The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2021

I love the 100 Notable List from The New York Times because it's a great tool to find books I might be interested in reading. Let's take a look at the 2021 100 Notable Books list to see if there's anything interesting.

Further viewing 🎥:

Titles mentioned 📚:
Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir, Brian Broome
The Trees, Percival Everett
What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
Afterparties: Stories, Anthony Veasna So
How Beautiful We Were, Imbolo Mbue
Libertie, Kaitlyn Greenidge
The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Honorée Fannone Jeffers
The Magician, Colm Tóibín
The Promise, Damon Galgut
Razorblade Tears, S.A. Crosby
The Sentence, Louise Erdrich
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, Michelle Zauner
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, Sarah Schulman
Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Sally Rooney
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi (surprise!)
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen
Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters
Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford
No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout
The Prophets, Robert Jones, Jr.
Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark
The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel
Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir, Ashley C. Ford

My husband made a cookbook! Check it out here:

But wait, there's more!

[lexicon]

Detransition, Baby is great. It's funny, important and just an all around great work.

[thedarkestreads]

Kind of shocked at the exclusion of fantasy, sci fi and speculative fiction. She Who Became the Sun, The Chosen and the Beautiful and Sorrowland were all some of the best books released this year hands down. Reviewers and readers alike flocked to those books in unexpected numbers! I wish they got recognized more.

[melissawilson]

You absolutely want to read This Strange Paradise, loved it and it's a gut punch!

[dhurd]

I DNF’d Overstory and lost patience with it even though I thought it sounded like my kind of book. Bewilderment, I would say, is a sensitive thinking person’s story that gets right to the purpose quickly. Wonderful writing that I really should’ve taken notes of. (Oh sorry, that’s such an awkward sentence!) Loved it.

[GuiltyFeat]

Great job. I have a subscription to the NYT through work, so I signed up for the live announcement thingy. I'm quite excited.

[ericav]

Love your content, happy to have discovered your channel 😀
Amor Towels hooked me with Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow, can't wait to read The Lincoln Highway.

[mattm]

You may have read it, but the novel of Louise Erdrich's I read first was The Roundhouse and I really found it compelling and good.

My dad actually was a founding member of Act Up Orange County, which as his gay son makes me very proud of him. I'd like to help him tell that story someday.

[KierTheScrivener]

What Strange Paradise won the Giller Prize the highest literary award in Canada. So it's been on my list for that reason

[dmurfval]

Great list. I've read some of them. On my radar Afterparties, Burnt Sugar and How Beautiful We Were.

[patricejones]

Light Perpetual was on sale on Audible for the Black Friday weekend. I bought it with high hopes for good fiction. We shall see.
Let the Record Show is on my wishlist. 27 hours on Audible. That will take a while for sure.

[DuncanMcCurdie]

I probably said it before but Percival Everett is amazing. Erasure and I Am Not Sidney Poitier are the 2 books of his that are must reads.

[planningforperfection]

Great video! I am obsessed with your library? Are we maybe having an updated shelf tour in 2022?....😂 Would love that! Also how do you remember which ones you've already read? ❤️

[SM-vrdz]

What Strange Paradise is definitely worth reading. It will have you riveted. I didn’t love the ending, but the whole ride was good.

[JentheLibrarianreads]

It’s really interesting to hear you echo my own thoughts about Detransition Baby, I’m just not that interested in reading it but I’m not sure why 🤷‍♀️

[erinh]

I read The Trees - it was fast to read, but it is dark, as well as funny, if you don't mind a lot of dark. It also goes places I wasn't expecting at the end! It's a bit of a revenge fantasy. I did like it but I bet it would upset some people.
And YES, you should read Empire of Pain, the audio was great.
Also just listened to Crying in H Mart - I wasn't as bowled over as many people were, but there is a lot about food in relation to her somewhat fraught relationship to her mother who died too young from cancer, and her heritage.

[trudyjohns]

I really enjoyed The Lincoln Highway. Even though it is thick, it reads quickly. I, also, like Razorblade Tears, however, it’s very violent. Thanks for the great video.

[bookishsabrina]

I don't think Libertie is classified as YA. At my library, we definitely have it in the adult section. I enjoyed the audiobook though!

I've only read Erasure by Everett but it was extremely challenging and eye opening. I read it for a class I took in college about portrayals of violence in 20th century American lit (it was a very cool class).

I definitely want to get to The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois. I've heard nothing but incredible things.

I did not like Cloud Cuckoo Land! I explained in my review why, but essentially I thought it was kind of cloying and lacking in depth, despite being so long.

Happy reading 😊

[girlsaint]

I read What Strange Paradise. I liked it. It won the Giller Prize. I didn't predict it winning from the 12 longlisted books I read, but they were mostly spectacular anyway. So, it wasn't that Akkad's book had shortcomings, it was simply a preference on my part for a couple of the books in the running with What Strange Paradise. Thanks for the NYT list. I was waiting for it after you posted your WP list. Cheers from Nova Scotia.

[spexi]

It’s a type of cool IMO how that works - 📚 being FOR certain people; I read BEWILDERMENT a couple weeks ago and it was my favorite of the year and maybe ever. I’ve never resonated with a book character so much & am bewildered it’s a 9 year boy who gets that title.

[sarahrigg]

Percival Everett is amazing. I really enjoyed "Erasure." I didn't know he had a new book out, but I'm really interested in "The Trees" now!