Kirkus threw their hat in the Best Books of the Century So Far conversation and unlike the NYT, they considered books for all ages. And within their adult selections, graphic novels and genre titles are in abundance. Finally, unlike the NYT limit to 100 books, Kirkus has 500!
How do you recapture the past? You could flip through the pages of a photo album or old diary, or listen to an old playlist that evokes a particular time in your life. If you’re a hardcore reader, as I am, you might well scan your bookshelves and recall when and where you read certain titles.
I see my copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, for example, and remember speed-reading it over a few days in the summer of 2004—mostly on a blanket in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—to prepare for an interview with debut author Susanna Clarke. Ordinarily, I’d have been stressed out by a long book (800 pages!) and a tight deadline, but I soon lost myself in Clarke’s absorbing work of historical fantasy, set in an early-19th-century England where the practice of magic is resurgent. It’s one of my favorite reading experiences ever.
On another shelf, I spy Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, which I read in long, blissfully uninterrupted sprints as I commuted daily by train out to Long Island in 2010, the scenery—and the pages—rushing by. It was thrilling to see what a contemporary novel could become in the hands of a gifted practitioner—there’s a chapter in the form of a PowerPoint presentation!—without sacrificing the old-fashioned investment we feel in Egan’s all-too-human characters. It’s certainly a top contender, in my opinion, for the best novel of the past 25 years.
Numerous other candidates appear—along with short fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and young adult literature—in our special issue dedicated to the best books of the 21st century (so far). The staff of the magazine has been hard at work on the issue for months now, revisiting old favorites, unearthing neglected gems, and arguing the merits of this or that title. We’ve chosen 100 books in each category, all published in the U.S. between 2000 and 2024; also scattered throughout these pages are spotlight features with details about the creation, reception, and long-term impact of select titles.
What a pleasure to reflect on a quarter-century of great reads! (And what agony to whittle the list down to 500.) Among the other books that set off Proustian reveries for me personally were Alison Bechdel’s funny and moving graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2008), Isabel Wilkerson’s magisterial yet intimate history, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010), Viet Thanh Nguyen’s sly post-Vietnam spy novel, The Sympathizer (2015), and Jennifer Homans’ vivid biography of a ballet genius, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022). They’re such stellar books that I wish I could read them all again for the first time.
Fortunately, such an array of riches means that every reader will find something unfamiliar among our lists, along with beloved old favorites. If you discover a new favorite here, I hope you’ll let us know. And if you want to argue for a title that didn’t make the cut, please let us know that, too. What fun is a booklist without some debate? As always, my email is tbeer@kirkus.com.
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
Click here to get to the books
