The Millions Top Ten: April 2013

May 1, 2013 | 14 books mentioned 2 min read

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for April.

This
Month
Last
Month
Title On List
1. 1. cover Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever 4 months
2. 2. cover Tenth of December 4 months
3. 3. cover An Arrangement of Light 5 months
4. 4. cover The Middlesteins 2 month
5. 7. cover Stand on Zanzibar 2 months
6. 5. cover Building Stories 4 months
7. 8. cover Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 2 months
8. 9. cover Arcadia 4 months
9. 10. cover Both Flesh and Not 5 months
10. cover Vampires in the Lemon Grove 1 month

 

In September 2012, we interviewed Sadie Stein, one of the Paris Review editors behind Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story, a book that seems tailor-made to appeal to Millions readers. In it, a handful of accomplished short story writers — Ann Beattie, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joy Williams, and so on — were asked to pick a favorite story from the journal’s archive, then write a brief introduction explaining how the story spoke to them. After a six-month run, the book has now graduated to our Hall of Fame.

Otherwise, our list doesn’t see a whole lot of movement, with the top four positions unchanged, including Millions ebook Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever at number one.

Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove is our one debut this month. We’ve interviewed Russell twice, in 2011 and again early this year. Vampires was also featured in our big 2013 book preview.

Near Misses: The Round House, The Orphan Master’s Son, Fox 8, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, and Dear Life. See Also: Last month’s list.

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