The New York Times recently published “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century,” and readers have a lot to say about it.
When it comes to lists of “top bests,” these can be incredibly biased based on each reader. Lists like best sellers or most read are more factual, but “best” is subjective.
There is a lot of controversy about the main genre being nonfiction. In this century, more fictional books have been published than ever before. Romance, horror, fantasy—these are just some of the broad categories that were lacking, even missing from this list.
Readers are also upset that a complete form of writing was completely omitted from this list: poetry. There was only one poetry book to be found. Poetry is a huge genre, with tens of thousands of books coming out each year. As the years pass, poetry publications continue to rise.
Many readers agree that the top ten books could be a good look at books of the 21st century. Putting aside the lack of genre diversity, these books have been very popular, and would easily make the top 100 list again, if the rest of the list had variety.
Most of the books on this list have a strong focus on history, being set in historical time periods. This again shows a lack of different topics and visions in writing.
Overall, the New York Times “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” hasn’t been faced with the best reactions. Readers are upset that a lot of great novels were excluded from this list.
The best thing to remember is that these lists are personal and might not always reflect how you feel about books. Why not write your own?
