Best Books List: Modern: 2000s and 2010s

The plan was always to update the Best Books list every ten years. That way, we can keep up to date and what we’re reading and not miss anything really exciting. Well, it’s been somewhere around ten years, and I thought I would make sure that the list goes all the way back to 2000. So here you go: the best books of the first and second decade of the twenty-first century. I have read very few of them, and like usual, I mashed up several other organizations’ lists and made sure to include nonfiction and Christian literature. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll make sure to swoop up things like poetry and plays, as well. Let me know if you have any recommendations or if you disagree. You could also let me know if I spelled something wrong, as that is incredibly likely. (Please ignore that I did not italicize titles. That would have been way too obnoxious to do.)

BEST BOOKS OF THE 2000S

Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling[image error]
The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (or Freedom)
Never Let Me Go, Kazua Ishigiro
2666, Roberto Bolano (or The Savage Detectives)
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Known World, Edward P. Jones
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth (or The Human Stain)
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz[image error]
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Louise Erdrich
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
The Book of Salt, Monique Truong
Oblivion, David Foster Wallace
Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell
The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon
Fine Just the Way It Is, Annie Proulx
Scenes from a Provincial Life trilogy, J.M. Coetzee
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Runaway, Alice Munro[image error]
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller
Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
Slavery by Another Name, Doug Blackmon
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Blankets, Craig Thompson
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Gilead, Marilynn Robinson
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
Devil in the White City, Erik Larson[image error]
Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman
Freakonomics, Leavitt and Dubner
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
Nixonland, Rick Pearlstein
Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris
Them, Francine de Plessex Gray
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gradwell
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Suroweiki
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
Bel Canto, Anne Patchett
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Moonlight, Mark Haddon
Empire Falls, Richard Russo[image error]
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Letham
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
The Terror, Dan Simmons
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngo
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The Known World, Edward P. Jones
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
unChristian, Kinnaman and Lyons
The Culturally Savvy Christian, Dick Staub[image error]
Evangelical Feminism, Wayne Grudem
Heaven, Randy Alcorn
Blue Like Jazz. Donald Miller
Wild at Heart, John Eldredge
Real Sex, Lauren Winner
Vintage Church, Driscool and Beashears
Worship Matters, Kauflin and Balouche
Epic, John Eldredge
Paris, Margaret McMillan
Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire
Under the Banner of Heave, Jon Krakhauer
Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Scar Tissue, Keidis
The End of Faith, Sam Harris
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls[image error]
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
The Blind Side, Michael Lewis
Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario
Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner
Blackwater, Jeremy Scahill
The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
The Heminses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed
Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
Methland, Nick Reding

 

BEST BOOKS OF THE 2010S

The Emporer of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee[image error]
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
Wild, Cheryl Strayed
The Black Swan, Nicholas Taleb Nassim
The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Black Count, Tom Reiss
The Passage of Power, Robert A. Caro
Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala
Between the World and Me, Ti-Nehisi Coates
Evicted, Matthew Desmond
The Order of Time, Corlo Rovelli
Bad Blood, John Carryrou
These Truths, Jill Lepore
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf
Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich
Dark Money, Jane Mayer
Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson[image error]
All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister
Frederick Douglas, David W. Blight
Say Nothing, Patrick Keefe
This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein
The Sports Gene, David Epstein
Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick
The Courage to Be Disliked, Kishimi and Koga
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
Quiet, Susan Cain
Daring Greatly, Brene Brown
Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrente
Tenth of December, George Saunders
Citizen, Claudia Rankine[image error]
My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Little Life, Hanya Yahagihara
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
There There, Tommy Orange
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
The Sellout, Paul Beatty
Sing, Unburied Sing, Jesmyn Ward
Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
Circe, Madeline Miller
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff[image error]
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemison
The Leavers, Lisa Ko
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle
The Water Dancer, Ta-Nahisi Coates[image error]
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Family Life, Akhil Sharma
Swing Time, Zadie Smith
The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
The Destroyers, Christopher Bolen
Boy, Snow, Bird, Helen Oyeyemi
The Lesser Bohemians, Eimer McBride
Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson
Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh
The Poppy Wars, R.F. Kuang
The Incendiaries, R.O. Kwon
Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green
The Twelve Lines of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti
What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
An Untamed State, Roxanne Gay
The Martian, Andy Weir
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid[image error]
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
Sudden Death, Enrigue and Wimmer
Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver
The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Steyngart
The MaddAddam trilogy, Margaret Atwood
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender
Lives Other than My Own, Emmanuel Carrere (or The Kingdom)
Zone One, Colson Whitehead (or Sag Harbor)
How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti
NW, Zadie Smith
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
The Neopolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson[image error]
The Sellout, Paul Beatty
The Outline Trilogy, Rachel Cusk
Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner (or 10:04)
The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner
Confronting Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin
Cultural Apologetics, Paul M. Gould
Christobiography, Craig Keener
Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes, Jackson W.
The Common Rule, Justin Whitmel Earley
Be the Bridge, Latasha Morrison
We Too, Mary DeMuth
What Is a Girl Worth?, Rachael Denhollander[image error]
His Testimonies, My Heritage, Kristie Anyabwile
Write Better, Andrew Le Peau
Adorning the Dark, Andrew Peterson
Light from Distant Stars, Shawn Smucker
Throw, Ruben Degollado
God in the Rainforest, Kathryn Long
Anointed with Oil, Darren Dochuck
One Soul at a Time, Grant Wacker
Women in God’s Mission, Mary Lederleitner
Christian Mission, Edward Smither[image error]
In Search of the Common Good, Jake Meador
Religious Freedom in Islam, Daniel Philpott
On the Road with Saint Augustine, James K.A. Smith
As I Recall, Casey Trygett
Justification, Michael Horton
For the Life of the World, Volf and Croasmun
Confronting the Truth, Rebecca McLaughlin
Surprised by Paradox, Jen Pollock Michel
Quiet, Susan Cain