Twenty-Five Years of Writing ... and Not Reading

I took a look at the NY Times list of the hundred best books of the 21sr century, as voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers, to see how I stacked up against the real literati. Not bad, though I guess it depends on how you look at it. I have not read any of the books on the list cover to cover but I've heard of almost half of them, and I've read more than a few of the pieces collected in The Short Stories of Lydia Davis.(88) I thought I had a winner with Tony Judt's Thinking the Twentieth Century, which I read and enjoyed, but a second look reveals that one of Judt's other books, Postwar (43), had made the list.

I think I also ought to get a little credit for other near-misses. I haven't read the number-one title on the list, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, but I read volume two of the tetrology, The Story of a New Name, which was difficult because I didn't know who any of the characters were. Likewise, I haven't read Lucia Berlin's collection,  Manual for Cleaning Women (79) but I did read the sequel, Evening in Paradise. I didn't read Small Things Like These (41) but I did read Keegan's recent collection, So Late in the Day, which might more accurately have been titled Creepy Men I Have Known.

I was surprised to see Austerlitz (8), a novel-essay-whatnot by W. G. Sebald, in the top ten. I own that book, but haven't read it. I have read Sebald's previous books, Vertigo (my favorite), The Rings of Saturn, and The Emigrants, all of which I enjoyed, though I enjoyed each one a little less than the one before.

I started to read Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking (12) but found myself strangely unmoved. And I seem to recall that many of my friends read Correction (5) to the end with grim fascination, then admitted that they hated it.

At a certain point, as I scrolled through the list, drawing mostly blanks, I began to wonder if I'd actually read any books published after the year 2000. Of course I have. Here are some of my favorites:

Borges and Me / Jay Parini (2020)

The Round House / Louise Erdrich (2012)

Catharsis: On the Art of Medicine / Andrzej Szczeklik (2005)

The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown / Karen Olsson (2019)

Literature and the Gods / Roberto Calasso (2001)

The Fruit Thief / Peter Handke (2022)

Out Stealing Horses / Per Petterson (2003)

Dept. of Speculation / Jenny Offill (2014)

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession / Edmund de Wall (2015)

Beyond Sleep / Willem Frederik Hermans (translated from the Dutch in 2007)

Netherland / Joseph O'Neill (2008)

Philosopher of the Heart: the Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard / Clare Carlisle (2019)

The Fly Trap / Fredrik Sjōberg (2014)

The Last Days of Roger Federer / Geoff Dyer (2022)

Normal People / Sally Rooney (2018)

In Search of Zarathustra / Paul Kriwaczek (2003)

Paris to the Moon / Adam Gopnik (2000)

A Gentleman in Moscow / Amir Towles (2016)

I'm not suggesting these books are among the best of the era; I'm in no position to judge, dilatory reader that I am. All I'm saying is that they stick in memory as good enough to mention.

From the Times list I extracted the names of an essayist unfamiliar to me, Elisa Gabbert, and a "philosophical" novelist, Rachel Cusk, and put in requests at the library for The Unreality of Memory and Outline. 

I also found it interesting to investigate the individual picks of selected judges, where I sometimes came upon books I liked that didn't make the consolidated list (e.g. Netherland) and also spotted titles I want to check out that I'd never heard of (e.g. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched The World, by Deirdre McCloskey. )

One final aspect of the article is worth mentioning: the graphics. (See above.) The editors separate the finalists into groups of twenty, and often make use of well-worn and sometimes shabby paperbacks for the group shots, rather than the pristine hardcovers we see in the individual listings.

It's always a pleasure to peruse a shelf of someone else's books. Or your own.