The Millions Top Ten: May 2012

June 1, 2012 | 14 books mentioned 2 2 min read

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.

This
Month
Last
Month
Title On List
1. 1. cover Pulphead 6 months
2. 3. cover The Book of Disquiet 6 months
3. 2. cover The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains 6 months
4. 4. cover The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World 6 months
5. 6. cover Train Dreams 4 months
6. cover Bring Up the Bodies 1 month
7. 10. cover How to Sharpen Pencils 2 months
8. 5. cover New American Haggadah 3 months
9. 7. cover The Swerve: How the World Became Modern 2 months
10. 9. cover Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language 2 months


Our one debut this month is one of the most anticipated books of the year: Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, her sequel to Millions July 2010 Hall of Famer Wolf Hall. The arrival of the Thomas Cromwell juggernaut bumps Binocular Vision from our list. David Rees’ How to Sharpen Pencils is the other big mover on our list, jumping three spots. Our in depth, hilarious interview with Rees from last month is a must read.

Next month should be very interesting as we’ll see the top four books on our list move to the Hall of Fame, opening four new spots.

Near Misses: Binocular Vision, The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk, Leaving the Atocha Station, The Great Frustration, and 11/22/63. See Also: Last month’s list.

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