Terence’s Tuesday Top 10: Best Books of the 21st Century (2001-now)
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It’s the first Terence’s Tuesday Top 10 (hooray alliteration) and man is it a doozy. I fear I’ll have nowhere to go but down but why not aim high? GQ recently did a post about the top 21 books of the 21st Century that every man should read and it inspired me to make this list. This was actually really difficult to do considering this is spanning from 2001 to now I can i can barely remember what book I read last week (Lover At Last by JR Ward if you’re wondering) let alone since 2001. I also took out books in a series (so no Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, or Robert Langdon books). You also won’t find plays, non-fiction, or internet fan fiction on the list, which is why the final list looks so geared towards the latter half of the time frame. So after reaching Claire Danes levels of ugly crying to cut this list down to 10, I managed to get it to my top books. Check it out!
Near Misses: Duma Key, We the Animals, Telex From Cuba, Never Let Me Go, 1Q84, Sharp Teeth, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Running with Scissors, Black Bodies White Gazes
Top 10 Books of the 21st Century
10. The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (2011): Part fairytale, part mystery and part medical drama, this book really pushes the boundary of how you can weave the spectral and the real. Luckily for us, it does so with such aplomb that about 10 pages in you don’t realize where the fiction in the fiction is.
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.
9. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (2011): A dazzling novel about the last werewolf in the world and the strain his existence is putting on him and the supernatural community. It’s an incredibly rich novel and way more sumptuous than you would think for a novel about existential angst
Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you’d never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely. Jake’s depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive. Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend— mesmerizing and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human. One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.
8. Incognegro by Mat Johnson (2009): A graphic novel with an edge, it manages to explore race relations and the concept of passing while presnting it in a visual style that’s incredibly relatable. I discovered this on a whim one day and your life will be better for it if you find it as well.
In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could “pass” among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going “incognegro.”Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald barely escapes with his life after his latest “incognegro” story goes bad. But when he returns to the sanctuary of Harlem, he’s sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay “incognegro” long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother — and himself. He finds that the answers are buried beneath layers of shifting identities, forbidden passions and secrets that run far deeper than skin color.
7. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (2011): Baseball, sexual orientation family strife and small town characters collide in this novel. Barbach has deft hand and you can just feel the smell of new cut grass of the field in this small town in Wisconsin. Also, it’s one of the few books on this list that speaks directly to people in my generation and doesn’t look down on the challenges we face.
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners’ team captain and Henry’s best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment–to oneself and to others.
6. The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2008): Who told Junot Diaz to go slap the fuck off like this? this novel is such a fun romp that deals with growing up, love and masculinity while never neglecting the cultural background of his main character. Surely the most unique narrator of all of these books, it’s a wonderfully spun tale that you can’t put down.
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
5. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (2011): Franzen is an acquired taste but this tome about a Minnesota family is wonderfully rich and dense. I poured over this novel for months and it challenged my capacity for staying with something that might not be in my wheel house. I came out better for it as Franzen has a wonderful way of humanizing even the most unlikable characters and giving you a great sense of place.
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Walter and Patty Berglund as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
4. Zorro by Isabelle Allende (2006): I almost forgot about this novel and how sad I would have been to leave off this amazing reinvention of the classic tale. Isabelle Allende paints with words, that’s the only way to describe how every page feels like images come to life. Zorro is wonderful exploration of friendship, heroism, and daring, while also being a globe trotting historical fiction piece and an examination of class issues.
A child of two worlds — the son of an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner and a Shoshone warrior woman — young Diego de la Vega cannot silently bear the brutal injustices visited upon the helpless in late-eighteenth-century California. And so a great hero is born — skilled in athleticism and dazzling swordplay, his persona formed between the Old World and the New — the legend known as Zorro.
3. World War Z by Max Brooks (2006): The only book on this list other than Freedom that took me MONTHS to finish. I wanted to absorb all of the incredible detail of this book. The interview style isn’t a new concept but the language and vivid imagery is so potent that you just get lost. Plus as a horror fan, this book is downright terrifying.
“The Crisis” nearly wiped out humanity. Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and author of The Zombie Survival Guide, 2003) has taken it upon himself to document the “first hand” experiences and testimonies of those lucky to survive 10 years after the fictitious zombie war. Like a horror fan’s version of Studs Terkel’s The Good War (1984), the “historical account” format gives Brooks room to explore the zombie plague from numerous different views and characters. In a deadpan voice, Brooks exhaustively details zombie incidents from isolated attacks to full-scale military combat: “what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t!” With the exception of a weak BAT-21 story in the second act, the “interviews” and personal accounts capture the universal fear of the collapse of society–a living nightmare in which anyone can become a mindless, insatiable predator at a moment’s notice. Alas, Brad Pitt’s production company has purchased the film rights to the book–while it does have a chronological element, it’s more similar to a collection of short stories: it would make for an excellent 24-style TV series or an animated serial. Regardless, horror fans won’t be disappointed: like George Romero’s Dead trilogy, World War Z is another milestone in the zombie mythos. Carlos Orellana Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
2. The Privileges by Jonathan Dee (2010): Who knew a book about rich white people and their problems/foibles/foolishness could be so engrossing? A Pulitzer nominee we follow a young couple, one of whom is an investment banker. I loved how the novel just lulls you into being complicit with the actions of the main characters and really challenges the notion of good and evil with regards to investment banking. It’s a novel for the modern age.
Smart and socially gifted, Adam and Cynthia Morey are perfect for each other. With Adam’s rising career in the world of private equity, a beautiful home in Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. But for the Moreys, their future of boundless privilege is not arriving fast enough. As Cynthia begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility. The Privileges is an odyssey of a couple touched by fortune, changed by time, and guided above all else by their epic love for each other.
1. Serena by Ron Rash (2009): Ron Rash’s novel wouldn’t seem like something that would top a list like this. But more than any of the novels that I’ve read the characters are the most fully realized, the scenarios so immersible and the story so tantalizing that I couldn’t help but put it number one. You’ve got everything you could want in a novel and was really a thrilling read from cover to cover.
The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains–but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.
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