NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
![](https://i0.wp.com/jennielyse.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bookstacks2.png?resize=515%2C171&ssl=1)
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:
- My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
- The Known World by Edward P Jones
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- Austerlitz by WG Sebald
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Outline by Rachel Cusk
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- The Sellout by Paul Beatty
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
- Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
- Erasure by Percival Everett
- Evicted by Matthew Desmond
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
- Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
- Citizen by Claudia Rankine
- Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Years by Annie Ernaux
- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
- A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
- H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
- A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
- Postwar by Tony Judt
- The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
- The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- A Mercy by Toni Morrison
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- The Vegetarian by Han Kang
- Trust by Hernan Diaz
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
- Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
- Runaway by Alice Munro
- Tenth of December by George Saunders
- The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
- The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
- Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Stay True by Hua Hsu
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Heavy by Kiese Laymon
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- 10:04 by Ben Lerner
- Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
- We the Animals by Justin Torres
- Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
- The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
- Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexeivich
- The Passage of Power by Robert Caro
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
- Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
- Septology by Jon Fosse
- A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
- The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
- Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
- Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labtut
- The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Pastoralia by George Saunders
- Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
- Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
- The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
- The Return by Hisham Matar
- The Sympathizer by by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- The Human Stain by Philip Roth
- The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
- Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
- Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- How to be Both by Ali Smith
- 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?
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.
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. 😂
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).
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.
Unsurprisingly I have not read any from the list. I am not really drawn to literary fiction. Good luck with the ones on your TBR!
I don’t really like literary fiction either, lol. I usually think it’s boring and too pretentious. 😀