Hundreds of hundreds of books of the century
Whose books? Which methodology?
Fellow Pilgrims,
I wasn’t over the moon about the recent New York Times list of the 100 best books of the century. Too many repeated authors (surely once is enough to appear on a list like this), too many things with literary buzz that nobody actually enjoyed. (If you’re behind a NYT paywall, here’s the list, rearranged, at Goodreads).
But I do love books and book recommendations. I love to know who loves what books and why. (The most fun part of the NYT list is the sublists and notes from authors who suggested certain picks, about why they love the chosen books.) I love a shelfie (that is, a photo of your books; I’ll take them on a shelf or in a pile).
And I love a book list. The Guardian has its own list of best books of the 21st.
The NYT list lets you check off what you’ve read to get a nice orange graphic. Mine is above.
I got a fun invite to contribute to
’ list of 100 books of the century at Current. I find the resulting list far more interesting than the NYT’s. “If the NYT’s list seemed less overtly concerned with matters of the soul,” says Williams, “ours amply compensates for it.”Here, my list of my personal favorites from my own bookshelf as well as the NYT, Guardian, and Current lists.
If I’m going to suggest a book might be one of the best “of the century,” it needs to have done something to me, something visceral and transformative. For me, those books are almost always fiction. Of the books listed below, I’ve put an asterisk by those that did just that. My list is in no particular order, but it is organized by category.
CONTENT NOTE: Many of these books include sensitive content, including racism, race based violence, child abuse, and sexual violence. We live in broken world, and great books often have to tell the truth about horror. I’ve marked the most difficult content with a ^, but please check book descriptions for yourself if you don’t want to read about certain topics.
Theology & Such
*God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ by Sarah Coakley. Coakley’s Spirit leading account of the Trinity is a game changer, and she knows there is no difference between theology and feminist theology.
“The Spirit, then, is what interrupts the fallen worldly order and infuses it with the divine question, the divine lure, the divine life.” — Coakley
^*From Shame to Sin: The Transformation of Christian Sexual Ethics in Late Antiquity by Kyle Harper. Harper shows the development of Christian sexual ethics against patriarchy and empire, and he demonstrates the connection between Christian ethics and free will.
“…Christian sexuality was born not out of a pathological hatred of the body, nor out of a broad public anxiety about the material world. It emerged in an existentially serious culture, propelled to startling conclusions by the remorseless logic of a new moral cosmology.” — Harper
^*The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race by Willie Jennings. Racism is heresy.
“The concept of reconciliation is not irretrievable, but I am convinced that before we theologians can interpret the depths of the divine action of reconciliation we must first articulate the profound deformities of Christian intimacy and identity in modernity.” — Jennings
^Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology by Kathryn Tanner. As far as I know, Tanner is the first woman to put her name on the cover of a book together with the words “systematic theology,” and I’m grateful.
Holiness by John Webster
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins. We’re all living in Jenkins’ world.
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright
“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.” — Wright
The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language by Janet Martin Soskice. I love this book so much.
*Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West by Lamin Sanneh. Sanneh has been integral to my understanding of the doctrine of scripture.
Fiction
*Tenth of December: Stories by
^*The Road by Cormac McCarthy
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” — McCarthy
^Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
*Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Read all four books. Lila is my favorite.
“It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.” — Robinson
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
*Atonement by Ian McEwan
“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” — McEwan
*Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
^*Oryx and Crake by
. All of Atwood’s work has been important to me, but this, the first in a trio of postapocalyptic disasters, is my favorite.“Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.” — Atwood
^*LaRose by Louise Erdrich . It was hard to choose one title by Erdrich, but this devastating story of love intertwined with loss will show you her genius.
*Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
^*Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi takes images from Snow White into a racist and sexist society, with unforgettable writing.
“... it's not whiteness itself that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things-- fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too... we beat Them (and spare ourselves a lot of tedium and terror) by declining to worship.” — Oyeyemi
^The Passage by Justin Cronin. I have no patience with dismissing genre fiction. This one is the beginning of a sweeping vampire epic.
^*North Woods by Daniel Mason
“the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.” — Mason
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
^Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys Book 1) by Seanan McGuire. Breathtakingly creative fanstasy with horror elements.
Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
^Beartown by Fredrik Backman
^*The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
Nonfiction & memoir
^*Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon. Don’t miss Laymon’s novel, Long Division.
^*Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
*In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm by Tiffany Eberle Kriner
^*Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human Centered Planet by John Green. If you can be brilliant about Diet Dr. Pepper, then you understand the world pretty well.
^*Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir by Lacy Crawford
^The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson. Tyson shows us Mamie Till-Mobley as the important public theologian she was.
^*Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Poetry
^*Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
^*Olio by Tyehimbe Jess. Pure genius.
Children & young people
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo. DiCamillo is a treasure. Despereaux is probably her best, but I also love, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures.
“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.” — DiCamillo
Gregor the Overlander: (The Underland Chronicles Book 1) by Suzanne Collins. Giant rats, bats, and cockroaches + a loving family.
*Everything Sad is Untrue: (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri
“How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.”
Why else would she believe it?” — Nayeri
Grace & peace,
BFJ
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Thank you for this list! Collecting book titles and Kindle books is one of my favorite hobbies. :) I so love a good book - it continues to change me long after I’ve read the last chapter.