Did you know that last year our users borrowed more than half a million items? That's a lot! To celebrate all the great reads (and listens and watches) that our users found last year, we thought we'd share our list of most borrowed items. 

Adult fiction 
(combined eBook, eAudio and print)

1. Apples Never Fall – Liane Moriarty
After seeing works like Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers top charts and get adapted to the screen for HBO and Hulu, Australian author Liane Moriarty had another mammoth year with the gripping must-read Apples Never Fall. On first look it tells the tale of a contented family with parents finally finding time to live the easy life, and four adult children living happy, moderately fulfilled lives. But the disappearance of their mother finds the children examining their family history with fresh, frightened eyes. You'll love this complex, captivating read

2. One Hundred Days – Alice Pung
3. Beautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney
4. Devotion – Hannah Kent
5. The Midnight Library – Matt Haig

Adult non-fiction
Combined eBook, eAudio and print

1. Love Stories – Trent Dalton
Truth is stranger than fiction, and it can also be more powerful, moving and heartbreaking. In 2021 journalist and author Trent Dalton spent two months asking people from all walks of life "Can you please tell me a love story?". We hear about how a blind man yearns to see the face of his wife of thirty years. A divorced mother has a secret love affair with a priest. A geologist discovers a three-minute video recorded by his wife before she died. A tree lopper's heart falls in a forest. It's nice to feel things - read this one!

2. My Year of Living Vulnerably – Rick Morton
3. Becoming – Michelle Obama
4. Atomic Habits – James Clear
5. Dark Emu – Bruce Pascoe

Picture books
Picture books are always a hit at our library, and these were the most popular ones in 2022. If you're looking for some fun, colourful reads to share with the little ones in your life you can't go wrong with these chart-toppers. Presented in no particular order, we've got...

Where's Spot? - Eric Hill 
All The Ways To Be Smart - Davina Bell
Give Me Some Space! - Philip Bunting
Alpacas With Maracas - Matt Cosgrove
The Ugly Five - Julia Donaldson
  

Junior fiction series
(combined eBook, eAudio and print)

1. Weirdo series – Anh Do
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid series – Jeff Kinney
3. Treehouse Series – Andy Griffiths
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. Funny Kid series – Matt Stanton

Kanopy
Streaming movies

1. The Father
As well as books and your usual library fare, your Yarra Libraries membership also gives you access to online resources like our movie streaming service Kanopy, where our most streamed movie of the year was the critically acclaimed The Father. Starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman and currently boasting a whopping 98% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅😮, it's an masterful watch that led Film of the Week's Guy Lodge to describe it as a "gaslight thriller in which the mind is both predator and prey". Sign in to watch it on Kanopy here.

2. Wild Mountain Thyme
3. Los Decentes
4. Minari
5. My Salinger Year


DVDs 
Single film or combined series 
For this category our judges have allowed all films from a series to count towards the total loans, so it's predictably dominated by some large franchises. Yet this makes the borrowing totals for the single films that made the list all the more impressive, with critical darlings like Parasite right up there with Hollywood behemoths like the entire Spider-Man film series. 

The Crown series
Succession series
No Time to Die
The Courier
Spider-Man film series
Fantastic Beasts film series
Parasite
The Father
The French Dispatch 

CDs
Single album or combined series
As with the DVDs category, our judges have considered CD series to count towards total loans, so predictably there are some long-running compilations in here that may be padding their totals by having multiple editions, but there's some bangers in here too, like iconic Kiwi/Melbourne band Crowded House.

Dreamers Are Waiting – Crowded House
So Fresh (series)
Just the Hits (series)
Tell Me Why – Archie Roach
Halcyon days - 60s Mod, R&B, Brit Soul & Freakbeat Nuggets
Wu Da Shi Yin Tian Hou 五大試音天后
Big Ballet Day! – The Wiggles
Triple J's Hottest 100 (series)
Yue Yu Lao Ge. 粤语老歌
5 Da Yue Yu Fa Shao Jing Sheng Hou 5大粤语发烧靓声后
Còn Chút Gì để nhớ
Motown: a Symphony of Soul with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
1970 – Bob Dylan

Head to our catalogue to request any of these titles and a whole lot more.