The Mary C. Moore Public Library in Lacombe conducted a survey to determine the top book for 2021and the results were largely inconclusive  but that doesn’t mean Lacombe isn’t reading. Here’s a look at what Lacombe residents are reading right now.

“We actually did a pool of the top books that our patrons were reading over the course of the past six weeks. To my surprise, I got like 40 different answers. It sounds like readers of Lacombe read quite a variety and quite a cross-section of genres and titles…It was just a huge variety of books which is fine too. That's great! I'm glad that we are a diverse community in that sense,” said Library Program Director, Kirstin Bouwsema.

Bouwsema says there are a couple genres that are particularly popular in the City.

“If you've been in our library, we have a massive Western collection here as well. There's a certain kind of demographic in the community that reads a lot of Westerns and they are definitely on high rotation here,” she added.

Bouwsema noted that Lacombe residents also enjoy reading fiction novels of any sort and enjoy audiobooks. The Program Director says the library tries their best to obtain audiobook copies of some of the more popular books, when they can.

Another thing of note is that vegan or vegetarian cookbooks have also been particularly popular in Lacombe.

“Our cookbook selection in general is quite large, but specifically if you're looking for picking up vegetarianism or you're going to do Veganuary—that's a big thing right now—is going vegan for the month of January, we've got an array of cookbooks on the topic,” said Bouwsema.  

Looking into 2022, Bouwsema says the library is expecting a couple of new titles from well-known authors including James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Bernard Cornwell, Jodi Picoult, Louise Erdich as well as several others.

Right now the library is offering Blind Date with a Book, if you are looking to spice up your reading list with something you may not have normally chosen. 

“My colleague here at the library is running a blind date with a book program. She's packaging up some books from our shelves that you may not have heard of. You get the first sentence from the book, she writes that out and you can read it and decide if that sounds interesting or not but you don’t get to judge the book by its cover because she has got it packaged up. So that’s part of the surprise but they’re flying off the shelf,” said Bouwsema.