The Millions is going to be very quiet this week, a great opportunity for readers to catch up on some of the most notable pieces from the site during the year. To start, we’ll divide the most popular posts on
The Millions into two categories, beginning with the 20 most popular pieces published on the site in 2014:
1. Sam Anderson and
David Rees decided, for science, to do a deep dive on
Dan Brown's thriller
Inferno. The result was
Dumbest Thing Ever: Scribbling in the Margins of Dan Brown’s Inferno and some of the funniest marginalia you'll ever read.
2. Oh, The Favorites You’ll Give: Literary Twitter’s Best Tweets: Many readers are well aware of the many charms that literary Twitter has to offer. We looked at the most "popular" tweets of some of the most well-known literary personalities on Twitter.
3. Style Sheet: A Conversation with My Copyeditor: Our own
Edan Lepucki's made waves this year with her bestselling novel
California, and as the book hit shelves, she took the opportunity to show us how the sausage is made. Among several behind-the-scenes interviews, Edan's visit with her copyeditor proved to be the most fascinating for our readers.
4. Read Me! Please!: Book Titles Rewritten to Get More Clicks: 2014 was the year of clickbait, snippets of twisted English pumped full of hyperbole and lacking in specificity, a concoction designed to wring maximum clicks from readers. Our own
Janet Potter and
Nick Moran pondered how some literary classics might have employed this same strategy. The results are hilarious... and terrifying.
5. 28 Books You Should Read If You Want To: Leery of proliferating lists exhorting us to read these 100 books (or those 100 completely different books) before we die, Janet Potter concocted her own reading list, one that feels more true to how we find the books that shape our lives. It begins: "You should read the book that you hear two booksellers arguing about at the registers while you’re browsing in a bookstore."
6. Our
pair of Most Anticipated posts were popular among readers looking for something new to read. Our 2015 book preview is coming soon.
7. Commercial Grammar: It's easy to shrug off bad grammar in a logorrheic age, but
Fiona Maazel outlined the danger of letting our language be manhandled by marketers.
8. 55 Thoughts for English Teachers: "All of a sudden, I have been teaching public school English for a decade." Our own
Nick Ripatrazone with some powerful reflections on teaching high school English.
9. Italo Calvino’s Science Fiction Masterpiece: Calvino is beloved for his unique brand of literary fiction, but
Ted Gioia argued persuasively that more attention should be paid to Calvino's "science fiction masterpiece"
Cosmicomics.
10. Our star-studded
Year in Reading was a big hit across the internet.
11. Only at
The Millions could a review -- albeit an undeniably persuasive one -- of a 1,200-page work of literary criticism be one of the most popular pieces of the year.
Jonathan Russell Clark painted a compelling picture of
Michael Schmidt’s mammoth
The Novel: A Biography
12. The Common Core Vs. Books: When Teachers Are Unable to Foster a Love of Reading in Students: The debate over Common Core standards raged across the U.S. in 2014.
Alex Kalamaroff urged readers to reflect on what these standards might mean for the next generation of readers.
13. Shakespeare’s Greatest Play? 5 Experts Share Their Opinions: For the Latest in his series of roundtables, our own
Kevin Hartnett asked five experts to name the greatest of Shakespeare's plays.
14. There Are Two Kinds of Novelists…: Let's be honest. Our own
Matt Seidel is right. When you boil it down, there are really only two kinds of novelists...
15. We Cast The Goldfinch Movie so Hollywood Doesn’t Have To: Word of a film adaptation gave us all the excuse we needed to keep talking about
Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Our own Janet Potter and Edan Lepucki saved everyone a lot of trouble and went ahead and put together a cast for the movie.
16. Judging Books by Their Covers 2014: U.S. Vs. U.K.: This unscientific look at book covers had readers taking sides in a trans-Atlantic design debate.
17: Thug: A Life of Caravaggio in Sixty-Nine Paragraphs: Pimp, brawler, Old Master.
Stephen Akey introduced us to the epic life of Caravaggio.
18. Here Come the Americans: The 2014 Booker Prize Longlist: Readers love playing along during the annual literary prize season, but the addition of Americans to this year's Booker Prize was cause for heightened curiosity (and consternation).
19: How to be James Joyce, or the Habits of Great Writers: It's tempting to think that by copying the habits of the greats, you can become one.
Elizabeth Winkler looked at some books about
how history's greatest writers wrote and found habits as widely varied as the books they produced.
20: Cooking with Hemingway: Maybe it's easier then to simply
eat like the greats?
Stephanie Bernhard tried cooking like Hemingway and came away sated, if sometimes perplexed.
There are also a number of older pieces that Millions readers return to again and again. This list of top “evergreens” comprises pieces that went up before 2014 but continued to find new readers.
1. The Weird 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel that Correctly Predicted the Current Day: Ted Gioia profiled
John Brunner's uncanny novel
Stand on Zanzibar, which included, way back in 1969, a President Obomi and visionary ideas like satellite TV and the mainstreaming of gay lifestyles.
2. Dickens’s Best Novel? Six Experts Share Their Opinions: Kevin Hartnett polled the experts to discover the best on offer from the prolific 19th century master.
3. The Ultimate List: 25 Gifts That Writers Will Actually Use: For the picky writers in your life,
Hannah Gerson delivered an array of ideas that will keep the creative juices flowing.
4. The Greatest American Novel? 9 Experts Share Their Opinions: Kevin Hartnett convened a panel of experts to offer their answers on a high-stakes literary question, What is the Great American Novel? The answers he received are thought-provoking, enlightening, and, of course, controversial.
5. The Best of the Millennium (So Far): Our late-2009 series invited a distinguished panel of writers and thinkers to nominate the best books of the decade. The ensuing list stoked controversy and interest that has lingered.
The write-ups of the "winner" and runners-up have also remained popular. We also
invited our readers to compile a "best of the decade" list. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the readers' list seemed to receive a warmer reception.
6. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? 8 Experts on Who’s Greater: Readers also returned to Kevin Hartnett's Russian lit throwdown, for which he asked eight scholars and avid lay readers to present their cases for Tolstoy or Dostoevsky as the king of Russian literature.
7. A Year in Reading 2013: 2013’s series stayed popular in 2014.
8. Hard to Pronounce Literary Names Redux: the Definitive Edition: Seven years on, our “definitive” literary pronunciation guide is still a favorite at
The Millions. There must be a lot of people name-dropping
Goethe out there.
9. Ask the Writing Teacher: The MFA Debate: Writers pondering "To MFA or not to MFA" keep finding Edan Lepucki's thoughtful advice from her popular Ask the Writing Teacher column.
10. How Many Novelists are at Work in America? At the end of 2013,
Dominic Smith pondered a scary question. The answer? More than you think.
Where did all these readers come from? Google (and Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Reddit) sent quite a few of course, but many Millions readers came from other sites too. These were the top 10 sites to send us traffic in 2014:
1. Flavorwire
2. Arts & Letters Daily
3. MetaFilter
4. The Paris Review
5. BookRiot
6. Longform.org
7. The Hairpin
8. The Rumpus
9. NPR
10. New York Times
Thanks for the great list! The recent Hollywood writer's strike, brought up 'back' to the Library…it's always better to have a good book then a TV remote.
Do you think that the Sherlock Holmes stories count? Sort of their own thing I suppose.
That's a great list but you left off my very favorite:
"The Complete Stories" Flannery O'Connor
I have very fond memories of reading short story collections when I was a kid. Thanks for the list and reminding me about this great literary form.
I second some recommendations here! But I hated the ZZ Packer collection, except perhaps for "Brownies"…
Sherlock Holmes stories ought to count.
If they do, then so should Collected Stories by Rudyard Kipling and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. (Exotic adventure with a little poetry may be old-fashioned, but it still makes for a good read.)
O. Henry should be in there, too.
What a great collection.
I second Hemingway.
He is my hero.
Terry Finley
http://terryrfinley.blogspot.com/
Great list, but missing my two favorites:
— "We're in Trouble" by Christopher Coake
— "Dead Fish Museum" by Charles D'Ambrosio
jdc.
No one mentioned Borges? Fine, I'll do it.
The list is pretty solid, especially with the great add of the horribly undervalued Susan Straight. She's an amazing amazing writer.
Ack! No Sherman Alexie? No Thom Jones? No Tobias Wolff?
I am with the Hemingway fans. He is my favorite short story writer. His tight, short wonders have delighted me since I first read them as a teenager. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "Up in Michigan" are perfect examples of great short stories. I have also discovered through my two annual short story contests that the form is getting more and more attention and, judging by the recent entries to the "Warren Adler Short Story Contest," I have become convinced that there are many extremely talented short story practitioners out there just waiting for a larger market to open up. I have always loved the form and my fifth collection New York Echoes has just been released.
http://www.warrenadler.com
http://warrenadler.blogspot.com/
A great list! Delighted to see Aimee Bender, Lorrie Moore, George Saunders and Diane Williams on that list, some of my personal favourites.
We have reviewed two of those collections on The Short Review:
* The Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield
* Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore
There are some titles that are new to me, thanks so much for the recommendations.
Tania
Editor, The Short Review
thanks a lot,,,:]
My latest favourite is the stunning
Like You'd Understand, Anyway, by Jim Shepard.
Don't forget The Collected Stories of Richard Yates and First Love and Other Sorrows, Harold Brodkey. Also, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich. And the wonderful Andre Dubus.
I would suggest The Science Fiction Century, Volume 2 as one of the best collections…and I agree, where are the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
Love the list, but I would add a few more titles, like “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami, who writes in his own, unique style. I alsko liked “Windowjumpers” by Joel Strivewell and Chuck Palahniuk’s “Haunted”, which isn’t exactly a short story collection by definition, but rather 23 stories combained in a novel – something like a modern day “Decameron”
Why is Barry Hannah’s “Airships” never included on these lists? Probably the most under appreciated collection from the 20th century.
T.C. Boyle! I pick up his Stories Volumes 1 &2 whenever I can’t pick between the billion books I want to read. They never disappoint! Often stunning, memorable, perfect. I’ve read a few of the oldest stories recently – amazing.
Other omissions: Flannery O’ Connor, Adam Johnson’s Emporium, Karen Russell
I know this is an old list, but I recently enjoyed Kelly Link’s ‘Get In Trouble’ so I imagine the other collections are worth picking up. SO many to choose… I might have to pick that Boyle Stories collection back up again.
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones (glad to see Aunt Hagar here), agree re: FOC. The China Factory by Mary Costello and Dinosaurs on Other Planets, just published in Ireland last month and coming stateside next year.
Hawthorne! De Mapaussant! Collette! Mary Lavin!
I would also make a case for some really great anthologies– the Oxford Book of Short Stories edited by VS Pritchett got me hooked on the short story as a teenager. Pritchett’s story Many Are Disappointed, AE Coppard’s story The Mustard Field and Mary Lavin’s MY Vocation among many many others.
oh yes, Mansfield. So so many. And Charles Baxter’s story Gryphon just kills me. Salinger. Also very fond of Wilde’s stories for children– Selfish Giant etc, if you would consider including them here. Seán ´O’Faoláin, Frank O’Connor, Think I may prefer Updike’s short stories to his novels, actually– but not adequately well read with him to make a case for this. Bradbury, Wolff, Dubus, yes. Shepard. Baldwin.
still obsessing. Chabon’s short stories are splendid– Son of the Wolfman and House Hunting are two of my most beloved. I really liked The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo, too.