Jenna Jaureguy has a book habit
She chooses books for the EBR library, shaping what the parish reads
If you’ve checked out a recent title from the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, it may well have passed the desk of Jenna Jaureguy. She oversees the selection of thousands of books a year—volumes that will end up in the hands (and earbuds) of tens of thousands of readers.
At first, she says, it felt faintly unreal to spend public money shaping private reading habits. That has worn off. Now the job is a steady, data-led mix of circulation trends, patron requests, professional judgment—and, increasingly, whatever TikTok has decided to make irresistible this week.
What Baton Rouge is reading
The big picture: Local checkout patterns track the country’s: roughly a third romance and “romantasy,” another third thrillers, with the remainder split between general fiction and nonfiction.
But, Baton Rouge has a tell. Readers here show a marked appetite for Louisiana stories and Louisiana writers. As Jaureguy puts it: “They like what we have here and they think other people should know it and be into it.”
By the numbers: Here are the top titles checked out by EBRPL patrons in 2025, combining print and digital.
Adult (Top 10):
- Great Big Beautiful Life—Emily Henry (also the top circulating author a year earlier)
- Atmosphere—Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Broken Country—Clare Leslie Hall
- Say You’ll Remember Me—Abby Jimenez
- One Golden Summer—Carley Fortune
- The Perfect Divorce—Jeneva Rose
- The Tenant—Freida McFadden
- The Housemaid—Freida McFadden
- Strangers in Time—David Baldacci
- Everything is Tuberculosis—John Green (the only nonfiction title in the top ten)
Why romance-fantasy dominates:
These books are built for easy entry and quick surrender—plainspoken, immersive, and hard to put down. They’re long, absorbingly so, which is part of the point. In an anxious age, a 900-page detour can look like self-care.
Cozy is the trend: Comfort mysteries and fantasy are leaking into other genres, with publishers’ pushing writers to include threads of gentle words in their stories.
