Top Ten Tuesday: Library Books I Want to Read That Have Long Waitlists


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A stack of five books sitting on a shelf with their spines to the left out of view of the viewer. A second stack of five slimmer volumes are leaned up against the first stack, and these, too, have spines we can’t read. Their spines are turned toward the white wall. The original theme for this week was “The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection,” but I’m tweaking it a little.

Here are some library books I want to borrow but have not requested yet due to their long wait times when I was writing this post last month.

We only get to have fifteen ebook holds at a time in my local library system, so I need to be choosy about what I request.

1. Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing by Abigail Thomas

Wait Time: 28 weeks

 

2. Seven Deadly Sins: The Biology of Being Human by Dr. Guy Leschziner

Wait Time: 30 weeks

 

3.The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard

Wait Time: 21 weeks

 

4. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

Wait Time: 21 weeks

 

5. Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite by Aaron Reeves, Sam Friedman

Wait Time: 20 weeks

 

6. Ghostroots: Stories by ‘Pemi Aguda

Wait Time: 20 weeks

 

7. The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern: A Novel by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Wait Time: 21 weeks

 

8.  Pompeii by Robert Harris

Wait Time: 17 weeks

 

9. Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Wait Time: 18 weeks

 

How long are the wait times at your local library, if you have one?

 

68 Comments

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68 Responses to Top Ten Tuesday: Library Books I Want to Read That Have Long Waitlists

  1. I haven’t had issues getting e-books from my library. There does not seem to be a holds on many of them. Not sure if it’s because of the types of books I read or because we don’t have enough readers in our area. I hope it’s the types of books I read. I hope you get to check out these books soon!

  2. Some of my library’s wait times are pretty lengthy too. Although I have noticed with a couple that they can drastically drop at times (I guess because if a couple of people change their minds about reading it in a row it goes down by three weeks for each one). I hope you get to check some of these out soon.

    I think I’d only heard of one of these before but I’m adding that Ghostroots: Stories one to my TBR now too.

  3. Wow, those are some wait times! I hope these books get to you faster than stated and that you enjoy reading them whenever that happens 🙂

  4. These sound interesting! I hope your hold come in quickly.

  5. There are a few audiobooks I’m on hold for that just say several months…

  6. Athena @ OneReadingNurse

    Wow we only are allowed eight and I never would read that many anyway 😂 better get in line sometimes they go pretty quickly!

  7. I used to have a library card where the ebooks were always available, but my card is expired and I need to renew it in person!

  8. I’ve never used a library (I think when we were kids, my mom or aunt looked into using it but we lived just outside the limit or something), but I have as an adult dropped off some books so it’s nice t have the library. 🙂 These wait times DO look long! Wow. Hopefully that’s a sign of them all being great reads. Happy reading, Lydia – and as always, thanks for visiting my list!

  9. Wow, some of these have really long wait times! I hope you get to read these books sooner rather than later.

    For books at my library with long wait times, I’ll sometimes see if I can snag a copy from the “Lucky Day” shelf that my library system uses for a copy or two of some popular items that aren’t used to fill holds. (I think they do that to get people to actually walk into the library instead of just waiting for their hold to come in.)

  10. These are some long waitlists indeed! I hope you’ll still get to read them sooner than expected though 🙂

  11. The Safekeep is on my TBR, too. But now I am panicked I’ll never get it. Must go to the library website and put it on hold immediately!

  12. Those are obviously very popular books! I am not familiar with many of these, but now that you’ve brought them to my attention I will have to check a few of them out. Ghostroots sounds like an especially good collection of stories. And The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern sounds like a fun read. Pompeii caught my attention because I’m currently reading a trilogy set mostly in Pompeii. I do like mysteries, so will have to give that one a try. I hope you enjoy all of these when you get to them!

  13. Great list, Lydia! We don’t get a lot of eBook holds through our library system either, so I have to be picky too. Looks like you’ve picked some good ones! I hope you enjoy them. Happy Tuesday!

  14. I adored reading The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern. It has such cozy vibes. I hope you don’t have to wait too long to read them.

    Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
    https://readbakecreate.com/2024-reading-google-map-books-i-read-in-2024/

  15. I’ve been shocked a few times when I put something on hold that had a long waiting list and I received it much sooner than I expected. I have no idea why that happened, but it’s a nice surprise when it does. I hope you have a chance to read your list. They look like good books.

  16. RS @ Literary Loot

    Libby wait times are usually longer for us than print copies — I typically get the latter within a month, 2 at most. Even for newer releases, my county is actually pretty good about buying enough copies relative to demand to limit wait times to ~4 months, unless it’s a wild outlier like The God of the Woods, which currently has 300 holds on 33 copies. (exceeding ONE hundred is rare)

    Actually, here’s a good example, forgive my continuing nerding out on data analysis — The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern has 6 holds on 4 print copies at the moment (probably 6-9 weeks at most), vs. an estimated 24 weeks for the ebook and even longer for the audio.

    So you have my sympathies — hopefully you have a nice list of backlist/less popular titles to keep you busy while you wait for the crowds to ebb.

    • I love nerding out on this sort of stuff!

      And, yes, I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime.

      It’s interesting that print books have such a shorter wait time.

  17. This is such a great prompt! I have a few holds that have several months to go. I do hope they end up coming in sooner, but not all at the same time! It seems to happen to me all the time. haha.

  18. My library used to show us where you were in the queue if you requested a physical copy but they updated the system and it doesn’t now so it’s a completely random wait haha. You could be 1st or 100th and have no idea. The ebook app will give you a date the book is available but most tend to be under a month. You’ll get something that’s really highly anticipated that might be anywhere from 2-4 months but usually it ends up churning through quicker than predicted.

  19. Joanne @ Portobello Book Blog

    Pompeii is a great book!

    I was looking for a new audiobook to borrow today and several of them had wait times until October – I didn’t bother!

  20. Now that was a good topic! I’m fortunate that here in Ohio we have regional libraries and you can have cards at more than one. [We don’t use the ticket system here]. There are limits on how many e-items you can borrow, but usually that’s the only things limited aside from how many renewals on new items. All that said, I’d have that long a wait for Louise Penny’s new Gamache book or some over-hyped Celebrity book club book.

  21. Forgot–Born to Rules is going straight to my TBR. I’ve long followed the politics of the UK and the politics of private schools both there and over here [USA]

  22. The wait times aren’t that bad for me. Sometimes I get the book I requested a lot earlier than the projected time stated. Hope you get your lends soon!

  23. I’m so busy trying to get through my TBR, I haven’t made use of the library in a while! I hope some of the ones you want come through sooner than the estimated wait time.

  24. Shaine

    Interesting list. I’m adding Ghostroots to my list!

    Most eBooks are highly available at our local library. Unless the books are by high-demand authors, the waiting time is usually around 1-2 weeks. The longest waiting time I’ve seen for a book is The Hobbit by Tolkien, which can be around 3-8 weeks.

  25. Some of the books and graphic novels that I want to read from the library have dreadfully long waits! And sometimes I get so busy that I forget to check and then they are gone and I have to request them all over again. Here’s hoping we both get to read some of our long-timers sooner than later. =P

  26. Whoa, those are some long waits! I can vouch for The Love Elixir of August Stern — it’ll be worth it, whenever you get it! I often find with these super long waitlist books that by the time my request comes in, I’m busy with other books and have totally lost interest. Good luck!

  27. WOW, those are some seriously long wait times! I have access to two large library systems (city and county), so it rarely takes more than a month or two for me to get a book that I want, even if it’s really popular. My libraries even allow you to get on the waitlist for new books that haven’t been published yet. I rarely have trouble getting any book I want to read, unless they’re really obscure and/or are published by foreign presses. Thank goodness our wait times aren’t as long as yours. I would be buying more books than I already do! LOL

    Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!

    Susan
    http://www.blogginboutbooks.com

  28. Most of those are new to me, but yeah, long waits! I hope you get them and are ready to read them when they become available! With audiobooks I put on hold from the library, sometimes I have to push back longer because I’m not ready when they are.

  29. Wow! Those are VERY long wait times! Our library tells us what place we are in, instead of how long we will wait. I hope you enjoy these when you do finally get them 🙂 Enjoy the rest of your week!

  30. I’m adding Ghostroots to my TBR because it sounds really interesting. I hope you can free some space soon to check these out.

  31. I love this topic – there are so many amazing books with such long waitlists at my library, and they limit how many holds I can have at a time.

    Hopefully you’re able to get these in your hands soon. I especially loved The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, and had to add The Safekeep to my TBR. I went to add Pompeii too, but it was already on it. Maybe it’s a sign to start working on my TBR more than adding to it?

  32. Sometimes I forget I put a hold on a book because it takes so long. Other times I’ll get a long hold much sooner than expected and not be prepared for that particular book. Regardless, libraries are still wonderful. I hope you have plenty of other books to keep you engaged while waiting for these books to have lower wait times.

  33. Pretty much every book I want has a waitlist at my library. I waited 6 months for Michelle Obama’s memoir.

  34. Wow! Those are some crazy wait times. Usually, I use my library for research materials, so often only wait a couple of weeks to a month. Hope you get some of these soon.

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