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Last year, the Denver Public Library worked on improving itself by renovating two branches, adding a new location and bringing back the popular One Book, One Denver program after more than a decade.
Turns out, DPL visitors were also looking to expand their perspectives and better themselves.
Popular Fiction
The most checked-out adult fiction book was James, a 2024 novel by Percival Everett that retells Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of James (formerly Jim), the enslaved man who teams up with Huck Finn on the Mississippi River, navigating racial dynamics and the journey with intelligence and humor as he tries to escape being sold and seeks freedom. The book is now being developed for a film by Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg, and was checked out over a thousand times through the DPL.
Popular Non-fiction
As for non-fiction, Denver residents checked out the physical and e-book version of The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool that Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins more than 4,000 times. The self-help book is meant to teach readers how to let go of other people’s opinions and judgments and instead focus on their own lives and happiness.
Popular Young Adult (YA)
Suzanne Collins’s highly anticipated Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping (also being turned into a film), released in March last year, was the most borrowed YA book, with 463 checkouts. The most popular children’s book, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess, was checked out 1,262 times.
Popular E-Book
‘Meanwhile, e-book readers checked out Kristin Hannah’s historical fiction novel, The Women, 6,490 times, while audiobook listeners favored Colorado Springs author Rebecca Yarros’s romantasy novel, Onyx Storm, checking out the audiobook 8,348 times. The most listened to non-fiction audiobook was Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, with 4,059 checkouts.
Popular Music & Film
Lady Gaga’s 2025 album, Mayhem, was borrowed 109 times, making it the most popular album in DPL’s collection last year, and the most sought-after DVD was Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), with 990 checkouts.
More Folks Using the Denver Public Library System Following Renovations and New City Librarian
DPL branches saw nearly three million visits in 2025 and patrons borrowed over 2.1 million items in all, from physical books, e-books and magazines to movies and music. DPL also saw a jump in library card signups, with 52,739 in 2025 — 660 more than in 2024.
Last year, DPL completed renovations on the Pauline Robinson Branch in Park Hill and the Athmar Park Branch in Ruby Hill. DPL also opened a 28th location, the Lena Archuleta Branch, in Westwood.
Kristen Fiore
In August, the library revived One Book, One Denver, a citywide reading initiative in which participating residents receive a free copy of the same book to “bring people together through the power of a shared story.” More than 5,500 copies of Hua Hsu’s Stay True were accessed as part of the program.
The library system also welcomed new city librarian Nicolle Davies, a former Colorado state librarian who took over the role after Michelle Jeske stepped down after a decade at the end of April. Davies is following a 2025-2030 strategic plan for DPL that includes new multilingual signage for easy navigation, enhanced design and layouts across the city’s dozens of branches, new programming to encourage all ages to engage with the library, expanded collections in various languages, updated website navigation, new landscaping and more.
“There are 112 public library systems across the state of Colorado, and about 75 percent of those are small and rural,” Davies noted during an interview with Westword inside the Central Library Branch in November. “We’re sitting in this beautiful space in a system that has 27(now 28) branches, but most libraries across the state are one location, and maybe not open more than twenty hours a week.”
Denver Public Library patrons have it pretty good — not that they care what anyone thinks anyway, after reading The Let Them Theory.
