The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century List

 The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century List

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  This list dropped last week- I can't track down a printable list but you can find non paywalled versions on Goodreads.  The list was generated via a survey of 500+ authors and other literary types which means that there was no editorial portion of the process. There was no definition of "best" give to the voters though in the parlance of this blog it is clear that voters cared more for "classics" than "hits,"  many hits were absent- no Sally Rooney, no Karl Ove Knausgaard, no Harry Potter.  Very little genre work of any kind.  The interactive presentation on the Times website allows you to tick off each title to see how many you've read- I came out with a count of 50/100- which probably would have been higher but for the inclusion of non-fiction works- not 50/50 fiction/non-fiction, but I'd only read one of the non-fiction titles.   There were a surprising number of authors who landed two or more titles on the list- Jesmyn Ward had three I thin, Ferrante has two, and Denis Johnson had 2 or 3.

  Leaving aside the actual rank order from 1 to 100, there was plenty of similarity between the books picked by these folks and the books I've written about here.  I was shocked by how many books in translation made the list- including the number one book (Ferrante) and three of the top ten books.  I saw the similarity in this blog and that list in the number of works of translated fiction and in the presence of so many titles that eschew the ordinary lives of ordinary folks.  I've made a dogged attempt over the past five years to come to terms with the merits of domestic fiction but after seeing only a handful of such titles on this NYT list, I'm starting to think I'm correct in my opinion that domestic fiction isn't particularly interesting to anyone.