Unabridged: That New York Times List Discussed and Debated

This edition of The Stacks Unabridged is dedicated to the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. First we talk with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the NYT Book Review, about the creation of the list and all the excitement it generated. Then, we welcome a panel of readers - Sara Hildreth, Hunter McClendon and Lupita Aquino - to discuss and debate the list, sharing our biggest takeaways, what we loved and hated, and which books we would add. We also try to figure out what the list says about US culture at large.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find what we talked about on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Gilbert Cruz

• “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” (The New York Times Book Review)

• The New York Times Books Review

• The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

• The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

• The Upshot

• Vulture

• There There by Tommy Orange

• Alice Munro

• Republican National Convention

• Democratic National Convention

• Olympic Games

• Sight and Sound - The Greatest Films of All Time

• NYT Most Notable Books (The New York Times Book Review)

• NYT Top Ten Books of the Year (The New York Times Book Review)

• Pulitzer Prize

• National Book Award

• Booker Prize

• Nobel Prize in Literature

• George Saunders

• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

• My Struggle, Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

• “Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” (The New York Times Book Review)

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• Amor Towles

• Colleen Hoover

• The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

• What Is the What by Dave Eggers

• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

• Sally Rooney

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

• 3 Critics + 100 Books = Something to Argue About (The New York Times)

• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

• Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

The Panel Discussion

• Lauren Groff

• “June 2024 Ranked Reading Recap” (Sara Hildreth, Fiction Matters Substack)

• “My June Reads Ranked” (Traci Thomas, Unstacked)

• Usain Bolt

• George Saunders

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

• “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” (The NYT Book Review podcast)

• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

• The Help by Katherine Stockett

• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

• “The 10 Best Books of the 21st Century according to…” (The New York Times)

• Marlon James

• On Writing by Stephen King

• “Simply the Best: The New York Times asked, and I answered.” (Jennifer Weiner, The Inevitable Substack)

• Roxana Robinson

• Traci’s Top 10 (@thestackspod)

• Sara’s Top 10 (@fictionmatters)

• “[Lupita's] Best Books of the 21st Century” (Lupita Aquino, Lupita Reads Substack)

• Heavy by Kiese Laymon

• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

• Goodreads

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James

• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

• Jon Krakauer

• “Reading in Public No. 44: What do we mean when we call a book ‘the best’?” (Sara Hildreth, Fiction Matters Substack)

• Italo Calvino

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

• Trust by Hernan Diaz

• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

• Pastoralia by George Saunders

• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

• Louise Erdrich

• 3 Critics + 100 Books = Something to Argue About (The New York Times)

• National Book Award

• Bernie Lombardi

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

• There There by Tommy Orange

• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

• Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

• Bel Canto by Ann Pachett

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

• Stay True by Hua Hsu

• A Mercy by Toni Morrison

• “Ep. 208 A Mercy by Toni Morrison -- The Stacks Book Club (Imani Perry)” (The Stacks)

• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

• Patrick Radden Keefe

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

• We the Animals by Justin Torres

• The LA Times Festival of Books

• Blackouts by Justin Torres

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Connect with Hunter: Instagram | Website | Substack
Connect with Lupita: Instagram | Twitter | Substack
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