I'm sure we've all seen the NYT list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and perhaps some of you caught the second list, Readers Pick their Best Books of the 21st century, after all the comments the newspaper got about the first one.

There are issues with both these lists for me, because I read mostly genre books, I read more international books, and I used to read a ton of YA in the past. This is a predominantly US-centric list, with the kind of books that the readers of a highbrow newspaper would gravitate towards, and it definitely suffers from recency bias.

Of course the great thing about these kind of lists is that, even though they're subjective, they give rise to discussions and offer food for thought. So I've been thinking about what my personal Best Books list would look like.

I am the kind of person who has forgotten what she ate yesterday, but luckily Goodreads doesn't forget and I've been doing the yearly reading challenge since 2013, which was a great help. If I've forgotten something amazing is because I read it before social media.

The books published this century that blew me away:

  1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
  3. Γκιακ by Δημοσθένης Παπαμάρκος
  4. Captive Prince by CS Pacat
  5. Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
  6. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
  7. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  8. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
  9. Brand New Ancients by Kae Tempest
  10. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
  11. Mo Dao Zu Shi by MXTX
  12. Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
  13. Storm of Swords by GRRM
  14. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel by S. Clarke
  15. Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

To round up the 15, here are five romance novels I adored:

  1. Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox
  2. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
  3. Spectred Isle by KJ Charles
  4. The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by KJ Charles
  5. For Real by Alexis Hall

Runners up:

The Dream Thieves, The Goldfinch, Long Price Quartet, Bel Canto, Amberlough, Vita Nostra, Seven Summer Nights, Jackdaw and the whole Magpie Lord series.

What about you? Which books would make it into your Top-20 of the past 24 years?