Guardian: The 100 best books of the 21st century

5 and none of them are the young adult ones. Nickel and dimed is sitting on my desk at work, and Henrietta Lacks, and a couple of others.... sigh.

I've read The Stories of Your Life and Others, the Harry Potter books, glimpses of Sapiens, parts of Thinking Fast and Slow, and that's pretty much it.

7.

I've read a few. Although some were better than others, I'm not sure I'd call any of them the 'best books' of any century.

The God Delusion would probably be near the top of my list;

The Nora Ephron is a pale shadow of her older, sassier essays.

The LeCarre was enjoyable, as he usually is.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics sounds worth picking up.

Stephen King is generally entertaining when writing about writing, and this book was no exception.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was a pretty incredible type of true-life detective story, definitely.

Persepolis was a quite good graphic novel, but I have to wonder of GN's really belong on these lists, no matter how well-done they are (yes, that is a bit of literary snobbism, I'll admit ).

The Year of Magical Thinking was moving, and probably the best thing Didion's done in some time.

The Hare With Amber Eyes was a little curio cabinet of a book.

Haven't gotten around to the Knausgaard yet, but if it follows the preceding books in his series, I'll want to do so.

Eherenreich's Nickle and Dimed is an excellent piece of social reportage, and one to stoke the 'outrage at capitalism' batteries to full charge.

The Plot Against America showed that Philip Roth was an elder lion who hadn't lost his powers, in defiance to the critics who'd already buried him.

I haven't seen a work by Kazuo Ishiguro yet that wouldn't take a high place on a best novels of the year list.

I was unsurprised to see the generally over-rated likes of Gaiman, Munro, McEwan, Sebald, Coates, Zaidie Smith, Franzen, McCarthy, and Atwood turn up on this list. All of them have produced some meritorious work, but I've never found any of them to be the literary treasure-houses their fans seem to find them. George Saunders also belongs on my list of the overpraised, but I'd definitely rank Lincoln in the Bardo well above the Guardian's pick.

I am stunned that none of Daniel Mendelsohn's scintillating and fiercely learned colllections of essays (How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken, Waiting for the Barbarians, Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones, or his Holocaust book, The Lost) were included. Quite amazed that Gore Vidal's concluding volume of his 'American' series, The Golden Age, was omitted (admittedly, it was published in 2000, so may technically not have been admissable to the list). Any one of these titles would have been worth half-a-dozen books of Gaiman's, Munro's, McEwan's, etc.

Equally shocked that Alan Bennett was overlooked, both his latest Diaries and stories.

At any rate, considering the fact that the 21st century isn't even into its second decade yet, isn't someone at The Guardian being a bit premature?

I read the physics one and the lessons fall into the slightly annoying situation of being dumbed down okay, but at the same time not in enough depth to really satisfy.

I've only read McCarthy's The Road and The Harry Potter one.

I’ve read 19 and have another 10 or so on my to read list

Frankly, don't care much about this century. There are so many great ones from the previous one which I am yet to read.

Only four - Harry Potter, Lisbeth Salander, The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time, and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.