The New York Times recently polled hundreds of novelists, poets, nonfiction writers, critics, and other book lovers and asked them to name the 10 best books published since January 1, 2000. Participants included Stephen King, James Patterson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Elin Hilderbrand, Roxanne Gay, and many more notable names. Their votes resulted in a ranking of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Perusing the list will likely remind readers of old favorites as well as add many more titles to one’s To Read Next pile. The top 10 titles include:
- My Brilliant Friend (Ferrante)
- The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson)
- Wolf Hall (Mantel)
- The Known World (Jones)
- The Corrections (Franzen)
- 2666 (Bolano, translated by Wimmer)
- The Underground Railroad (Whitehead)
- Austerlitz (Sebald, translated by Bell)
- Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
- Gilead (Robinson)
Not surprisingly, the list generated lots of opinions from the average reader who thought certain books should have made the cut, so the NYT subsequently conducted a similar survey to publish the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century According to Readers.
Their top 10 titles include:
- Demon Copperhead (Kingsolver)
- All the Light We Cannot See (Doerr)
- A Gentleman in Moscow (Towles)
- The Goldfinch (Tartt)
- Pachinko (Lee)
- Educated (Westover)
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Zevin)
- My Brilliant Friend (Ferrante)
- Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
- Station Eleven (Mandel)
We’d love to know your favorite titles published in the first quarter of this century and hope these lists inspire you to check out some new books, authors, and series here soon!