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. | 1. |  |
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead | 5 months |
| 2. | 2. |  |
The Memory Police | 5 months |
| 3. | 3. |  |
The Topeka School | 3 months |
| 4. | 4. |  |
Inland |
5 months |
| 5. | 6. |  |
Ducks, Newburyport | 3 months |
| 6. | 5. |  |
Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories |
4 months |
| 7. | 9. |  |
The Hotel Neversink | 2 months |
| 8. | 7. |  |
The Nickel Boys | 6 months |
| 9. | – |  |
Trick Mirror | 1 month |
| 10. | 8. |  |
The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale | 4 months |
It’s an exciting month for Millions staffer Adam O’Fallon Price, whose novel The Hotel Neversink rose two spots in our Top Ten, and now ranks higher than Margaret Atwood’s latest novel on the list. Clearly, interests were piqued by Price’s entry in our Year in Reading series. (You can explore the entire series here.)
Meanwhile, the top half of this month’s list held steady month-over-month. Ducks, Newburyport cracked the top-5, displacing J. Robert Lennon’s short story collection, which moves to sixth place. For now, long sentences get the upper hand over the left.
Our lone newcomer this month is Jia Tolentino’s hugely popular essay collection, Trick Mirror. Tolentino’s book was named in no fewer than eight of this year’s Year in Reading entries, so its appearance on the list comes as no surprise. Millions readers can thank Mike Isaac, Kaulie Lewis, C Pam Zhang, Kate Gavino, Garth Risk Hallberg, Lauren Michele Jackson, Shea Serrano, and yours truly for the recommendations.
Speaking of recommendations, it seems that either Barack Obama is a devout Millions reader or Millions readers take their cues from him. It’s a bit of a chicken-egg situation. Either way, a full five of the books on this month’s Top Ten (and among the “Near Misses”) appeared on Obama’s year-end list of his favorite books—a Venn diagram overlap representing 36% of our total. Uncanny is another word for suspicious. Obama, since you’re clearly reading this, we invite you to share a Year in Reading entry in 2020.
This month’s near misses included: Night Boat to Tangier, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Trust Exercise, and How to Be an Antiracist. See Also: Last month’s list.
