Have you seen the New York Times Top 100 Books of the 2000’s? Former Oz customers and friends still ask me about my favorite books, or what I’m now reading.

I have a few questions about the NYT list, although as soon as I woke up these past few days, I quickly opened to the website.

I don’t get the #1 placement of the Elena Ferrante novel, My Brilliant Friend. Will someone please let me in on the secret?

I get the #2 placement of The Warmth of Other Suns. The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (1915-1970) by Isabel Wilkerson. What an eye opener about the plight of Black Americans in the twentieth century. Consider reading NYT super-columnist Charles Blow’s The Devil You Know. A Black Power Manifesto. He urges Black Americans to move to the South. He himself recently moved from NYC to Atlanta because he believes if more Black American Southerners turned out to vote it would increase their political power.

I was glad to see Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo at #22. Another stunner and eye opener that opened the door to lives I knew nothing about. I felt like a know-nothing “elitist” after reading it.

In my view, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead should have been way up there. I haven’t been a fan of all her books; this one is her best. I couldn’t put it down. Perhaps more important, it rang true

I would switch a few author’s novels to ones not mentioned on the list: Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad was a terrific read but I found his thin volume Nickel Boys: A Novel a more compelling, surprising knockout, not an easy read but it’s stayed with me. Messed with my thinking, which I enjoy.

I haven’t read the two books on the list by Jesmyn Ward but I loved her latest Let Us Descend, with the most gorgeous, melodic, spiritual and fantastical writing. Thanks to Mary in my Minneapolis book group, who also suggested our latest book, Eve. How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon. So much interesting science that I never knew about! The author is so funny in her telling how women’s lives/evolution is based in history. I love that! Perhaps I’ll just ask Mary for future book suggestions…

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American professor, also wowed me. Otherwise, the NYT list offered some titles I now want to read, which I appreciate. Some titles struck me as “meh,” like The Goldfinch. I know many people loved it but the young boy’s plight didn’t ring true to me.

Oh. And I loved The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. I haven’t gotten into any of her other books I tried to read.

I most like books that have the power to transform, the power to shake up my thinking.

If you’re interested…

I’ve read 27 books on the list …

The Warmth of Other Suns  ●  The Corrections  ●  The Underground Railroad  ●  The Year of Magical Thinking  ● The Road  ●  Pachinko  ●  Behind the Beautiful Forevers  ●  The Overstory  ●  Atonement  ●  Americanah  ●  Fun Home  ●  Between the World and Me  ●The Years  ●  H Is for Hawk  ●  Postwar  ●  The Goldfinch  ●  Persepolis  ● Nickel and Dimed●  Middlesex  ●  Demon Copperhead  ●  The Plot Against America  ●  Olive Kitteridge  ●Exit West ●  The Sympathizer  ●  The Human Stain  ●  Station Eleven ●  Bel Canto

… and I want to read 19.

My Brilliant Friend  ●  Austerlitz  ●  Never Let Me Go  ●  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao  ●  Outline  ● Erasure  ●  Salvage the Bones  ●  A Mercy  ●  Trust  ●  Life After Life  ●Heavy  ●  All Aunt Hagar’s Children  ● Secondhand Time  ●  The Passage of Power  ●Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow  ●  An American Marriage  ●  The Story of the Lost Child  ●  The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis ●  The Return