Our top books of the 21st century

What our ballot votes would be, had The New York Times asked us

The NYT just published the 100 best books of the 21st century and wow there’s been a lot of chat. If you haven’t seen it, please do take a peruse as we would love to know your thoughts (sorry, it might be behind a paywall… it was, now it’s not, maybe it will be again).

I’ve seen lots of enthusiastic readers start producing their own lists, and yes I’ve contributed to a few google forms this week enabling readers to build their own crowd-sourced list. I will comment a link to these as they get published!

The NYT has also already responded with a readers’ choice list which I found to be much more recognisably aligned with my top books, but which Today in Books labelled as noticeably more boring. Can’t win, hey? What I think is amazing about this dialogue is how passionate we are about books we love and how diverse our tastes are. To prove this point, Tom and I have decided to share with you our ballots.

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The rules:

The NYT sent a survey to hundreds (503 I believe) of novelists, non fiction writers, academic, book editors, journalists, critics etc and ask them to pick their 10 best books of the 21st century. This is how the top 100 list is compiled.

So, for avoidance of any doubt, here are our selections IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Jen’s list:

1. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

2. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

3. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

4. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

5. Christodora by Tim Murphy

6. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

9. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

10. The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Special mentions to: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

Tom’s list

1. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

2. Kingdom of Fear by Hunter S Thompson

3. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

4. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

5. Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan

6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

7. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

9. The Damned Utd by David Peace

10. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

No special mentions from Tom because I gave him a 10 book limit and he stuck to it and didn’t cheat like me.

See what I mean about difference? Not a minuscule amount of overlap between the two of us - so great. I have added so many of his list to my to be read pile, starting with The Three-Body Problem.

You can find the full list here.

What would be yours? Leave us a comment below 👇

You can also generate your own graphic like the ones we’ve used above on our website. Complete yours and tag us at @weare.verse so we can see your selection!

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Other lists you might also like:

Books we added to our to read pile this month

The best books I've been given

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