Spoiler: Stephen King voted for himself, did not win
July 12, 2024 2:40 PM Subscribe
100 Best Books of the 21st Century. (NYT gift link)
As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers: the Top Ten Lists. (NYT gift link)
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012)
2. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
4. The Known World, Edward P. Jones (2003)
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
6. 2666, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2008)
7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (2016)
8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald; trans. Anthea Bell (2001)
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
14. Outline, Rachel Cusk (2015)
15. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee (2017)
16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
17. The Sellout, Paul Beatty (2015)
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)
19. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe (2019)
20. Erasure, Percival Everett (2001)
21. Evicted, Matthew Desmond (2016)
22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo (2012)
23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro (2001)
24. The Overstory, Richard Powers (2018)
25. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
27. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (2000)
30. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (2017)
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)
32. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward (2011)
34. Citizen, Claudia Rankine (2014)
35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
36. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
37. The Years, Annie Ernaux; trans. Alison L. Strayer (2018)
38. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2007)
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010)
40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2015)
41. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (2021)
42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014)
43. Postwar, Tony Judt (2005)
44. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (2015)
45. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2015)
46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013)
47. A Mercy, Toni Morrison (2008)
48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
49. The Vegetarian, Han Kang; trans. Deborah Smith (2016)
50. Trust, Hernan Diaz (2022)
51. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (2013)
52. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson (2011)
53. Runaway, Alice Munro (2004)
54. Tenth of December, George Saunders (2013)
55. The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright (2006)
56. The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner (2013)
57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
58. Stay True, Hua Hsu (2022)
59. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
60. Heavy, Kiese Laymon (2018)
61. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
62. 10:04, Ben Lerner (2014)
63. Veronica, Mary Gaitskill (2005)
64. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (2018)
65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)
66. We the Animals, Justin Torres (2011)
67. Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon (2012)
68. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez (2018)
69. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (2010)
70. All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P. Jones (2006)
71. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen; trans. by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (2021)
72. Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro (2012)
74. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (2008)
75. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (2017)
76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (2022)
77. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones (2018)
78. Septology, Jon Fosse; trans. Damion Searls (2022)
79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin (2015)
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015)
81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
82. Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor; trans. Sophie Hughes (2020)
83. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut; trans. Adrian Nathan West (2021)
84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)
85. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
86. Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight (2018)
87. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters (2021)
88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis (2010)
89. The Return, Hisham Matar (2016)
90. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
91. The Human Stain, Philip Roth (2000)
92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2005)
93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012)
96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman (2019)
97. Men We Reaped Jesmyn Ward (2013)
98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
99. How to Be Both, Ali Smith (2014)
100. Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson (2007)
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012)
2. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
4. The Known World, Edward P. Jones (2003)
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
6. 2666, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2008)
7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (2016)
8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald; trans. Anthea Bell (2001)
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
14. Outline, Rachel Cusk (2015)
15. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee (2017)
16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
17. The Sellout, Paul Beatty (2015)
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)
19. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe (2019)
20. Erasure, Percival Everett (2001)
21. Evicted, Matthew Desmond (2016)
22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo (2012)
23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro (2001)
24. The Overstory, Richard Powers (2018)
25. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
27. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (2000)
30. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (2017)
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)
32. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward (2011)
34. Citizen, Claudia Rankine (2014)
35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
36. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
37. The Years, Annie Ernaux; trans. Alison L. Strayer (2018)
38. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2007)
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010)
40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2015)
41. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (2021)
42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014)
43. Postwar, Tony Judt (2005)
44. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (2015)
45. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2015)
46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013)
47. A Mercy, Toni Morrison (2008)
48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
49. The Vegetarian, Han Kang; trans. Deborah Smith (2016)
50. Trust, Hernan Diaz (2022)
51. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (2013)
52. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson (2011)
53. Runaway, Alice Munro (2004)
54. Tenth of December, George Saunders (2013)
55. The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright (2006)
56. The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner (2013)
57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
58. Stay True, Hua Hsu (2022)
59. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
60. Heavy, Kiese Laymon (2018)
61. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
62. 10:04, Ben Lerner (2014)
63. Veronica, Mary Gaitskill (2005)
64. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (2018)
65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)
66. We the Animals, Justin Torres (2011)
67. Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon (2012)
68. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez (2018)
69. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (2010)
70. All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P. Jones (2006)
71. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen; trans. by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (2021)
72. Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro (2012)
74. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (2008)
75. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (2017)
76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (2022)
77. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones (2018)
78. Septology, Jon Fosse; trans. Damion Searls (2022)
79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin (2015)
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015)
81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
82. Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor; trans. Sophie Hughes (2020)
83. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut; trans. Adrian Nathan West (2021)
84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)
85. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
86. Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight (2018)
87. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters (2021)
88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis (2010)
89. The Return, Hisham Matar (2016)
90. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
91. The Human Stain, Philip Roth (2000)
92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2005)
93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012)
96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman (2019)
97. Men We Reaped Jesmyn Ward (2013)
98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
99. How to Be Both, Ali Smith (2014)
100. Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson (2007)
Only twelve books not originally written in English?!? This is pathetically parochial.
posted by Kattullus at 2:50 PM on July 12 [10 favorites]
posted by Kattullus at 2:50 PM on July 12 [10 favorites]
Were there ones on this list that people really liked?
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel are outstanding books. Fun Home is the reason I create comics.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:55 PM on July 12 [7 favorites]
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel are outstanding books. Fun Home is the reason I create comics.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:55 PM on July 12 [7 favorites]
We aren't even a quarter into it.
posted by mhoye at 2:59 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 2:59 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
I feel confident in finding fault with this list, despite having only read four of the books: The 21st century started on January 1st, 2001.
posted by justkevin at 3:10 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
posted by justkevin at 3:10 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
I know it's just a list and there are other books I'm happy to see in it, but seeing Edward P. Jones twice delights me.
posted by kingless at 3:11 PM on July 12
posted by kingless at 3:11 PM on July 12
Yeah, so it’s a truism that’s book that speaks to its time does not speak to the future. By this metric, the best books of the 21st C needs to wait until about 2150.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:12 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:12 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
I appreciated the authors' top 10 lists, especially the ones that don't have much overlap with the top 100. Stephen King voting for one of his own books was also great.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:20 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:20 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
I've read 15 of these which is more than I was expecting. My Brilliant Friend was a great read but nothing about it really stayed with me, Atonement gave me some inspiration for my garden if nothing else. Would I have picked either for the top book of the century (so far)? No, but the point of these lists for me isn't the ranking but having a list you can look at and remind yourself of books you've read, meant to read, or should get around to reading.
I will say that I'm happy that Exit West made it onto this list but kind of surprised that Against the Day didn't, although that may be more of a 20th Century book that was published in the 21st.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:23 PM on July 12
I will say that I'm happy that Exit West made it onto this list but kind of surprised that Against the Day didn't, although that may be more of a 20th Century book that was published in the 21st.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:23 PM on July 12
some of these are really good books
posted by entropone at 3:37 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
posted by entropone at 3:37 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
I've read a surprising number of these. Gilead is one heck of a book, if you ask me. Of the ones I've read, Gilead, Austerlitz, Fun Home and the Savage Detectives seem to me to have the most staying power.
The Warmth of Other Suns is a great book, but I think that one problem with mixing fiction and non-fiction on this list is that there just isn't nearly as much shared popular awareness about ambitious non-fiction. Lose Your Mother, for instance, and The Half Has Never Been Told are both astonishing non-fiction about slavery and its afterlives, but they are less well-known. Granted, I would not like to be forced to rank the three, maybe we'd just have to cut up the golden apple.
I will say that while these lists can't ever begin to be adequate, most of the books I've read from this one are pretty solid. There are a couple,here unnamed, that I think are really overrated.
posted by Frowner at 3:42 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
The Warmth of Other Suns is a great book, but I think that one problem with mixing fiction and non-fiction on this list is that there just isn't nearly as much shared popular awareness about ambitious non-fiction. Lose Your Mother, for instance, and The Half Has Never Been Told are both astonishing non-fiction about slavery and its afterlives, but they are less well-known. Granted, I would not like to be forced to rank the three, maybe we'd just have to cut up the golden apple.
I will say that while these lists can't ever begin to be adequate, most of the books I've read from this one are pretty solid. There are a couple,here unnamed, that I think are really overrated.
posted by Frowner at 3:42 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
48/50, possibly 50/50 because there are two books where I genuinely can't remember if I read them or read a lot about them, and that was at a time when I was avoiding goodreads. I read very little book-length non-fiction--most of my non-fiction reading is made up of articles in The New Yorker, and the rest of it is about overcoming procrastination.
Obviously procrastination won for today.
The books I have recently been unable to stop talking about are the Wolf Hall series, which I am now seriously into years after everyone else is over them, and Lady Joker by Kaoru Takamura (trans. Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell), which is not on this list, possibly because it was originally published in 1997 and the translation is 2022, possibly because you need to get through the first 500 pages of tedium before getting to the next 675 pages that are amazing.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:43 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
Obviously procrastination won for today.
The books I have recently been unable to stop talking about are the Wolf Hall series, which I am now seriously into years after everyone else is over them, and Lady Joker by Kaoru Takamura (trans. Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell), which is not on this list, possibly because it was originally published in 1997 and the translation is 2022, possibly because you need to get through the first 500 pages of tedium before getting to the next 675 pages that are amazing.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:43 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I know it’s just the title..: but I am dying to tell someone, somewhere, how much I loathe Stephen King. Because he hates women and his writing drips with that 70s author disdain for the feminine.
Maybe his new stuff is fine.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
As you were.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:44 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Maybe his new stuff is fine.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
As you were.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:44 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
However, if this is ranked list, I would not put My Brilliant Friend first. I dunno, I read the first three of that series and they're good, but I was really kind of let down by them. I was expecting to be absolutely blown away, and they felt like the grimdark version of Marge Piercy's non-SF novels, which are also very good but no one is putting them on best-of lists.
posted by Frowner at 3:44 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
posted by Frowner at 3:44 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I don't read a ton of contemporary literature but this has two books I actively disliked (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and A Visit From the Goon Squad both of which I read over ten years ago so maybe my opinion would be different now), a number I thought were fine (e.g. The Goldfinch which I mostly liked but think needed more editing), and at least a few I liked a lot (I think Bel Canto should be higher) and gives me some ideas to add to my reading list so thank you for that -- very excited to hear other people's takes!
posted by an octopus IRL at 3:49 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
posted by an octopus IRL at 3:49 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
There are a couple,here unnamed, that I think are really overrated.
When I was putting together the list, my original plan was to put the books I like in bold and the books I think are mediocre in small. Sadly, that plan would have also required the blink tag.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:58 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
When I was putting together the list, my original plan was to put the books I like in bold and the books I think are mediocre in small. Sadly, that plan would have also required the blink tag.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:58 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
I have read 20! Mostly for book club, but not exclusively. I do think some more SFF could be on this list. But at least several genre books were nominated by the reviewers.
The Warmth of Other Suns
Wolf Hall
the Underground Railroad
Never Let Me Go
Gilead
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Road
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Atonement
Cloud Atlas
Sing, Unburied, Sing
White Teeth
A Visit From the Goon Squad
H is for Hawk
The Fifth Season
Persepolis
Life After Life
Middlesex
Olive Kitteridge
Station Eleven
Bring Up the Bodies
Bel Canto
posted by suelac at 4:03 PM on July 12
The Warmth of Other Suns
Wolf Hall
the Underground Railroad
Never Let Me Go
Gilead
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Road
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Atonement
Cloud Atlas
Sing, Unburied, Sing
White Teeth
A Visit From the Goon Squad
H is for Hawk
The Fifth Season
Persepolis
Life After Life
Middlesex
Olive Kitteridge
Station Eleven
Bring Up the Bodies
Bel Canto
posted by suelac at 4:03 PM on July 12
I have read 14 of these and I think it's a good list based on my limited knowledge. 2666 is my favorite book from this period and it ranks highly, and I love Elena Ferrante so it adds up. But again, I really can't claim to know much.
I sort of thought Knausgård would make it on this sort of list, but perhaps his memoirs aren't really acclaimed by critics and authors.
posted by chaz at 4:08 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I sort of thought Knausgård would make it on this sort of list, but perhaps his memoirs aren't really acclaimed by critics and authors.
posted by chaz at 4:08 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
The Goldfinch which I mostly liked but think needed more editing
Yeah, The Goldfinch is definitely mid. Lots of authors have multiple books on here which seems a bit ridiculous to me, and I'm gonna say that The Reluctant Funadamentalist is a better book than Exit West, although both are solid works. And among books on displacement and identity, Aleksandar Hemon's Nowhere Man or Teju Cole's Open City rank right up there and I think belong on this list.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:18 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
Yeah, The Goldfinch is definitely mid. Lots of authors have multiple books on here which seems a bit ridiculous to me, and I'm gonna say that The Reluctant Funadamentalist is a better book than Exit West, although both are solid works. And among books on displacement and identity, Aleksandar Hemon's Nowhere Man or Teju Cole's Open City rank right up there and I think belong on this list.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:18 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
Very happy to see Percival Everett and Paul Beatty on here, and I liked Egan's Goon Squad too. Also DeWitt and Hernan Diaz.
I think I've read 28 of the books on this list; I also think I really need to read Gilead.
I do think they shouldn't have had any writer twice; that would have made more room and we get it: Ferrante is universally appreciated, if not adored. Same goes for Saunders.
posted by chavenet at 4:18 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I think I've read 28 of the books on this list; I also think I really need to read Gilead.
I do think they shouldn't have had any writer twice; that would have made more room and we get it: Ferrante is universally appreciated, if not adored. Same goes for Saunders.
posted by chavenet at 4:18 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
(Yeah, Jessamyn, I would be willing to bet that Fun Home is gonna knock your socks off, if for no other reason that I have gathered over the years that you are also a member of the brilliant-but-difficult-dad club.)
I’ve read 54 of the list - well, I’m technically in the middle of Pulphead right now, so 53.5 - and I actually find it pretty unambitious as a supposed chronicle of our century thus far. But honestly as a goad to folks planning their summer reading, it does its job.
posted by minervous at 4:25 PM on July 12
I’ve read 54 of the list - well, I’m technically in the middle of Pulphead right now, so 53.5 - and I actually find it pretty unambitious as a supposed chronicle of our century thus far. But honestly as a goad to folks planning their summer reading, it does its job.
posted by minervous at 4:25 PM on July 12
Even funnier than Stephen King voting for himself is that he voted for "Under The Dome". My oh my.
posted by superelastic at 4:31 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
posted by superelastic at 4:31 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
Those are the ones I read:
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012)
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)
37. The Years, Annie Ernaux; trans. Alison L. Strayer (2018)
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010)
79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin (2015)
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015)
92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2005)
94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012)
All those books were well worth my time, would have probably ended up on my personal list as well, maybe with a slightly different ranking (would have placed Lucia Berlin much higher). I was a bit meh about the ones by Annie Ernaux and Jonathan Franzen, but Hilary Mantel, Elena Ferrante, Zadie Smith and Lucia Berlin are must-reads for me. I do plan to read more by Marilynne Robinson and George Saunders.
I feel kinda over Ian McEwan by now, but that's probably because I had a bit of an Ian McEwan phase in my twenties, and am now over-correcting. I think he's often trying too hard to be topical (and is not that perceptive, when it gets sociological), but I would be lying if I said he hadn't once played a huge role for me (my favourite of his is On Chesil Beach; slim and polished to the point of devastation).
I think this list is woefully missing Susanna Clarke!
posted by sohalt at 4:32 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012)
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)
37. The Years, Annie Ernaux; trans. Alison L. Strayer (2018)
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010)
79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin (2015)
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015)
92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2005)
94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012)
All those books were well worth my time, would have probably ended up on my personal list as well, maybe with a slightly different ranking (would have placed Lucia Berlin much higher). I was a bit meh about the ones by Annie Ernaux and Jonathan Franzen, but Hilary Mantel, Elena Ferrante, Zadie Smith and Lucia Berlin are must-reads for me. I do plan to read more by Marilynne Robinson and George Saunders.
I feel kinda over Ian McEwan by now, but that's probably because I had a bit of an Ian McEwan phase in my twenties, and am now over-correcting. I think he's often trying too hard to be topical (and is not that perceptive, when it gets sociological), but I would be lying if I said he hadn't once played a huge role for me (my favourite of his is On Chesil Beach; slim and polished to the point of devastation).
I think this list is woefully missing Susanna Clarke!
posted by sohalt at 4:32 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
I think this list is woefully missing Susanna Clarke!
Concur! How did none of the nominators mention Piranesi?
posted by suelac at 4:34 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
Concur! How did none of the nominators mention Piranesi?
posted by suelac at 4:34 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
I've read 20 of them, really loved some, thought others were overrated. Probably my favorite book on the list is The Argonauts.
I've only finished 19 of them actually because about halfway through 2666 I woke sitting up in my bed screaming, and decided it wasn't a book I could finish. I agree it is a work of genius and regret my human frailty.
posted by potrzebie at 4:46 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I've only finished 19 of them actually because about halfway through 2666 I woke sitting up in my bed screaming, and decided it wasn't a book I could finish. I agree it is a work of genius and regret my human frailty.
posted by potrzebie at 4:46 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I would be willing to bet that Fun Home is gonna knock your socks off
Oh gosh you and Frowner and jordantwodelta are right. I did love it and somehow missed counting it when I mentioned which books I liked. Fun Home was so relatable to me (beautiful self-involved mom, gay-adjacent-at-least dad, quirky sibling - four people occupying the same house basically separately) without having the cringe aspect to Are You My Mother. I agree, this would have been a better list if everyone could only place on it once.
posted by jessamyn at 4:47 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]
Oh gosh you and Frowner and jordantwodelta are right. I did love it and somehow missed counting it when I mentioned which books I liked. Fun Home was so relatable to me (beautiful self-involved mom, gay-adjacent-at-least dad, quirky sibling - four people occupying the same house basically separately) without having the cringe aspect to Are You My Mother. I agree, this would have been a better list if everyone could only place on it once.
posted by jessamyn at 4:47 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]
IMHO this list is pretty good!
posted by latkes at 4:51 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 4:51 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Oh also may I just complain how supremely annoying the 20-a-day rollout of this stupid clickbait list was? Especially the "AND NOW, THE BIG MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR, THE TOP 20!!!" they put up today? Like it's some kind of literary event. Guess I just really loathe the New York Times.
posted by potrzebie at 4:53 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 4:53 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
Now that I’ve gotten over my shock at this list, and after reading through the top ten lists, I’ve come to understand what this list is. These are all books that were talked about a lot when they were published, and most of the people the Times asked to contribute, at least judging by the top ten lists, are people who read books that are prominent in the discourse.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s a really good way to engage with literature, and I certainly read my share of books like that, but I think most readers tend to move haphazardly through the literary landscape, forging paths that meander along byways, cut across fields, and take detours into areas of natural beauty or past ruined industrial estates. But almost by definition, those kinds of readers would be hard pressed to make a consensus list of best books. Though some of the top ten listmakers are clearly in that category, and they alerted me to some books I should check up on.
But the ‘books that get a lot play in the media’ isn’t a random collection of books, these are the books that publishers with substantial resources decided to push hard. Many a pushed book fall flat, of course, but those books are given the chance to make it into the hands of people who do get asked to contribute to these kinds of lists. These are the books that have done well within the capitalist system as it is currently configured. I don’t think that lessens them in any way, but it’s definitely not really a quality that I seek in a book.
I note that there’s one book of poetry there (unless I missed some), which is one book of poetry more than I expected. Poetry, by its nature, fits badly into capitalism. Not because it’s niche, but because playing with language is fundamental to human nature. It’s never going to sit easily in a system built on economies of scale, rather than human-to-human contact. And that doesn’t lessen, or elevate, poetry. It’s just the way things are, and why, say, not even a book like Louise Glück’s Averno, even if it’s by a Nobel Prize Laureate, will show up on a list like that. Same goes for books from small publishers, or ones put out by university presses, or genre books, or translated books.
A book’s value to a reader is individual, because every reader creates their own text in their mind as they read them. It’s a fairly mysterious process, even to readers themselves, and it seems slightly ludicrous that you can ask a bunch of readers to somehow rank the ten best reading experiences they’ve had, of books published this century. Some, quite a few even, of the people whose top ten lists are featured don’t approach it that way, submitting programmatic lists of some kind, and that’s fine, but I’m not sure that really reflects how most readers think of books.
In some ways, the top ten lists I find most interesting from an analytical point of view are the ones who seem to be trying to predict what the future canon will look like, or so I can’t help but interpret the lists of people who nominate 5-8 books that ended up on the top 100. Canons are famously unpredictable. Any list of ‘best books’ produced near-contemporaneously will always look really strange from the perspective of the future. Who reads Booth Tarkington these days? But some people still want to get it right, want to read the correct books. And some of the books on that list probably will end up being canonized. Because they’ve navigated through the shoals of the capitalist system, and have given themselves every chance of being read in the future.
But that’s the list that we have here. I’m not sure there’s a way of making the kind of list that I dream of, a list that ranges widely across literature, pulling in books from many genres and countries, where novels as singular as Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria and Sara Mesa’s Four by Four can sit alongside poetry and plays and essays and whatever. I guess it would have to be a list that’s almost an argument, a list that’s as much opinion as it is an attempt to draw a contour map of the best literature. It would certainly be a failure, but it would be an interesting failure. More interesting than a list of the books that were pulled to the top by the invisible hand of capitialism.
posted by Kattullus at 5:01 PM on July 12 [23 favorites]
Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s a really good way to engage with literature, and I certainly read my share of books like that, but I think most readers tend to move haphazardly through the literary landscape, forging paths that meander along byways, cut across fields, and take detours into areas of natural beauty or past ruined industrial estates. But almost by definition, those kinds of readers would be hard pressed to make a consensus list of best books. Though some of the top ten listmakers are clearly in that category, and they alerted me to some books I should check up on.
But the ‘books that get a lot play in the media’ isn’t a random collection of books, these are the books that publishers with substantial resources decided to push hard. Many a pushed book fall flat, of course, but those books are given the chance to make it into the hands of people who do get asked to contribute to these kinds of lists. These are the books that have done well within the capitalist system as it is currently configured. I don’t think that lessens them in any way, but it’s definitely not really a quality that I seek in a book.
I note that there’s one book of poetry there (unless I missed some), which is one book of poetry more than I expected. Poetry, by its nature, fits badly into capitalism. Not because it’s niche, but because playing with language is fundamental to human nature. It’s never going to sit easily in a system built on economies of scale, rather than human-to-human contact. And that doesn’t lessen, or elevate, poetry. It’s just the way things are, and why, say, not even a book like Louise Glück’s Averno, even if it’s by a Nobel Prize Laureate, will show up on a list like that. Same goes for books from small publishers, or ones put out by university presses, or genre books, or translated books.
A book’s value to a reader is individual, because every reader creates their own text in their mind as they read them. It’s a fairly mysterious process, even to readers themselves, and it seems slightly ludicrous that you can ask a bunch of readers to somehow rank the ten best reading experiences they’ve had, of books published this century. Some, quite a few even, of the people whose top ten lists are featured don’t approach it that way, submitting programmatic lists of some kind, and that’s fine, but I’m not sure that really reflects how most readers think of books.
In some ways, the top ten lists I find most interesting from an analytical point of view are the ones who seem to be trying to predict what the future canon will look like, or so I can’t help but interpret the lists of people who nominate 5-8 books that ended up on the top 100. Canons are famously unpredictable. Any list of ‘best books’ produced near-contemporaneously will always look really strange from the perspective of the future. Who reads Booth Tarkington these days? But some people still want to get it right, want to read the correct books. And some of the books on that list probably will end up being canonized. Because they’ve navigated through the shoals of the capitalist system, and have given themselves every chance of being read in the future.
But that’s the list that we have here. I’m not sure there’s a way of making the kind of list that I dream of, a list that ranges widely across literature, pulling in books from many genres and countries, where novels as singular as Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria and Sara Mesa’s Four by Four can sit alongside poetry and plays and essays and whatever. I guess it would have to be a list that’s almost an argument, a list that’s as much opinion as it is an attempt to draw a contour map of the best literature. It would certainly be a failure, but it would be an interesting failure. More interesting than a list of the books that were pulled to the top by the invisible hand of capitialism.
posted by Kattullus at 5:01 PM on July 12 [23 favorites]
I’m not sure there’s a way of making the kind of list that I dream of...
There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from typing up your own list of your top 100 books published since 2000. That's why MetaFilter has a comment box.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:15 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from typing up your own list of your top 100 books published since 2000. That's why MetaFilter has a comment box.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:15 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I shocked myself by having read 18 of these, because I always see these lists and sigh, if only I had the time! But apparently over the past 24 years I had some time. Oh god, I'm about to write a wall of text. Forgive me.
I think I've already posted about my love of Hilary Mantel a million times here, but I'm glad she's represented. Beyond Black should have been on the list, as it's not only her best book, but I think somewhat more accessible than the Wolf Hall books, but still, she has some kind of divine gift with language, and the world is worse and darker without her in it.
I was really pleased to see Kate Atkinson here. Talk about combining art with accessibility, she is wonderful and tricky and deep without you ever feeling like she's doing a literature at you. Life After Life is probably the correct choice here, but Case Histories is magical if you don't want to read about...well...history.
I almost didn't finish Lincoln in the Bardo because I was like what is this, what is he trying to do and after reading the first few pages I put it down for years, literal years. I picked it up again last year on the advice of a friend, found myself instantly addicted to it and went on to enjoy his short story collections as well as his book on the Russian writers (which, if you're looking for a book on writing craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is SO GOOD).
I will never stop trying to convince people to read Percival Everett, and Erasure is the one I usually recommend (but The Trees is maybe better? Maybe 'better' isn't what I mean, it's a really different experience.)
I think I'm done with Zadie Smith--I liked On Beauty okay but it's a little like trying to eat an entire container of ice cream in one sitting (although I think the term 'hysterical realism' is mean, James Wood!). Also, I had great hopes for The Goldfinch and it was also okay but, like...where was its soul? The Line of Beauty, I just read last year, and it was marvelous, and I think if it had been around when I was younger it might have become one of those Formative Books you come across that change your brain wiring (his Swimming-Pool Library had certainly done that to me).
Now to read the rest of these books over the next 24 years. See you when I'm dead!
posted by mittens at 5:21 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
I think I've already posted about my love of Hilary Mantel a million times here, but I'm glad she's represented. Beyond Black should have been on the list, as it's not only her best book, but I think somewhat more accessible than the Wolf Hall books, but still, she has some kind of divine gift with language, and the world is worse and darker without her in it.
I was really pleased to see Kate Atkinson here. Talk about combining art with accessibility, she is wonderful and tricky and deep without you ever feeling like she's doing a literature at you. Life After Life is probably the correct choice here, but Case Histories is magical if you don't want to read about...well...history.
I almost didn't finish Lincoln in the Bardo because I was like what is this, what is he trying to do and after reading the first few pages I put it down for years, literal years. I picked it up again last year on the advice of a friend, found myself instantly addicted to it and went on to enjoy his short story collections as well as his book on the Russian writers (which, if you're looking for a book on writing craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is SO GOOD).
I will never stop trying to convince people to read Percival Everett, and Erasure is the one I usually recommend (but The Trees is maybe better? Maybe 'better' isn't what I mean, it's a really different experience.)
I think I'm done with Zadie Smith--I liked On Beauty okay but it's a little like trying to eat an entire container of ice cream in one sitting (although I think the term 'hysterical realism' is mean, James Wood!). Also, I had great hopes for The Goldfinch and it was also okay but, like...where was its soul? The Line of Beauty, I just read last year, and it was marvelous, and I think if it had been around when I was younger it might have become one of those Formative Books you come across that change your brain wiring (his Swimming-Pool Library had certainly done that to me).
Now to read the rest of these books over the next 24 years. See you when I'm dead!
posted by mittens at 5:21 PM on July 12 [8 favorites]
Hmmm! I’ve read six, started and DNF-ed a dozen or so. Kattullus is right about the nature of the list. Still, I’m glad the NYT, the most or second-most widely read paper in the U.S., did this. The choices are logical by and large, though many of them are books that were more important than good and won’t be read in 50 years.
Also much <3 for Bechdel. I wrote her once, and she wrote back, and it was a brief, pleasant conversation. I feel like FUN HOME really hit hard and had an impact, but I will be curious to see if people are talking about DTWOF more or less than it in 20 years. Very different works, each influential in their own ways.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:22 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Also much <3 for Bechdel. I wrote her once, and she wrote back, and it was a brief, pleasant conversation. I feel like FUN HOME really hit hard and had an impact, but I will be curious to see if people are talking about DTWOF more or less than it in 20 years. Very different works, each influential in their own ways.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:22 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
I'm still trying to square that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay came out almost a quarter century ago.
Also, I'm happy that some nonfiction got the nod, as I devoured The Passage of Power when it came out. Please Mr. Caro, finish the last one!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:29 PM on July 12
Also, I'm happy that some nonfiction got the nod, as I devoured The Passage of Power when it came out. Please Mr. Caro, finish the last one!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:29 PM on July 12
I've read 23 of these. Of those, I thought the following 10 were absolutely brilliant:
The Story of the Lost Child, Fun Home, The Fifth Season, Life After Life, Nickel and Dimed, How to Be Both, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Persepolis, Station Eleven, Cloud Atlas
I thought the following 7 were great, happy to see them on a list like this:
My Brilliant Friend, Gilead, The Road, Americanah, The Years, A Visit From the Goon Squad
There were 2 more I liked OK but wouldn't have put on a list like this, and 4 I was meh about.
Here are some books that I might have expected to see on this kind of list, but didn't:
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride
All the Lovers in the Night, by Mieko Kawakami
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, by David Foster Wallace
Her Body and Other Parties & In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado
Severance, by Ling Ma
No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Here are some books, in honor of Katullus' comment, that will never appear on a list like this and I wish they would:
Hild & Menewood, by Nicola Griffith
The Orphan's Tales, by Catherynne M. Valente
Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell
The Lost Steersman & The Language of Power, by Rosemary Kirstein
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi
A Stranger in Olondria & The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Ducks, by Kate Beaton
posted by kyrademon at 5:30 PM on July 12 [11 favorites]
The Story of the Lost Child, Fun Home, The Fifth Season, Life After Life, Nickel and Dimed, How to Be Both, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Persepolis, Station Eleven, Cloud Atlas
I thought the following 7 were great, happy to see them on a list like this:
My Brilliant Friend, Gilead, The Road, Americanah, The Years, A Visit From the Goon Squad
There were 2 more I liked OK but wouldn't have put on a list like this, and 4 I was meh about.
Here are some books that I might have expected to see on this kind of list, but didn't:
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride
All the Lovers in the Night, by Mieko Kawakami
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, by David Foster Wallace
Her Body and Other Parties & In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado
Severance, by Ling Ma
No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Here are some books, in honor of Katullus' comment, that will never appear on a list like this and I wish they would:
Hild & Menewood, by Nicola Griffith
The Orphan's Tales, by Catherynne M. Valente
Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell
The Lost Steersman & The Language of Power, by Rosemary Kirstein
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi
A Stranger in Olondria & The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Ducks, by Kate Beaton
posted by kyrademon at 5:30 PM on July 12 [11 favorites]
i’m usually annoyed about lists like this but the whole neapolitan cycle, there’s 4, is incredible, those books changed me
posted by dis_integration at 5:40 PM on July 12
posted by dis_integration at 5:40 PM on July 12
(which, if you're looking for a book on writing craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is SO GOOD)
Seconded; this book is compelling and fabulous.
posted by Gadarene at 5:52 PM on July 12
Seconded; this book is compelling and fabulous.
posted by Gadarene at 5:52 PM on July 12
the kind of list that I dream of, a list that ranges widely across literature, pulling in books from many genres and countries, where novels as singular as Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria
That's what I liked about The White Review's roundups that one time included Sofia Samatar, and by chance, she maintains her own list of recommended reading that mixes well-known and little-known books. These are her selections from the 21st C.: Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen (2002); Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002); Roberto Bolaño, Antwerp (2002); Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004); Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (2005); Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest (2009); Greer Gilman, Cloud and Ashes (2009); Maggie Nelson, Bluets (2009); Antoine Volodine, Writers (2010); Renee Gladman, Event Factory (2010); Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene (2011); Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s and Other Essays (2013); Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons (2013); Madame Nielsen, The Endless Summer (2014); Alicia Kopf, Brother in Ice (2016); J'Lyn Chapman, Beastlife (2016); Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny (2017); Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic (2019); Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier (2019); Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (2019); Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal (2020); Kate Zambreno, Drifts (2020); and Amina Cain, A Horse at Night: On Writing (2022). Maybe the thing to do would be to create an ideal/imaginary jury out of the author lists here or other people doing things like that and figure out how to merge lists and/or reviews they've shared.
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:55 PM on July 12 [13 favorites]
That's what I liked about The White Review's roundups that one time included Sofia Samatar, and by chance, she maintains her own list of recommended reading that mixes well-known and little-known books. These are her selections from the 21st C.: Jeff VanderMeer, City of Saints and Madmen (2002); Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002); Roberto Bolaño, Antwerp (2002); Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004); Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (2005); Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest (2009); Greer Gilman, Cloud and Ashes (2009); Maggie Nelson, Bluets (2009); Antoine Volodine, Writers (2010); Renee Gladman, Event Factory (2010); Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene (2011); Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s and Other Essays (2013); Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons (2013); Madame Nielsen, The Endless Summer (2014); Alicia Kopf, Brother in Ice (2016); J'Lyn Chapman, Beastlife (2016); Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny (2017); Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic (2019); Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier (2019); Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (2019); Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal (2020); Kate Zambreno, Drifts (2020); and Amina Cain, A Horse at Night: On Writing (2022). Maybe the thing to do would be to create an ideal/imaginary jury out of the author lists here or other people doing things like that and figure out how to merge lists and/or reviews they've shared.
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:55 PM on July 12 [13 favorites]
I enjoyed the several books on the list I have read, but I think it leans really hard on literary fiction. That leaves out lots of brilliant genre work, like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.
posted by marksullivan5 at 5:58 PM on July 12
posted by marksullivan5 at 5:58 PM on July 12
This was fun—I appreciated the read-alike recommendations and garnering additional recs from certain authors’ ballots.
I’ve read 17 so far:
The Corrections
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Road
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Overstory
White Teeth
Fun Home
A Visit From the Goon Squad
The Argonauts
The Goldfinch
Persepolis
Nickel and Dimed
Middlesex
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Pastoralia
Detransition, Baby
Station Eleven
posted by sugarbomb at 6:00 PM on July 12
I’ve read 17 so far:
The Corrections
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Road
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Overstory
White Teeth
Fun Home
A Visit From the Goon Squad
The Argonauts
The Goldfinch
Persepolis
Nickel and Dimed
Middlesex
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Pastoralia
Detransition, Baby
Station Eleven
posted by sugarbomb at 6:00 PM on July 12
Related in Defector: who are these big book lists for?
I mean yes, they're engagement engines and people like me and those on this thread clearly enjoy exactly that, even if we know it's part of the attention economy. But the article makes a few points about the increasing homogeneity of so many lists - and increasingly the way even the recommendation sections ar small bookshops are all the same, too.
So then, who is the audience for this list if not people who read a lot? What is its goal? Because it certainly feels like the goal isn't to sell books or to even endorse great books, but to codify a kind of public opinion that already feels fully solidified already.
It certainly feels a lot more like confirmation and canonisation than finding something new to read.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 6:16 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
I mean yes, they're engagement engines and people like me and those on this thread clearly enjoy exactly that, even if we know it's part of the attention economy. But the article makes a few points about the increasing homogeneity of so many lists - and increasingly the way even the recommendation sections ar small bookshops are all the same, too.
So then, who is the audience for this list if not people who read a lot? What is its goal? Because it certainly feels like the goal isn't to sell books or to even endorse great books, but to codify a kind of public opinion that already feels fully solidified already.
It certainly feels a lot more like confirmation and canonisation than finding something new to read.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 6:16 PM on July 12 [4 favorites]
the NYT is asking for readers to share their top 10, if you want to have your say. Mine were
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
What is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future by jon bois*
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Isle of Youth by Laura Van Den Berg
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
*it's my list I can do what I want
posted by minervous at 6:49 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
What is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future by jon bois*
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Isle of Youth by Laura Van Den Berg
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
*it's my list I can do what I want
posted by minervous at 6:49 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
personally, if i were going to put one trans book on the list, it'd be Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl over Detransition, Baby. the former feels more like a queer book for queer people.
posted by kokaku at 6:49 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 6:49 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
I think that is literally a list of books that my parents have read for their book club. I used to work at a bookstore, and the owner described our clientele's taste as "upper-middlebrow," which feels like a literary mode that is pretty well represented on that list.
Having said that, I literally plan to start *Small Things Like These* tonight, and *Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments* is on my TBR.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:04 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Having said that, I literally plan to start *Small Things Like These* tonight, and *Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments* is on my TBR.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:04 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Having said that
so you’re upper middlebrow too huh
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 8:37 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
so you’re upper middlebrow too huh
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 8:37 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I’ve read 20, if I’ve counted right. I think allowing multiples from the same author is malpractice for best-of lists, especially given the enormous pool.
posted by janell at 8:41 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
posted by janell at 8:41 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I've ticked at least 35, if this includes half a dozen I didn't finish, so more like 30? (I'll comment a full list if I get around to it...)
My Brilliant Friend by Ferrante is one book that I am certain will pass the test of time for future generations. (I'm also guessing that it's a collaborative work, which doesn't make it less brilliant.)
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, which has absolutely nothing to do with a Tom Cruise movie with the same title.
Jesmyn Ward is a writer that I haven't read yet but should.
Knausgard isn't on this list, and I think he's over-rated.
posted by ovvl at 8:53 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
My Brilliant Friend by Ferrante is one book that I am certain will pass the test of time for future generations. (I'm also guessing that it's a collaborative work, which doesn't make it less brilliant.)
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, which has absolutely nothing to do with a Tom Cruise movie with the same title.
Jesmyn Ward is a writer that I haven't read yet but should.
Knausgard isn't on this list, and I think he's over-rated.
posted by ovvl at 8:53 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Kattullus we want your list
posted by latkes at 9:00 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]
posted by latkes at 9:00 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]
so you’re upper middlebrow too huhI mean, on my highbrow days I'm upper-middlebrow. My guess is that in the past four years, about half of the books I've read have been historical romance novels. This is an observation, not a value judgement.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:07 PM on July 12 [2 favorites]
Kat! Tul! Lus!! Post! Yr! List!!
posted by potrzebie at 9:17 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 9:17 PM on July 12 [3 favorites]
I've read about 20 of these, also. Elena Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" is really 4 books, with "Friend" followed by Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and , at No 80 on this list, The Lost Child. A very amazing achievement.
There are books here that I didn't know what I was getting into at first..but once I "got it", I completely enjoyed. David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas, for example. Jennifer Egan's " A Visit From the Goon Squad."
And so on. And: some books on this list I honestly could not handle and put down. I was interested in seeing others in these comments saying roughly the same thing. I'm sure we all have many different reasons for not liking a book, and I'm not sure about some of my reasons. But at least it was nice to see I was not alone!
posted by pthomas745 at 9:34 PM on July 12
There are books here that I didn't know what I was getting into at first..but once I "got it", I completely enjoyed. David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas, for example. Jennifer Egan's " A Visit From the Goon Squad."
And so on. And: some books on this list I honestly could not handle and put down. I was interested in seeing others in these comments saying roughly the same thing. I'm sure we all have many different reasons for not liking a book, and I'm not sure about some of my reasons. But at least it was nice to see I was not alone!
posted by pthomas745 at 9:34 PM on July 12
I'm interested in Fun Home and Persepolis. I liked these book a lot. But I didn't experience them as the "best" comics I've read so far this century. This stuff is all arbitrary of course but like, if there are only a couple books of a certain genre that make the list, that invites comparisons to other works. Diary of a Teenage Girl (not exactly a traditional comic, but illustrated), Epileptic, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, stand out to me as formally innovative, incredibly rich stories, masterful illustrations. Not an expert on comics but perhaps looking at comics as an underrepresented genre here sheds light on the impossibility of literary best of lists.
posted by latkes at 9:48 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 9:48 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I think I managed about 8 from the list, I think. Or ten. I'm not really invested enough to go back, but I will say I was surprised to see that Nickled and Dimed came out in 2001. For some reason, I thought that had been around forever.
I was happy to see Kavalier and Clay and Fifth Season, though I think Station Eleven might have been the book on the list I've enjoyed most, enough to read both Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility after that. There's something about her storytelling sense that I find irresistible. The HBO series of Station Eleven was pretty magical, as well, and worth watching, even though there are significant differences from the book.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:52 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I was happy to see Kavalier and Clay and Fifth Season, though I think Station Eleven might have been the book on the list I've enjoyed most, enough to read both Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility after that. There's something about her storytelling sense that I find irresistible. The HBO series of Station Eleven was pretty magical, as well, and worth watching, even though there are significant differences from the book.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:52 PM on July 12 [1 favorite]
My 21st Century List with stars*
(the tilde ~ means either "it's complicated/qualified" or "why did they put this dumb title here when the author wrote something much better that's not on this list.")
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012) ****
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009) ****
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001) ** ~
6. 2666, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2008) **
8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald; trans. Anthea Bell (2001) ***
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) ****
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007) **
13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006) * ~
16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000) **
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017) ***
23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro (2001) *** ~
24. The Overstory, Richard Powers (2018) ****
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002) * ~
28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004) *** ~
29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (2000) ****
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000) ** ~
35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006) ***
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010) **
40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2015) ***
42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014) ** ~
43. Postwar, Tony Judt (2005) ** ~
46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013) ** ~
48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003) ***
53. Runaway, Alice Munro (2004) ***
54. Tenth of December, George Saunders (2013) ***
57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) ***
65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004) *
73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro (2012) ** ~
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015) **
81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011) ** ~
84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010) ** ~
85. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000) ****
88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis (2010) ****
93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014) **
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012) ** ~
98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001) ** ~
posted by ovvl at 11:28 PM on July 12
(the tilde ~ means either "it's complicated/qualified" or "why did they put this dumb title here when the author wrote something much better that's not on this list.")
1. My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2012) ****
3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009) ****
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001) ** ~
6. 2666, Roberto Bolaño; trans. Natasha Wimmer (2008) **
8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald; trans. Anthea Bell (2001) ***
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) ****
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007) **
13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006) * ~
16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000) **
18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017) ***
23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro (2001) *** ~
24. The Overstory, Richard Powers (2018) ****
26. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002) * ~
28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004) *** ~
29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (2000) ****
31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000) ** ~
35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006) ***
39. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010) **
40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2015) ***
42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014) ** ~
43. Postwar, Tony Judt (2005) ** ~
46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013) ** ~
48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003) ***
53. Runaway, Alice Munro (2004) ***
54. Tenth of December, George Saunders (2013) ***
57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) ***
65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004) *
73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro (2012) ** ~
80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante; trans. Ann Goldstein (2015) **
81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011) ** ~
84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010) ** ~
85. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000) ****
88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis (2010) ****
93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014) **
95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012) ** ~
98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001) ** ~
posted by ovvl at 11:28 PM on July 12
I've read 17, my favorites being Wolf Hall, The Sympathizer, Never Let Me Go, The Vegetarian, and White Teeth.
I hope they post a top authors list because some authors didn't make it due to votes being split between two or more of their books.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:34 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I hope they post a top authors list because some authors didn't make it due to votes being split between two or more of their books.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:34 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I believe that in the (far?) future, people will believe that early 21st century literature was defined by Martha Wells, Ann Leckie and Becky Chambers. None of whom are on this list, because they are considered genre fiction maybe? Still, when I think of the zeitgeist, I can't image Lincoln in the Bardo being thought about five years from now. Hell, I haven't thought about it since I read it.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:52 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
posted by Literaryhero at 2:52 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
Lincoln in the Bardo being a stand in for about half of the novels on this list, not a specific slight against it individually.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:53 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
posted by Literaryhero at 2:53 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I’m surprised that The Idiot isn’t on here. The Corrections is about 120 spots too high.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:01 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 4:01 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
The Corrections is about 120 spots too high.
Candidate for Best MetaFilter Statement Mid-July 2024
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:06 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
Candidate for Best MetaFilter Statement Mid-July 2024
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:06 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
(It’s another tell for the nature of this list. A much-discussed and much-read book, but I haven’t heard anyone actually discuss it for a decade-plus.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:07 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:07 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I’m also disappointed—but not surprised—that the Times is still trying to make Junot Diaz happen.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:15 AM on July 13 [4 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 4:15 AM on July 13 [4 favorites]
I've read a decent number, and thought it was an OK list, but I was more interested in which authors they chose to be on the panel. It's easy for books to fall through the cracks when it comes to the list, but the panel selection is different. I think Ruth Ozeki should have been there, based on general merit, aiming for variety in the list and so on. Some other surprises and second-guessings but that one really stood out for me.
posted by BibiRose at 5:33 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
posted by BibiRose at 5:33 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
With respect to the people observing that we're barely/not even yet a quarter century into the 21st Century, I'm pretty sure the people creating this list (NYT and voters both) know that the end of the century list will look much different than this list. Some books will make it but the large percentage are destined to fall out of list. It's the nature of literature being a moving target. This is a snapshot of the culture, or at least, the segment of "the culture" that the NYT calls upon to participate in a list like this.
(And now, a disclosure: I was a participant. I'll note at no point did I vote for or suggest my own work, which I felt would be against the spirit of the thing, even if I felt one of my works deserved to be on this particular list, which, no aspersions to me, I do not, though I am happy to be on other similar but more specialized lists.)
I think it's a pretty respectable list overall, and I do wonder what novels in it will make it to an actual end of the century list. I have my suspicions, but I (probably) won't be around to find out if I was right.
posted by jscalzi at 5:46 AM on July 13 [12 favorites]
(And now, a disclosure: I was a participant. I'll note at no point did I vote for or suggest my own work, which I felt would be against the spirit of the thing, even if I felt one of my works deserved to be on this particular list, which, no aspersions to me, I do not, though I am happy to be on other similar but more specialized lists.)
I think it's a pretty respectable list overall, and I do wonder what novels in it will make it to an actual end of the century list. I have my suspicions, but I (probably) won't be around to find out if I was right.
posted by jscalzi at 5:46 AM on July 13 [12 favorites]
An idiosyncratic list for sure but Never Let Me Go is one of the most memorable books I've ever read. It is one of those books that still makes me cry just thinking about it.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:38 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 6:38 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
> "This is a snapshot of the culture"
I still remember reading an introduction to a "best of the 19th century" list of this sort written around 1900, which essentially said, "Now obviously, it would have been more accurate to fill this entire list with Walter Scott novels, but that seemed unfair so I kept it to one novel per author."
posted by kyrademon at 6:51 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I still remember reading an introduction to a "best of the 19th century" list of this sort written around 1900, which essentially said, "Now obviously, it would have been more accurate to fill this entire list with Walter Scott novels, but that seemed unfair so I kept it to one novel per author."
posted by kyrademon at 6:51 AM on July 13 [1 favorite]
Hilary Mantel's death in 2022 did not prevent her from finishing the Wolf Hall trilogy. Like it or not, the third book needed her treatment.
Wolf Hall, 2009
Bring Up the Bodies, 2012
The Mirror and the Light, 2020
posted by TrishaU at 7:05 AM on July 13
Wolf Hall, 2009
Bring Up the Bodies, 2012
The Mirror and the Light, 2020
posted by TrishaU at 7:05 AM on July 13
the former feels more like a queer book for queer people.
I've read a few books in the SFF genre which I feel fit that brief. Some are obvious like Terraformers, some of which I've heard less about like World Running Down by Al Hess. Also I can not suggest Gender Euphoria by Laura Kate Dale enough, just collections of essays from trans folks about when they felt just right or happy or ecstatic about their bodies.
A few books that I've read that (I think) were published this century that I can heartily suggest for most people. I tend towards SFF as you can see.
Fiction
- Terraformers, obvs, by Annalee Newitz
- Mars House (this book is doing a LOT and does most of it extremely well)
How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
- The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow (or 10,000 Doors of January)
- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (or any other book she's written)
- Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
- A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian
- Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares
- Rosewater Trilogy by Tade Thompson
- Strange Beasts of China by Ge Yan
Non-Fiction
- And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
- Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
- The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg
- The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky
- Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
- We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America by Kate Daloz
- The New Disability History : American perspectives by Paul Longmore
- March by John Lewis
posted by jessamyn at 8:46 AM on July 13 [4 favorites]
I've read a few books in the SFF genre which I feel fit that brief. Some are obvious like Terraformers, some of which I've heard less about like World Running Down by Al Hess. Also I can not suggest Gender Euphoria by Laura Kate Dale enough, just collections of essays from trans folks about when they felt just right or happy or ecstatic about their bodies.
A few books that I've read that (I think) were published this century that I can heartily suggest for most people. I tend towards SFF as you can see.
Fiction
- Terraformers, obvs, by Annalee Newitz
- Mars House (this book is doing a LOT and does most of it extremely well)
How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
- The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow (or 10,000 Doors of January)
- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (or any other book she's written)
- Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
- A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian
- Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares
- Rosewater Trilogy by Tade Thompson
- Strange Beasts of China by Ge Yan
Non-Fiction
- And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
- Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
- The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg
- The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky
- Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
- We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America by Kate Daloz
- The New Disability History : American perspectives by Paul Longmore
- March by John Lewis
posted by jessamyn at 8:46 AM on July 13 [4 favorites]
Post needs a trigger warning for all the photos of books face down breaking their poor spines
Why do the people promoting books hate books so much?
posted by caution live frogs at 8:57 AM on July 13
Why do the people promoting books hate books so much?
posted by caution live frogs at 8:57 AM on July 13
wow. I have only read 11 of these:
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel*
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Erasure, Percival Everett*
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchel
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates*
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin*
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt*
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander*
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen*
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel*
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
*favs
so I cannot really assess the list beyond saying the picks I have read are all solid choices. guess I'll wade through this list and these comments and look for some items to add to my To Read list.
posted by supermedusa at 9:26 AM on July 13
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel*
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Erasure, Percival Everett*
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchel
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates*
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin*
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt*
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander*
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen*
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel*
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
*favs
so I cannot really assess the list beyond saying the picks I have read are all solid choices. guess I'll wade through this list and these comments and look for some items to add to my To Read list.
posted by supermedusa at 9:26 AM on July 13
I've read many of these books, and -- because I'm a boor -- my first thought was "what a bunch of bummers." It's so difficult for a book to be both funny and also taken seriously by critics / culture / people recommending books to bookgroups.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:44 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:44 AM on July 13 [2 favorites]
I guess I did leave myself open to an entirely reasonable demand to share my top ten list. I will do so, with the caveat that I'm not the kind of reader that's suited to making a list of the best books available in English of the 21st Century so far, because only about half of my book-reading is in English, and the majority of that isn't books published recently. Currently I'm reading Richard Wright's Native Son (which is incredible by the way) and that's fairly typical of the sorts of books I read in English.
That said, here's my top ten. I should start by mentioning the three I already referred to above. Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria was a really amazing reading experience for me. I borrowed it during Covid through my local library's ebook service, on GenjiandProust's recommendation, and I was fully transported out of my constricted lockdown existence into a fully realized, fully alive secondary world. It was thus immensely frustrating that there was a glitch in either the library's web-reader or the ebook file itself, which meant that I couldn't finish it. Given that I couldn't secure a physical copy, I had to put it down. When my local library revamped its ebook service, I went back, skimmed quickly through what I'd read, and went through the final third in two days (which is very quick for me, because I read slowly). I found that the world had remained as vivid for me as it was when I first read it, and the ending was perfect, despite having had to live up to years of on-off speculation.
Sara Mesa's Four by Four is another Covid-era read for me, but one that I could, happily, finish at the time (hurray for physical books). I went into it knowing nothing, except that it took place in some kind of alternate Spain, where a city had been depopulates due to some kind of disaster (it’s suggested that it’s financial). It takes place in a boarding school and is really unsettling. Certain scenes, and the general atmosphere, have really stayed with me.
I don’t think I really need to recommend Averno. It’s my favorite, by some distance, of Louise Glück’s collections, but that’s not to knock her other books. I just think it’s a masterpiece, combining the immediacy of the lyric voice, but taking in history and the wider world in a way that hits me right in the feels. It is a collection, and all the poems stand on their own, but they way they’re arranged in the book reminds me of a great album, where the individual pieces play off each other and bring forth qualities which aren’t apparent when they stand on their own.
I’m surprised that three of the first four books I thought of are Covid era reads, but another book that transported me out of my confined circumstances to a distant time and land was Yūko Tsushima’s Territory of Light. It’s the year in a life of a single mother in 1970s Tokyo as she deals with reestablishing her life after a divorce. Like few other books, it really captures the randomness of daily life, without itself feeling random. It was written in a really strange way, Tsushima was commissioned to fill a certain number of pages in a monthly magazine, so she wrote one chapter at a time until the story came to an end. Somehow, that feeling of time passing became part of the book, and I felt like I had lived a year in Tokyo in the 70s.
These are all recent reads, but the earliest contemporary book I remember knocking my socks off this century was William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. I’d loved his science fiction books, but was somewhat wary of his turn towards contemporary fiction. I shouldn’t have, as he took his unique powers of description, which he’d used in the service of creating secondary worlds, and turned it on our own time. I read it as I was spending my first winter in the US, and I felt like it explained the country to me better than anything else I read.
Around the same time, maybe earlier, I read At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. He hasn’t published anything since then, but passages from it remain etched in my mind. It’s about two teenage boys in Dublin, during the run-up to the Easter Rising of 1916, who are discovering their political convictions and sexual identities. It’s written in a heightened, lyric style, which serves to emotionally supercharge every moment they share.
Bae Suah’s A Greater Music came to me at a time when I’d been on a long streak of reading books that I almost really liked, but ultimately didn’t quite connect with, and was starting to think that I was the problem, and not the books. So it was a relief to put down Suah’s novella at the end and feel like I’d read a book that was written just for me, even though I had no particular connections to Korean, Suah’s native tongue, Berlin, where the book is set, nor classical music, which is in so many ways the theme. But the way the book thought, or how it led me to think, was really profound for me.
I could put down Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Savage Detectives or the History of Nazi Literature in the Americas, but the book that had the greatest impact on me was the short story collection Last Evenings on Earth. I was going through a really difficult time, and I’d lost the ability to read books, I just couldn’t focus. Then one day I was in a waiting room, I forget what I was waiting for, and there was an issue of the New Yorker there, and I flipped to the short story, which turned out to be The Insufferable Gaucho. I read all of it, and then went and found Last Evenings on Earth at my local library and read every short story. And I was back to reading books again.
I hesitate with the last couple of books I want to mention, because I didn’t read them in English so they sort of belong to my top ten list of Icelandic reading experience, and furthermore I can’t vouch for the translation. That said, one of my most important reading experiences was Herostories by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, a long poem she cut together out of passages from memoirs of Icelandic midwives in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In a strange way, even though it’s focused on the heroic deeds of women traveling though inhospitable terrain and deadly weather, it becomes a poem about how much the climate has changed in the last hundred years.
Another was Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. It’s a strange book, because it starts off as a fairly straightforward realistic novel about a carpenter in contemporary Iceland, who has a kind of breakdown halfway through the book and flies to an unnamed country that’s recently had a civil war, which if you read carefully you realize is most likely France. At that point it becomes a sort of fable about non-toxic masculinity. As you can probably tell, it basically defies description, and I’ve thought about it a lot since I read it.
Anyway, this is an idiosyncratic list, I’m aware, but most people read idiosyncratically, finding books almost at random in bookstores and libraries. It is only as time passes that it becomes more difficult to find books of previous eras, either because they physically disappear or get forgotten. Eventually only a handful of books from a certain era remain relevant in the culture, and the rest are only studied by experts. I understand the impulse to want to see the contours is the canon, but if you think back to, say, the entire 18th Century of English-language literature, there are maybe only twenty-thirty books that are read regularly, and that number at most doubles if you include books that are taught in undergrad English classes. The canon is tiny, and very few books from our time will end up on it.
posted by Kattullus at 3:17 PM on July 13 [9 favorites]
That said, here's my top ten. I should start by mentioning the three I already referred to above. Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria was a really amazing reading experience for me. I borrowed it during Covid through my local library's ebook service, on GenjiandProust's recommendation, and I was fully transported out of my constricted lockdown existence into a fully realized, fully alive secondary world. It was thus immensely frustrating that there was a glitch in either the library's web-reader or the ebook file itself, which meant that I couldn't finish it. Given that I couldn't secure a physical copy, I had to put it down. When my local library revamped its ebook service, I went back, skimmed quickly through what I'd read, and went through the final third in two days (which is very quick for me, because I read slowly). I found that the world had remained as vivid for me as it was when I first read it, and the ending was perfect, despite having had to live up to years of on-off speculation.
Sara Mesa's Four by Four is another Covid-era read for me, but one that I could, happily, finish at the time (hurray for physical books). I went into it knowing nothing, except that it took place in some kind of alternate Spain, where a city had been depopulates due to some kind of disaster (it’s suggested that it’s financial). It takes place in a boarding school and is really unsettling. Certain scenes, and the general atmosphere, have really stayed with me.
I don’t think I really need to recommend Averno. It’s my favorite, by some distance, of Louise Glück’s collections, but that’s not to knock her other books. I just think it’s a masterpiece, combining the immediacy of the lyric voice, but taking in history and the wider world in a way that hits me right in the feels. It is a collection, and all the poems stand on their own, but they way they’re arranged in the book reminds me of a great album, where the individual pieces play off each other and bring forth qualities which aren’t apparent when they stand on their own.
I’m surprised that three of the first four books I thought of are Covid era reads, but another book that transported me out of my confined circumstances to a distant time and land was Yūko Tsushima’s Territory of Light. It’s the year in a life of a single mother in 1970s Tokyo as she deals with reestablishing her life after a divorce. Like few other books, it really captures the randomness of daily life, without itself feeling random. It was written in a really strange way, Tsushima was commissioned to fill a certain number of pages in a monthly magazine, so she wrote one chapter at a time until the story came to an end. Somehow, that feeling of time passing became part of the book, and I felt like I had lived a year in Tokyo in the 70s.
These are all recent reads, but the earliest contemporary book I remember knocking my socks off this century was William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. I’d loved his science fiction books, but was somewhat wary of his turn towards contemporary fiction. I shouldn’t have, as he took his unique powers of description, which he’d used in the service of creating secondary worlds, and turned it on our own time. I read it as I was spending my first winter in the US, and I felt like it explained the country to me better than anything else I read.
Around the same time, maybe earlier, I read At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. He hasn’t published anything since then, but passages from it remain etched in my mind. It’s about two teenage boys in Dublin, during the run-up to the Easter Rising of 1916, who are discovering their political convictions and sexual identities. It’s written in a heightened, lyric style, which serves to emotionally supercharge every moment they share.
Bae Suah’s A Greater Music came to me at a time when I’d been on a long streak of reading books that I almost really liked, but ultimately didn’t quite connect with, and was starting to think that I was the problem, and not the books. So it was a relief to put down Suah’s novella at the end and feel like I’d read a book that was written just for me, even though I had no particular connections to Korean, Suah’s native tongue, Berlin, where the book is set, nor classical music, which is in so many ways the theme. But the way the book thought, or how it led me to think, was really profound for me.
I could put down Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Savage Detectives or the History of Nazi Literature in the Americas, but the book that had the greatest impact on me was the short story collection Last Evenings on Earth. I was going through a really difficult time, and I’d lost the ability to read books, I just couldn’t focus. Then one day I was in a waiting room, I forget what I was waiting for, and there was an issue of the New Yorker there, and I flipped to the short story, which turned out to be The Insufferable Gaucho. I read all of it, and then went and found Last Evenings on Earth at my local library and read every short story. And I was back to reading books again.
I hesitate with the last couple of books I want to mention, because I didn’t read them in English so they sort of belong to my top ten list of Icelandic reading experience, and furthermore I can’t vouch for the translation. That said, one of my most important reading experiences was Herostories by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, a long poem she cut together out of passages from memoirs of Icelandic midwives in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In a strange way, even though it’s focused on the heroic deeds of women traveling though inhospitable terrain and deadly weather, it becomes a poem about how much the climate has changed in the last hundred years.
Another was Hotel Silence by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. It’s a strange book, because it starts off as a fairly straightforward realistic novel about a carpenter in contemporary Iceland, who has a kind of breakdown halfway through the book and flies to an unnamed country that’s recently had a civil war, which if you read carefully you realize is most likely France. At that point it becomes a sort of fable about non-toxic masculinity. As you can probably tell, it basically defies description, and I’ve thought about it a lot since I read it.
Anyway, this is an idiosyncratic list, I’m aware, but most people read idiosyncratically, finding books almost at random in bookstores and libraries. It is only as time passes that it becomes more difficult to find books of previous eras, either because they physically disappear or get forgotten. Eventually only a handful of books from a certain era remain relevant in the culture, and the rest are only studied by experts. I understand the impulse to want to see the contours is the canon, but if you think back to, say, the entire 18th Century of English-language literature, there are maybe only twenty-thirty books that are read regularly, and that number at most doubles if you include books that are taught in undergrad English classes. The canon is tiny, and very few books from our time will end up on it.
posted by Kattullus at 3:17 PM on July 13 [9 favorites]
I've read 66 of these. About thirty of those titles I really loved. Plenty of stuff missing.
Would love to discuss with someone whether or not Annie Ernaux's The Years, in French, reads less like "We Didn't Start the Fire" than its English translation, but this is probably a minor point, all things considered.
Delighted to see Percival Everett and Paul Beatty, as always.
posted by thivaia at 3:37 PM on July 13 [1 favorite]
Would love to discuss with someone whether or not Annie Ernaux's The Years, in French, reads less like "We Didn't Start the Fire" than its English translation, but this is probably a minor point, all things considered.
Delighted to see Percival Everett and Paul Beatty, as always.
posted by thivaia at 3:37 PM on July 13 [1 favorite]
I remember thinking Jennifer Egan's previous two books (Look at Me and The Keep) were a bit more special than Visit From the Goon Squad -- which I also liked -- but I guess I'm not sure I'd feel that way if I read them all again now. (The Keep employs a framing device that I found really compelling, maybe disarming even, but I'm afraid to see if I might look at it cynically now.)
posted by nobody at 4:27 AM on July 14 [1 favorite]
posted by nobody at 4:27 AM on July 14 [1 favorite]
(Adding: it's a little weird that the framing device isn't mentioned on its Wikipedia page at all. I had to look elsewhere to confirm I wasn't misremembering that the entirety of the modern-gothic story described there as The Keep's plot is positioned by the novel as a story being written by an inmate in a prison literacy program, who's a character in the novel in their own right.)
posted by nobody at 4:37 AM on July 14 [2 favorites]
posted by nobody at 4:37 AM on July 14 [2 favorites]
Kattullus, I just want to say, you really have a way of selling books - I've ordered three of your list already. In terms of finding new books I might love, your list has certainly been more useful to me than the NYT one - that one also has a quite a few books I want to read, but they have been on my to-do-read list for quite a while already.
That said, I still have some interest in the general idea of a canon. To me too, it would feel woefully constrictive to just read books on it/speculated to be on it. Some books I read because there's something about the premise, the setting, the themes, the language of the first page that calls out to me; some books I read based on recommendation; some books I read because I stumble upon them in a little free library, and the author's name rings a bell, so eh, why not. I'm in many ways a marketing department's dream target reader, because I do usually end up liking a lot of the books someone in my demographic is predicted to like (staunchly middle-brow). Knowing that about myself, I make some effort to leave a bit of room for serendipity in my reading choices.
That said, some books I do read because I want to follow the discourse. For that, it's nice to have shared references. I also like reading criticism, and comparing different critics, and while actually having read the text in question myself is no strictly necessary requirement for me to get something out of this, it's often illuminating. So I do want to read some of the books that are widely discussed, mostly because they are widely discussed. Of course "following discourse about books" is a different hobby from "reading", but one I also sometimes have a bit of time for - but not as much as I would like, as always, so these lists can be useful shortcuts/snapshots where the discourse stands at a given moment.
posted by sohalt at 5:21 AM on July 14 [2 favorites]
That said, I still have some interest in the general idea of a canon. To me too, it would feel woefully constrictive to just read books on it/speculated to be on it. Some books I read because there's something about the premise, the setting, the themes, the language of the first page that calls out to me; some books I read based on recommendation; some books I read because I stumble upon them in a little free library, and the author's name rings a bell, so eh, why not. I'm in many ways a marketing department's dream target reader, because I do usually end up liking a lot of the books someone in my demographic is predicted to like (staunchly middle-brow). Knowing that about myself, I make some effort to leave a bit of room for serendipity in my reading choices.
That said, some books I do read because I want to follow the discourse. For that, it's nice to have shared references. I also like reading criticism, and comparing different critics, and while actually having read the text in question myself is no strictly necessary requirement for me to get something out of this, it's often illuminating. So I do want to read some of the books that are widely discussed, mostly because they are widely discussed. Of course "following discourse about books" is a different hobby from "reading", but one I also sometimes have a bit of time for - but not as much as I would like, as always, so these lists can be useful shortcuts/snapshots where the discourse stands at a given moment.
posted by sohalt at 5:21 AM on July 14 [2 favorites]
Keep thinking about the difference between what I think is BEST vs what I most enjoy. Just like, one example: the Murderbot books were among the most pleasurable I've read in recent years. The execution of these books is supremely skillful. The author successfully illicit excitement, joy, humor, empathy, etc. I can think of some great literary fiction & non-fiction that I could say the same about including some of the authors on this list, like Coats, Kingsolver, Ishiguro, Chabon, Laymon. But I don't think these books come close to being the Best books I've read recently. For Best I think a book should impact the literary world around it. It should do something very well and should do something different or at least do the thing it is doing differently than how other books do that thing, and maybe (rarer) it should say something different than other books. I will always remember The Savage Detectives because I can't think of another book I read before or after that did what it was doing, in the way it did that thing, AND that was so smoothly written, with such internal consistency.
posted by latkes at 4:05 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 4:05 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
My tiny moment of surprise and joy came when I saw that "queen of the beach read" Elin Hildebrand is a fan of A. M. Homes.
Hildebrand likes the comparatively tame May We Be Forgiven, which I suppose is a minor quibble—my personal Homes fav is her brutal, hilarious, pitch-black Music for Torching, which begins with a couple daring each other to set the house on fire by tipping over the barbecue, and then taking the kids out to dinner while it burns. (NYT critic Gary Krist: "To say that I loved A. M. Homes's 'Music for Torching' would be a ridiculously inadequate description of my feelings about this nasty and willfully grotesque novel.")
posted by vitia at 6:15 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
Hildebrand likes the comparatively tame May We Be Forgiven, which I suppose is a minor quibble—my personal Homes fav is her brutal, hilarious, pitch-black Music for Torching, which begins with a couple daring each other to set the house on fire by tipping over the barbecue, and then taking the kids out to dinner while it burns. (NYT critic Gary Krist: "To say that I loved A. M. Homes's 'Music for Torching' would be a ridiculously inadequate description of my feelings about this nasty and willfully grotesque novel.")
posted by vitia at 6:15 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
I'll add, perhaps obviously, that my favorite part of the NYT list was seeing what individual authors I like (and dislike) have nominated. Others have said it more eloquently above, but most of these best books lists generated by committee or mass vote feel to me boringly flat, with zero idiosyncrasy—give me lists like Kattullus's above, or like Michael Dirda's occasional "Here are some books I've been reading and why I think they're cool" columns.
And I share the sentiment that an excellent "book should impact the literary world around it. It should do something very well and should do something different or at least do the thing it is doing differently than how other books do that thing." That, to me, is a manifesto for MORE EXPERIMENTAL FICTION. I look back over the NYT list, and I wonder: in 30 years, which of these novels will be generally considered avant-garde, and why?
posted by vitia at 6:35 PM on July 14 [2 favorites]
And I share the sentiment that an excellent "book should impact the literary world around it. It should do something very well and should do something different or at least do the thing it is doing differently than how other books do that thing." That, to me, is a manifesto for MORE EXPERIMENTAL FICTION. I look back over the NYT list, and I wonder: in 30 years, which of these novels will be generally considered avant-garde, and why?
posted by vitia at 6:35 PM on July 14 [2 favorites]
In a recent 20th century novel syllabus, I tried to balance what 3rd-year English majors at an American university would find unusual and engaging with what I felt they needed to know. I'm not sure to what degree I could call any of these novels the "best" anything (well, OK, fine: Pale Fire is absolutely my favorite novel of the 20th century and maybe probably of all time) but I can certainly call them all good and important:
Jean Toomer, Cane
Louise Erdrich, Tracks
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Toni Morrison, Sula
Obviously, I'm working above within the limits of a 15-week semester, so no Midnight's Children, Ulysses, The Golden Notebook, etc.
The 21st century isn't even a quarter done, but were I given the chance, my 15-week syllabus assembled from the NYT authors' also-rans would be:
Olga Ravn, The Employees
Ed Park, Same Bed, Different Dreams
Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain Gang All-Stars
Renee Gladman, Houses of Ravicka
But again, even Park's and Adjei-Brenyah's page counts push hard against the limits of what I'm able to ask students to read, so no chance for big books that are both good and important—like Zadie Smith's NW or Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. (My "I love big books and I cannot lie" syllabus—Moby-Dick, Invisible Man, Infinite Jest, you get the idea—would likely be a ten-year directed study.) One key lesson from the English Department "canon wars" of the 80s and 90s is that any notional 'canon' is a technology of exclusion: it falsely implies that all other texts not on the list are less than worthy. Some of my colleagues now teach the concept of "canonicity" in the same way these best-of lists function on the internet: as starting points for examinations and discussions of what we think is good and important, and why.
posted by vitia at 9:29 PM on July 14 [6 favorites]
Jean Toomer, Cane
Louise Erdrich, Tracks
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Toni Morrison, Sula
Obviously, I'm working above within the limits of a 15-week semester, so no Midnight's Children, Ulysses, The Golden Notebook, etc.
The 21st century isn't even a quarter done, but were I given the chance, my 15-week syllabus assembled from the NYT authors' also-rans would be:
Olga Ravn, The Employees
Ed Park, Same Bed, Different Dreams
Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain Gang All-Stars
Renee Gladman, Houses of Ravicka
But again, even Park's and Adjei-Brenyah's page counts push hard against the limits of what I'm able to ask students to read, so no chance for big books that are both good and important—like Zadie Smith's NW or Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. (My "I love big books and I cannot lie" syllabus—Moby-Dick, Invisible Man, Infinite Jest, you get the idea—would likely be a ten-year directed study.) One key lesson from the English Department "canon wars" of the 80s and 90s is that any notional 'canon' is a technology of exclusion: it falsely implies that all other texts not on the list are less than worthy. Some of my colleagues now teach the concept of "canonicity" in the same way these best-of lists function on the internet: as starting points for examinations and discussions of what we think is good and important, and why.
posted by vitia at 9:29 PM on July 14 [6 favorites]
Sara Mesa's Four by Four is another Covid-era read for me, but one that I could, happily, finish at the time (hurray for physical books). I went into it knowing nothing, except that it took place in some kind of alternate Spain, where a city had been depopulates due to some kind of disaster (it’s suggested that it’s financial). It takes place in a boarding school and is really unsettling. Certain scenes, and the general atmosphere, have really stayed with me.
It is great to see Four by Four mentioned as this is one of the few books that also just sticks with me. I found it haunting. Cristina Rivera Garza's Taiga Syndrome also deserves mention as the closest I've read to a nightmare encapsulated in prose.
Some of the most incredible writing right now is coming from female Mexican authors. I'm happy to see Rivera Garza and Luisielli and Fernanda Melchor get some attention but there are so, so many others! Ave Barrera is getting translated (The Forgery is so much fun!).
There's great small presses out there doing good work. Too many to list but, besides Barrera, Charco Press is also translating Chefjec, whose work has been a bit of a revelation for me. Indirectly thats also how I found Benjamin Labatut. Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World has also stayed in my head.
Which is also to say that, yeah, these lists. Who are they even for? If you peruse NYTimes Bestseller lists then you know these books already. I don't need to point out that sales don't correspond to quality.
Before I go let me throw in some Japanese candidates:
I've really enjoyed Inhabitation by Teru Miyamoto and The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada but two candidates for greatest novels of the 21st century would be:
A True Novel by Minae Mizumura
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
All translated of course which to me hints at the iceberg of great, untranslated fiction out there.
posted by vacapinta at 6:34 AM on July 15 [3 favorites]
It is great to see Four by Four mentioned as this is one of the few books that also just sticks with me. I found it haunting. Cristina Rivera Garza's Taiga Syndrome also deserves mention as the closest I've read to a nightmare encapsulated in prose.
Some of the most incredible writing right now is coming from female Mexican authors. I'm happy to see Rivera Garza and Luisielli and Fernanda Melchor get some attention but there are so, so many others! Ave Barrera is getting translated (The Forgery is so much fun!).
There's great small presses out there doing good work. Too many to list but, besides Barrera, Charco Press is also translating Chefjec, whose work has been a bit of a revelation for me. Indirectly thats also how I found Benjamin Labatut. Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World has also stayed in my head.
Which is also to say that, yeah, these lists. Who are they even for? If you peruse NYTimes Bestseller lists then you know these books already. I don't need to point out that sales don't correspond to quality.
Before I go let me throw in some Japanese candidates:
I've really enjoyed Inhabitation by Teru Miyamoto and The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada but two candidates for greatest novels of the 21st century would be:
A True Novel by Minae Mizumura
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
All translated of course which to me hints at the iceberg of great, untranslated fiction out there.
posted by vacapinta at 6:34 AM on July 15 [3 favorites]
One response from LitHub, "What the New York Times Missed: 71 More of the Best Books of the 21st Century -- A Non-Boring List": "Since no one asked us (rude) ... we decided to make our own list of books the Times list missed."
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:55 AM on July 16 [4 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:55 AM on July 16 [4 favorites]
Wow, that LitHub list is awesome, there's some really interesting-looking titles in there. More than in the original list, I think.
posted by ovvl at 9:48 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 9:48 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
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posted by jessamyn at 2:50 PM on July 12 [5 favorites]