Twilight Novels Rank Among the Most Borrowed in the UK in 2010

According to The Guardian, the first four books in the Twilight Saga were among the 100 most borrowed library books in England in 2010. They decided to analyze why Twilight Saga books and others that made the list are so popular. Interesting concept, even if they seem slightly off in their Twilight description as being laced with crime.

“Trying to explain why the wartime British public were turning to “brutal and sordid” American crime novels, George Orwell suggested that pulp fiction offered “a distilled version of the modern political scene” in an era of “mass bombing of civilians, the use of hostages, torture [and] secret prisons”, and “systematic falsification of records and statistics”. The average man, he proposed, “wants the current troubles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals”.

Some such theory is needed, 65 years later, to account for the stunning appetite for evil evinced by people popping into their local libraries, as revealed again by the latest data released by Public Lending Right (PLR), covering the period from mid-2009 to mid-2010. Of the 100 most borrowed titles, close to two-thirds are crime novels or thrillers, including all the top 10, and others (such as Stephenie Meyer‘s crime-laden vampire romances) are in related genres.”

See more on The Guardian.