The NY Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Reacting to the NY Times' list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century discussing what I've read, what I want to read and what books I'd add. Click ‘Show More’ for info & links.

--------------------

Some of my additions:

The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

The Parcel by Anosh Irani

My full reviews of some of these books:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Outline by Rachel Cusk

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

The Years by Annie Ernaux (translated by Alison L Strayer)

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Tiina Nunnally)

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

The Other Name by Jon Fosse (translated by Damion Searls)

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes)

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (translated by Adrian Nathan West)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
6:09 The 100 Best Books list
33:05 Three books I would add
34:48 Conclusion

--------------------

Get in touch

[mrenadid]

This is updated list for 21. century from Quora "Once upon a book" reading forum - top 100 books. I post it because this lists are updated daily and changed frequently.

100. Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke
99. Ali Smith: How to Be Both
98. Ann Patchett: Bel Canto
97. Jesmyn Ward: Men We Reaped
96. Saidiya Hartman: Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments
95. Hilary Mantel: Bring Up the Bodies
94. Zadie Smith: On Beauty
93. Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven
92. Elena Ferrante: The Days of Abandonment
91. Philip Roth: The Human Stain
90. Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer
89. Hisham Matar: The Return
88. Lydia Davis: The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
87. Torrey Peters: Detransition, Baby
86. David W. Blight: Frederick Douglass
85. George Saunders: Pastoralia
84. Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Emperor of All Maladies
83. Benjamin Labatut: When We Cease to Understand the World
82. Fernanda Melchor: Hurricane Season
81. John Jeremiah Sullivan: Pulphead
80. Elena Ferrante: The Story of the Lost Child
79. Lucia Berlin: A Manual for Cleaning Women
78. Jon Fosse: Septology
77. Tayari Jones: An American Marriage
76. Gabrielle Zevin: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
75. Mohsin Hamid: Exit West
74. Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge
73. Robert A. Caro: The Passage of Power
72. Svetlana Alexievitch: Secondhand Time
71. Tove Ditlevsen: The Copenhagen Trilogy
70. Edward P. Jones: All Aunt Hagar’s Children
69. Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
68. Sigrid Nunez: The Friend
67. Andrew Solomon: Far from the Tree
66. Justin Torres: We the Animals
65. Philip Roth: The Plot Against America
64. Rebecca Makkai: The Great Believers
63. Mary Gaitskill: Veronica
62. Ben Lerner: 10:04
61. Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead
60. Kiese Laymon: Heavy
59. Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
58. Hua Hsu: Stay True
57. Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
56. Rachel Kushner: The Flame Throwers
55. Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower
54. George Saunders: Tenth of December
53. Alice Munro: Runaway
52. Denis Johnson: Train Dreams
51. Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
50. Hernan Diaz: Trust
49. Han Kang: The Vegetarian
48. Marjane Satrapi: Perseopolis
47. Toni Morrison: A Mercy
46. Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch
45. Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts
44. N. K. Jemisin: The Fifth Season
43. Tony Judt: Postwar
42. Marlon James: A Brief History of Seven Killings
41. Claire Keegan: Small Things Like These
40. Helen Macdonald: H Is for Hawk
39. Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad
38. Roberto Bolano: The Savage Detectives
37. Annie Ernaux: The Years
36. Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me
35. Alison Bechdel: Fun Home
34. Claudia Rankine: Citizen
33. Jesmyn Ward: Salvage the Bones
32. Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
31. Zadie Smith: White Teeth
30. Jesmyn Ward: Sing, Unburied, Sing
29. Helen DeWitt: The Last Samurai
28. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
27. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah
26. Ian McEwan: Atonement
25. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family
24. Richard Powers: The Overstory
23. Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
22. Katherine Boo: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
21. Matthew Desmond: Evicted
20. Percival Everett: Erasure
19. Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing
18. George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo
17. Paul Beatty: The Sellout
16. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
15. Min Jin Lee: Pachinko
14. Rachael Cusk: Outline
13. Cormac McCarthy: The Road
12. Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
11. Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
10. Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
9. Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
8. W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz
7. Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
6. Roberto Bolano: 2666
5. Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
4. Edward P. Jones: The Known World
3. Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
2. Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns
1. Adam Medvidović: Night in Zagreb (first part in the series, and I have to add here that people dont understand that people value this book believing informations in the serie to be true - revelation of the third secret of Fatima, etc... Its not mentioned anywhere in book description... and people voted for whole serie to be considered as such, not just "Night in Zagreb", because there is "Process notice" "Big meeting in New York" and "Cwayka" so this is partially wrong information)

[janetlee]

Thanks for your insight on the list! I wish you gave a tiny bit more detail on why you liked certain novels. Definitely added Love Songs of WEB DuBois on my list!

[mame-musing]

I haven’t tallied up how many I’ve read however there are a few I would have liked to see included: Milkman by Anna Burns, Women Talking by Miriam Toews, Educated by Tara Westover. I agree with you about Lila rather than Gideon. In “Nickeled & Dimed” the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, consecutively worked at various minimum or low wage jobs and wrote about how daunting it can be to find housing and groceries as a sole provider in that situation. The dollar amounts of wage rates and rents are a bit dated but the reality remains.

[maryannchandonnait]

So many books, so little time! I would add I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger and Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I've only read about 6 on the list and hope to get to a few more this year.

[vayres]

A very anglo- saxon list. Roth, Munro, Egan, McCarthy, Mcewan, Mantel, Hisham Matar are my favorites and I read them all. Strangely Auster and Delillo don't appear here.

[rebecca.reader]

Im just about to start on my Ferrante journey too. Very much anticipated. By the way, i have a different cover for My Brilliant Friend...its nuch more appealing! That cover that you have has always put me off a little 😂

[StuMoore-kr]

I have read 21 and own another 7 not read yet. I agree with you about the multiples for an author. Would have liked to see more authors represented and then all with just one book on the list each. I'm mildly shocked that you have not read Middlesex or Kavalier and Clay - both quite popular and very good reads. For new books I would also echo that The Bee Sting by Paul Murray was quite memorable and well written. The Fifth Season being included on the list is really something, since it is a fantasy book. It is really almost it's own little genre by way of being so different. I am very interested in reading The Last Samurai - before this list came out I would have just assumed it was the source material for the Tom Cruise movie. LOL

[jamiebbooks]

My list might include The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid; Babel, by RF Kuang; Woman at 1000 Degrees, by Hallgrimur Helgason; and The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng. It is so early in the century though that I'm sure many of my current top books from this century will look very different by the time I'm done reading.

[karakask]

I went through, and I had read 19, and I only did "want to read" if I had on my shelf but haven't read. 26, I have 26. I need to get to reading! (Septology and The Copenhagen Trilogy were published as single volumes in the U.S. so I think that's why they're included as a whole)

[jcgothard]

Is there a written list of book titles

[kimswhims]

Not sure that I've read that many maybe 24? I'd add a few Australians, Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, The Yield by Tara June Winch, The Living Sea of the Waking Dream by Richard Flanagan, Breath by Tim Winton, Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, The Spare Room by Helen Garner, Sorry by Gail Jones, there's probably others that I'd consider maybe Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton or his other one, Boy Swallowed Universe. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas or one of his others (but I haven't read them yet). So many others...

[betsymaher]

I haven't read many of them. I did like The Year of Magical Thinking, especially the beginning of the book and then hearing about her daughter too. I'm reading The Warmth of Other Suns right now and like it a lot. I loved A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which isn't on the list. I also liked Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and The Gift of Rain by Tan Tvan Eng which aren't on the list. One of my favorite books is Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck, also not on the list.

[jennrecord]

I just finished The Love Songs of W.E.B DuBois earlier this month such a great book. Tom Lake of course. And I would add The Women by Kristen Hannah Hannah.

[anthonygudwien]

Thanks for this video. I've listed twenty-five novels that should've been on this list. A few of these were published in their original language before the 21st Century. Nonetheless, the English translation of all of these appeared in this century.
Elizabeth Costello: J.M. Coetzee
Satantango: Laszlo Krasznahorkai
A Sense of an Ending: Julian Barnes
The Map and the Territory: Michel Houellebecq
I Curse the River of Time: Per Petterson
In Memory of Memory: Maria Stepanova
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Olga Tokarczuk
Milkman: Anna Burns
Elena Knows: Claudia Piñeiro
Solar Bones: Mike McCormack
The Ice Palace: Tarjai Vesaas
Heaven and Hell: Jon Kalman Stefansson
The Passenger/Stella Maris: Cormac McCarthy
Against the Day: Thomas Pynchon
Solenoid: Mircea Cărtărescu
Public Reading Followed by Discussion: Danielle Mémoire
Indecision: Benjamin Kunkel
Remainder: Tom McCarthy
Ducks, Newburyport: Lucy Ellmann
The Door: Magda Szabo
All That Is: James Salter
Barley Patch: Gerald Murname
Lost Paradise: Cees Nooteboom
The Promise: Damon Galgut
Minor Detail: Adania Shibli

[marianmccaffrey]

Shuggie Bain should have been there. Young Mungo also by Douglas Stuart was great too.

[tjpieraccini]

Yes to Ducks, Newburyport! That was the one I was waiting for. Lucy Ellmann continues to be robbed...

[arekkrolak]

I genuinely expected my score to be 0/0 but I actually read 5 of these and I am interested in 5 more :)

[raymondconners]

Definitely missing Kafka on the Shore.

[reenajoseph]

Cutting for Stone would be in my list or the new one Covenant of Water

[GuroFlemmen]

I think Septology is considered as 1 book with 7 parts published in 3 volumes. So for that one at least, it's right that the complete work is listed as one entry.
Read 9, want to read 6.