The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - The Guardian

Britain's The Guardian newspaper has an interesting article titled "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century" that caught my eye this morning. Essentially, of course, it is a list of what the newspaper considers to be the best books of the past two decades, meaning that something like 80% of the books on today's list are likely to be gone by the turn of the 22nd century.

The entire list can be found here. It's beautifully done, so take a look at it.

Of the Top 10, I've only read number 2, Marilynne Robinson's 2004 novel Gilead. That this one is on the list is not much of a surprise because it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. I am a bit surprised that it rates this highly, though. From The Guardian: "Robinson’s meditative, deeply philosophical novel is told through letters written by elderly preacher John Ames in the 1950s to his young son who, when he finally reaches an adulthood his father won’t see, will at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation."

I seem to have done much better with the second ten on the list, having read six of them starting with number 11, My Brilliant Friend by the mysterious Italian author who uses the pen name Elena Ferrante. My Brilliant Friend is part of a four-book series that kept me reading for several weeks and was one of my favorite books of 2012. The other five I read were: Number 12, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004); Number 13, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001); Number 17, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006); Number 19, Mike Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003); and Number 20, Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (2013).

Of the next twenty (31-40), I've read only three: Number 22, Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013), Number 30, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016), and Number 40, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Dideon (2005). The Whitehead book is one of my all-time favorites and it, of course, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017. I still think about that one sometimes because of the audacious approach Whitehead uses to make his completely serious points about slavery and its aftermath. It is brilliant.

Again, of the next twenty (41-60), I've only managed three of them: Number 41, Ian McEwan's Atonement (2001), Number 42, Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2010), and Number 51, Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn (2009). These three fall right into my wheelhouse because I'm a huge fan of both McEwan and Tóibín and I'm always on the lookout for a good baseball book, especially something like this groundbreaking one from Lewis. Really, what surprises me here is that a baseball book showed up at all on a "Best of" booklist in a British newspaper. That's kind of cool.

I didn't even do that well on the next twenty (61-80), having read only one of them and abandoned one other that only irritated me more with every page I turned. The one I read is: Number 64, Stephen King's wonderful book on writing appropriately titled On Writing (2000). The one that I found unreadable enough to give up on it despite all its hype was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. (That one is my candidate to be the first one to drop off the list next time its updated.)

And then there are the final twenty - and I can add only one of them to my list of ones read. It's The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell   (2000) which came in at Number 94.  I've read all the recent Gladwell books and have enjoyed each of them, but I'm starting to hear rumblings that his star is becoming a bit tarnished these days. Interestingly Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) comes in at number 97 (well, that surprises me) and I spotted a Jim Crace novel I didn't know about, 2013's Harvest at number 81. That one will be added to my TBR for sure.

So there you have it, a mere 15 out of the top 100 books of the past two decades. I realize that this is a British newspaper's list, but I read a whole lot of British literature and nonfiction so I'm still a little disappointed in myself. Anyway, take a look at the list by clicking on that link up above because you might very well spot something you want to add to your own TBR list. Good stuff here.