100 Best Books of the 21st Century

[Liam]

Another pathetic and thoroughly lazy list from the Guardian. I had to do a double-take. I thought maybe they chose to focus on English-language writers only? But no. This is it folks. This is the height of culture, creme de la creme, of the last two decades, from around the world. They should take the "p" out of pity and replace it with "s.h." coz this is shit.

 

[Vitrvvivs]

Calm it with the faecal imagery, Murphy. I think someone already posted this, by the way. The Dutch guy.

 

[Ludus]

... but it is pretty shitty, indeed.

 

[Liam]

Did he? Apologies if so, but I've only just seen it.

 

[Vitrvvivs]

Apropos scatological imagery... There's a quote about Sartre by Celine, where he claims Sartre crawled out his anal sphincter. Anyone have it?

 

[Ludus]

Well, even if the list is pretentious, it has some interesting picks. I agree with the list in some points, like Tokarczuk (but I prefer Flights), Marías, Ferrante, Carson, Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Roth, Ishiguro, and Alexievich. Lots of writers I´m interested in but haven´t read (like Barnes, Sebald, Robinson, Knausgaard, Cusk, and some others). I don´t know if some of the american names in the list are hidden jems I´m overlooking, but the list seems to be full of some good trash.

I really don´t know if Yuri Herrera belongs into a "best of the XXI" list just now. I mean he is good, but I think he is still to publish something greater. Although both mexican writers that come up in the list (Herrera and Luiselli) write about immigration and about the USA, wich has to be somehow appealing to american and brittish readers and... list makers.

Talking about Luiselli, I read her first book in spanish and it was... ok i guess. People went crazy over it when it came out, but it did not impressed me. Maybe she writes better in english idk.

 

[Cleanthess]

On the topic of lists, the more focused the list the better; for example, some dude picks his 10 favorite American novels since the 70's here.

On the scatology front, Antonio Lobo Antunes' colorful views regarding the Nobel Prize "Me cago en el Nobel". Lobo Antunes dismisses Pessoa and Borges, but then, when asked who he rereads, Lobo Antunes answers "Faulkner, Proust".

 

[Liam]

Perhaps we can start our own list?

We can come up with all the "great" books published since 2000, in any language, and then hold a three-day voting process whereby we establish which titles are indeed the greatest. I mean, I realize we're a small pool and the list will reflect our personal "favorites" anyway, but I daresay we are more well-read and eclectic than whoever the fuck came up with that hideous Guardian pseudo-list.

And, from what I can tell about most users here (i.e. the regulars), at least we try to be objective. Perhaps most of the time we fail, but at least we try, and so necessarily we fail better (better than the Guardian folks, anyway) each time. For instance, I'm not a great fan of Saramago, but I would objectively place his A Caverna and O Homem Duplicado among the more "important" books of this century, as opposed to, I don't know, Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal.

 

[Bartleby]

Perhaps we can start our own list?

We can come up with all the "great" books published since 2000, in any language, and then hold a three-day voting process whereby we establish which titles are indeed the greatest. I mean, I realize we're a small pool and the list will reflect our personal "favorites" anyway, but I daresay we are more well-read and eclectic than whoever the fuck came up with that hideous Guardian pseudo-list.

And, from what I can tell about most users here (i.e. the regulars), at least we try to be objective. Perhaps most of the time we fail, but at least we try, and so necessarily we fail better (better than the Guardian folks, anyway) each time. For instance, I'm not a great fan of Saramago, but I would objectively place his A Caverna and O Homem Duplicado among the more "important" books of this century, as opposed to, I don't know, Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal.

That's a lovely idea!
Though I'm not sure I'd be able to contribute much, perhaps like, if we had a year, or half a year of reading, I could catch up with some authors and titles... But that's such a long time for such a simple idea, I'm sure each one of us can fill in the blind spots of each other with some important nominations...

 

[Liam]

Doesn't have to be an exhaustive list, we start with a more modest Top 25, and grow [sic] from there--

 

[Ludus]

I think that´s a great idea. It can be a progressive list that changes every year, giving that we´ve only seen 19 years of the XXI century
And I think we would have a broader perspective of literature than the guys at the Guardian, giving that we all are from very different places. So, when do we start?

 

[Ludus]

Also, we could make various lists, for novels, short stories, poetry and essays.

 

[Verkhovensky]

Wow, I've bought Gilead long time ago and basically forgot about it. I didn't know it was such highly rated book, so I guess it just moved up on my tbr list. I haven't read much, obviously because I'm not from English-speaking world and this list is just laughably anglocentric. First two books from the list I actually read I don't think belong that high. Cloud Atlas I was very disapointed with, and Plot Against America is an interesting idea, but it is my least favourite Roth novel I've read. He just lost my suspension of disbelief in the way how everything ended.

It's not shameful if they don't know much about literature outside of English speaking world, but it is quite insulting to suggest that other 7 billion people (lets say that English is a first language to approx. half billion out of 7.5 billion people in the world) that don't use English as first language produced just one freaking book worthy of making top 10 in the whole century.

 

[Verkhovensky]

Talking about Luiselli, I read her first book in spanish and it was... ok i guess. People went crazy over it when it came out, but it did not impressed me. Maybe she writes better in english idk.

Are you talking about Los ingravidos or about that book of essays? Because I absolutely loved Los ingravidos, that's maybe in my top 10 or top 20 favourite books of all-time, a true masterpiece. For me, it was one of those books you open not knowing much about, and then bam, your life has been changed.

 

[Liam]

We don't even have to vote for anything (yet), we can just keep a comprehensive list for a few months and just keep adding new titles to it. I just haven't come up with the best way to categorize this: alphabetically by author, by language, alphabetically by country, numerically by year, etc. I think going alphabetically by author's last name is the neatest way to do it, but what if you want to compare France, say, with Italy? Or Albania? Just to see which country's list is longer? You lose all of that if you go strictly by author. Any thoughts on this?

 

[Ludus]

Are you talking about Los ingravidos or about that book of essays? Because I absolutely loved Los ingravidos, that's maybe in my top 10 or top 20 favourite books of all-time, a true masterpiece. For me, it was one of those books you open not knowing much about, and then bam, your life has been changed.

I´m talking about "Papeles falsos", her first book of essays. Not really impressive for me, but if you say "Los ingrávidos" is that good, then I´m afraid I´ll have to give it a try

 

[Ludus]

We don't even have to vote for anything (yet), we can just keep a comprehensive list for a few months and just keep adding new titles to it. I just haven't come up with the best way to categorize this: alphabetically by author, by language, alphabetically by country, numerically by year, etc. I think going alphabetically by author's last name is the neatest way to do it, but what if you want to compare France, say, with Italy? Or Albania? Just to see which country's list is longer? You lose all of that if you go strictly by author. Any thoughts on this?

Numerically by year of publication might be neat

 

[Liam]

And within that, alphabetically by author? Or country and then author? This is getting confusing, LOL.

I guess what I am proposing will look something like this:

[2000]

?? Kadare, Ismail. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (novel).
?? Aira, César. El Juego de los Mundos.
etc.

 

[Ludus]

I had in mind something like this
?? (2000) Aira, César. El Juego de los Mundos.
?? (2000) Kadare, Ismail. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost (novel).
?? (2007) Tokarczuk, Olga. Flights.

But I think the presentation is not really that important, the important thing is to discuss the books <3

 

[Ludus]

While looking at my Goodreads, I´m humbled by how many great books from this century I haven´t read. Gotta get reading! Any suggestions of a book you guys consider indispensable for the XXI? That should be a good way to start!