation Books of SFPL-To-Go up to December 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a radical effect upon library service. At San Francisco Public Library our readers have relied eBooks and other eResources more than ever. However, many other readers either cannot or prefer not to read online, or the books they want are not yet available online. The launch of SFPL-To-Go on August 10 brought the San Francisco Public Library's print collections back into the public's hands after a nearly five month break. 

Most of the books in the subjects of Art, Music and Recreation are assigned a call number in the Dewey 700 range (Dewey Decimals numbers 700 to 799). Among the top 15 most circulated in the Dewey 700 range, seven are pre-2020 titles.

The most borrowed print book by far is Ali Wong's Dear Girls. It was already among the most popular titles a year ago. Two other books that have continued from last year's list are Trevor Noah's Born A Crime and Hamilton: The Revolution.  Some other no longer current titles that have continue to be frequently borrowed include The Mamba Mentality by the late Kobe Bryant, Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, Making Comics by Lynda Barry and Just Kids by Patti Smith.  Noah's and Smith's books are possibly the most popular arts related books of this century so far.

Naturally, most of the books that are frequently requested and checked out are current titles.  Hollywood often figures into these choices and currently The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood and Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother are hot titles.  Two new books by popular music divas Jessica Simpson and Mariah Carey are also racking up a large number of holds.

It's a great pleasure the see the positive attention our readers are giving to Marilyn Chase's biography of San Francisco's own Ruth Asawa, Everything She Touched.

The Victory Machine by Ethan Sherwood details the rise and fall of our Golden State Warriors (who are hopefully soon to rise again!)  Sanam Maher's A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing Of a Social Media Star would not immediately seem like a hot title (we initially only ordered three copies for our system) but it has proven popular in its rich investigation of fame, faith gender roles and social media.

Homebody: A Guide To Creating Spaces You Never Want To Leave from 2018 by Joanna Gaines is the most apt title for our times. If the experts tell us to stay at home, then, of course, we want to make it a place that we never want to leave.

The Top 15 Titles of December 2020

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice For Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong (Random House, 2019).

Born A Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau, 2016).

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown And the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson (Flatiron Books, 2020). 

The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant (MCD, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2018). 

Open Book by Jessica Simpson with Kevin Carr O'Leary (Dey St., 2020). 

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase (Chronicle Books, 2020).

A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing Of a Social Media Star by Sanam Maher (Melville House Publishing, 2020).

A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir by Colin Jost (Crown, 2020). 

Homebody: A Guide To Creating Spaces You Never Want To Leave by Joanna Gaines (Harper Design, 2018). 

Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco, 2010). 

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2017). 

Making Comics by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019)

Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs Of a Neurotic Filmmaker (Hachette Books, 2020).

The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis (Andy Cohen Books, 2020). 

The Victory Machine: The Making And Unmaking Of the Warriors Dynasty by Ethan Sherwood Strauss (PublicAffairs, 2020).

Hamilton: The Revolution: Being the Complete Libretto of the Broadway Musical, With a True Account Of its Creation, and Concise Remarks On Hip-hop, the Power of Stories, And the New America by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (Grand Central Publishing, 2016).

The Most Popular Art, Music and Recreation Center books, May 2018

Highest Circulating Books March 2015

Highest Circulating Books June 2014

Highest Circulating Books June 2013

Highest Circulating Books June 2011

Because this list reflects the cumulation of an entire years circulation it does not include 2018 titles that have not had enough time to circulate as highly.  Unsurprisingly, the top three titles on the list were among the books with the largest number of holds placed in November 2017.

Given the excitement over the Golden State Warriors, it's no surprise that Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry is ending up the hands of a lot of our readers.  Memoirs by entertainers and comedians continue to be circulate well represented here with books by Tiffany Hadish, Kevin Hart, Gucci Mane, John Hodgman and Eddie Izzard.

The musical Hamilton appears twice -- both the accompanying book with the libretto and a score of the songs arranged for easy piano.  Along the lines of easy piano, the piano instruction manual Adult Piano Adventures.  This interest in musical self-learning in our community is also evident in the popularity of Music Theory for Dummies and Jake Shimabukuro Teaches Ukulele Lessons.

There are a few older titles on the list.  Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-stakes Adventure In the World of Underground Poker became a successful movie.  Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud has become a classic on the subject.

Happy reading!


Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau, 2016).

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2017).

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe (Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).

Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry by Marcus Thompson II (Touchstone, 2017).

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish (Gallery Books, 2017).

I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart with Neil Strauss (37 Ink; Atria, 2017).

Hamilton: The Revolution: Being the Complete Libretto Of the Broadway Musical, With a True Account of Its Creation, and Concise Remarks on Hip-hop, the Power Of Stories, And the New America by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (Grand Central Publishing, 2016).

The Autobiography of Gucci Mane (Simon & Schuster, 2017).

Music Theory For Dummies by Michael Pilhofer, MM and Holly Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2015).

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (Paradox Press, 1999).

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell (Simon & Schuster, 2013).

Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-stakes Adventure In the World of Underground Poker by Molly Bloom (It Books, 2014).

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel (Oxford University Press, 1977).

Rock Climbing: Mastering Basic Skills by Craig Luebben (Mountaineer Books, 2014).

Jake Shimabukuro teaches ukulele lessons (Hal Leonard, 2017).

Vacationland: True Stories From Painful Beaches by John Hodgman (Viking, 2017).

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard (Blue Rider Press, 2017).

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool: A True Love Story by Peter Turner (Picador, 2017).

Adult Piano Adventures: A Comprehensive Piano Course: All-in-one Lesson Book: Solos, Technique, Theory. 1 by Nancy and Randall Faber (Faber Piano Adventures, 2010).

Hamilton: An American musical; Easy Piano Selections / book, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hal Leonard, 2015).

The Most Borrowed Books in Art, Music and Recreation - March 2015

 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).

The Highest Circulating Art, Music & Recreation Books From July 2012 Through the End of June 2013

We measure our collection's circulation according to the City's July-June fiscal year. The list of thirty titles below reflect the most popular books in the Art, Music & Recreation Center collection during those twelve months. 

The majority of the titles are celebrity memoirs, the most popular being those of comediennes and rockers.  There are also a few knitting and photography titles.  Books on fashion and distance running continue to be popular.

Here's a snapshot of what has been popular in the subjects of arts and recreation at the San Francisco Public Library.

Bossypants by Tina Fey (Little, Brown and Co., 2011).

Girl Walks Into A Bar--: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, And A Midlife Miracle by Rachel Dratch (Gotham Books, 2012).

The Truth About Style by Stacy London (Viking Adult, 2012).

Rod: The Autobiography by Rod Stewart (Crown Archetype, 2012).

My Mother Was Nuts: A Memoir by Penny Marshall (New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets For How To Make Your Photos Look Like The Pro's!. Part 4 by Scott Kelby (Peachpit, 2012).

Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream by Neil Young (Blue Rider Press, 2012).

We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy by Yael Kohen (Sarah Crichton Books, 2012).

I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons (Ecco, 2012).

Twitch Upon A Star: The Bewitched Life and Career of Elizabeth Montgomery by Herbie J. Pilato (Taylor Trade Pub., 2012).

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, And The Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

Who I Am: A Memoir by Pete Townshend (Harper, 2012).

Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll by Ann and Nancy Wilson (It Books, 2012).

Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith (Gotham Books, 2012).

Seriously-- I'm Kidding by Ellen DeGeneres (Grand Central Pub., 2011).

The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest For The Courage to Settle Down by Andrew McCarthy (Free Press, 2012).

Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them by Frank Langella (Harper, 2012).

Life by Keith Richards (Little, Brown and Co., 2010).

The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, And My Father's Twentieth Century by Margaret Talbot (Riverhead Books, 2012).

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From The Sidewalk To The Catwalk, edited by Thierry-Maxime Loriot (Museum of Fine Arts in association with Abrams, New York, 2011).

Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco, 2010).

Lucky Me: My Life With--And Without--My Mom, Shirley MacLaine by Sachi Parker, Frederick Stroppel (Gotham Books, 2013).

Rita Moreno: A Memoir by Rita Moreno (Celebra, 2013).

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter: Scaling Back In The 21st Century by Lloyd Kahn (Shelter Publications, 2012).

Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards (Tarcher/Penguin, 2012).

Knitting In Circles: 100 Circular Patterns For Sweaters, Bags, Hats, Afghans, and More by Nicky Epstein (Potter Craft, 2012).

Aran Knits: 23 Contemporary Designs Using Classic Cable Patterns by Martin Storey (St. Martin's Griffin, 2012).

Understanding Exposure: How To Shoot Great Photographs With Any Camera by Bryan Peterson (Amphoto Books, 2010).

The Soundtrack of My Life by Clive Davis (Simon and Schuster, 2013).

Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).