Reading choices in lockdown show NHS in surprising new light

Figures released to The Yorkshire Post reveal that This Is Going To Hurt, the diary of former junior doctor Adam Kay, was by far the most borrowed library book of the last three months, with a readership that increased exponentially as bookshops closed their doors.

Kay, who resigned from the NHS and was later removed from the medical register, depicts hospital doctors as poorly paid, undervalued and neglected. He published the book after the 2015 contract dispute with junior doctors, whom the then Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, accused of being “greedy”.

His memoir was borrowed in electronic form 352 times during the lockdown from North Yorkshire’s 42 libraries, which have signed up nearly 2,000 new members and more than doubled their usual turnover, despite being closed.

Kay might have attracted more readers still, but for the licensing rules which restrict e-books, like paper ones, to one reader at a time.

His audience had come from across the county, with the biggest concentrations in the major centres of Harrogate and Scarborough, said Chrys Mellor, general manager of libraries for North Yorkshire County Council.

“We have taken on 4,000 new titles since lockdown to cope with demand,” she said.

“We’re seeing more take-up for more fiction than non-fiction, but that’s partly because there are more of those titles available as e-books.”

The latest instalments in the lives of fictional heroes like Lee Child’s former Army major Jack Reacher – portrayed on screen by Tom Cruise – and Dan Brown’s Harvard professor Robert Langdon, whom Tom Hanks played in The Da Vinci Code, have been among the most requested escapist titles.

But although Ms Mellor said the Harry Potter series remained “incredibly popular”, none of JK Rowling’s books are in the list of top reads, which includes the romantic novel Still Me by JoJo Moyes, and the coming-of-age story Normal People by Sally Rooney, which is also a TV series.

The local history titles available in electronic form have also found a ready audience, Ms Mellor said.

However, it was the popularity of Kay’s book that was the standout statistic. A best-seller in hardback and paperback, it was commissioned in 2018 as an eight-part drama for BBC Two, with Ben Whishaw as the main character, though it has not yet been screened.

Its executive producer, Naomi de Pear, has said she hoped its portrayal of the stark reality of life on the NHS front line would be “a call to arms”.

Kay portrays the NHS as an unsympathetic employer which forces its junior medical staff to work for hours beyond their shifts without pay, and makes it difficult for them go on holiday if they can not find someone to cover for them. He also describes being offered neither recovery time or counselling after an operation of which he was in charge went tragically wrong.

North Yorkshire’s libraries have around 14,000 electronic books in their catalogue, with adults – many of whom would not normally consider using a library – accounting for three-quarters of regular readers, said Ms Mellor.

Before the lockdown began, the service’s online membership form was seldom used, she said. But story readings and question-and-answer sessions with authors have become popular since.

The branches, 31 of which are run in partnership with community-based groups of volunteers, are likely to reopen in stages from next month.

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