New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

A Response

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Today’s post: my reaction to last week’s Top Books of the 21st Century List in the New York Times.

Intro:

Any list reflects its maker. The books on the Times were vetted by “503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers—with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.” Sound like a wide-enough net? Wait until the grousing, quibbling, charges of insularity/elitism pour in! I’m not wading into that dogfight. If five hundred small press editors or five hundred public librarians are asked—or for that matter, readers of The Times of India, The Daily Times of Nigeria, El Pais, The Asahi Shimbun . . . you get a different list. And there’s the fact that a wide net may catch not the best books but books with the most name recognition—the better marketed books, the books anointed by Oprah/Reese/Jenna, the books that appeal broadly because they’re fun to read, not too outre or transgressive, the books scads of readers can agree on. You find yourself asking (twistedly): How good can it be if everyone likes it?

All that said, I’m responding anyway.

Ground Rules:

• After each of the 100 listed books, one or more others in the same vein are suggested. For clarity, I’m calling the main list “Top 100”; the suggestions I’ll aggregate and call “Second List.”

• Titles I feel unequipped to judge, I’m omitting.

• I’ve also excluded the nonfiction, except for a few personal essays.

• The ones I’ve read are marked with an asterisk.

• I list by date published. The number in [brackets] is the Times rank.

• I’m not debating where a book is ranked on the Top 100.

• At the end, I’ll give my own Top Ten Works of Fiction Since 2000.

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1. Books on Top-100 That Belong There [1]: The ones I’ve read:

• *Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (2021)   [41]

• *When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut [trans. by Adrian Nathan West] (2021) [83]

• *Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (2017)   [75]

• *Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017)   [18]

• *A Manual for Cleaning Women [stories], Lucia Berlin (2015)   [79]

• *The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2015)   [45]

• *A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James (2014)  [42]

• *Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014)  [93]

• *Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (2013) [51]

• *Tenth of December [stories],¹ George Saunders (2013)   [54]

• *The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (2013)   [46]

• *Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (2012)   [95]

• *2666, Roberto Bolaño [trans. by Natasha Wimmer] (2008)   [6]

• *Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (2008) [74]

• *The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)  [13]

• *The Year of Magical Thinking [memoir/essay], Joan Didion (2005)  [12]

• *Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)   [9]

• *Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)   [28]

• *Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)   [10]

• *The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)   [65]

• *Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (2002) [59]

• *Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002) [26]

• *White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000) [31]

2. Books on Top 100 That Belong There [2]: Ones I haven’t read (yet):

• The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (2016)   [7]

• How to Be Both, Ali Smith (2014)   [99]

• Men We Reaped [nonfiction], Jesmyn Ward (2013) [97]

• My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante [trans. by Ann Goldstein] (2012)  [1]

• The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson (2010)   [2]

• The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño (trans. by Natasha Wimmer) (2007) [38]

• The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante [trans. by Ann Goldstein] (2005) [92]

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000) [16]

3. Most Astonishing Omissions [1]: Books only on Second List:

• *The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride (2023)

• *Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

• Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evariso (2019)

• *This Is Happiness, Niall Williams (2019)

• *My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)

• *Normal People, Sally Rooney  (2018)

• Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (2017)

• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (2016)

• Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue (2016)

• *Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata (2016)

• *Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

• *Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, Max Porter (2015)

• We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo (2013)

• *How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti (2012)

• *Tinkers, Paul Harding (2009)

• *Flights,” by Olga Tokarczuk [trans. by Jennifer Croft] (2007)

4. Most-Astonishing Omissions [2]: Books not listed at all

• *North Woods, Daniel Mason, 2023

• *Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy, 2022

• *Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr, 2021

• *Matrix, Lauren Groff, 2021

• *The War for Gloria, Atticus Lish, 2021

• *The Ministry For the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020

• *Milkman, Anna Burns, 2018

• *Women Talking, Miriam Toews, 2018

• *Commonwealth, Ann Patchett, 2016

• *Seveneves, Neal Stephenson, 2015

• *The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth, 2014

• *All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews, 2014

• *My Struggle [six volumes] Karl Ove Knausgaard, 2009-2011

• *Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann, 2009

• *Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro, 2007²

• *The Unit, Ninni Holmqvist, 2006

• *Mr. Pip, Lloyd Jones, 2006

• *Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell, 2006

5. Books from Top 100 That Failed to Stick:

We’ve all read books that came lavishly recommended but didn’t do much for us . . . or that absorbed us while we read them, but soon went missing from our memory banks.

To be clear: I don’t mean books we actively disliked or gave up on without regret.

Is it the book’s fault? If lots of good readers admire it, I tend to think the trouble’s on my end—read it too fast, read it without really latching on . . . I joke that some stuff just doesn’t get filed in my long-term memory, but it’s not a joke. My memory is very fluky. I can give you lyrics of “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain” by the Cascades (1962); I can name the twenty novels in Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, but, unaided, can tell you nothing I did last February.

Here’s a few titles I read but don’t remember:

• *Trust, Hernan Diaz (2022) [50]

• *10:04, Ben Lerner (2014) [62]

• *A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (2010) [39]

• *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (2007) [11]

• *Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson (2007) [100]

• *Veronica, Mary Gaitskill (2005) [63]

• *The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt (2000) [29]

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6. Thirty Other Writers Not on the Lists:

José Eduardo Agualusa, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Don De Lillo, Louise Erdrich, Ernest J. Gaines, Leslie Jamison, Heidi Julavits, Stephen King, Deborah Levy, Alice McDermott, Thomas McGuane, China Miéville, Haruki Murakami, Amélie Nothomb, Hanne Ørstavik, Cynthia Ozick, Thomas Pynchon, Anne Tyler, John Updike, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sara Waters . . .

Not to mention: You and all your friends who write. Sigh.

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Dave’s Faves [2000-2024]

Top Ten [1]  

• Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr (2021)

• Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

• The Ministry For the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh (2018) 

• The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2015)

• The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth (2014)

• Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

• All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews (2014)

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)

• My Struggle [Min kamp] (6 vol.), Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009-2011) 

• Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann (2009)

• Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell (2006)

Top Ten [2]  

• North Woods, Daniel Mason (2023)

• Normal People, Sally Rooney (2018)

• Commonwealth, Ann Patchett (2016)

• Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh (2015)

• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (2014)

• Preparation For the Next Life, Atticus Lish (2014)

• The Tenth of December [stories], George Saunders (2012)

• Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy: The Three-Body Problem,

           The Dark Forest, Death’s End, Liu Cixin (2006-2010)³

• Tinkers, Paul Harding (2009)

• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)

• Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro (2007)

• The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (2004)

• White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2000)

A Bunch More: 

Stella Maris,⁴ Cormac McCarthy (2022), The War for Gloria, Atticus Lish (2021), Twenty Stories: New and Selected, Jack Driscoll (2022), Pew, Catherine Lacey (2020), Stillicide, Cynan Jones (2019), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak (2018), Shadowbahn, Steve Erickson (2017), Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders (2017), Black Wave, Michelle Tea (2017), The Young Bride, Alessandro Baricco (2015), Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (2015), Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, (2014). Live Through This [memoir], Debra Gwartney (2009), Nothing To Be Frightened Of [memoir/essay], Julian Barnes (2008), On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (2007), Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan (2007), The Unit,⁵Ninni Holmqvist (2006), The Waitress Was New, Dominique Fabre (2005). Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005), 2666, Roberto Bolaño (2004), A Time for Everything,⁶ Karl Ove Knausgaard (2004), Whale [trans. by Chi-Young Kim], Cheon Myeong-kwan (2004), Stump, Niall Griffiths (2003), This Is Not Novel,⁷ David Markson (2001).

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1. Saunders: On the basis of: “Victory Lap” and “The Semplica Girls Diaries.”

2. Elena Knows: This was my intro to Charco Press, Edinburgh-based publisher of South American (principally Argentinian) fiction in skinny, matching editions. Give them a look:

     https://charcopress.com/

3. Three-Body: Maybe you’ve seen that these have been adapted for two limited series on TV: The Three-Body Problem (English) and Three Body (Chinese). You don’t have to dig sci-fi to get caught up in the book—or either show. [Have I watched both? Yes. Yes, I have.]

4. Stella Maris: Not arguing about this. A one-of-a-kind artifact that kept me glued to the page. An act of unfettered imagination. I re-read it almost immediately. Entirely speech.

5. The Unit: Dystopian—women over fifty, men over sixty, warehoused/pampered in a state-of-the-art facility while waiting to make “donations”—until they make their “final donation.” I don’t think this beauty got enough attention. Holmqvist is Swedish, known also as a translator.

6. Knausgaard: My Struggle and his later books have pushed this one out of the spotlight, but it’s really strong writing—difficult to describe how it works but he reimagines religious figures/symbols/narratives. You’ll never think the same way about Noah again, sailing off with a steely heart as the pleas of his extended kin fade.

7. Markson: Second book of the so-called Notecard Tetralogy. Page after page of snippets from the narrator’s reading, snippets of comment about them. He’s playing with the title of Magritte’s painting of a pipe labeled Ceci n'est pas une pipe [actual title: The Treachery of Images], which played against Denis Diderot’s story, “Ceci n’est pas un conte.” Yet, beguilingly, it is a novel—the narrator’s assembly and reaction to these notes about writing, writers and what they died of, amounts to a plot, woven around the repeated phrase, Timor mortis conturbat me, borrowed from the medieval Office of the Dead (The fear of death distresses me). I loved these books.