The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

The 21^st century is a quarter of the way through and what a quarter century it has been. The New York Times decided to list the 100 best books of the 21st century and I am not envious of their job. Keep reading to find out what books made their list as the 100 best books of this century!

Trying to choose from tens of thousands of book is no easy task. That is why the New York Times turned to 503 people to make this list. Those people are novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and book lovers. And along with the New York Times staff, they made this list come to fruition.

Those people were sent a survey and were told to name their ten best books of the 21^st century. While that sounds easy, it is anything but. I can’t even think which ten books I would select and hate myself for leaving some amazing novels off the list. 

Just like any other list, this one is going to get certain things right and probably leave off some notable works. That is what makes lists like these fun. Even someone like the New York Times have to rely on a voting system because it is all arbitrary at the end of the day. You can see the full list below!

The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

• Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 
• How to Be Both by Ali Smith 
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mante
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 
• The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante; translated by by Ann Goldstein 
• The Human Stain by Philip Roth
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Return by Hisham Matar
• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
• Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
• Pastoralia by George Saunders
• The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut; translated by Adrian Nathan West
• Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor; translated by Sophie Hughes
• Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
• The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein
• A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
• Septology by Jon Fosse; translated by Damion Searls
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Passage of Power by Robert Caro
• Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Bela Shayevich
• The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen; translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
• All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
• Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
• We the Animals by Justin Torres
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 
• Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
• 10:04 by Ben Lerner
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Stay True by Hua Hsu
• Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
• The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
• Tenth of December by George Saunders
• Runaway by Alice Munro
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Trust by Hernan Diaz
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang; translated by Deborah Smith
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• Postwar by Tony Judt
• A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño; translated by Natasha Wimmer
• The Years by Annie Ernaux; translated by Alison L. Strayer
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• Evicted by Matthew Desmond
• Erasure by Percival Everett
• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty 
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald; translated by Anthea Bell
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño; translated by Natasha Wimmer
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein

Trying to analyze a list of a hundred books is not easy. There are novels here that I haven’t heard of before and others that are beloved by critics. For the most part, this list gets many of the major books of the 21st century right.

I’m sure that many readers will find some works that they believe belonged on the list. Even if it didn’t make it, it resonated with you strongly and that is what matters at the end of the day. In a few years, this list will be outdated and that’s just how it goes.

I would recommend using this list to find your next book to read and don’t lose sleep over it. The fact that the New York Times made this list is an impressive accomplishment. How many books on this list have you read? Let us know in the comments below!

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