The Millions Top Ten: June 2015

July 10, 2015 | 12 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 June.

This Month Last Month Title On List
1. 4. cover Loitering: New and Collected Essays 6 months
2. 5. cover The Buried Giant 4 months
3. 6. cover The David Foster Wallace Reader 6 months
4. 7. cover The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing 3 months
5. 8. cover The Girl on the Train 3 months
6. cover Book of Numbers 1 month
7. 10. cover Satin Island 2 months
8. 9. cover The First Bad Man: A Novel 3 months
9. cover The Familiar, Vol. 1 1 month
10. cover The Paying Guests 1 month

Our Hall of Fame added three volumes this month — Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library, and Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation — and that opened the door for three new entrants. Before moving on to them, however, let’s give a shout out to Murakami, who’s now officially made it into the Hall of Fame for two separate books (1Q84 graduated in April ’12). It’s a praiseworthy feat, and one that’s only been accomplished by nine other authors: David Foster WallaceJunot DíazStieg LarssonDavid MitchellHilary MantelJonathan FranzenGeorge SaundersDave Eggers, and Alice Munro. That’s some lofty company to keep.

Also noteworthy is the fact that, David Foster Wallace has the unique distinction of having two of his own books in our Hall of Fame in addition to a biography written about him. And if current trends hold true for another 31 days, then he’ll be adding an anthology put together in his honor to that group as well.

Of the three new entrants to our list, two of them — Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen and The Familiar, Vol. 1 by Mark Z. Danielewski — appeared in our Most Anticipated List earlier this year. Danielewski teased his ambitious 27-volume Familiar project in our 2012 interview. Meanwhile, the third new book on the list is Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests. To quote Emily Gould in last year’s Year in Reading, “God, this book. This BOOK!”

Stay tuned next month as we open two more spots. Will they be books we featured in our new Book Preview? My guess is yes, but there’s only one way to find out.

Near Misses: My Struggle: Book 1Everything I Never Told You: A Novel, Redeployment, The Martian, and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. See Also: Last month’s list.

works on special projects for The Millions. He lives in Baltimore and he frequents dive bars. His interests can be followed on his Tumblr, Nick Recommends and Twitter, @nemoran3.