At the turn of the century, amid one of the early moral panics over the rise of the digital age, many folks were asking whether books would become obsolete.
But in the years since, there’s been no shortage of great reads. Indeed, today one can feel almost overwhelmed by the choices.
Now, the New York Times Book Review has to come to the rescue with a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century — so far, at least. And books by more than a few Texas authors are included in this highly-selective list.
Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, said the Review reached out to authors, librarians, and other writers to help build their list.
“Instead of us just doing it, the 30 of us at the Book Review, let’s reach out to all the people that we communicate with all the time and see what they think,” he said. “So we sent a poll out to more than 1,000 writers, novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, librarians – you know, people who read a lot. And 503 of them responded.”
The Review staff then counted up the votes for each title.
“We asked each person who we sent a poll out to to pick up to ten books that they think are the best of the century so far. We purposefully left the definition of the word ‘best’ up to participants in order to make it as broad as possible,” Cruz said. “Some people interpreted that as the most pleasurable books. Some people interpreted that as the most influential books, the most important. It really was up to the individual.”
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This list includes some pretty big Texas names. George Saunders, born in Amarillo, has three books on this list.
“He was one of the few authors that had three books on the list,” Cruz said. “He’s a short story writer, primarily. He writes sort of fantastically odd short stories. And two of those short story collections made it onto the list.
But he’s also written an amazing novel called ‘Lincoln in the Bardo,’ which ranked pretty high and which is about Abraham Lincoln and his grief following the death of his son. That’s a very sort of simple explanation for what is actually, much like his short stories, is a very odd book.”
Texas author Lawrence Wright also landed on this list with “The Looming Tower,” a nonfiction read about the rise of Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11. Cruz said the goal of the project was to encompass both fiction and nonfiction books.
“A quarter of the list was nonfiction,” he said. “It was fascinating to think about the early part of this century — the the post-9/11 years, the Iraq War years. Before the list was put together, all of us at the Book Review were wondering were there going to be any books on this list that reflected what at the time consumed us all when it came to nonfiction writing and nonfiction reading. But Lawrence Wright’s book, which was also made into a mini series, I think really stands the test of time.”
Another titan of Texas literature who made the list is Cormac McCarthy. Arguably one of the most influential writers of this century, McCarthy has strong ties to El Paso. His book “The Road” ranked 13.
“Cormac McCarthy was one of the great American stylists. He’s known for writing that can be spare. He’s known for writing that can be sort of flowery and over the top. But he is also known for writing that can be quite dark,” Cruz said.
“’The Road’ is his post-apocalyptic novel. It’s essentially about a man and a boy on the road trying to survive in an America that is post-nuclear war. And it’s dark and it’s disturbing. But there’s also a little bit of hope in it – like the tiniest bit of hope, which maybe is not what people think about when they think about Cormac McCarthy. But I think, you know, when he passed, everyone sort of said this was one of the greats.”
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Cruz said for those who were upset by their favorites being left off the list, the Times is putting out another list that takes reader feedback into account.
“Whenever a list comes out like this – and people have lots of opinions about lists: they’re good, they’re bad, you can’t rank art – I think the point of anything like this is to introduce people to things that they had not seen before,” Cruz said.
“So if you read this and you find even one book out of 100 that intrigues you and that you end up buying or taking out of the library or listening to its audiobook, then that was a success.”
Cruz said he noticed a few trends among the 100 books on the list. First and foremost: there’s a lot of historical fiction included.
“Even if you look at the top ten books, you have ‘Wolf Hall,’ which is an English book about the reign of King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell,” he said. “You have ‘The Known World’ and ‘The Underground Railroad’ – two books about American slavery.”
Cruz also noticed a number of post-apocalyptic or dystopian fiction — “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel, “The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemisin and “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro being three examples.
“There is (also) a ton of translated literature on here. Books from other countries are translated into English, and that have become popular here,” Cruz said. “The number one book on our list is ‘My Brilliant Friend,’ written by Elena Ferrante, which is the name of an Italian author who writes under an alias.
No one knows who Elena Ferrante is. But to see that book, an Italian book that was translated into English and then became the basis for a quartet of books that captured the minds of a bunch of readers here in America, I thought was quite surprising, but also very demonstrative of how translated literature has become a big deal in this century.”
