NY Times Readers Poll on the Best Books of the Century

Among those not cited by the professional reviewers are:

2. Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
3. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
31. Madeleine Miller, Circe
56. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
67. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
86. Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

Let's start with All the Light We Cannot See. I enjoyed this book but I understand why the professionals didn't rate it highly: it's just very sentimental, and these days "sentimental" is about the worst thing a critic can say about a work of art. Art is supposed to be tough and insightful, to call out evil and oppression, not gloss over the world's pains. (My sister wrote a whole book about this phenomenon.)

Same goes for A Gentleman in Moscow., which I liked but from one perspective very much glosses over the horrors of 20th-century history.

I didn't like Circe as much, but I thought it was ok (much better than e.g. Lincoln in the Bardo) and many women loved it. But it struck a lot of people as weak and sappy, and, again, our artistic world despises the weak and sappy.

Some of you may laugh at The Hunger Games, but I would put it in the same category as Dune, a book that resonates very deeply with a certain sort of teenager. It's basically an anti-utopia in which the evil government forces young people to fight it out with each other in a savage competition for resources, with zero regard for what the young people actually need or want. Many, many teenagers have found it to be a perfect metaphor for our educational system, and it was long the favorite book of my most rebellious son.

I loved Piranesi, and absolutely think it belongs on this list. But then the list was almost devoid of fantasy (unless you count N.K. Jemisin), so this isn't surprising. 

Interesting that nothing by Haruki Murakami made either list.