The Millions Top Ten

The Millions Top 10
February 1, 2009 | 6 books mentioned 12

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We’ve added a new feature to The Millions sidebar. 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 inaugural Millions Top Ten list, and we’ll be updating the list in our sidebar each month.

This
Month		 Last
Month		   Title On List
1. – cover 2666 1 month
2. – cover The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 1 month
3. – cover Infinte Jest 1 month
4. – cover The Dud Avocado 1 month
5. – cover The White Boy Shuffle 1 month
6. – cover A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again 1 month
7. – cover The Savage Detectives 1 month
8. – cover The Tales of Beedle the Bard 1 month
9. – cover The Northern Clemency 1 month
10. – cover Netherland 1 month

Let us know if you’ve been reading any of these books. We’d love to hear about it.

This is the byline used for site announcements and for articles by more than one Millions contributor.

The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: May 2015

The Millions Top 10
June 3, 2015 | 6 books mentioned 3 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 May.

This
Month
Last
Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

My Brilliant Friend
6 months

2.
2.

The Strange Library
6 months

3.
4.

Dept. of Speculation
6 months

4.
7.

Loitering: New and Collected Essays
5 months

5.
6.

The Buried Giant
3 months

6.
5.

The David Foster Wallace Reader
5 months

7.
10.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
2 months

8.
9.

The Girl on the Train
2 months

9.
8.

The First Bad Man: A Novel
2 months

10.
–

Satin Island
1 month

 

May has come and gone, and the weather is warming. But is that due to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, or is it due to the amount of energy being expelled by Millions writers hard at work at the upcoming Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview, which will hit these pages in about a month? My guess is the latter, but in the mean time, grab a drink and stay cool.

This month, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, has vaulted into our Hall of Fame. It’s a book that our own Michael Bourne rightly called “a literary sensation,” albeit one that, at first glance, did not have the makings of a smash hit. As Bourne explained it:
This is a 500-page novel about a war increasingly few Americans are old enough to remember, in which not one of the principal characters is American. This is a recipe for a well-regarded literary novel, perhaps even a prize-winning critical darling. But a breakout bestseller so popular it leaves Amazon’s vast warehouses empty of copies at Christmas? Not likely. So what then explains the success of All the Light We Cannot See? It all, I would argue, comes down to Doerr’s sentences, in particular his masterly use of nouns and verbs.
You’ll have to check out the rest of the review for some examples. (Or you could check out both of Doerr’s past Year in Reading entries, too: 2010; 2014.)

Meanwhile, Elena Ferrante continues her reign atop our Top Ten list, and My Brilliant Friend looks poised to join our Hall of Fame in June. More than likely, it’ll be accompanied by The Strange Library and Dept. of Speculation.

The lone newcomer this month is Tom McCarthy’s latest novel, Satin Island. A few months back, here’s what our own Garth Risk Hallberg had to say about it:
McCarthy’s fourth novel introduces us to a “corporate anthropologist” struggling to wrest an overarching account of contemporary existence from a miasma of distraction and dream. Perhaps he’s a stand-in for your average internet user. Or novelist. At any rate, expect ideas and delight in equal measure (assuming there’s a distinction); McCarthy’s reputation as a “standard bearer of the avant-garde” underrates how thoroughly he’s mastered the novelistic conventions he’s concerned to interrogate – and how fun he is to read.
Certainly sounds appealing. Join us next month, but remember: with the Great Second-Half Preview on the horizon, it’ll be a good idea to keep some space open on your “to be read” pile until that’s posted.

Near Misses: The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May, The Paying Guests, Everything I Never Told You: A Novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and My Struggle: Book 1. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 6 books mentioned 3 min read
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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: March 2014

The Millions Top 10
April 8, 2014 | 6 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 March.

This
Month
Last
Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

The Goldfinch
6 months

2.
2.

Selected Stories
6 months

3.
3.

The Flamethrowers
6 months

4.
4.

The Luminaries
6 months

5.
5.

Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment
6 months

6.
6.

The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose
4 months

7.
8.

The Lowland
6 months

8.
10.

Just Kids
3 months

9.
–

Beautiful Ruins
1 months

10.
–

The Circle
1 month

 

The first six spots in the March Top Ten are unchanged from February, and only two newcomers — Beautiful Ruins and The Circle — managed to crack this month’s list. Their arrival was made possible by the ascension of Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge to the hallowed ground of our Millions Hall of Fame.

It may come as a surprise to faithful Millions readers that this is the first time Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins has made our Top Ten. First published in 2012, Walter’s novel has been a mainstay in our Year in Reading series ever since. First came the estimable trio of Emma Straub, Roxane Gay, and Robert Birnbaum, who by turns referred to the book as “precise, skilled, quick-witted, and warm-hearted,” “one of my favorite books of the year,” and “especially special.” More recently, Kate Milliken commented on how it seems the entire world has read the book already, and that she was late to the party when she got to it in 2013. Of course, that didn’t stop her from diving in, later confirming what others have said all along: “Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is indeed bumpin’.”

(If you still need more convincing, then know this: the book is on its way to the big screen, too.)

On the other hand, Dave Eggers’s The Circle has hovered outside of the Top Ten ever since Lydia Kiesling identified it as “occup[ying] an awkward place of satire and self-importance.” It wasn’t the most positive review she’s written, but it wasn’t altogether negative, either: “There are noble impulses behind this novel — to prophesy, to warn, and to entertain — and it basically delivers on these fronts.” And if nothing else, Kiesling notes that the book provides a reliable glossary of “awful techno-cum-Landmark Forum-cum-HR-cum-feelings-speak,” which should prove useful for anyone hoping to understand the language of blog posts on TechCrunch, ValleyWag, and other sites devoted to the latest digital secretions from Silicon Valley.

Stay tuned next month for the likely graduation of six titles to our Millions Hall of Fame. Which books will take their places? Will surprises emerge? As with March Madness, the only certainty is uncertainty, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Near Misses: Eleanor & Park, Bark: Stories, The Son, The Unwinding, Well-Read Women: Portraits of Fiction’s Most Beloved Heroines, and The Good Lord Bird. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 6 books mentioned 2 min read
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12 comments:

  4. I just started reading 2666 yesterday and so far I can't put it down. This is the second book of Bolano's I've read (the first being Amulet). I probably should have read The Savage Detectives first, but I just couldn't wait.

    I've read Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, but the rest I have not.

  5. I'm reading 2666. On the first book right now and can't put it down. So far so good. I've read most of DFW except Infinite Jest. Prefer his essays, but that's just my taste.

  6. read Netherland (loved it, seriously considering adding it to my syllabus next semester)

    read The Savage Detectives (loved the first half, alright in the middle, really liked the end) – liked it so much that I . . .

    bought 2666 and it is on "The Stack"

    Infinite Jest shows up on "The Stack" sometimes, but usually comes out before I get to it (though sometimes I start it before deciding I don't have time right now).

    bought The Dud Avocado on recommendations here

    am reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. about half way and would probably enjoy it more if I knew more Spanish (but I can get by). I think it might come off as heavy-handed in its "geek culture" references (for lack of a better term), but at least I haven't found more than one that I don't get immediately. if I didn't have the Spanish AND I had never spent much time with comics and hanging out in comic book shops I think I would be very lost.

  7. I read Oscar Wao last year, and I loved it. I am not a comic book reader and have never read Lord or the Rings, but I still loved the book. As soon as I finished it, I ran out and bought Diaz's book of short stories Drown and enjoyed it very much too. I think Oscar Wao is a classic in the making.

  8. I'm about 200 pages into 2666, and the book led me on a side trip, as they always do, to the book by journalist Teresa Rodriguez, "The Daughters of Juarez" A true story of serial murder south of the border."

  9. I'm reading 2666 now, savouring it slowly. It is my first venture into Bolano, it has been very interesting this far. The Savage Detectives is buried somewhere beneath the mountain of coursework.

  10. I have had Savage Detectives and haven't gotten around to reading it but judging from all the comments here maybe I need to pick it up next. Infinite Jest is the only thing on this list I've read and the more I let it marinate the highter it moves up on my list of favorite books…

  12. Read Bolano's 2666, DFW's Supposedly Fun Thing, and O'Neill's Netherland. Netherland was a bit of a disappointment after all the hype, while 2666 was simply amazing even with the hype. It's been a few months since I read 2666, and I still find anything I've read since lackluster and uninteresting. I remember enjoying a number of the essays in this collection by DFW, but I read it so long time ago that my memory can't be trusted. I, too, prefer his essays to his fiction.

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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: October 2011

The Millions Top 10
November 1, 2011 | 6 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 October.

This
Month
Last
Month

Title
On List

1.
–

1Q84
1 month

2.
1.

The Enemy
6 months

3.
–

The Marriage Plot
1 month

4.
4.

The Bathtub Spy
3 months

5.
3.

The Art of Fielding
2 months

6.
5.

Leaves of Grass
4 months

7.
9.

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life
2 months

8.
6.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
6 months

9.
7.

A Moment in the Sun
5 months

10.
–

Lightning Rods
1 month

The literary battle royale of 2011 played out and Haruki Murakami emerged the winner with 1Q84 (read our review here) debuting atop our October list. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot (read our review here), meanwhile, debuted a bit farther down the list, but still put up an impressive showing. These two weren’t the only novels to make a splash in October, though. As Garth wrote in his review, “in a just world, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods would be greeted with the same frenzy of publicity that attended Freedom last year, or The Marriage Plot just this month.”

The Murakami debut bumps Christopher Hitchens’The Enemy from the top spot, while Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric, that perhaps unlikely favorite of Millions readers graduates to our Hall of Fame. Don’t miss the review that started it all.
Falling off our list is Geoff Dyer’s Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (our review). This is the second of Dyer’s books (Out of Sheer Rage) to spend time on our list but fail to make our Hall of Fame. Also slipping from our list was Christopher Boucher’s debut novel How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive (our review).Other Near Misses: The Missing of the Somme, The Sisters Brothers, and The Sense of an Ending. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 6 books mentioned 2 min read
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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: March 2017

The Millions Top 10
April 5, 2017 | 6 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 March.

This Month
Last Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

Norwegian by Night
4 months

2.
3.

Lincoln in the Bardo
2 months

3.
2.

The Trespasser
6 months

4.
4.

Moonglow
5 months

5.
8.

A Separation
2 months

6.
5.

The North Water
4 months

7.
6.

Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
2 months

8.
10.

Homesick for Another World
3 months

9.
7.

Commonwealth
6 months

10.
–

Swing Time
2 months

 

News broke recently that Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad will be adapted for the screen by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, and it’s hard to say what Whitehead’s going to celebrate more: that wonderful development, or the fact that his novel, after a six-month run on our Top Ten list, has at last graduated to our site’s hallowed Hall of Fame. Regardless, it can be said that good news seldom comes alone.

Filling the open spot on our list is Zadie Smith, whose latest novel, Swing Time, returns to our list after a three-month absence. (It first cracked the rankings in December.) At this pace, look for Smith, who’s previously reached our Hall of Fame four years ago with NW, to send her second work there in March 2018.

Elsewhere on the list, several titles swapped positions, and George Saunders’s Lincoln In the Bardo overtook Tana French’s The Trespasser to claim second place. On our site this week, Millions staffer Jacob Lambert penned a simultaneously hysterical and haunting “modern” adaptation of Saunders’s first novel, featuring a lumbering, slovenly beast by now familiar to us all:
Even in the gloom, his skin held an unhealthy rusty glow; his hair, if one might call it that, had an aspect of spun sugar, though it did not appetize.
Meanwhile, Manjula Martin’s Scratch anthology – which chronicles the ways writers do and do not make money from their craft — held fast in the middle of our list. Millions editor Lydia Kiesling caught up with Martin last week to discuss the way the book came to be, the struggles of trying to make a living from writing, and how writers, editors, and publishers alike feel about the same:
On the one hand I’m like yeah, people who do work should be paid. On the other hand…there is a way in which artistic value cannot be quantified. These two things can be true at the same time. But I think where things become far less ambivalent is when it comes to writing for publications and companies that make a lot of money off your work while you’re not making money off your work.
Skulking just beyond our Top Ten ranks this month are two particularly notable titles: Ill Will by Dan Chaon, who was recently interviewed by Edan Lepucki; and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, which made it to the Championship Round of the Tournament of Books. Will either break into the rankings of our list next time? Well, there’s only one way to find out.

This month’s other near misses included: Here I Am, Version Control, and The Nix. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 6 books mentioned 2 min read
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