The Arts

A way to keep up with Seattle theaters, concert halls, galleries, museums and other fine-arts events.

Here’s one more piece of evidence that Seattle and King County residents love their books: according to a just-released survey by Overdrive, a chief purveyor of e-books to libraries, the King County Library System led the nation in e-book checkouts, with 1.3 million checkouts from Overdrive-powered catalogs in 2012. That made KCLS number one in the country. Close on King County’s heels was the Seattle Public Library system, which came in at number four with 850,000 checkouts.

Rounding out the top five were The New York Public Library System, which ranked number two  (1.1 million checkouts), the Toronto Public Library, number three (900,000 checkouts) and the Hennepin County Library  in Minnesota. (750,000 checkouts) at number five. Minneapolis, which like Seattle always does well in the annual “literate cities” ranking,  is the county seat of Hennepin County.