The plan was always to update the Best Books list every ten years. That way, we can keep up to date on 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 ***
• The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (or Freedom)
• Never Let Me Go, Kazua Ishiguro *
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
• 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 (or Beyond Black)
• The Known World, Edward P. Jones
• Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• unChristian, Kinnaman and Lyons
• The Culturally Savvy Christian, Dick Staub
• 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 (*)
• 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
• Beowulf, translation be Seamus Heaney
• One Palestine, Complete, Tom Segev
• Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike
• Afterimage, Helen Humphreys
• The Abomination, Paul Golding
• John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro
• The Adventures of Miles and Isabel, Tom Gilling
• Accidents in the Home, Tessa Hadley
• Seeing in the Dark, Timoth Ferris
• American Woman, Susan Choi
• Abandon, Pico Iyer
• Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin
• Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler
• Washington’s Crossing, David Hackett Fischer
• Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
• Snow, Orhan Pamuk
• The Master, Colm Toibin
• Empire Rising, Thomas Kelly
• A Changed Man, Francine Prose
• Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
• Saturday, Ian McEwan
• Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
• On Beauty, Zadie Smith
• Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
• After This, Alice McDermott
• Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
• The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
• The Emperor’s Children, Claire Messud
• Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart
• Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo
• The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
• After Dark, Haruki Murakami
• The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta
• The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, Linda Colley
• Little Heathens, Mildred Armstrong Kalish
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rejiv Chandrasakaran
• Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
• Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
• The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross
• American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld
• The Forever War, Dexter Filkins
• The Dark Side, Jane Mayer
• Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
• A Mercy, Toni Morrison
• Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser
• The Cookbook of Victor Frankenstein, Peter Ackroyd
• Lit, Mary Karr
• The Good Soldiers, David Finkel
• The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes
• Half Broke Horses, Jeanette Walls
• Chronic City, Jonathan Letham
• Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat

BEST BOOKS OF THE 2010S

• The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• 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, Lorna Sage
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
• Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick
• The Ask, Sam Lipsyte
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
• Room, Emma Donaghue
• The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
• 1Q84, Murakami
• The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
• 11/22/63, Stephen King
• Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
• Arcadia, Lauren Groff
• Alif, the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson
• Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon
• The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers
• A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers (or The Circle)
• Building Stories, Chris Ware
• Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
• Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon
• The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates
• Redeployment, Phil Klay
• Euphoria, Lilly King
• Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offil
• City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg
• Beatlebone, Kevin Barry
• One of Us, Asne Seierstad
• H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
• Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert
• The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante
• A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin
• The Door, Magda Szabo
• Children of the New World, Alexander Weinstein
• Barkskins, Annie Proulx
• Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson
• The Return, Hasham Matar
• The North Water, Ian McGuire
• The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Mahajan
• A Boy in Winter, Rachel Seiffert
• The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitvch
• Bad Dreams, Tessa Hadley
• Anything is Possible, Elizabeth Strout
• Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood
• Prairie Fires, Caroline Frasier
• Grant, Ron Chernow
• The Power, Naomi Alderman
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
• Autumn, Ali Smith
• An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
• How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
• Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight
• Educated, Tara Westover
• American Prison, Shane Bauer
• The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai
• Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday
• The Dutch House, Anne Patchett
• Cherokee America, Margaret Verble
• Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham
• 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak

2020s (up through 2023)

• A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet
• Deacon King Kong, James McBride
• Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
• Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar
• The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
• Hidden Valley Road, Robert Kolker
• A Promised Land, Barack Obama
• Shakespeare in a Divided America, James Shapiro
• Uncanny Valley, Weiner
• The Bee Sting, Paul Murray
• Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjai-Brenyah
• Eastbound, Maylis de Kerangal
• The Fraud, Zadie Smith
• North Woods, Daniel Mason
• The Best Minds, Jonathan Rosen
• Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, Kerry Howley
• Fire Weather, John Vaillant
• Master Slave Husband Wife, Ilyon Woo
• Some People Need Killing, Patricia Evangelista
• Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, Rebecca Yaros
• None of the This is True, Lisa Jewell
• Yellowface, R. F. Kuang
• Divine Rivals, Rebecca Ross
• Spare, Prince Harry
• Biography of X, Catherine Lacey
• Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
• Crook Manifesto, Colson Whitehead
• Discalculia, Camongne Felix
• Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
• I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
• Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward
• Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
• Victory City, Salman Rushdie
• What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, Michiko Aoyama
• Deacon King Kong¸ James McBride
• Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar
• A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet
• Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stewart
• The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
• Afterlife, Julia Alvarez
• Piranesi, Susannah Clarke
• Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi
• The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
• The Poet King, Ilana C. Meyer
• Black Bottom Saints, Alice Randall
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V. E. Schwab
• Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
• Matrix, Lauren Goff
• All That She Carried¸ Tiya Miles
• An Immense World, Ed Yong
• The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O’Rourke
• The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
• I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jenette McCurdy
• Portrait of an Unknown Woman, Daniel da Silva
• Prophet Song, Paul Lynch
• Weyward, Emilia Hart
• The Housemaid’s Secret, Frieda McFadden
• Happy Place, Emily Henry
• Hellbent, Leigh Bardugo
• In the Lives of Puppets, T. J. Klune
• Divine Rivals, Rebecca Ross
• Check and Mate, Ali Hazlewood
• Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
• Breasts and Eggs, Meiko Kawakami
• The Boy in the Field, Margot Livesey
• Beheld, TaraShea Nesbit
• Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Sally Rooney
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
• Intimacies, Katie Kitamura
• Bliss Montage, Ling Ma
• The Bangalore Detectives Club, Harini Nagendra
• Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Under the Skin, Lina Villarosa
• Stay True, Hua Hsu
• Trust, Hernan Diaz
• The Furrows, Namwali Serpell
• Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
• Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett
• Bright Young Women, Jessica Knoll