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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?

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Top Ten Tuesday #45

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Reasons I Loved Remarkably Bright Creatures

This week’s theme is a fun one, I think. It’s “Ten Things I Loved About [___]” and it comes with instructions. They are to pick a book title. It didn’t take me long to figure out which book I wanted to gush about. REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. Here are ten eight reasons I love it as much as I do:

Marcellus: It’s mostly told in a third-person limited POV and it’s sometimes told in a charming first-person POV from Marcellus, the octopus, the star of the book. He’s smart, snarky, a little bit cranky, and a delightful narrator.

Tova: Tova’s the main human character. She’s such a likable person despite being a bit closed off because of grief. She reminded me a bit of my own grandmother whose family, like Tova’s, immigrated to the US while she was very young.

Friendship: There are many forms of friendship but my favorite is the one between Tova and Marcellus. Their friendship reminds us, not in a preachy way, that animals know more than they let on and they each have feelings and deserve our kindness and respect.

Unputdownable: As soon as I started reading REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, I could tell it was going to suck me right in and it did. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I still think about it long after I finished reading it.

All the Feels: I laughed, I cried, and I smiled. I felt so many emotions while reading this beautiful story.

Great Discussion: It’s a very heart-warming story of love, loss, grief, and resilience and garnered a great discussion at my IRL book club. Even though most of my book club rated it high, we still had things to talk about.

Fredrik Backman Read-a-Like: It reminded me of something written by Fredrik Backman. Both authors draw you right in to the story and characters because they make you feel something.

My Octopus Teacher: One of my friends recommended I watch MY OCTOPUS TEACHER on Netflix because I loved this story as much as I did. I’m so glad I decided to watch it. I adored it. It was captivating and it made Marcellus more real to me.

What about you? Have you read REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES? If so, did you love it as much as I did?

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Review: Hello, Transcriber

Review: Hello, TranscriberTitle: Hello, Transcriber
Author: Hannah Morrissey
Series: Black Harbor #1
Genre(s): Romance, Thriller
Pages: 304
Source: Library
For: Personal Interest
Rating:
Sexual Content: 3 Flames

Add to Goodreads

There's content in this book that may be triggering to some readers. I've tried to include the possible triggers in this book at end of my review.
Goodreads Synopsis

Every night, while the street lamps shed the only light on Wisconsin's most crime-ridden city, police transcriber Hazel Greenlee listens as detectives divulge Black Harbor's gruesome secrets. As an aspiring writer, Hazel believes that writing a novel could be her only ticket out of this frozen hellscape. And then her neighbor confesses to hiding the body of an overdose victim in a dumpster.

My Thoughts

I found out WHEN I’M DEAD, one of my Book of the Month (BOTM) books, is the third book in the Black Harbor series. I wanted to read it this month so I decided to check out the first (HELLO, TRANSCRIBER) and second (THE WIDOWMAKER) books from my library.

I’m glad I decided to read HELLO, TRANSCRIBER. It was a captivating romantic thriller. Thanks to Morrissey’s beautifully descriptive prose, I zipped right through it by staying up all night listening to the audiobook. It hooked me right from the beginning and has left me thinking about the characters and their relationships.

HELLO, TRANSCRIBER is more than a thriller with romantic fluff. It’s also a thought-provoking story that deals with hard subjects like spousal abuse, depression and suicidal ideation, homo- and transphobia, and drug use in minors.

As I read HELLO, TRANSCRIBER, I could see the big twist at the end. Knowing about the twist didn’t ruin the suspense or story for me, though, because I still wanted to know how everything would play out. View Spoiler »

Before I started reading HELLO, TRANSCRIBER, I thought the series was a classic series with the same characters in each novel. However, I’ve since learned that the sequels are companion novels with different characters that take place in Black Harbor. Despite this, I look forward to reading both sequels and any others Morrissey writes.

Have you read HELLO, TRANSCRIBER? If so, what did you think?

Trigger Warning

There is a trigger warning for suicide, suicidal ideation, cheating on a spouse, spousal abuse, homo- and transphobia, and drug use.

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Sunday News #60

Sunday Post and Sunday Salon are blog news memes hosted at Caffeinated Reviewer and Reader Buzz, respectively. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week on your blog, and showcase books and other things.
What Happened this Week

I’ve decided to change up my Sunday News posts. I’ve realized how much I disliked trying to think of something to share in each category every week.

Anyway, this week has been kind of quiet. I spent some time with my BFF. Her birthday was Thursday. Corey and I went to dinner with her and her family, we ate cake and cookies, played some Mario Kart and Boomerang FU on the Switch, and watched CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart.

We also went to my BFF’s oldest daughter’s jazz band concert on Friday morning. She plays both the clarinet and tenor sax like her mom. It’s been really fun to watch her grow and gain confidence in her playing skills.

What I Blogged

Here’s what I posted on the blog this week:

What I Read and I’m Reading

I finished rereading SUNRUNNER’S FIRE this week. I’m really glad I decided to reread the Dragon Prince trilogy. It was fun to revisit some of my favorite stories and characters. You can click the link above if you’re interested in my thoughts about the trilogy.

I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night so I listened to the HELLO, TRANSCRIBER audiobook and finished it before Corey woke up. I’ll be posting my review tomorrow.

I finally started reading FOURTH WING this week. I haven’t gotten very far because I’ve been really tired this week. I’m really excited to see what all the hype’s about.

I also started listening to the WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING audiobook. I started reading the Kindle book a couple of years ago but got sidetracked and never finished it. I went through my library’s available audiobooks and it was one of them. I really like the audiobook so far.

How was your week? Anything exciting happen?

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Before I Blogged: Dragon Prince Trilogy

Before I Blogged is a feature here at JenniElyse. The idea is to post my original review of a book I recently reread and my feelings after the reread.

I recently reread the Dragon Prince trilogy by Melanie Rawn. Here are my original reviews of each book:

Dragon Prince: June 9, 2008

During lunch today, I finished reading DRAGON PRINCE by Melanie Rawn. This is the first book in the Dragon Prince trilogy. Becky, one of my co-workers, recommended it to me and I’m glad she did because DRAGON PRINCE has earned a place as one of my favorite books.

Upon the death of Rohan’s father, Prince Zehava, Rohan finds himself as the prince of the Desert, one of the vast princedoms of the Continent ruled by the evil High Prince Roelstra. Sioned is a Sunrunner witch and is Rohan’s chosen bride. Together, they must outwit Roelstra to maintain their lands and establish peace throughout the Continent.

The story’s very intriguing and captured my attention by the end of the second chapter. In fact, it was one of those books I didn’t want to put down. The story has elements for everyone, such as romance, adventure, betrayal, conflict, and fantasy.

The Star Scroll: October 2, 2008

Tuesday evening, I finished reading THE STAR SCROLL by Melanie Rawn. It’s the second book in the Dragon Prince trilogy.

Just like its predecessor, THE STAR SCROLL has earned a place as one of my favorite books. The story has elements for everyone, such as romance, adventure, betrayal, conflict, and fantasy. By the end of the first page, I couldn’t put the book down. It only took me as long as it did to read it because I had so many other things going on this month.

I loved THE STAR SCROLL because I was reintegrated into Rohan’s and Sioned’s life. I also met new characters, good and bad, and the new dynamic of sorcery was introduced.

Sunrunner’s Fire: December 28, 2008

Tonight, I finished reading SUNRUNNER’S FIRE by Melanie Rawn. It’s the third book in the Dragon Prince trilogy.

Just like its predecessors, SUNRUNNER’S FIRE has earned a place as one of my favorite books. Also, just like its predecessors, the story has elements for everyone, such as romance, adventure, fantasy, and conflict. I found the story to be riveting from beginning to end.

One of the reasons I loved SUNRUNNER’S FIRE is that it’s the end of the trilogy so most of the events that had been brewing from the beginning finally came to an end. The Sorcerers had a more central role in the story, which I thought was very interesting as I learned more about their powers and saw a glimpse of the reason for their hatred of the Sunrunners. I also loved watching the events in the lives of the characters, especially Rohan’s and Sioned’s, play out.

As I started to read SUNRUNNER’S FIRE, I knew Melanie Rawn had written a second trilogy that follows Pol’s life rather than Rohan’s, Pol’s father, and I didn’t expect all of the conflict to get resolved. By the end of SUNRUNNER’S FIRE, Rawn has laid the ground work for the Dragon Star trilogy to flourish into its own story. Luckily, there was enough closure that I don’t have to start the second trilogy immediately.

Reread Feelings

Wow. My reviews have gotten a lot better, thankfully. Lol.

Anyway, I’m glad I decided to reread this trilogy. I adore Rawn’s writing. I love the epic fantasy-ness of the series thanks to the fantastic world building, characters, relationships, political intrigue, and the ethical/moral issues the books explore. The trilogy actually reminded me a lot of DUNE, but fantasy, during my reread.

It seems that most, if not all, epic fantasy stories come with a huge cast of characters and the Dragon Prince trilogy is no different. I didn’t feel like any of the characters were superfluous and I especially love the two main ones. To top it all off, the villains are the kind I love to hate.

One of my favorite aspects of the trilogy is the farahd’im (Sunrunners) and diarmahd’im (Sorcerers). People who are born with faradhi gifts are sent to Goddess Keep to be trained in the sunrunning arts of weaving light using the power of the sun and moon, call fire and wind, and conjure images of the future. The diarmahd’im have been in hiding for hundreds of years because of their differences with the farahd’im. They also weave light, call fire and wind AND earth and water, and produce conjurings using the forbidden power of the stars.

I hope to start reading the Dragon Star trilogy within the next couple of months. I’m excited to find out what happens. Hopefully, my two favorite characters are still a part of the stories.

What about you? Have you read the Dragon Prince trilogy and / or the Dragon Star trilogy? If so, what did you think about either or both?

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