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The NYT has dropped a list of the 100 best books of the 21st Century. According to them.
I find the list to be vapid beyond words. The inclusion of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow alone, even in the upper 70s, disqualifies it from being anything except for a circlejerk of the rag. Trash like The Fifth Season cements it.
You can walk through the list and see the same themes being hammered over, and over, and over, and over. It is exactly what you'd expect from the culture war, and the percentage of books written in the last 10 years (much less the last 20) is absurdly high.
A couple years ago I collected what I think are the best hundred songs of all time. A friend's python visualization of my Spotify playlist illuminated that, despite all the deep cuts, I didn't have a single entry from before I was born. My musical blind spots are enormous, and I think most old music just fucking sucks. At least I can admit it's because I'm susceptible to the level of manufacturing that modern music goes through, along with a huge obsession with sick beats. My list is "wrong" for most people.
I can't imagine having this level of navel-gazing weakness in self-reflection. Did nobody look at this list and realize how stupid the title is? Did anyone over 25 contribute to it?
In any case as the number got higher there were at least some decent books listed that you could read without hating yourself. They're all still liberal, by default, but at least have significant redeeming qualities.
I spent most of the dinner I took my wife on Saturday debating this list, so thanks for posting it!
It was quite obviously political, in ways that are so blatant as to be silly. It was snobby, in ways that come out stupid. On both counts: how do you not throw a single Harry Potter book on there? Or any of GRRM's stuff? Both have been vastly influential, much moreso than fifty seven books that amount to Girl with Ethnicity finds herself through interactions with friend/mentor/historical figure/sapphic love object.
But ok, let's see what you've got: what are your ten books that should have made the list? When I tried to, I realized I don't read much new fiction, so with a strong non-fiction bias I came up with:
1 Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Absolutely essential reading for understanding American sports since 2000, and most of American business and politics too.
2 Game Change by Halperin and the other guy. Holy shit this book was everywhere when it came out. It was the whole attitude of the Obama era.
3 Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The best book for digging into the financial crisis. It amazes me that crises since have not been understood in light of '08, despite it being in such close memory.
4 Storm of Swords by GRRM. The best of the GoT/Asoiaf books, with the most iconic set piece in fantasy, definitely of the century, possibly ever. The last of the books where he knew where he was going, and the one whose events made the show what it was.
5 Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow. Synthesizes a huge amount of Anthropology into a coherent vision of alternate versions of human society.
6 Circe by Madeleine Miller. Stands in for the entire genre it spawned of female views on Homeric epic. Engaged with the material, didn't sugarcoat or pussyfoot.
7 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling. This was where the series peaked, the next three books suffered from mistakes made here, but this was her best world-building and swashbuckling.
8 Catch and Kill by Ronan farrow. Massively important, but also well written and entertaining, mixes Nancy Drew with genuine reporting. Benefits from reread and reflection, as important for what Farrow didn't write as for what he did.
9 Baudolino by Umberto Eco. Eco always explores forgotten vistas of history, this is his swing at the medieval legendarium of the near and far orient.
10 The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. Honestly at times I didn't love it reading it but so many things from it really stuck with me. A fascinating window into Polish society and Jewish history.
Huh, you'd rate Goblet above Prisoner of Azkaban?
I haven't heard that one before - I thought the usual take was that Azkaban was the peak, whereas Goblet was, though still readable and fun, starting to show the bloat and lack of discipline that would be at its worst with Phoenix, but still on display until the end of the series.
I think you can argue between the peak being end of Azkaban or beginning of Goblet, but for the purposes of a 21st century list: Azkaban was 1999. I do think Goblet gets extra "influence" credit on a top x list because I felt, as a 10 year old at the time, that it clearly pushed YA fiction into longer pagecounts.
...oh, well, that makes sense. I didn't check the publication dates. That's fair. I do agree that Goblet is definitely the best of the latter four Potter books.
I'm not sure I would give Harry Potter the credit for pushing YA fiction longer? Azkaban is the first 'large' Potter book - I believe Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets are both around 200 pages? And Azkaban was, as you say, 1999. But consider, say Northern Lights - that's a 1995 YA novel, it was quite successful, and it was 400 pages long.
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