'Best of' lists are silly... and here's mine
Yes, the New York Times' "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" list is a ridiculous exercise designed to harvest clicks and spark discussion, and I'll be damned if it didn't work on me.
I'll start by acknowledging that lists are silly. As I wrote recently about Apple Music's own Top 100 list, they are meaningless unless you agree with them, and serve as little more than a way to generate conversation.
Such is the case with the New York Times’ “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” list. After a week digesting the list and reading various takes on it, I still see it as little more than a nudge to read some books I've long had on my own "want to read" list, their worthiness perhaps further affirmed by their inclusion here. But that sort of confirmation bias only goes so far. I have no interest in Elena Ferrante's work, and seeing her debut atop this list does nothing to change that (and, in fact, it makes me wonder all the more about the validity of the list).
I've read 28 of the 100, counted thanks to the handy checkboxes provided by The Times. However, I think they were too limiting in their options. In addition to "I've read this" and "I want to read this," it would have been helpful to include "I thought I had read this but it turns out I have not," "I own this but haven't read it yet," "I have a bookmark about 30 pages into this one," "I checked this out of the library at least once with good intentions," and so on. Adding the 16 that qualify for one or more of these new categories to my list brings me to a more impressive 44. I would be close to 50 if "I read another one of this author's books and figured I had it covered" was also an option.
I fare worse on the reader-selected list, having read 25 (with a smattering from the above self-created categories as well, but not as many). That list feels predictably more commercial than critical, yet it contains many crossovers from the primary list — 39 to be exact.
The main list was created by asking "hundreds of novelists, nonfiction writers, academics, book editors, journalists, critics, publishers, poets, translators, booksellers, librarians and other literary luminaries" to pick their 10 best books of the 21st century. The Times allowed the respondents to define "best" in their own way, and these lists, along with a sort of "hot or not" popularity contest among other books were all fed into some process that yielded this overall list.
Additionally:
It was interesting to see some connections. Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Curtis Sittenfeld offers some exposure to fellow alums Jamel Brinkley, Susanna Daniel, Maggie Shipstead, and V.V. Ganeshananthan.
Who knew Goosebumps scribe R.L. Stine was such a mystery fan?
Having talked with Iowa's own Nathan Hill about the connection he has made with John Irving, I was unsurprised (and very happy for him) to see his The Nix on Irving's list.
Confirming that I am not yet a "literary luminary" in the eyes of the Times, my opinion was not solicited. However, what's the point of a Substack if not to offer unsolicited opinions? Here then, is my list. The Times rule was that chosen books "had to be published in the United States, in English, on or after Jan. 1, 2000. (Yes, translations counted!)" My added rule is that I need to have actually read the book to include it. Further self-imposed guidance was that a book should be memorable, have merited a second or third look at some point (though I rarely re-read entire books), and that it generally seems to have stood the test of time.
I have read a little more than 2,000 books since the turn of the millennium (and will read a few more before the end of 2024, which would technically be the end of the first quarter of the century). Not all of these were published in 2000 or beyond, of course, so not all would qualify.
After looking through the list of books I have read over the past 25 years, I came up with a short list of 26 contenders. It's no surprise to me that this list begins heavy on novels by white, middle-aged men and becomes much more diverse in terms of gender, race, and form as we get closer to the present. My awareness and consciously seeking out of different voices over the past two decades led to a much richer, rewarding (reading) life.
In addition to "I've read this" and "I want to read this," it would have been helpful to include "I thought I had read this but it turns out I have not," "I own this but haven't read it yet," "I have a bookmark about 30 pages into this one," "I checked this out of the library at least once with good intentions," and so on.
My Top 10, offered in chronological order of when I read them, along with a few similar titles that made the short list.
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
Many of my favorite authors wrote a "big book" during this stretch, ambitious, sprawling novels whose narratives spanned decades and tackled big ideas. Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, and Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers could have made the list, but Chabon edges them out just slightly.
Plainsong - Kent Haruf
This was probably deemed too popular or quaint to make most lists, but Haruf here captures so much of what would become a rather popular and fertile style, a deceptively simple book with darker undertones that placed character on equal footing with plot. He created a world in the same way Faulkner did, and continued to explore it for the rest of his career. In some ways, Tony Earley's Jim the Boy and Castle Freeman Jr.'s Go With Me cover similar territory, and Marilynne Robinson's Lila, though it fits in other categories here, does as well.
Elegy on Toy Piano - Dean Young
Along with Bob Hicok and Tony Hoagland, Young showed how humor could be used in verse to make points as savage and biting as any confessional poet, the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Nothing else on my list does exactly what this does, though Robert Wood Lynn's Mothman Apologia shares a certain absurdist bent with Young's best.
Just Kids - Patti Smith
I'm not a big reader of memoirs, though when I do it's usually the life of a musician on the page. Here, Smith talks less about her music and more about the relationships that nurtured and shaped her art. Musician memoirs and music books rarely rise to the level of "best of the century (so far)," but the lyrical quality of Smith's writing elevates this to such an exalted spot.
American Salvage - Bonnie Jo Campbell
I read a lot of mystery and crime fiction, and Midwestern and Southern grit factor heavily into the best. Campbell wouldn't be lumped in with those genres, but her stories capture the lives of the same type of people who often fall into the traps best detailed in those books. Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time is another that could have made this list. Other short story collections on my long list were George Saunders' Pastoralia and Nam Le's The Boat.
The Ecstasy of Influence - Jonathan Lethem
Several of Lethem's novels might have qualified here — his Fortress of Solitude is in the same ballpark as Chabon's Kavalier and Clay — but it is this collection of nonfiction that I return to again and again. My initial pass led me to explore the work of so many musicians and authors, and subsequent discoveries often lead me back to its pages to find that yes, Lethem wrote about this or that as well. Entire shelves of my library house similar collected works, but the sheer variety of subjects and the universal excellence of the entries sets this apart from the rest.
Citizen - Claudia Rankine
Just as Young's collection showed me one thing poetry could do, Rankine's ground-breaking book showed me another. Published in the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin — and many other unjust killings of young men of color — these prose poems turned expectations and assumptions inside out. Few books have so altered the way I view the world. Reginald Dwayne Betts's Felon carried that work forward, albeit in more traditional (but no less impactful) forms.
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
Yes, another music book, though very different from the others. The closest analogue is Lethem's for the sheer breadth and depth of the contents, but here The New Yorker's classical music critic offers a survey of the music of the 20th century. I have had a hand in producing a classical music festival for the past eight years; that and this book have thoroughly rewired the way I listen to music and led me to immerse myself in vast swaths of the canon that had been previously unexplored. It feels exhaustive and definitive. I'm sure other critics could quibble with his choices, but the compellingly rich narrative would make me question detractors.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois - Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
I was surprised this didn't make the overall list or any of the published lists from contributors (Jeffers offered her own list to the project). This beautiful novel charts the triumphs and tragedies of a black family over the decades with a deft touch. It never felt too long or too complex. I started reading it a few pages at a time each day, but eventually was sucked into the narrative and sped through before slowing down as I realized I was about to lose these characters. Similar books with multiple characters and sprawling storylines abound on my shortlist, including The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter, Empire Falls by Richard Russo, There There by Tommy Orange, and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which would be here had Nigel Tufnel compiled this list, does this as well in its own odd way.
What Belongs to You - Garth Greenwell
I fell for this book when I heard Greenwell read from it at Prairie Lights Books just after it was published. I'm not an audiobook fan, but hearing these gorgeous sentences read in Greenwell's particular cadence brought the book to life in a way that carried through as I took it home and read it on my own. Its story is claustrophobic in a good way, the tightly coiled tension belied by the luxuriant prose used to render it. Nothing else I've read in the past 25 years, save for Greenwell's own follow up, Cleanness, comes close.
What would make your list of the 10 best books of the century to date? What do you think of the Times’ list?