My top books of the 21st Century

I love reading Best of lists. I don’t expect to agree with them (I don’t think that’s the point) but I love the exercise of trying to rank and rate books or movies or wine or, well, anything. But books especially. It forces you to think about things you’ve enjoyed in the past, and maybe why you liked them, and what that says about you and your tastes.

The New York Times’ just had a great interactive piece on the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century as voted on by about 500 industry insiders. The interactive bit was good — they let you mark which ones you read, which ones you wanted to read, and let readers submit their own favorites — and then they gave you these pretty graphics.

24?!? I can’t believe that’s all I’ve read.

There were a lot of good books on there, but they missed many of my favorites and had many that were just not interesting to me. I don’t get the obsession with Elena Ferrante, for example — she has two on there, including the top spot! I’ve tried reading her a couple of times but the prose just never clicked for me.

As soon as I started reading this list, I began to think about where mine would deviate. I think anyone who takes lists like this on should start with the assumption that the ranking is subject to change at any time, that you’ll almost certainly remember something you should have included later, and that time will not be kind to at least one or two items on your list. Tastes change, artists go off the rails, we learn as time goes on. But for what it’s worth, here are my 25 top books of the 21st Century.