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 March.
| This Month | Last Month | Title | On List | |
| 1. | 1. |  |
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style |
3 months |
| 2. | 3. |  |
The Friend | 4 months |
| 3. | 4. |  |
Severance | 5 months |
| 4. | 10. |  |
The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms |
2 months |
| 5. | 6 |  |
The William H. Gass Reader | 4 months |
| 6. | 5. |  |
Educated: A Memoir |
2 months |
| 7. | 8. |  |
Milkman | 3 months |
| 8. | 7. |  |
My Year of Rest and Relaxation | 5 months |
| 9. | 9. |  |
Killing Commendatore |
6 months |
| 10. | – |  |
Transcription | 5 months |
March sent Esi Edugyan’s novel Washington Black to our site’s Hall of Fame, opening one spot for a newcomer on our list. As it happens, instead of a newcomer, we welcome something more familiar. Kate Atkinson’s novel Transcription had been on our Top Ten lists last September through December, yet for reasons unclear it dropped out of the running in January. Since then, it’s hovered in the “near misses” section at the bottom of these posts, and now it’s officially back as if to say, Spring is here and perennials return.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Dreyer’s instructive Dreyer’s English solidified its position in the top spot. Not long ago, our own Adam O’Fallon Price pondered the book’s popularity. “It would be difficult to think of a current subject that feels, superficially, less likely to top a list of best sellers,” Price wrote. “But beyond the pleasure of Dreyer’s prose and authorial tone, I think there is something else at play with the popularity of his book,” he explained. “To put it as simply as possible, the man cares, and we need people who care right now.”
Elsewhere on the list, little changed. Some titles swapped positions, some other titles moved up or down a spot or two, and outside the birds chirped and the planet spun and we completed just about one 12th of a rotation around the sun.
This month’s near misses included: Circe, Becoming, The Golden State, The New Me, and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays. See Also: Last month’s list.
