We spend plenty of time here at 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. | 3. |  |
How High We Go in the Dark | 5 months |
| 2. | 2. |  |
Refuse to Be Done | 5 months |
| 3. | 4. |  |
Either/Or | 3 months |
| 4. | 5. |  |
Sea of Tranquility |
4 months |
| 5. | – |  |
Sirens & Muses | 1 month |
| 6. | 6. |  |
The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories | 2 months |
| 7. | 8. |  |
Paradais | 2 months |
| 8. | 7. |  |
Forbidden City | 3 months |
| 9. | – |  |
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | 1 month |
| 10. | 10. |  |
The Tartar Steppe | 2 months |
We close out summer with one title headed to the Hall of Fame. By some measures, it took The Socratic Method six months to reach our site’s hallowed hall; by others it took 2,400 years. That’s characteristic of the season, I suppose, and how it blurs schedules, obliterates routines. (Among August’s near misses is Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, proving that warm weather vibes arriving late still arrive right on time.)
Either way, The Practitioner’s Handbook author Ward Farnsworth has cultivated a durable audience on our site—this is his third time reaching the Hall since 2011.
Our list opened another spot this month because Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace dropped out of the running. What did I just write about how the summer months are not compatible with routines?
Filling the two spots are new novels by Antonia Angress and Gabrielle Zevin. Both Angress’s Sirens & Muses and Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow published in July, and the pair was listed in our Great Second-Half 2022 Book Preview, where they earned high praise from our own Kaulie Lewis and Carolyn Quimby, respectively.
Check back next month to see what’s changed in the Fall.
This month’s near misses included: How to Read Now (Essays), Properties of Thirst, Essays One, When We Were Bright and Beautiful, and The Summer Book. See Also: Last month’s list.
