The Millions Top Ten: March 2010

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.

Fortune Smiles
5 months

2.
–

The Sympathizer
1 month

3.
4.

What Belongs to You
4 months

4.
5.

My Name is Lucy Barton
4 months

5.
6.

The Past
3 months

6.
3.

The Big Green Tent
6 months

7.
8.

Girl Through Glass
2 months

8.
10.

The Lost Time Accidents
2 months

9.
7.

A Brief History of Seven Killings
5 months

10.
–

Mr. Splitfoot
1 month

If you’re reading this, you survived to bear witness as Donald Trump became the Grand Old Party’s official presidential candidate. (Thanks a lot, William Faulkner!) And if the unpredictable, foreboding days spread out ahead promise nothing if not apocalyptic visions – glimpses of failures personal and societal, as well as cosmic – then take solace in this one thing: the Millions Top Ten abides as ever – safe, regular, and fun.
For here on our list, we celebrate the buying habits of our readers, and we can illuminate the works that bring them joy, inspire them, or whisk their emotions. Surely in these trying times, that’s better to read than, say, any newspaper. Right?
And so let’s begin with the good news. We graduated two – count ’em! – books to our hallowed Hall of Fame this month. First, David Mitchell launched his fourth – count it! – book to immortality, as his latest novel, Slade House, joined three of his others: Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and The Bone Clocks. (Connections abound with that last one, noted Alex Miller, Jr. in his review for our site.) Next, our own Garth Risk Hallberg sent his debut novel, City on Fire, to the Hall as well. Although this is the first time Garth has reached the Hall of Fame as the author of a work of fiction, he did previously reach it as the editor of one of our Millions Originals – Konstantin Kakaes’s The Pioneer Detectives.
Filling those two opened spots are Samantha Hunt’s Mr. Splitfoot and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. Hunt’s work is an “elegantly structured novel,” observed our own Kaulie Lewis in the Great 2016 Book Preview, and it “promises to be the year’s most unusual ghost story.” Don’t miss her interview for our site with Adam Vitcavage. Meanwhile Nguyen’s work is “rich, surprising, and often darkly funny,” according to Claire Messud in her most recent Year in Reading entry. (Bonus: Thanh Nguyen contributed his own entry in that same year’s Year in Reading series.) You can read an excerpt from The Sympathizer from our friends at Bloom.
Elsewhere on the list, A Brief History of Seven Killings dropped from seventh position to ninth. Ordinarily I wouldn’t remark about a book moving down our list, but this is a special case because it only needs one more month to reach our Hall of Fame, and frankly I nagged y’all too damn hard for it to drop out when it’s this close. Do your part and buy seven copies immediately, please.
Now, wasn’t that better than reading the political tipsheets?
This month’s near misses included: The Queen of the Night, The Sellout, The Nest, When We Came to the City, and The Turner House. See Also: Last month’s list.