NEW YORK CITY — Staten Island swooned over Danielle Steel’s latest romantic tearjerker. The Bronx couldn’t get enough of a gritty urban potboiler. And a Jewish guide to hitting the sheets made for popular bedtime reading in Crown Heights.
New Yorkers' summer reading lists included a wide array of books — from award-winning literature to self-help guides to Japanese Manga comics, according to the list of the most popular books checked out from city libraries.
While each borough prefers different page-turners, one book remained at the top of every neighborhood's list: Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, according to data from the New York Public Library — which covers branches in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx — as well as the Brooklyn Public Library.
Miriam Tuliao, the NYPL’s assistant director of branch collection development, said she wasn’t surprised the late tech guru’s biography was the most checked-out book in its entire system during June.
“Memoirs and biographies are certainly some of the highest circulating,” she said.
Tuliao added that the Steve Jobs book — released last year, less than three weeks after his death on October 5 — “functions not only as a biography of a key, important American figure, but it’s a key read on leadership and management.”
After Jobs, the most popular titles varied by borough.
In Brooklyn, the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series made a strong showing. Early this month the series of novels about a young boy's middle-school follies were the top fiction titles at 15 of the borough's 60 libraries.
Michael Santangelo, a librarian in the collection-development department at the Brooklyn Public Library, said the book's success came because of word of mouth.
"The kids were seeing other kids read it," Santangelo said, adding that Japanese Manga comics have taken off the same way.
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