top of page

Create for community's 100 best books of the 21st century

Thank you to everyone who submitted a survey! Surveys were posted online and submitted over the past week. Here is how the ranking (or lack thereof) works and how we narrowed it down:

​

  1. Fourteen books were submitted by multiple people! The more people who submitted them, the higher the rank. These are the ONLY ranked books in this list.
     

  2. We removed books of poetry to their own separate list. 
     

  3. The remaining books are listed alphabetically by author, so you can see if authors had multiple submissions. 
     

  4. Underlined books mean that they are on the official NYT Books list. Similarly, a star indicates that while the book is not on the official list, the author is. (Entries that are both underlined and starred indicate that an author is on the official list more than once. Looking at you, George Saunders.)

Top 14 — Ranked by number of mentions in submissions

  1. Citizen by Claudia Rankine (x5)
    ​

  2. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (x5)
    ​

  3. Normal People by Sally Rooney (x3)​
     

  4. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (x3)​
     

  5. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (x3)​
     

  6. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (x2)​
     

  7. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (x2)

​​8. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (x2)​
 

9. Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob (x2)
​

10. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (x2)
​

11. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (x2)
​

12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (x2)​
 

13. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (x2)​
​

14. The Goldfinch by Donna Tart (x2)

Top 86 — Listed Alphabetically by Author's Last name

  • They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
     

  • Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
     

  • The Power Naomi by Ackerman
     

  • A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia by Sandy Allen

​

  • The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
     

  • Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

​

  • Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

​

  • The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
     

  • The Idiot Elif Batuman

​

  • Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

​

  • By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño*

​

  • Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

​

  • Madeleine is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

​

  • Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Carmus

​

  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

​

  • The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates*

​

  • The Sluts by Dennis Cooper

​

  • Dark Matter by BlakeCrouch

​

  • Outline by Rachel Cusk 

​

  • The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

​

  • Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

​

  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

​

  • A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

​

  • Bloomland by John Englehardt

​

  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

​

  • Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause by Chris Graham

​

  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

​

  • Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

​

  • Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

​

  • Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

​

  • The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

​

  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

​

  • The Nix by Nathan Hill

​

  • Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

​

  • How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

​

  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

​

  • The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

​

  • The Vegetarian by Han Kang 

​

  • Counternarratives by John Keene

​

  • ​​The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd​

​

  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

​​

  • Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas Kristof

​​

  • Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

​​

  • Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner*

​​

  • Autoportrait by Édouard Levé

​​​

  • ​​Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

​

  • The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Louiselli

​

  • Severance by Ling Ma

​

  • In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

​

  • Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai*

​

  • The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May

​

  • Know My Name by Chanel Miller

​

  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

​

  • The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

​

  • All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison

​

  • Cruising Utopias by José Esteban Muñoz

​

  • Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

​

  • Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

​

  • How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

​

  • Weather by Jenny Offill

​

  • Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

​

  • A Hidden Wholeness by Parker J.Palmer

​

  • State of Wonder by Ann Patchett*

​

  • Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

​

  • In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

​

  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

​

  • The Revenant by Michael Punke

​

  • Rhetorical Listening in Action by Krista Ratcliffe and Kyle Jensen

​

  • The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

​

  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

​

  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders*

​

  • Austerlitz by WG Sebald 

​

  • The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

​

  • Just Kids by Patti Smith

​

  • You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

​

  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

​

  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

​​

  • Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward*

​

  • Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

​

  • Educated by Tara Westover

​

  • The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead*

​

  • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead*

​

  • The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

​

  • Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

​

  • The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben

​

  • The Labyrinth of Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

bottom of page