My 25 (??) Favorite (??) Books of the 21st Century

Greetings from Read Max HQ!

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Now on to regularly scheduled programming: In this week’s issue, I list my favorite (??) novels of the 21st century, plus a discussion of the process by which I submitted to the New York Times’ list of the 100 best novels of the century so far.

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How to make a list

In May I received an email from The New York Times asking me to contribute a ballot to the newspaper’s project of picking the best books of the 21st century. Even though my reading habits are inconsistent and relatively narrow, and my memory for books I’ve read prior to about 2015 is basically nonexistent, I quickly and eagerly submitted a list of 10 books, for two reasons: One, I have inexplicably but successfully tied my family’s financial stability to my capacity to produce 3,000-5,000 words a week across two newsletters (subscribe now at the low price of $5/month or $50/year!), and therefore will happily do almost anything that might provide fodder for content. And two, I really love lists.

I mean, look, deep down I know that ranking books against each other is a sort of silly and ultimately limiting critical exercise. But as a content creator/consumer with a professional appreciation for splashy packages done well, I love lists as a carefully constructed editorial products, and as a person interested in the creation and maintenance of canons, “eras,” and cultural “type,” I love lists as a ruthless, revealing, and coldly definitive form of cultural boundary-setting. Perhaps most of all, as someone who loves to argue, I love lists as an opportunity to do so.

There is, luckily, no shortage of opportunities or angles for arguing about the Times list. If anything I wish the Times had seized on some of those opportunities itself: It’s all well and good to (e.g.) snub Karl Ove Knausgaard, Margaret Atwood, Sally Rooney, and Thomas Pynchon, but to do so without mounting a defense of their omission is leaving some really good content on the table. Why is the only nonfiction book in the top 10 Warmth of Other Suns? (And why is it number two?) Why did Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies make the list when The Mirror and the Light didn’t? I guess Netherland and Remainder didn’t end up being the two paths for the novel?

I know this would have taken too much wrangling to put together, so I don’t mean it as a criticism, but I would like to have read more from the 51 authors whose 10-best ballots were made public by the times. What was their reasoning? How did they choose? Their singular picks are more intriguing than the consensus best books, which are ultimately pretty predictable; I don’t need really need Lev Grossman to recommend Wolf Hall to me, but I would be fascinated to hear e.g., Jonathan Lethem account for his sci-fi heavy top-ten, or Sarah MacLean explain her all-romance ballot.

This is part of the fun of the process, after all: For an electorally organized list like this one, ther is, in addition to the obvious questions about what “best” might mean (technically impressive? Personally meaningful? Memorable? Favorite?), a latent question of strategy. Should you treat the exercise straightforwardly, and simply list the “best” (by whichever reckoning) books of the last 25 years? Or should you fill your ballot out strategically, and omit books that likely already have support in favor of books you think deserve more attention?

And, of course--of course!--you have to think about how your ballot redounds to your personal brand, especially if access to said brand is, for better or worse, the basic value proposition of your subscription newsletter. Does your ballot make you look smart, cool, well-rounded, widely read, slightly ahead of the curve--but not pretentious--and also like someone who is not actually concerned with such debased concepts as “personal brands”?

I want to be clear that, yes, that is overthinking it, but overthinking it represents about 60 percent of the enjoyment of the exercise, the other 40 percent coming from looking over your bookshelves and “remembering some books” that you haven’t thought about in two decades. Making a ballot is an eye-opening exercise in the narrowness of one’s reading habits (I read very little contemporary non-fiction, I realized!) the obviousness of one’s taste (I, too, love Elena Ferrante and Hilary Mantel!), and the failures of one’s memory (I read Netherland. Right? Did I?).

Anyway. I wanted to share my ballot with a little bit of explanation, but here’s the problem: I don’t actually remember what was on the 10-book ballot I submitted, and there appears to be no way to access it. (I was not one of the Ryan Holiday-level luminaries asked to make their ballots public.)

What I do still have is a 25-book longlist in a Google Doc that I put together, that I can present in three lumps, as a kind of lesson in quality editorial list-making. If you want to just skip to the store, they’re all located conveniently on this Bookshop dot org landing page. As noted above, I will receive a small affiliate fee for any purchases you make through the links, so please buy all of them, and throw some other expensive items in your cart while you’re at it.

1. Obvious choices

If you’re making a best-of list, you have to start some obvious choices--the books that everyone agrees are good, that are so widely beloved it feels almost embarrassing to love them, but which are ultimately so good as to be basically undeniable. These are the books that gain you credibility with your audience; if you don’t have at least a couple of them on your list, you may give off the impression that you are pretentious, tasteless, “up to something,” or are possibly not taking the project seriously. (And, possibly, you are: That’s fine, too.) Ten of the books I had on my longlist ended up on the final Times 100; they are, no particular order:

• My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante: If it was possible to vote for this one as a full four-book cycle, I would have. These and Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy are unquestionably my favorite books of the century, by basically any measure, despite the pathetically basic taste that indicates.

• Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

• Erasure - Percival Everett: Previously recommended on Read Max. I have to admit I was a little surprised this placed so high on the list--not that it’s not deserving, I just didn’t realize how widely beloved it was. Nice to have an adaptation win a bunch of awards just before the ballots, I suppose.

• 2666 - Roberto Bolaño

• A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James

• The Known World - Edward P. Jones

• The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner

• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis - Lydia Davis

• The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead: Because of the year in which Underground Railroad was published (i.e., 2016), and the national mood and general marketing hype around the book, I think a lot of people misunderstand it and (quietly, privately) dismiss it as slavery/trauma porn. But I think it’s better read as a satirical American travelogue, in the spirit of Mason & Dixon or The Sot-Weed Factor--harrowing in places, absolutely, but more interested in providing an comic alt-history of the U.S. than in reveling in or exploiting pain.

• White Teeth - Zadie Smith

2. Outside chances

In addition to a certain number of undeniable, can’t-leave-them-off books, you need a few “outside” picks--books that can be surprising without being ridiculous and dismissable. These are books with small but devoted coteries of fans, or unexpected choices from expected authors, or already-forgotten or previously overlooked classics. On my longlist I can pick out nine books that didn’t make the final Times 100, but probably had a decent shot, or whose authors’ other books did:

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell: I just sort of think anyone who believes Cloud Atlas is a better book than this hasn’t read Cloud Atlas more recently than they read Thousand Autumns.

• Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner: I love 10:04 and don’t begrudge its placement on the list, but this is still the best Lerner, to me.

• Conversations With Friends - Sally Rooney: I’m genuinely pretty shocked at Sally Rooney’s complete omission from the Times list! I’ve always liked Rooney’s novels, but I’ve found myself reverse polarized into becoming a real Sally Rooney ride-or-die by her critics, who I think are much more often expressing their contempt for Rooney’s imagined audience of basics than they are engaging with her work.

• Milkman - Anna Burns: This is a masterpiece whose reputation in the U.S. I think was unfortunately clouded by a very wrongheaded Dwight Garner review, which seemed to miss that it is an extremely if mordantly funny book and an incredibly impressive feat of acrobatic writing.

• Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon: All three Pynchon novels published this century are bangers--I will die on this hill--and even though I did expect Against the Day to make it to the Times 100 my pick for his most impressive recent novel is Bleeding Edge. The prospects of a “Pynchon 9/11 Novel” or a “Pynchon Internet Novel” are almost too good to be true (to Pynchon fans) but he nails it. My octogenarian president.

• Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

• Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link: Surprised by the lack of both Link and Chiang on this list, especially considering how often they both show up in the published ballots. I wonder if their consistency hurts them here--too many good collections means votes don’t concentrate enough on a single work. If you subscribe to and enjoy this newsletter and have not read any Kelly Link or Ted Chiang change that immediately.

• Open City - Teju Cole: I still think about this book constantly. One of the most memorable and haunting endings to a novel I can think of.

• Remainder - Tom McCarthy: I wonder if Zadie Smith’s infamous review put this and Netherland in a timeout for critics? Are people embarrassed for having liked and praised a Very Conceptual book by a guy who very obviously Read Theory? I would like to hear a dissenting review from a hater, even though I would disagree with it.

3. Personal favorites

Finally, a good list needs to have some fully left-field, highly personal choices--books that you do not expect will meet any kind of consensus, but which you can defend and which give the list some kind of genuine personality.

• Red Plenty - Francis Spufford: I’ve recommended Spufford books on this newsletter in the past, but this one is a pretty incredible achievement--a mostly non-fictional account of the development of the Soviet planned economy, written (quite beautifully) in the tone of a science-fiction novel. I know at this point Red Plenty has a relatively big fan base, but they’re all like left-liberal economics Twitter power users and not the kinds of people who get asked to vote in these lists.

• The Skull - Jon Klassen: Previously recommended on Read Max. The ballot instructions said picture books counted, and I think I sort of took that as a challenge. I actually wonder if Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back is the better and more iconic choice. But I love The Skull, as does my son, though he’s started to get a little scared of it.

• Piranesi - Susannah Clarke

• The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie: Piranesi and The Raven Tower are very different books, but they remind me of each other in that they’re extremely impressive technical feats in the development and maintenance of a singular voice. I suppose they’re also the two best fantasy novels of the century?

• The Likeness - Tana French: I think I would feel like I wasn’t being honest if I left Tana French off any list I made of the best books of the 21st century--I have read more of her books than any other author, and probably recommended more of her books than any other author as well. The best thriller writer of the century, for sure. The Likeness is the best, but start with In the Woods.

• Light - M. John Harrison: Previously recommended on Read Max. If you don’t count Red Plenty, and you probably shouldn’t, best sci-fi novel of the century? What else even competes, really?

So that’s it: My ballot was some 10 from those 25. (I know Ferrante and Mantel were on it, and Spufford and Tana French, and then the rest is kind of a blur.) I have no doubt there are books that I love and honor and believe to be great that I’ve left off! (Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This, maybe, and if I’d read it before I filled out the ballot my enthusiasm might’ve led me to include Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension.) I’ve also sort of conspicuously ignored nonfiction, because, as I say, I just haven’t read that much recent nonfiction, and I think comparing and ranking fiction is more fun anyway.

One final tout: If you like book recommendations--especially if you like these book recommendations--don’t forget that this very newsletter publishes a weekly recommendation roundup featuring new and old books, movies, and music, for paying subscribers only. For $5/month or $50/year you get both the weekly recommendations and access to the entire archive: