In 2019 the Guardian published a list of the 100 best books of the 21st Century:

 

  1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – not read
  2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – not read
  3. Secondhand Time by Svetland Alexievich – not read
  4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – not read but owned
  5. Austerlitz by WG Sebald – not read
  6. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman – read
  7. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates – read
  8. Autumn by Ali Smith – read
  9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – not read
  10. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie – not read by owned
  11. My Brilliant Friend by Elen Ferrante – not read
  12. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth – not read
  13. Nickel and Dime by Barbara Ehrenreich – not read 
  14. Fingersmith by Sara Waters – read
  15. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert – not read
  16. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – not read by owned
  17. The Road by Cormac McCarthy – read
  18. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein – not read
  19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon – read
  20. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – read
  21. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari – not read
  22. Tenth of December by George Saunders – not read
  23. The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon – not read
  24. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – not read
  25. Normal People by Sally Rooney – read
  26. Capital in the Twenty First Century by Thomas Piketty – not read
  27. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – Alice Munro – not read
  28. Rapture – Carol Ann Duffy – not read
  29. A Death in the Family by Karl One Knausgaard – not read
  30. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead – read
  31. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson – not read
  32. The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee – not read
  33. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel – not read
  34. Outline by Rachel Cusk – not read
  35. The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal – not read
  36. Experience by Martin Amis – not read
  37. The Green Road by Anne Enright – read
  38. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – not read
  39. White Teeth by Zadie Smith – not read
  40. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – not read
  41. Atonement by Ian MEwan – not read
  42. Moneyball by Michael Lewis – not read
  43. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine – not read
  44. Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit – not read
  45. Levels of Life by Julian Barns – not read
  46. Human Chain by Seamus Heaney – not read
  47. Persepolis by Marjane Satrap – read
  48. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett – not read
  49. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson – not read
  50. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood – not read but owned
  51. Brooklyn by old Toibin – not read but owned
  52. Small Island by Andrea Levy – not read
  53. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey – not read
  54. Women & Power by Mary Beard – not read
  55. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – not read
  56. Underland by Robert Macfarlane – not read
  57. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon – read
  58. Postwar by Tony Just – not read
  59. The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson – not read
  60. Dart by Alice Oswald – not read
  61. This House of Grief by Helen Garner – not read
  62. Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn – not read
  63. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – not read
  64. On Writing by Stephen King – not read
  65. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – read
  66. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli – not read
  67. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – not read
  68. The Constant Gardener by John le Carre – not read
  69. The Infatuations by Javier Marias – not read
  70. Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller – not read
  71. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware – not read
  72. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff – not read
  73. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick – read
  74. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry – not read
  75. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – not read
  76. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – not read
  77. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera – read
  78. The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin – not read but owned
  79. The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett – not read
  80. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang – not read
  81. Harvest by Jim Crace – not read
  82. Coraline by Neil Gaiman – not read
  83. Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli – not read
  84. The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy – not read
  85. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins – not read
  86. Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis – not read
  87. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood – not read
  88. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman – not read
  89. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage – not read
  90. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck – not read
  91. Light by M Joh Harrison – not read
  92. The Siege by Helen Dunore – not read
  93. Darkmans by Nicola Barker – not read
  94. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – not read
  95. Chronicles Volume One by Bob Dylan – not read
  96. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara – read
  97. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling – read
  98. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – read
  99. Broken Glass by Alan Mabanckou – not read
  100. I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron – not read