The Millions Top Ten: September 2017

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.	1.	Ill Will	6 months
2.	2.	American War	6 months
3.	4.	Exit West	3 months
4.	3.	Men Without Women: Stories	5 months
5.	–	Forest Dark	1 month
6.	7.	The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel	2 months
7.	–	My Absolute Darling	1 month
8.	10.	The Changeling	2 months
9.	6.	What We Lose	3 months
10.	5.	The Idiot	3 months

Minimal shake-ups on this month’s list, only two spots opened, and no ascendants to our Hall of Fame, so what on earth is there to talk about? Patterns? The top four books this month have the letter “W” in their titles. What does that mean? The works in fourth, fifth, and sixth position have yellow covers. Is that significant? The mind reels.

In all seriousness, this month marks the entrée of two newcomers, both of whom were spotlit in our Great 2017 Book Preview.

Debuting in the respectable fifth position this month is Nicole Krauss’s fourth novel Forest Dark, which “follows the lives of two Americans in Israel in alternating chapters.” In his preview for our site, Nick Ripatrazone added context:

Krauss’s novel A History of Love has been rightly praised, but this new book might send people back to her equally intriguing debut, Man Walks into a Room, another investigation of what happens when our lives are radically transformed.

The other newcomer this month is Gabriel Tallent, whose debut novel My Absolute Darling fills our lists seventh spot. In her blurb for our preview, Janet Potter invoked a heavy hitter to sing the book’s praise:

The book industry trades in superlatives, but the buzz for this debut novel stands out. To read it is to become an evangelist for it, apparently, and Stephen King says he’ll remember it forever. It’s about 14-year-old Turtle Alveston and her “tortured but charismatic father,” from whom she’s gradually realized she needs to escape, with the help of her one and only friend and an arsenal of survival skills.

This month’s other near misses included: The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, The Night Ocean, Little Fires Everywhere, Hillbilly Elegy, and In Praise of Shadows. See Also: Last month’s list.

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