A while ago (sometime in mid-2024 I guess based on where I found my list, heh), someone on Instagram was going through and choosing their very favorite book from each year in the 2000s. Here’s mine (nine months after I made the list, heh)!! Books are selected / listed in the year they were published as opposed to the year that I read them. I really tried hard to limit myself to one book per pub year, unless I could split it by genre, but in some years, I just wasn’t able to cut it down to one. I am only human!
2000
Fiction: I absolutely loved Kavalier & Clay (Michael Chabon, FTW) and nothing else comes close. In fact, I didn’t even write anything else down for that year!
2001
Fiction: I would say now, in 2025, the best book published in 2001 was Erasure by Percival Everett, who I knew nothing of in 2001, but am all about in the 2020s.
Fiction runner-up: But at the time, I think I would have said Atonement, by far Ian McEwan‘s best book and the least icky of everything he’s written because some are…just skeevy, creepy, yucky.
Nonfiction: Shutterbabe, the first memoir from photographer Deborah Copaken Kogan.
2002
Fiction: No question, the best book published in 2002 was Audrey Niffennegger‘s The Time Traveler’s Wife. What a beautiful and beautifully crushing story. Ack, that ending. ACCKKKKK. How sad it was that they completely butchered it in the movie.
2003
Nonfiction: No fiction or anything else I read published in 2003 can come close to challenging Jon Krakauer and possibly his best book Under the Banner of Heaven.
2004
Fiction: The Plot Against America is fantastic and Philip Roth will never be reviled on this web site.
2005
Nonfiction: I have come to think very differently of Joan Didion these days, but I do remember really loving The Year of Magical Thinking.
2006
Fiction: I absolutely adore Black Swan Green, the least David Mitchell of all the David Mitchell books.
Poetry: This is also the year Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard collection was published and it is excellent.
2007
Fiction: this was the year the first Tana French book In the Woods came out and that book is truly impressive. (There is a point where that series kinda fell off the rails for me, but the first three are outstanding.)
Nonfiction: Love Is a Mixtape (Rob Sheffield) really speaks my language.
Honorable Mention: The Watchman (Robert Crais) was the first book to feature my one true love Joe Pike. I’m still considering getting his tattoos.
2008
Fiction: Kristen Cashore’s Graceling is such a fabulous book and the beginning of a truly beautiful series.
2009
Fiction: How can one resist the siren call of Wolf Hall? My dad had introduced me to Hilary Mantel long before she latched on to Cromwell, but this book… This is Dorothy Dunnet levels of fabulous (Lymond + Nicolo + Thorfinn 4-ever). (I did not read it in 2009 however, heh.)
Honorable Mention: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is just a lovely middle-grade book that I wish more kids would read and just seeing that title on my list brings it more vividly to mind than most of the adult books I read published that year.
2010
Fiction: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Done.
2011
Fiction: I love Maggie Stiefvater so much, and two of her series reside deep in my heart, but none of those books even hold a candle to The Scorpio Races, a stand-out stand-alone. OMG I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH.
2012
Fiction: Tell The Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. This might be the best book on this entire list.
2013
Fiction: The glorious, glorious HILD. Magical. Nicola Griffith is another follower in Dorothy Dunnet’s footsteps.
2014
Fiction: There were lots of great novels published in 2014, but none that I have continued to think about as much as A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, by Will Chancellor.
Non-fiction: H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald.
2015
Fiction: There are two truly fabulous science fiction series that started in 2015 and I just cannot acknowledge only one of them. So I’m declaring a tie between Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who is the writer to start reading if you never want to run out of material; and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, a complete tour de force.
2016
Fiction: I really fell for The Mothers, by Brit Bennett.
Honorable mention: Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood is truly fantastic.
Poetry: Counting Descent by Clint Smith.
2017
Fiction: One of only a few YA nods on this list: The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. I really, really wanted to read this with my sixth graders, but there is just ONE s-e-x-u-a-l scene that makes that impossible and I do think I might have edited that out were I the author since there are more YA books on this topic than there are middle grades. Sigh.
2018
Fiction: Holy crap, is There, There by Tommy Orange not the most stunning debut. Swoon.
Poetry: American Sonnets, by Terrance Hayes.
2019
Fiction: I am still in 100% completely, head-over-heels in love with This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Runner-Up: But I cannot even fathom leaving Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir off this list. A life without Gideon? Not worth living.
Poetry: I didn’t know Hanif Abdurraqib for his poetry at first, but that has become my favorite of his many genres and A Fortune for Your Disaster is just drop-dead beautiful.
2020
Fiction: This is the year of Deacon KingKong by James McBride. Amazeballoons.
2021
Fiction: The Trees by Percival Everett. The most topical of topicals. Sly. Sarcastic. So Very funny. And yet, just a complete and utter chill to the bone.
Runner-Up: Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters. ‘Nuff said.
Non-fiction: How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith.
2022
Fiction: The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka becomes such a surprisingly different book as it goes on. Everyone I told about this one raved about it for months.
Nonfiction: Elaine Castillo’s fiction is great, but these essays were chef’s kiss: How to Read Now.
2023
Fiction: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, by Moniquill Blackgoose How is this so good?
Non-Fiction: Hijab Butch Blues, by Lamya H. So very good. But I just don’t see how it would be possible to maintain anonymity…
Poetry: I was completely stunned by The Kingdom of Surfaces by Sally Wen Mao.
2024
Fiction: My very, very favorite read in any genre for 2024 was “Wounded” by Percival Everett. Yes, I read James. Yes, I see it getting all the glory. Yes, I found it a good read. I did not find it as good a read as Wounded.
Non-fiction: Hanif Abdurraqib with a breathtaking memoir “There’s Always This Year.”
Poetry: Victoria Cheng’s collection “With My Back to the World.”
Now tell me yours… Comments are open.