Great books of the 21st century?

[BlackCat]

Can you guys introduce me to some great books of this century? It somehow seem that the pop culture now a day has also affected the literary world, leaving us with sparkling vampires and combatant adolescents.

[Vonny]

Oh my, this is going to be a short thread! :biggrin5:

[Darcy88]

Atonement by Ian McEwan is 21st century and pretty highly regarded. I liked it but its been some time since I read it.

[Vonny]

Ooops, I almost forgot Emil's Pro Bono Publico :)

[Dark Muse]

I often do not read the more recent books but some which come to mind which I thought were quite good

Water For Elephants
Kafka on the Shore
The Angel's Game
The Shadow of the Wind
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Let the Right One In (There are vampires but they don't sparkle and it is an amazing book I think)
The Road
The Blind Assassin

[stlukesguild]

How do you define something as "great" literature? It would seem to me that to define something as objectively "great" it must have become a canonical work... something which has stood the test of time and continues to resonate with an audience and subsequent writers. The closer a work of art is to our own time, the more difficult it is to judge as it... and whatever innovations it brings... has yet to be absorbed. The best we can do is make an educated guess or offer an opinion on books that especially spoke to us as individuals. I must admit that I'm not a big reader of contemporary novels, but a few that I have read and enjoyed include:

Don DeLillo- The Body Artist
Jonathan Safran Foer- Everything is Illuminated
Mario Vargas Llosa- The Feast of the Goat
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Living to Tell the Tale
Jose Saramago- Blindness

I tend to read far more poetry. Among the collections published since 2000, the following grabbed me in one way or another:

Yves Bonnefoy- Curved Planks
Adam Zagajewski- Without End
Wisława Szymborska- Monologue of a Dog
Eugénio de Andrade- Forbidden Words
Aleš Debeljak- Dictionary of Silence
Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise
Anne Carson- Men in the Off Hours, Elektra (translation), Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera, An Oresteia (translation)
Anthony Hecht- Collected later Poems, The Darkness and the Light
Richard Wilbur- Collected Poems: 1943-2004, Anterooms: New Poems and Translations
Richard Howard-Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003, Without Saying
Seamus Heaney- Human Chain
Geoffrey Hill- Selected Poems, The Triumph of Love, Without Title

And there are many more. Of course any number of the above include volumes of selected poems which collect works before the year 2000 as well as after.

I'm also fond of a number of non-fiction. I quite like Peter Ackroyd's "biographies": London, Albion, Shakespeare: The Biography, The Life of Thomas More, Venice: Pure City. Other non-fiction works of note include Cees Nooteboom's Roads to Santiago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Living to Tell the Tale, Donald Kuspit's The End of Art, etc...

[Vonny]

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Living to Tell the Tale ?? Oh My Gaawd!!!! :lol: What have I missed? I must always remember to consult Luke when I determine my reading agenda, so I don't overlook a masterpiece.


There's a book called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas that is good, I was told. I saw the movie, and it was very good.

[KCurtis]

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Living to Tell the Tale ?? Oh My Gaawd!!!! :lol: What have I missed? I must always remember to consult Luke when I determine my reading agenda, so I don't overlook a masterpiece.


There's a book called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas that is good, I was told. I saw the movie, and it was very good.

I have difficulty reading that subject matter, but I know both the movie and book are very good.
What about "Never Let Me Go", by Kazuo Ishiguro? It was good, he also wrote "Remains of the Day".

[Charles Darnay]

Great novels (as well as other forms of literature) do still exist. I like to follow the literary awards (here in Canada there is a pretty good culture surrounding them). For example in Canada we just had the Giller Prize and Writer's Trust Awards, as well as the GG awards - each one with a list of great books. Now, just because a book is recognized as being worthy of an award doesn't make it a "great" book, and doesn't mean you will love it - but it is a great way to keep up with the recent novels that don't get as much attention as the sparkly vampire series.


As for my recommendations:

Nicole Krauss - History of Love
Water For Elephants (I know it's already been mentioned)
Essie Eduyic - Half-Blood Blues (great Canadian novel)
Mordecai Richler - Barney's Version (I'm throwing this on here even though it was published in 1997).

[BlackCat]

thank you, I think your recommendations will fill up my schedule for both Christmas and summer break :lurk5:

[mortalterror]

Cloud Atlas, The Kite Runner, The Corrections

[jyossarian]

Wow there's quite a few..

My personal favourites would have to be:
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" - Michael Chabon
"The Road" - Cormac McCarthy
"The Book Thief" - Markus Zusak
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" - Mark Haddon

But it's all down to what you consider "great" really :)

And yeah, I don't want it is that seems to draw me to book with "The" in the title :L

[Gregory Samsa]

2666 by Roberto Bolaño. The best book of the twenty-first century.

[lowradiation]

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections as well as Freedom.

[FannyRose]

Nicole Krauss - History of Love

Yes !! And I would add Big House, by N. Krauss too.
There are other, of course there are! And a lot of them. I think XXI century literature is already rich in great books... I just wanted to underline these two because they are some of my personal favourites. As far as I am concerned, Krauss is a real genious!

[cafolini]

Can you guys introduce me to some great books of this century? It somehow seem that the pop culture now a day has also affected the literary world, leaving us with sparkling vampires and combatant adolescents.

One hundred ways to cook an egg.

[Greenazure]

thx for all the info provided, Vielen Dank.

[tonywalt]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace almost made it (1996) but really a 21st century book in many ways.

[TheFifthElement]

There are many - contemporary fiction is better than you imagine, once you filter out the vampires. I haven't checked exact dates on the following, so some might be late 20th C, but some recommendations follow:
Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
Theodora, State of Happiness - Stella Duffy
Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
C, Men in Space, Remainder - Tom McCarthy
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
In A Strange Room - Damon Galgut
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
Cosmopolis, White Noise - Don DeLillo
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Cave, Death at Intervals, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago
Lost Paradise, Rituals - Cees Nooteboom
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruis Zafon
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
Room - Emma Donoghue
Heart's Wings and other Stories - Gabriel Josipovici
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
Hawthorn and Child - Keith Ridgeway
Housekeeping - Marilynn Robinson
Rape: A Love Story - Joyce Carol Oates
The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa
Mr Golightly's Holiday, Miss Garnet's Angel, Instances of the Number 3 - Salley Vickers

[cacian]

I would have read the thread title this way
''great 21st Century and great books to go with it''. That would be the manisfesto of any great era which is reflected in its books.
No point in a book telling it is snowing in June or he just turned eighteen when it is bluntly a war zone outside my house.
Just a thought there.

[kelby_lake]

I don't think we can really decide what the best books of the twenty first century will be because we don't have any critical distance from it. We could possibly judge the books on the cusp of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st but we can't place anything post-2010 in any canon yet.

[Nelsondaniel59]

I'd also recommend;

Johnathan Lethem- Chronic city
Neal Stephenson- Snowcrash
Jeffrey Eugenides- The marriage plot
Barbara Kingsolver- Migrations
Douglas Coupland-Microserfs
Chuck Palanhiuk- Invisible monsters

In fact I've never read abad book by any of these authors. Thanks for a bunch of good tips!

[grigioverde]

2666 by Roberto Bolaño. The best book of the twenty-first century.

I have to agree with you.

[RetsixArp]

...Cosmopolis, White Noise - Don DeLillo ...White Noise is 20th cent.; Cosmopolis I didn't much care for. I thought Delillo's Falling Man (2007), his 9/11 novel, was much better: main character Keith wanders out of the rubble, hitches a ride to his estranged wife's apartment, is caked w/ someone else's blood, & is carrying someone else's briefcase. One of Keith's Fri. night poker buddies winds up inert in a Vegas casino.

Delillo was peculiarly prescient on the Twin Towers in his work (Underworld) B4 9/11, characters often citing the Towers as some source of spiritual mystery.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Europe Central by Bill Vollmann has my vote.

[ladderandbucket]

Home by Marilynne Robinson

New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani

[cafolini]

Excuse me, this is extremely important. The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has publicly recognized the Holocaust as historical and has said he knows the what the Nazi's did in the extermination of Jews. However, he said he's not a historian and he's ignorant of the details, which he would leave to historians to tell us about. This is probably the most important news of this decade. Take heed.

[mal4mac]

We need the great political books, to help us take heed

1984
Animal Farm
Brave New World
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Enemies by Isaac Bashevis Singer

What are the great books on modern Iran/Israel?

[Primavera888]

Wowzers, Adam Zagajewski- Without End? I'm glad that someone knows this guy, because Polish literature isn't as popular as it could be.

[sawkid]

We need the great political books, to help us take heed
What are the great books on modern Iran/Israel?

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi immediately comes to mind. It's a graphic novel - like Maus by Art Spiegelman - set in Iranian around the Revolution.

Other 21st Century literature which comes to mind includes:
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill
And of course...Pastoralia by George Saunders (collection of short stories)

I agree with others though that we can't really judge what's been great this century till some time has passed.

[tonywalt]

"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" - Michael Chabon
"The Road" - Cormac McCarthy
"The Book Thief" - Markus Zusak

[ajvenigalla]

I would choose:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Adler
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

[WICKES]

Atonement by Ian McEwan


Good choice. I thought the film adaptation was pretty good as well.