The District of Columbia Public Library unveiled its lists of the most-borrowed books of 2020, with ones by Tara Westover, Michelle Obama, Celeste Ng, and Delia Owens all favored by readers in the nation’s capital, DCist reports.
Westover’s Educated and Obama’s Becoming were the No. 1 and 2 most–checked-out nonfiction books, respectively. Rounding out the top five were Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, and Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror.
Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere and Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing were the top fiction picks, followed by Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.
The library also revealed its lists of the most-borrowed e-books of the year, and the nonfiction list was marked by several books on racism. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism took the No. 1 spot, followed by Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Also appearing on the list were Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me at No. 4 and Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist at No. 8.
Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age was No. 1 on the fiction e-book list, followed by Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
