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The Millions Top Ten: May 2018

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 May.

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This Month Last Month Title On List
1. 1. cover 5 Year Diary 6 months
2. 2. cover Her Body and Other Parties 6 months
3. 5. cover The Immortalists
 4 months
4. – cover Less
 1 month
5. 4. cover Fire Sermon
 5 months
6. 7. cover Sing, Unburied, Sing
 6 months
7. 10. cover Frankenstein in Baghdad
 2 months
8. 6. cover The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
 5 months
9. 9. cover The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath
 2 months
10. – cover Lost Empress
 1 month

 

It’s surprising that this is the first time John McPhee’s sent a work to our site’s Hall of Fame, which recognizes books that have made appearances on our Top 10 for more than six months. McPhee, whose Draft No. 4 attains that honor this month, has published more than three dozen books. To have only one ascend to our hallowed halls surely reveals more about us than him, no? Well, an honor is an honor regardless of past injustice. Going forward, consider this my call to action: go read Oranges and learn all about the absolute madmen who grew grapefruits and limes on the branches of orange trees.

With one newly opened spot on this month’s list and one title dropping out of favor from last month’s, we welcome two newcomers. First there’s Less by Andrew Sean Greer, who just won the Pulitzer, and second there’s Lost Empress by Sergio De La Pava, who years ago won something even more coveted than an award: a glowing profile from our own Garth Risk Hallberg. Writing at the time about De La Pava’s breakout, A Naked Singularity, which ultimately made it to our Hall of Fame, Hallberg recalled getting hooked on a big self-published book despite his initial skepticism, and in spite of the book’s superficial flaws.

A good big novel lives or dies at a level far removed from considerations of teachable “craft” — the level Henry James and Michel Houellebecq gesture toward when they speak, in different contexts, of “intensity.” … And at that level, A Naked Singularity is, if not a masterpiece, then certainly a roaring success.

Fast forward six years and De La Pava’s returned with another 600+ page novel. Plus ça change…

Elsewhere on our list, the top two titles retained their positions, The Immortalists rose two spots, Sing, Unburied, Sing dropped two more, and books by Ahmed Saadawi, Denis Johnson, and Leslie Jamison jostled around a bit. Altogether that part isn’t terribly eventful, but next month we’ll see three spots open up, and that’s where the fun should really begin. Stay tuned.

This month’s near misses included: An American Marriage, The Overstory, The Mars Room, and Pachinko. See Also: Last month’s list.

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