Last year was a great year for books. I hit a bland patch coming out of the summer, but finished out 2015 with some great reads. Now that 2016 is here, it’s fun to look back and see what other readers were doing.

Libraries around the country have been posting their “most requested” and “most borrowed” lists for a few weeks. So I thought I’d sample a few and see what the commonalities are.

Here in Birmingham, Alabama, John Grisham’s Gray Mountain and two David Baldacci books, The Memory Man and The Escape, make the “most popular” list.

The folks in South Florida favored Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, but both Grisham and Baldacci made a Top 5 list from Miami Dade county also.

Paula Hawkins topped the lists in Boston as well as those up around Chicago as well. Interesting how there’s no Grisham or Baldacci there.

And patrons of the New York Public Library System prefer Jodi Picoult over everything else. Though Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train was second. But again, no Grisham or Baldacci.

There definitely seems to be a line, on the map, somewhere for what types of thrillers readers like in different parts of the country.

Hope you read some good books last year. And I hope you have many more ahead of you this year.

Happy New Year!