As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
Q: How many of the 100 have you read? Q: Which ones did you love/hate? Q: What’s missing?
Here’s the full list.
100. Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson 99. How to Be Both, Ali Smith 98. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett 97. Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward 96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman 95. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel 94. On Beauty, Zadie Smith 93. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel 92. The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante 91. The Human Stain, Philip Roth 90. The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen 89. The Return, Hisham Matar 88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis 87. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters 86. Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight 85. Pastoralia, George Saunders 84. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee 83. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labutat 82. Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor 81. Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan 80. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante 79. A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin 78. Septology, Jon Fosse 77. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones 76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin 75. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid 74. Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout 73. The Passage of Power, Robert Caro 72. Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich 71. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen 70. All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P. Jones 69. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander 68. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez 67. Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon 66. We the Animals, Justin Torres 65. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth 64. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai 63. Veronica, Mary Gaitskill 62. 10:04, Ben Lerner 61. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver 60. Heavy, Kiese Laymon 59. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides 58. Stay True, Hua Hsu 57. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich 56. The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner 55. The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright 54. Tenth of December, George Saunders 53. Runaway, Alice Munro 52. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson 51. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson 50. Trust, Hernan Diaz 49. The Vegetarian, Han Kang 48. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi 47. A Mercy, Toni Morrison 46. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt 45. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson 44. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin 43. Postwar, Tony Judt 42. A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James 41. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan 40. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald 39. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan 38. The Savage Detectives, Roberto Balano 37. The Years, Annie Ernaux 36. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates 35. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel 34. Citizen, Claudia Rankine 33. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward 32. The Lines of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst 31. White Teeth, Zadie Smith 30. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward 29. The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt 28. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 27. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 26. Atonement, Ian McEwan 25. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc 24. The Overstory, Richard Powers 23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro 22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo 21. Evicted, Matthew Desmond 20. Erasure, Percival Everett 19. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe 18. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders 17. The Sellout, Paul Beatty 16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon 15. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee 14. Outline, Rachel Cusk 13. The Road, Cormac McCarthy 12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion 11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz 10. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson 9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 8. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald 7. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead 6. 2666, Roberto Bolano 5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen 4. The Known World, Edward P. Jones 3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel 2. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson 1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
Having rewatched Pirates of the Carribean several times, I have noticed something interesting. Will Turner is often the only survivor of massive shipwrecks, like the one that killed his mother or the one with the kraken. Other times even when hes alone he survives drowning in ways he really has no right to, like the destruction of the Interceptor. He just often conveniently finds a perfect sized piece of driftwood or something. Remember what Calypso said? About him having a “touch of destiny?” I think that the sea could never kill him, will always cradle him and protect him, because all along he was destined to be the captain of the Flying Dutchman. The sea could no more kill him than a human could cut off their own arm.
Genuinely 90% of historical fiction would be so much better if more writers could get more comfortable with the fact that to create a good story set in a different time period you do actually have to give the characters beliefs & values which reflect that time period
You can research what people actually said in history!
In 1726, when William Brown was on trial for attempted sodomy in London, he didn’t say “I was born this way”, he said, ““I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body”.
In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen didn’t say, "A woman can do anything a man can do!”, she said, God created men and women with different humours and having too much of the male elements will throw society out of balance.
In the 1860s, Millicent Garrett Fawcett didn’t say, “Women are just as smart as men”, she said, Men get to vote no matter how dumb they are.
In the 1850s, William Craft didn’t say, “Africans are just as smart as Europeans and it’s bigoted to say otherwise”, he said that Africans have thick skulls “to defend the brain from the tropical climate in which he lived. If God had not given them thick skulls their brains would probably have become very much like those of many scientific gentlemen of the present day”
I genuinely like how all of those examples are killer quotes but also represent something that may be considered unkind or overly religious or oddly phrased or straight up untrue today. Excellent job picking them out @sourjen .
gravity falls was such a great show for so many reasons but one in particular that stuck with me to this day was that it proudly encouraged kids to be weird. there was never the almost stifling message of “everyone is their own normal :)” because as a neurodivergent child that is almost never how it actually feels. it did an awesome job at saying “yeah, you stick out like a sore thumb. six of em, actually! how cool is that!?” and it encouraged you to support your loved ones weirdness even if you don’t begin to understand it
