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. | 3. |  |
The Great Mistake | 4 months |
| 2. | – |  |
Beautiful World, Where Are You | 1 month |
| 3. | – |  |
The Magician | 1 month |
| 4. | – |  |
The Book of Form and Emptiness | 1 month |
| 5. | – |  |
Bewilderment | 1 month |
| 6. | 5. |  |
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus |
2 months |
| 7. | – |  |
Matrix | 1 month |
| 8. | – |  |
Cloud Cuckoo Land | 1 month |
| 9. | 4. |  |
Subdivision | 5 months |
| 10. | 10. |  |
The House on Vesper Sands | 3 months |
Hall of Famers alone do not explain why newcomers make up 60 percent of this month’s list. Only two spots opened because Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy ascended to our site’s hallowed hall—Ishiguro’s second entry and Ditlevsen’s first.
Six newcomers may be a record for our site. Certainly it is since the start of 2020. We’ve averaged 2.45 new books each month over that span, only once welcoming four.
To reshape the list with six, then, means something else is happening. No doubt the popularity of these new books’ authors has something to do with it. Sally Rooney is in second position, Colm Tóibín holds third, Lauren Groff claims sixth, and this is not to make slouches out of Ruth Ozeki, Richard Powers, and Anthony Doerr, either.
Perhaps it’s seasonal. As the leaves drop through crisp air, do wallets open to purchase new books? Evidently so, and The Millions was on it. All six newcomers were on our Great Second-Half 2021 Book Preview.
Will next month’s list bring as much change to our list? Unlikely, but there’s only one way to find out.
This month’s near misses included: A Calling for Charlie Barnes, The Morning Star, Harlem Shuffle, Nightbitch, and Intimacies. See Also: Last month’s list.
