As well as being stimulating, moving and fun, Sydney Writers' Festival broke all records last week – attendances up 10 per cent to an estimated 97,700, ticket sales up, book sales up. Roger Mackell, co-owner of Gleebooks, which runs the festival bookshops, says, "It was the best year ever by a long way; last year was good after some flat years." As well as benefiting from the festival's growth, Mackell said, "People are relaxing into buying books again, they're not scared of being seen as old-fashioned. In the bookshop generally there's a more buoyant feeling about books than a couple of years ago when the press was full of stories about digital books." The bestselling books at the festival were an interesting mixture of health issues, family memoir, literary fiction, current affairs and children's books: The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge, H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming, The Age of Magic by Ben Okri, One Life by Kate Grenville, Blood Year (Quarterly Essay) by David Kilcunnen, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman, The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths, The Bush by Don Watson, Dear Life (Quarterly Essay) by Karen Hitchcock, and Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan. Children's authors Andy Griffiths and David Walliams were the top-selling authors, with many popular books, which bodes well for festival's future. You can see Macdonald and Cumming on The Book Club on ABC TV on Sunday June 7.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards have lost two judges from the fiction and poetry panel. Poet Les Murray has been unwell but had decided not to rejoin the panel after Tony Abbott shared last year's fiction prize between Steven Carroll and Richard Flanagan despite the judges' recommendation of Carroll as sole winner. He told Undercover (in unrepeatable terms) he was not willing to speed-read so many books only to be overruled. Last Saturday the remaining four judges met to decide on the longlist but film producer Margie Bryant suddenly resigned and did not attend. MUP publisher Louise Adler, who chairs the panel, said Bryant's father "is very ill and as a conscientious reader she felt she couldn't get through all the books". But Bryant may also have been unhappy with the messy judging process. That leaves Adler and poets Jamie Grant and Robert Gray. "We'll probably appoint another judge," Adler says. "It's up to the Minister [for the Arts, George Brandis]. We're at the beginning of the process." It looks as if we should prepare for another end-of-year announcement.

MOST BORROWED BOOKS

A survey of more than 150 Australian libraries from February to April produced a list of the most borrowed books. Top 10 adult fiction: Never Go Back by Lee Child, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, Eyrie by Tim Winton, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, Inferno by Dan Brown, The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and A Wanted Man by Lee Child. The top adult non-fiction book was Jamie's 15 Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver, top children's books were the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney and top young-adult titles were the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Australian authors feature strongly on the first three lists, while Americans dominate the YA category in the survey produced by the Australian Library and Information Association for Library and Information Week, which ends today. The full lists are at alia.org.au.