New York Times releases list of top books of the 21st century 

Pachinko is absolutely spectacular

"surprisingly philosophical" sounds like a backhanded compliment.

I just took a look at the list. While I am thrilled Savage Detectives is at 38, I hate how they go off the publication date for the English translations, rather than the publication date of the actual novel - Savage Detectives was published in Spanish in 1998. But they include it because the English version was 2007. Small complaint. As brilliant as Savage Detectives is, it shouldn't be there purely because it wasn't actually published this century.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (#15) is incredible!

Reading Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" right now. It's spectacular.

Mom and dad read pulp magazines in the 50s but dad would take us every week to the library. Thanks dad, I'm sure you would have rather been doing something else.

Stephen King submitted his own work and he's so real for that lol

Wolf Hall will always be my #1.

Just picked up Lenin :What is to be Done.

It's a bit suspect when they spend their time talking about the HBO series, and how many sequels the #1 book has.

I just love books reading is fundamental and special. This is why literacy is so important especially in cities like Albany Ga and New Orleans Louisiana. For kids it starts with Ivf before a child is born.

I've got the Warmth of Other Suns recently from a book sale. Pretty excited to review the whole list.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy!

The real banned books are zines. Most publishing in the 1990’s was zines, The best literature was zines, A new type of literature was zines that combined book making, art, and lit. The last golden age of literature before the internet. But you won’t see zines in any book show - Zines were not major corporations, they were not mass produced (they were produced in limited copies) and they were as often traded for other zines, as sold. They were marginalized by the mainstream - even though they were most of the publishing, and the most innovative of publishing. Wherever you see, hear, or read a review of the latest novel now, you should have seen, heard or read about reviews of a zines. Zines were exploding in the early nineties. Desk top publishing and copy stores allowed anyone to make and publish their writings on anything. Zinesters popped out of every city and began to share their work with others. This was the literature of an entire generation. But where was the media? They still haven’t covered this golden age of writing - and, as we see now, it was the last golden age of literature before the internet - that’s a big deal. Imagine a generation's total literary output treated like the Thought Police treated facts in the novel 1984. That's what happened to zines. This was not a case of banning one person's writings - this was banning an entire generation of writers - that even now have not been recognized. *** The media has done everything it can to alter publishing history and not tell about the zine explosion that came with desktop publishing. It's as if someone wrote the history of music but didn't talk about rock and roll from 1955-1970. The best and most innovative writing in the world was in zines during the years from 1990 - 2000+. There is a Zine Hall of Fame. So where has the media been? How many thousands and thousands of zines have not been reviewed since 1990 why generic publishing has gotten endless reviews? This article barely touches the tip of an iceberg that really came into its own in the 90's in a golden decade of writing, illustrating and bookmaking, still unknown to the majority of the world. The last great Golden age of literature before the internet began.

I love it that My Brilliant Friend is number one on the list!

Wolf Hall. I’ve loved the Tudors since childhood, but I did not love you and no one that I gave the book to, enjoyed or even finished it. Still on my bookshelf, I’ll try again.

Wolf Hall series for me is the best.

For me personally, and although I've read many of these books, it was Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon, that most impressed me with its storytelling, its characters, and its grand satisfying themes. I have to wonder whether it's missing from this list because it's over 1,000 pages long and thus much less commercial for a general readership.

GREAT item, @nbc !! Beautiful questions too, I may add. Very well presented. Love and light from Amsterdam 💖

Where can we see the list? I don't have a subscription to NYT.

Where’s the list?!

Is there a link to the list?

I see some books on this list that are praised for what they stand for rather than their craftsmanship. I've read Underground Railroad, Exit West, and Lincoln in the Bardo, and they were all okay but very forgettable. Maybe a little pretentious. Pachinko fell apart for me after the first half. I might have to give Mantel one more shot, because I had a hard time getting into Wolf Hall and never got past the first 50 pages. I feel like a book must leave an everlasting imprint on you to be considered great. Also, the list is overwhelmingly US-centric, so I don't give it a lot of merit. The fact that some of the "experts" shamelessly plugged their own work into the ballots is pretty telling about how the whole thing was assembled: connections and performative intellectualism.

I'm reaching out for your prayers and support. Please keep me in your thoughts for a speedy recovery.

If you are not a reader, please check out your favorite genre (can be movie/TV) and look up booktubers who highlight that genre. Also, ask your friends, family, or librarian for recommendations.

Those Books sound special and relatable

Jenna Bush what a luminary

Why haven’t I heard of any of these books 🤨

Pachinko❤

I was expecting The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood but it was not on the list.

Pillars of the Earth. 😊😊

Gone Girl? I mean, really. It's housewife crime fiction at best. To have it ranked there with Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood is just ridiculous.

Where is the list?

where is Haruki Murakami....

The puppy killer’s book didn’t make the list?

More like "Top 100 Books in English - with a few token bestsellers from abroad thrown in, the ones made into a prestige series I saw on HBO" So much for "experts" ... 😅

21st century starts on January 1, 2001. Why Michael Chabon's 2000-released book Kavalier and Clay is there?

The century is still young ... there's time to do better. I agree about the Wolf Hall trilogy and 'Say Nothing'.

Every circle begins with its end. Reflection is key. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge, hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)

Cartarescu might be the greatest writer alive and is not on the list. Solenoid is the best book of this century.

Another masterpiece!

How did Solenoid not make it to this list?

Great list, although a little anglo/european centric ?

Wonderful

This should only be done at the actually end of the century not when we’re 1/4ths in it

I've read nine of them and they were all fairly good, but not great. "The Goldfinch" is probably the best of all of the ones I read, but it was just "pretty good" if you ask me. "The Road" is quite possibly Cormac McCarthy's worst novel. It's really good, but the ending is a total "Deus Ex Machina" bailout. "Station Eleven" was a middling entry in the never ending "dystopian future" genre. Honestly, nothing I read on the list would even touch my own personal 100 favorite books ever.

No Bret Easton Ellis?

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is the best book ever written. If it's not on the list, I'm not taking this list seriously.

Ooh, 2666….thats a fun one

Some crap books rated too highly and some great ones not on the list. For example “The Road” isn’t even serious literature, more like a Hollywood screenplay, airport bookstore drivel. “The Blind Assassin” was completely ignored and should be in the top 10. Why no love for Ms Atwood, guys? She’ll still be read in 2050 when presumably the next quarter century list will be released-not true for many of these.

Why now this list? There are 77 years remained to complete the 21st century. The end of the world is just around the corner?

About 76 years too early, don't you think, folxs?

I guess ..those 500 plus people New York Times asked ..what 's the best 21st century BEST BOOKS ..❤ ..EACH PERSON HAS THEIR OWN VIEWS AND INSIGHTS ... THERE ARE MORE BILLIONS READERS OUT THERE .. WE CAN'T JUST SET THEM ASIDE .. THANKS !

Elena Ferrante 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Wolf Hall is my personal favorite. I am so honored to be born in a time Hilary wrote the masterpiece, and hope she is enjoying time chatting with Thomas Cromwell in heaven now.

You seem to be conflating the last hundred years and the top books of the 21st century so far. We're only in the first 25 years of the century. If Jenna Bush is one of your judges on literature then how prestigious is the judging panel? This is a literary scholar?

WOW

PACHINKO IS BEST

Almost All Anglo Saxon 🙄

Many of these books are flat-out bad, or at best mediocre. It just shows how artistically stunted these hacks are, especially those who win literary prizes.

*Pretty pitiful* . . . if you compare it to the top 100 books for the equivalent 25 years of the 20th century: Maugham, Kipling, Conrad, Lewis, Hardy, James, Forster, etc

I loved 3 out of 100. The rest I never encountered or found difficult to get into. Still haven’t read the Goldfinch. Call Me By Your Name was left off. Pity.

List whereeeee

What an American centric garbage list that misses some of the most important works of the 21st century!

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is not on list

Picking there own books. The list might be trash

An American newspaper, a newspaper from a country which bans books, feels itself entitled to tell the world which, not (yet) banned, one has to assume..., it should read...? A r e y o u s e r i o u s ??

✋✋ Philippines

The road high up at 13? Wow. Anyone who’s read that book knows how happy or joy creating it is.

👍🏾 😍😍

From nyt by nbc-skip

No, people dont want to read cause they don't wanna read.

Anyone interested in reading a book i wrote

The average American wouldn't read a book with a gun to their head.

most of those books sound boring but to each his own.

NYT got themselves on the naughty and haughty list. LOL good to share the list with the reading population but frankly Scarlet I don't give flying burrito.

Top 100 books for liberals

So shallow!

How can they possibly pick if the century hasn’t ended?😂 couldn’t they just say the “future classics from this time”?

Alice Munro’s books are problematic after recent revelations from her daughter. Mine have gone in the bin.

How is Murakami not on the list?

🥱

Solzhenitsyn

4:57 “ It’s also very sad, as many of these books are”. Well, there you go, it wouldn’t be intellectual and “serious” literature if it wasn’t filled with black despair. The reason Tolkien, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky are perennial is because they managed to combine the darkness of the human condition with Hope and even a sense of humor. With our suicide rate, our Alcoholism rate, the angry polarization of the country, the opioid epidemic, and life being plain hard, wouldn’t it be better to have Hope as an element that is essential in a list of the best books? It is difficult to write a serious book that includes Hope as a theme or even a haunting minor key than to write one that is a tragedy with a dark theme and secrets that destroy everyone

unfollow for using incel terms honestly

This list is simply laughable

¡A leer!

Women get the top list

Septology sighting

📖 🪱 💚

Top 3 picks are all women authors. I wonder If women are writing more or better, or if there's a certain type of gender bias.

As usual normies hate non-fiction educational books.

The Bible is #1… btw

These are DEI awards, nothing less. Pathetic.

Thank for reminding, Stephen King is a Narcissist.

Dune?! Come on! The greatest Science Fiction book of all time isn’t on the list?! Shame! Shame!

Top book is The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health”

The list is so… white to say the least. 🤔

Probably majority are Lib authors 🤫