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

London's The Guardian has a list up on its website right now titled "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century." That's exactly the kind of list I can never resist, always wondering what tiny percentage of the books listed I may have read and which ones need to go immediately to my TBR list. You can click right here to go to the Guardian website - and immerse yourself in the descriptions of all of the books chosen for their top 100. 

Here's a simple list of the 100 books without descriptions other than author and year originally published. Some of the books were published in their home markets and translated into English for publication several years later. I've used bold type on the ones I've read because that was my original goal.

100. I Feel Bad About My Neck – Nora Ephron (2006)

99.   Broken Glass – Alain Mabanckou (2005)

98.   The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson (2005)

97.   Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling (2000)

96.   A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

95.  Chronicles – Bob Dylan (2004)

94.  The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

93.  Darkmans – Nicola Barker (2007)

92.  The Siege – Helen Bunmore (2001)

91.  Light – M John Harrison (2002)

90.  Visitation – Jenny Erpenbeck (2008)

89.  Bad Blood – Lorna Sage (2000)

88.  Noughts & Crosses – Malorie Blackman (2001)

87.  Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood (2017)

86.  Adults in the Room – Yanis Varoufakis (2017)

85.  The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins (2006)

84.  The Cost of Living – Deborah Levy (2018)

83.  Tell Me How It Ends – Valeria Luiselli (2016)

82.  Coraline – Neil Gaiman (2002)

81.  Harvest – Jim Crace (2013)

80.  Stories of Your Life and Others – Ted Chiang (2002)

79.  The Spirit Level – Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2009)

78.  The Fifth Season – NK Jemisin (2015)

77.  Signs Preceding the End of the World – Yuri Herrera (2009)

76.  Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman (2011)

75.  Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

74.  Days Without End – Sebastian Barry (2016)

73.  Nothing to Envy – Barbara Demick (2009)

72.  The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff (2019)

71.  Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Man on Earth – Chris Ware (2000)

70.  Notes on a Scandal -Zoë Heller (2003)

69.  The Infatuations – Javier Marías (2011)

68.  The Constant Gardener – John le Carré (2001)

67.  The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker (2018)

66.  Seven Brief Lessons on Physics – Carlo Rovelli (2014)

65.  Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn (2012)

64.  On Writing – Stephen King (2000)

63.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot (2010)

62.  Mother’s Milk – Edward St Aubyn (2006)

61.  This House of Grief – Helen Garner (2014)

60.  Dart – Alice Oswald (2002)

59.  The Beauty of the Husband – Anne Carson (2002)

58.  Postwar – Tony Judt (2005)

57.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon (2000)

56.  Underland – Robert Macfarlane (2019)

55.  The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan (2006)

54.  Women & Power – Mary Beard (2017)

53.  True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey (2000)

52.  Small Island – Andrea Levy (2004)

51.  Brooklyn – Colm Tóbín (2009)

50.  Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood (2003)

49.  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal – Jeanette Winterson (2011)

48.  Night Watch – Terry Pratchett (2002)

47.  Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi (2002-2003)

46.  Human Chain – Seamus Heaney (2010)

45.  Levels of Life – Julian Barnes (2013)

44.  Hope in the Dark – Rebecca Solnit (2004)

43.  Citizen: An American Lyric – Claudia Rankine (2014)

42.  Moneyball – Michael Lewis (2010)

41.  Atonement – Ian McEwan (2001)

40.  The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion (2005)

39.  White Teeth – Zadie Smith (2000)

38.  The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst (2004)

37.  The Green Road – Anne Enright (2015)

36.  Experience – Martin Amis (2000)

35.  The Hare with Amber Eyes – Edmund de Waal (2010)

34.  Outline - Rachel Cusk (2014)

33.  Fun Home – Alison Bechdel (2006)

32.  The Emperor of All Maladies – Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)

31.  The Argonauts – Maggie Nelson (2015)

30.  The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (2016)

29.  A Death in the Family – Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009)

28.  Rapture – Carol Ann Duffy (2005)

27.  Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – Alice Munro (2001)

26.  Capital in the Twenty First Century – Thomas Piketty (2013)

25.  Normal People – Sally Rooney (2018)

24.  A Visit from the Good Squad – Jennifer Egan (2011)

23.  The Noonday Demon – Andrew Solomon (2011)

22.  Tenth of December – George Saunders (2013)

21.  Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari (2013)

20.  Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (2013)

19.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon (2003)

18.  The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein (2007)

17.  The Road  - Cormac McCarthy (2006)

16.  The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen (2001)

15.  The Sixth Extinction – Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)

14.  Fingersmith – Sarah Waters (2002)

13.  Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)

12.  The Plot Against America – Philip Roth (2004)

11.  My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante (2011)

10.  Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

  9.  Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (2004)

  8.  Autumn – Ali Smith (2016)

  7.  Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

  6.  The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman (2000)

  5.  Austerlitz – WG Sebald (2001)

  4.  Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

  3.  Secondhand Time – Svetlana Alexievich (2013)

  2.  Gilead – Marilynne Robinson (2004)

  1.  Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel (2009)

So I've read a measly 16 of the 100 best books of the 21st century despite having read 1,991 books (a substantial percentage of them having been published in this century) in total since midnight December 31, 1999. Talk about trying to find a needle in a haystack...even though I have zero desire to read quite a few of the books listed.

Out of curiosity, I made an imprecise breakdown of the list and found these numbers:

Male Authors: 52

Female Authors: 49

(The 101 total results from one of the books being co-authored by a man and a woman.)

Fiction: 55

Nonfiction: 40

Poetry: 5

Translations: 11  (Several other books were written by African writers and others in English.)

First Decade of the century: 60

Second Decade of the century: 40

Keep in mind that I did not double-check my compiled statistics, so they may be off by one or two in places...but you get the idea.

So how many of the 100 have you guys read?