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NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

When I visited Helen’s Book Blog on Sunday, I saw that the New York Times created a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and knew I needed to take a look. Even though I’ve usually only read a handful of books on these types of lists, I always think it’s fun to compare.

I’ll put a next to the ones I’ve read, a next to the ones on my TBR, and an next to the ones I’ve attempted and haven’t finished. Without further ado, here’s the NYT’s list:

  1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
  3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  4. The Known World by Edward P Jones
  5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  6. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
  7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  8. Austerlitz by WG Sebald
  9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
  12. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  13. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  14. Outline by Rachel Cusk
  15. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
  16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
  17. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
  18. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  19. Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
  20. Erasure by Percival Everett
  21. Evicted by Matthew Desmond
  22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
  24. The Overstory by Richard Powers
  25. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
  26. Atonement by Ian McEwan
  27. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  28. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  29. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
  30. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
  31. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  32. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
  33. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
  34. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
  35. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
  36. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  37. The Years by Annie Ernaux
  38. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
  39. A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
  40. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
  41. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  42. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
  43. Postwar by Tony Judt
  44. The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
  45. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
  46. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  47. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
  48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  49. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
  50. Trust by Hernan Diaz
  51. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
  52. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
  53. Runaway by Alice Munro
  54. Tenth of December by George Saunders
  55. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
  56. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
  57. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
  58. Stay True by Hua Hsu
  59. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  60. Heavy by Kiese Laymon
  61. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
  62. 10:04 by Ben Lerner
  63. Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
  64. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
  65. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
  66. We the Animals by Justin Torres
  67. Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
  68. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
  69. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
  70. All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
  71. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
  72. Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexeivich
  73. The Passage of Power by Robert Caro
  74. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  75. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
  76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  77. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
  78. Septology by Jon Fosse
  79. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
  80. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
  81. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
  82. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
  83. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labtut
  84. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  85. Pastoralia by George Saunders
  86. Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
  87. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
  88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
  89. The Return by Hisham Matar
  90. The Sympathizer by by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  91. The Human Stain by Philip Roth
  92. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
  93. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  94. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
  95. Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
  96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
  97. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
  98. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  99. How to be Both by Ali Smith
  100. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

If my count is correct, I’ve read 1 of the 100 and I have 6 on my TBR. Honestly, now that I’ve read through the whole list, I’m not surprised by my results. I’m not a huge fan of literary fiction. I prefer other genres, which mostly accounts for the 6 books on my TBR. When I do read literary fiction, it’s usually because of my IRL book club.

What about you? How many of these books have you read? How many are on your TBR? Do you agree with the list?

About Jenni Elyse


Hi, I'm Jenni. I’m an eclectic reader. I mostly read fiction and I favor fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery, thrillers, and romance. The more kissing in a book the better!
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6 replies
  1. Margaret
    Margaret says:

    I’ve read eight and many of them I absolutely loved like Middlesex, Demon Copperhead, The Great Believers, The Sympathizer and Station Eleven. Some were OK like Pachinko and An American Marriage. I hated Lincoln in the Bardo. Honestly, I have no desire to read any book just because it made a list or won an award. Often those books are too heavy and depressing.

    • Jenni Elyse
      Jenni Elyse says:

      I honestly have only heard of Station Eleven and Pachinko from your list. I’ll have to take a look at Middlesex, Demon Copperhead, The Great Believers, and The Sympathizer if you liked them so much. I can’t guarantee I will too, lol. I agree that the books on these lists are usually heavy and depressing. 😂

  2. Sophia @ Bookwyrming Thoughts
    Sophia @ Bookwyrming Thoughts says:

    Shockingly, I read two of them, though both were for a class – one from high school and one from college – because like you, I don’t read much literary fiction. I have 2-3 others as well, but they border a little on sci-fi/fantasy, which definitely is my cup of tea (though Pachinko doesn’t fall under any of those).

    • Jenni Elyse
      Jenni Elyse says:

      Ha! Yeah, I totally get that. A lot of the time with these types of lists, the reason I’ve read something was because of a class. In this case, I read LIFE AFTER LIFE for book club.

      I’m also a huge fan of sci-fi/fantasy and the reason some of these books are on my TBR.

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