The Millions Top Ten: August 2013

The Millions Top 10
September 6, 2013 | 15 books mentioned 5

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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 August.

This
Month		 Last
Month		 Title On List
1. 1. cover Taipei 3 months
2. 9. cover The Pioneer Detectives 2 months
3. 5. cover Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 6 months
4. 2. cover Stand on Zanzibar 6 months
5. 4. cover The Orphan Master’s Son 4 months
6. 3. cover The Middlesteins 6 months
7. 10. cover Fox 8 2 months
8. 8. cover Visitation Street 2 months
9. 6. cover The Interestings 2 months
10. – cover Night Film 1 month

Tao Lin’s Taipei remains in our top spot. (For more on the book’s success in our Top Ten, take a look at my commentary on June’s list.) Meanwhile, our Millions Original The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes surges into the second spot and continues to win rave reviews from readers. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain was also a mover, landing in the third spot as it nears graduation to our illustrious Hall of Fame.

Our one debut this month is Marisha Pessl’s anticipated sophomore effort Night Film. Our own Bill Morris called the book a “stirring second act” but commenters have voiced strong disagreement.

Pessl bumps Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell from the Top Ten (at least for now).

Other Near Misses: They Don’t Dance Much, Speedboat, Wonder Boys and My Struggle: Book 1. See Also: Last month’s list.

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: September 2010

The Millions Top 10
October 1, 2010 | 15 books mentioned 2 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 September.

This
Month
Last
Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

Freedom
2 months

2.
2.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
4 months

3.
3.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
4 months

4.
5.

Tinkers
5 months

5.
4.

The Passage
3 months

6. (tie)
10.

A Visit from the Goon Squad
2 months

6. (tie)
6.

Faithful Place
3 months

8.
8. (tie)

Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
4 months

9.
8. (tie)

Super Sad True Love Story
2 months

10.
–

Room
1 month

Summer favorites stayed firmly ensconsed on our list in September, but Emma Donoghue’s Booker shortlisted Room managed to debut on the list in the tenth spot. Edan recently offered up a compelling review of the book in our pages. Meanwhile, the top three spots on our list remain unchanged from the prior month, with Freedom by Jonathan Franzen still in the top spot. Garth’s review of the book was published here in August. Graduating to our Hall of Fame this month was Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. Garth offered up a a look at the book and n+1’s entry into the financial meltdown post-mortem genre earlier this week. Near Misses: The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Gone-Away World, War and Peace, Things We Didn’t See Coming, The Imperfectionists. See Also: Last month’s list

The Millions Top 10
| 15 books mentioned 2 2 min read
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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: May 2017

The Millions Top 10
June 5, 2017 | 15 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 May.

This Month
Last Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

Norwegian by Night
6 months

2.
2.

Lincoln in the Bardo
4 months

3.
4.

A Separation
4 months

4.
7.

Ill Will
2 months

5.
5.

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

6.
6.

The North Water
6 months

7.
8.

American War
2 months

8.
–

Men Without Women: Stories
1 month

9.
9.

Homesick for Another World
5 months

10.
10.

Swing Time
4 months

 

April showers bring May flowers, but a month of May book purchases launched Michael Chabon’s Moonglow into our Hall of Fame. It’s the author’s second appearance there; Telegraph Avenue made the list four years back.

Chabon’s success freed up an opening on this month’s Top Ten. Filling his place in 8th position is another author who’s no stranger to our Hall of Fame: Haruki Murakami. In our Great 2017 Book Preview, Murakami’s latest story collection, Men Without Women, was said to “concern the lives of men who, for one reason or another, find themselves alone.” Emily St. John Mandel continued:
In “Scheherazade,” a man living in isolation receives regular visits from a woman who claims to remember a past life as a lamprey; in “Yesterday,” a university student finds himself drawn into the life of a strange coworker who insists that the student go on a date with his girlfriend.
Could this book become Murakami’s third to make our Hall of Fame? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night continues its reign over our list, further demonstrating that if you want to sell books to Millions readers, you ought to get an endorsement from Richard Russo first.

Elsewhere on the list, a few movers moved and shakers shook, but overall things held steady. Next month, we’ll likely graduate two titles to our Hall of Fame, which means we’ll welcome two more newcomers. By then, we’ll be in full swing with our Great Second-Half 2017 Book Preview, which was a shocking thing to type. Can 2018 come soon enough?

This month’s other near misses included: The Idiot, Eileen, The Nix, Exit West, and Enigma Variations. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 15 books mentioned 2 min read
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5 comments:

  1. You use Amazon to gauge what we’re reading…? Wow, that’s pretty indefensible. But hey, one day they’ll probably own your site as well.

    – an INDEPENDENT bookseller

  2. I DO get it: Taipei is shit by a fool who cannot write. It’s hilarious to see folks drinking the Kool-Aid en masse, and trying to put clothes on the naked emperor. Tao Lin is great o at one thing–conning people/.

  3. The Tao Lin hate seems so ridiculous and over the top… I really enjoyed the book, and I know a lot of other people who enjoyed it as well. Maybe the reason why Taipei is selling so well is more complicated than “everyone is stupid.”

  5. Lots of books sell well that doesn’t mean they are worth reading. Marisha Pessl’s piece of garbage made the bestseller list too.

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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: February 2016

The Millions Top 10
March 8, 2016 | 15 books mentioned 1 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 February.

This Month
Last Month

Title
On List

1.
1.

Fates and Furies
6 months

2.
4.

Fortune Smiles
3 months

3.
3.

Slade House
5 months

4.
5.

The Big Green Tent
4 months

5.
8.

What Belongs to You
2 months

6.
9.

My Name is Lucy Barton
2 months

7.
6.

The Heart Goes Last
6 months

8.
7.

City on Fire
5 months

9.
10.

A Brief History of Seven Killings
3 months

10.
–

The Past
1 month

For the first time in five years, but also the third time in six, Jonathan Franzen sent one of his books to our site’s Hall of Fame. And with the ascension of Purity, that makes Franzen three-for-three on his most recent novels reaching such hallowed ground. (Sorry, Kraus Project, but it looks like the streak is limited to fiction; and sorry as well, Strong Motion, but it looks like you arrived before the Franz-y* picked up full force; you’ll have to content yourself with Brain Ted Jones’s Millions essay instead of a HoF berth.)
Filling Purity‘s spot this month is The Past by Tessa Hadley, which was featured in both our Second-Half 2015 and also our Great 2016 Book Previews. The novel concerns siblings who reunite to sell their grandparents’ old house, but it really shouldn’t be summed up by its plot. The author would protest. After all, in an interview for our site last year, Hadley remarked upon the dangers that come from focusing too narrowly on plot and sequential order, and how she controls that impulse when she writes:

Things in life don’t, on the whole, add up or get resolved in that deliciously satisfactory, finalizing way that novels are so good at. Nineteenth-century novelists resolved their plotty novels so magnificently because they shared convictions about meaning and fulfillment that we surely mislaid somewhere in the 20th century. But I do believe that “leaping over the gaps” doesn’t mean you can’t hold a story together. Rather, we’ve grown suspicious of stories that resolve too satisfactorily. The danger is that if you fill in all the gaps you lose the essence of the story, you write something stodgy and merely consecutive, instead of keeping your hand on the live wire of the life, which jumps from place to place.

Elsewhere on this month’s list we see Marlon James’s A Brief History… move up on spot, which is good because that means you’re listening to my repeated pleas for you to buy that book. It also appears that next month our list will welcome two new additions, as both Fates and Furies and The Heart Goes Last seem destined for the Hall of Fame.

*No, I don’t want to apologize for that. It was good.

This month’s near misses included: The Queen of the Night, The Lost Time Accidents, Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, Girl Through Glass, and The Turner House. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 15 books mentioned 1 2 min read
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The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: December 2014

The Millions Top 10
January 6, 2015 | 15 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 December.

This
Month
Last
Month

Title
On List

1.
4.

The Novel: A Biography
3 months

2.
2.

Station Eleven
3 months

3.
1.

The Bone Clocks
4 months

4.
6.

Reading Like a Writer
6 months

5.
–

My Brilliant Friend
1 month

6.
7.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

3 months

7.
–

The Strange Library
1 month

8.
10.

All the Light We Cannot See

2 months

9.
3.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

6 months

10.
–

Dept. of Speculation
1 month

 

Ohio State over Alabama wasn’t the only New Year’s upset: in the first Top Ten of 2015, Millions readers propelled a mammoth, scholarly 1,200-page history of the novel ahead of David Mitchell’s latest. That’s right. The Novel: A Biography is our new number one. Let us all join hands as we usher in a new age dominated not by the Crimson Tide and kaleidoscopic fiction but instead by the Buckeyes and literary history. (Or you could read the review that started it all.)

And that’s not the only surprise this month, either. Two fixtures in our most recent Top Ten lists — Haruki Murakami and Karl Ove Knausgaard — saw their latest works — Colorless Tsukuru and My Struggle — drop out of our standings altogether. (Have no fear, Murakami fans: your darling remains on this month’s list with the debut of The Strange Library, which Buzz Poole recently described as a heavily illustrated 96-page paperback that “like … so much of Murakami’s fiction, questions the differences between what is real and what is not, and whether such a distinction even matters.”)

Moving along, it seems apparent that our recent Year in Reading series motivated a good number of Millions readers to purchase works by Elena Ferrante and Jenny Offill. In the case of Ferrante, whose My Brilliant Friend debuts this month in our list’s fifth spot, we probably have Charles Finch to thank. He’s the one who wrote, “I read Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan trilogy this year. I read it twice, actually. It made me want to quit writing.” For her part, Offill’s Dept. of Speculation earned heaps of praise in the series entries from Rachel Fershleiser, Scott Cheshire, and Dinaw Mengestu. (And Sam Lipsyte, way back in ’13.)

Meanwhile our own Emily St. John Mandel maintains a strong presence on the list with Station Eleven, and next month we’ll likely see the graduation of two works— Reading Like a Writer and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves — to our Hall of Fame.

Near Misses: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, My Struggle: Book 1, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Loitering: New and Collected Essays, and An Untamed State. See Also: Last month’s list.

The Millions Top 10
| 15 books mentioned 2 min read
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