Readers didn’t shy away from telling The New York Times what was missing from their original list of 100 books.
When The New York Times released their list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, many were left unsatisfied.
The original list was compiled by novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and the staff of The New York Times Book Review. While some people were happy with the list, many felt that it was missing important and popular pieces of literature.
Readers questioned the lack of poetry and genre fiction in the list. Others felt that the list seemed like required reading rather than the books most of America is really reading.
READ ALSO: From Pages To Screens: 6 Upcoming Book-To-Movie Adaptations In The Works
And so the publication opened the floor for readers to vote on their own list and have their opinions heard. Between the original list and the one voted on by readers, they had 39 books in common.
According to the NYT, the 61 new entries are “the books that captured cultural moments and sparked lively literary conversations.” Out of the 100 books in the list, these are the top five as voted on by American readers.
5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Book Review ranked Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko relatively high on their list as well, in 15th place. Pachinko, Lee’s second novel, was published in 2017 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
The story follows a Korean family who immigrated to Japan in the early 1900s. Its ensemble of characters span four generations of the family as they grapple with the realities of the 20th-century Korean experience of Japan.
In an interview, Lee described this period as “one of the clearest manifestations of legal, social, and cultural practices of exclusion and otherization.”
In 2022, Apple TV+ released a television series adaptation of the novel. Kogonada and Justin Chon directed four episodes each while Soo Hugh served as showrunner, writer, and executive producer.
The cast includes Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, top Hallyu star Lee Min-ho, and 2024 Emmy Award nominee Anna Sawai. Pachinko’s second season will be released soon, on August 23, 2024.
4. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Sitting at number 46 on the Book Review’s list, readers ranked The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in fourth place. In 2014, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
The novel centers around young New Yorker Theo Decker. At 13 years old, he survives a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother.
Escaping the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch painting titled The Goldfinch which sets his story into motion. As an adult, Theo falls into the gritty underworld of art and wealth.
In 2019, a film adaptation of the novel was released. Ansel Elgort and Oakes Fegley both played Theo in different stages of his life.
Aneurin Barnard and Finn Wolfhard shared the role of Boris, Theo’s friend. Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, and Nicole Kidmanb also appeared in supporting roles.
3. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
One of the novels not featured in the original list, readers highly ranked Amor Towles’ second novel at number three. A Gentleman in Moscow follows the fictional Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol.
Within the confines of the luxury hotel, Rostov has to live in the servants’ quarters. Though restricted from life outside, he eventually cultivates a new circle of companions and gains the time for self-reflection.
“Initially, I imagined that the central challenge posed by the book was that I was trapping myself, my hero, and my readers in a single building for thirty-two years,” Towles said in a Q&A.
“But my experience of writing the novel ended up being similar to that of the Count’s experience of house arrest: the hotel kept opening up in front of me to reveal more and more aspects of life.”
A television adaptation of the novel premiered earlier this year in March. The limited series, helmed by showrunner Ben Vanstone, stars Ewan McGregor as Rostov.
2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Published in 2014, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is another novel that didn’t make it to the Book Review’s list. The novel has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
Set in World War II, the novel’s main characters are a blind French girl named Marie-Laure LeBlanc who is taking refuge in Saint-Malo and Werner Pfennig, a German boy who joins the military through his skills in radio technology.
Doerr tells the story in a nonlinear structure, alternating between the two characters’ points of view. According to Doerr, he was first inspired to write the novel during a train ride in 2004. He was observing a fellow passenger who got angry when his call dropped as they traveled underground.
“I just remember thinking, what he’s forgetting—really what we’re all forgetting all the time—is that this is a miracle. He’s using this little receiver and transmitter, this little radio in his pocket, to send messages at the speed of light rebounding between towers to somebody maybe thousands of miles away.
“Originally, the real central motivation for the book was to try and conjure up a time when hearing the voice of a stranger in your home was a miracle,” he continued. At the time, the only image he had was of a blind girl reading a story to a boy over the radio.
There is a Netflix limited series based on the novel, starring Aria Mia Loberti as Marie-Laure, Louis Hofmann as Werner, Mark Ruffalo as Daniel (Marie-Laure’s father), and Hugh Laurie as Etienne (Marie-Laure’s great-uncle).
1. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Finally, at the top for readers and number 61 on the Book Review’s list, we have Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 novel Demon Copperhead. Kingsolver has received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her Charles Dickens-inspired book.
Instead of England, Demon Copperhead takes place in Appalachia, where the protagonist Damon Fields lives with his mother in a trailer home. He earns the nickname “Demon Copperhead” from the color of his hair and his attitude.
Through his charms, wits, and fierce talent for survival, Demon braves the contemporary struggles of poverty in the American South.
“Along with his defiant attitude and copper-red hair, Demon has a persistent belief in superhero rescues. He wonders whether superheroes still care about rural people,” Kingsolver explained in an interview for Oprah’s Book Club.
“Save or be saved, these are questions. You want to think it’s not over till the last page. And here’s my promise to readers: It is not.”
Banner image by Aline Viana Prado via Pexels.
