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. | 2. |  |
The Corrections | 5 months |
| 2. | 5. |  |
Reality Hunger | 2 months |
| 3. | 10. |  |
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories | 4 months |
| 4. | 6. |  |
Let the Great World Spin | 4 months |
| 5. | – |  |
The Big Short | 1 month |
| 6. | 9. |  |
Wolf Hall | 3 months |
| 7. | 3. |  |
The Interrogative Mood |
4 months |
| 8. | 4. |  |
Austerlitz | 6 months |
| 9. | 7. |  |
Stoner | 3 months |
| 10. | 8. |  |
The Mystery Guest | 4 months |
Graduating to our Hall of Fame this month is David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which was the readers’ favorite in our "Best of the Millennium (So Far)" series last year. That allows our panel’s winner in the same series, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, to take over the top spot. Of late, readers have begun looking forward to Franzen’s next novel, Freedom, out later this year.
Our only debut this month is Michael Lewis’ look at the financial crisis of the last two years, The Big Short. Of the hundreds of books on the topic, Lewis’ was one of the most widely anticipated, both because of his long history writing about Wall Street’s excesses and because of the powerful essay he penned on the topic for Portfolio magazine at the height of the crisis.
Near Misses: Asterios Polyp, The Known World, War and Peace, Then We Came to the End, Union Atlantic
See Also: Last month’s list
I find it beyond interesting that “The Mystery Guest” (no. 10 on list) has maybe 7 reviews on Amazon. Yet The Millions “readers” are all over it, and have been for 4 months? I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. But I DO know this: Over at Goodreads.com, there are 87!! reviews, not to mention over 300 total ratings on the book. Maybe you guys should consider linking to a somewhat more actively literate and engaged group. (I’m still puzzled by the disconnect at Amazon)
Mike, The reason Millions readers dig A Mystery Guest probably begins here. We also reviewed it in 2007.
As for why we (with some reservations) link to Amazon, this piece explains the reasoning (particularly section 3).