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. | 2. |  |
The Sympathizer | 3 months |
| 2. | 3. |  |
Mr. Splitfoot | 3 months |
| 3. | 4. |  |
Girl Through Glass | 4 months |
| 4. | 5. |  |
The Past | 5 months |
| 5. | 6. |  |
What Belongs to You | 6 months |
| 6. | 8. |  |
Zero K | 2 months |
| 7. | 7. |  |
My Name is Lucy Barton | 6 months |
| 8. | 9. |  |
The Lost Time Accidents | 4 months |
| 9. | – |  |
The Nest | 1 month |
| 10. | – |  |
Barkskins | 1 month |
Fresh off the heels of its Pulitzer win, there’s a new number one in Millionsland: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. (He’s a Year in Reading alumnus, by the way.) If past success in any indication, then smart money rides on Nguyen’s debut novel soon heading to our Hall of Fame, where it’ll join the past six Pulitzer winners: All the Light We Cannot See (2015), The Goldfinch (2014), The Orphan Master’s Son (2013), A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011), Tinkers (2010), and Olive Kitteridge (2009). You can read an excerpt of The Sympathizer at our sister site, Bloom.
Speaking of the Hall of Fame, we graduate two novels this month — Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings — each of which took different paths en route to the honor. Johnson’s novel enjoyed a comfortable position on the rankings pretty much out of the gate, when it debuted in the seventh spot last December. It subsequently climbed to fourth position the next month, then second, and ultimately it held the top position in March, April, and May. James’s work, on the other hand, never climbed higher than the seventh spot, and most months it hovered around the ninth or tenth position. Nevertheless, it’s staying power that matters around these parts, and now both works are headed to the Hall of Fame together. I, for one, am heartened!
Filling the two open spots on this month’s list are recent novels by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney and Annie Proulx, both of which were featured in our Great 2016 Book Preview last January. (Bonus: Did you hear we published the Great Second-Half Preview this week?)
Sweeney’s novel, The Nest, was teased by Rumaan Alam in his 2015 Year in Reading entry, and has been described since its March release as “delightful,” “hilarious,” “lively,” and more. It focuses on four adult siblings waiting to cash in on their shared inheritance.
Meanwhile Proulx’s Barkskins was a lynchpin piece on our own Claire Cameron’s “Summer Reading List for Wretched Assholes Who Prefer to Wallow in Someone Else’s Misery.” It focuses on greed, wilderness, and the desolation of our forests.
Truly, Millions readers are all over the map!
This month’s near misses included: Innocents and Others, The Queen of the Night, Signs Preceding the End of the World, Why We Came to the City, and Everybody’s Fool. See Also: Last month’s list.
