The 100 Best Books of the Decade(2000) by Times
The Time's list of the 100 Best Books of the 2000s. It's a mix of fiction and nonfiction.
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1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blast...
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4. Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers by Robert Bringhurst
Robert Bringhurst (born October 16, 1946) is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual an...
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5. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Suite française is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, N...
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6. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." The book seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological change...
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7. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel written by Canadian author Yann Martel. In the story, the protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spiritua...
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8. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is a non-fiction book written by Margaret Atwood, about the nature of debt, for the 2008 Massey Lectures. Each of the book's five chapters was delivered ...
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9. Atonement by Ian McEwan
Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan. It tells the story of protagonist Briony Tallis's crime and how it changes her life, as well as those of her sister Cecilia and her lover Rob...
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10. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective fiction novel written by American author Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louv...
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11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of fi...
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12. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (ISBN 0-330-48455-9) is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the ...
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13. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Austerlitz, the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by "one of the most gripping writers imaginable" (The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man?s search for the answer to his life?s ce...
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14. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a book by Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi.
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15. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the P...
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16. Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955 in Glasgow) is a British poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed ...
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17. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final of the Harry Potter novels written by British author J. K. Rowling.
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19. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections is a 2001 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid...
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20. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
This may be the first novel ever written that truly feels at home in our borderless, globalized, intermarried, post-colonial age, populated by "children with first and last names on a direct collis...
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21. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The Plot Against America is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternate history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindb...
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22. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights (1995, published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spygla...
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24. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The novel describes the life of Kathy H., a young woman of 31, focusing at first on her childhood at an unusual boarding school and eventually her adult life. The story takes place in a dystopian B...
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25. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a 2003 novel by British writer Mark Haddon. It won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First B...
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26. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage
Bad Blood is a 2000 work blending collective biography and memoir by the Welsh literary critic and novelist Lorna Sage.
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27. Oxford English Dictionary by Oxford University Press
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by the Oxford University Press, is a descriptive dictionary of the English language. As well as describing English usage in its many variations throug...
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29. The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in N...
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30. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner is a novel by the author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it is Hosseini's first novel, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007.
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31. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel (born December 14, 1951) is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College.
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32. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Everything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into a film starring Elijah Wood in 2005.
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33. Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan
Chronicles, Volume One is the first part of Bob Dylan's planned 3-volume memoir. Published on October 5, 2004 by Simon & Schuster, the 304-page volume covers selected points from Dylan's long caree...
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36. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
How I Live Now is a young adult novel by Meg Rosoff, first published in 2004. The book won three notable awards including the Michael L. Printz Award and received generally positive reviews.
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38. The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression is a 2001 memoir written by Andrew Solomon. It examines the personal, cultural, and scientific aspects of depression through Solomon's published interviews...
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39. Runaway by Alice Munro
Runaway is a book of short stories by Alice Munro. First published in 2004 by McClelland and Stewart, it was awarded that year's Giller Prize.
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41. The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
The Secret Scripture is a 2008 novel written by Irish playwright Sebastian Barry.
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42. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Fun Home (subtitled A Family Tragicomic) is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvani...
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43. Thursbitch by Alan Garner
Thursbitch is a novel by English writer Alan Garner, named after the valley in the Pennines of England where the action occurs (also listed in the 1841 OS map as "Thursbatch"). It was published in ...
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44. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. T...
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46. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Middlesex is a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. The narrator and protagonist, Calliope Stephanides (later called "Cal"), an in...
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47. Collected Poems of Ted Hughes by Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes was an English poet and children's writer, known as Ted Hughes. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984...
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48. A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything (ISBN 0-7679-0817-1) is a general science book by Bill Bryson, which explains some areas of science, using a style of language more accessible to the general pu...
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49. The Ghost by Robert Harris
The Ghost is a contemporary political thriller by the best-selling English novelist and journalist Robert Harris.
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51. Home by Marilynne Robinson
Home is a novel written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Marilynne Robinson. Published in 2008, it is Robinson's third novel, preceded by Housekeeping in 1980 and Gilead in 2004.
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52. Youth by J M Coetzee
Youth (or Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II) (2002) is a semi-fictionalised autobiographical novel by J. M. Coetzee, recounting his struggles in 1960s London after fleeing the political unrest ...
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53. Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver
The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a series of fantasy books by Michelle Paver, her first books for children. Set 6000 years ago in the pre-agricultural Stone Age, the Chronicles are about a boy...
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54. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctua...
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55. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone is a 2006 book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran that takes a critical look at the civilian leadership of the American reconstruction project in Ir...
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56. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is author Jon McGregor's first novel, first published by Bloomsbury in 2002. It centres around a day in the life of a suburban British street, with the plot al...
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57. Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin
Fleshmarket Close is a 2004 crime novel by Ian Rankin, and is named after a real close off Edinburgh's Cockburn Street. It is the fifteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. "Fleshmarket" is the Scots...
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59. Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is the author of Moondust : In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. HarperCollins. 2005. ISBN 0-00-715541-7. , which tells the story of the twelve U.S. astronauts who journeyed to the ...
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61. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Line of Beauty is a 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst. Set in the United Kingdom in the early to mid-1980s, the story surrounds the post-Oxford life of the young gay prota...
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62. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Fingersmith is a 2002 Victorian-inspired crime fiction novel by Sarah Waters.
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65. Peeling the Onion by Günter Grass
Peeling the Onion (German: Beim Häuten der Zwiebel) is an autobiographical work by German Nobel Prize-winning author and playwright Günter Grass, published in 2006. It begins with the end of his ch...
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66. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas (published in the United States as Cloud Atlas: A Novel) is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the ...
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67. The Kindly One by Jonathan Littell
The Kindly Ones (French: Les Bienveillantes) is a novel, in the form of historical fiction, written in French by the American-born author Jonathan Littell. It tells the story of a former SS officer...
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68. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester) is a 2003 novel by Per Petterson. It was translated into English in 2005 by Anne Born, published in the UK that year, and in the US in 2007. Among other aw...
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69. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
My Name Is Red (Benim Adım Kırmızı) is a Turkish novel by Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk. The English translation won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003,. The French version w...
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72. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
True History of the Kelly Gang is a historical novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Man Booker P...
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73. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
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75. The Damned Utd by David Peace
The Damned Utd is a novel by British author David Peace which presents a fictionalised account of Brian Clough's brief spell as manager of Leeds United football club in 1974.
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76. England in Particular by Sue Clifford, Angela King
Sue Clifford co-founded Common Ground, an organisation which campaigns to link nature with culture and the positive investment people can make in their own localities, with Angela King in 1983.
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79. Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth is a widely-acclaimed graphic novel by Chris Ware, published in 2000. The story was previously serialized in the pages of Ware's comic book Acme Novelty L...
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80. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the Man Booker Prize for the same year. The novel studies the contrast between India's rise...
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81. The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Emperor's Children is a 2006 novel by the American author Claire Messud. The author's third—and her first best-seller—it was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
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84. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence is a novel by Salman Rushdie published in 2008. According to Rushdie this is his "most researched book" which required "Years and years of reading".
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87. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a short story collection by the American writer Wells Tower. It was published to excellent reviews, including by Michiko Kakutani and Edmund Wilson. Kakutan...
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88. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World is Harvard professor Niall Ferguson's tenth book, published in 2008, and an adapted television documentary for Channel 4 (UK) and PBS (US). I...
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89. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is a narrative nonfiction book by Suketu Mehta, published in 2004, about the Indian city of Mumbai ("Bombay"). It was published in hardcover by Random House's Al...
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91. Unless by Carol Shields
Unless, first published by Fourth Estate, an imprint of Harper Collins in 2002, is the final novel by Canadian writer Carol Shields. Semi-autobiographical, it was the capstone to Shields's writing ...
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93. District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
District and Circle (2006) is a collection of poems written by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. It is the poet's most recent volume, published forty years after his debut Death of a Naturalist, ...
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96. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is a historical look at the way in which Al-Qaeda came into being, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and ...
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97. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) is a best-selling novel written by Dominican-American author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised...
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98. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel that was written by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It was first published in 2006 by Knopf/Anchor and tells the story of two sisters Olanna and Kainene du...
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99. The Lost Leader by Mick Imlah
Michael Ogilvie Imlah (26 September 1956 – 12 January 2009), better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.
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100. The Position by Meg Wolitzer
The Position: A Novel (ISBN 0-7432-6178-X) is a 2005 novel by Meg Wolitzer. It tells the story of a book titled Pleasuring: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment and the effects it has on a family.
