The book club I joined in late 2023 used this list of supposedly “the best books of the 21st century” to generate reading picks. (We’re fully aware that some of the books on the list are godawful, trust me.) I’m using this page to track what I have and haven’t read from the list.
01 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
02 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
03 Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (2013), translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
04 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
05 Austerlitz by WG Sebald (2001), translated by Anthea Bell (2001)
06 The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2000)
07 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
08 Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)
09 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell (2004)
10 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
11 My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011), translated by Ann Goldstein (2012)
12 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
13 Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
14 Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
15 The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
16 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
17 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
18 The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007)
19 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night‑Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
20 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (2013)
21 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), translated by Harari with John Purcell and Haim Watzman (2014)
22 Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013)
23 The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon (2001)
24 A Visit from The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
25 Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018)
26 Capital in the Twenty First Century by Thomas Piketty (2013), translated by Arthur Goldhammer (2014)
27 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (2001)
28 Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy (2005)
29 A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009), translated by Don Bartlett (2012)
30 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
31 The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)
32 The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)
33 Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)
34 Outline by Rachel Cusk (2014)
35 The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (2010)
36 Experience by Martin Amis (2000)
37 The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015)
38 The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
39 White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
40 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
41 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
42 Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2010)
43 Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014)
44 Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (2004)
45 Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (2013)
46 Human Chain by Seamus Heaney (2010)
47 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000-2003), translated by Mattias Ripa (2003-2004)
48 Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (2002)
49 Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2011)
50 Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003)
51 Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
52 Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
53 True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)
54 Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017)
55 The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2006)
56 Underland by Robert Macfarlane (2019)
57 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
58 Postwar by Tony Judt (2005)
59 The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson (2002)
60 Dart by Alice Oswald (2002)
61 This House of Grief by Helen Garner (2014)
62 Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn (2006)
63 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
64 On Writing by Stephen King (2000)
65 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
66 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli (2014)
67 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (2018)
68 The Constant Gardener by John le Carré (2001)
69 The Infatuations by Javier Marías (2011), translated by Margaret Jull Costa (2013)
70 Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003)
71 Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000)
72 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
73 Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick (2009)
74 Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2016)
75 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009), translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (2018)
76 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)
77 Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (2009), translated by Lisa Dillman (2015)
78 The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin (2015)
79 The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2009)
80 Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (2002)
81 Harvest by Jim Crace (2013)
82 Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2002)
83 Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (2016), translated by Luiselli with Lizzie Davis (2017)
84 The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (2018)
85 The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006)
86 Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis (2017)
87 Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (2017)
88 Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001)
89 Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)
90 Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (2008), translated by Susan Bernofsky (2010)
91 Light by M John Harrison (2002)
92 The Siege by Helen Dunmore (2001)
93 Darkmans by Nicola Barker (2007)
94 The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
95 Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (2004)
96 A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)
97 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (2000)
98 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005), translated by Steven T Murray (2008)
99 Broken Glassby Alain Mabanckou (2005), translated by Helen Stevenson (2009)
100 I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron (2006)