The Ultimate Best Books
of 2021 List

For good or for ill, no matter what happens in any given year—be it insurrection, new variants, the rise of #BookTok, or even a free Britney—the end-of-year lists will go on. And therefore, per Literary Hub tradition, we will count them. After all, didn’t 2021 teach us anything about the value of personal opinions vs. actual data? (No, actually, I’m sorry to say that it looks like it didn’t, but for the record: listen to the data.)

So this year, I counted up 49 lists from 33 outlets (as ever, there are . . . even more out there, but life and time are both finite), which recommended 785 total books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. 138 of those appeared on 3 or more lists, and I have collated those for you here, in descending order of frequency.

Does this mean that these are the absolute Best Books of the Year? Who knows! But if you pay attention to a single popularity contest this year, you could do worse than choosing this one.

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19 lists:

Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This

17 lists:

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

16 lists:

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun
Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

15 lists:

Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads
Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

14 lists:

Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle

13 lists:

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America

12 lists:

Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties

11 lists:

Rachel Cusk, Second Place
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Katie Kitamura, Intimacies
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

10 lists:

Lauren Groff, Matrix

9 lists:

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello
Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets

8 lists:

Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were
George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

7 lists:

Melissa Broder, Milk Fed
Tove Ditlevsen, tr. Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman, The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood, Youth, Dependency
Ashley C. Ford, Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir
Damon Galgut, The Promise
Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie
Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl
Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun
Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed
Sarah Ruhl, Smile: The Story of a Face
Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

6 lists:

Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength
Patricia Engel, Infinite Country
Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
Jason Mott, Hell of a Book
Pola Oloixarac, tr. Adam Morris Mona
Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks: A Memoir
Richard Powers, Bewilderment
Kristen Radtke, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness
Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind
Dana Spiotta, Wayward
Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!
Claire Vaye Watkins, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness
Joy Williams, Harrow

5 lists:

Joan Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
Mariana Enriquez, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes
Nikole Hannah-Jones, ed., The 1619 Project
Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Gayl Jones, Palmares
Mieko Kawakami, Heaven
Billie Jean King, All In: An Autobiography
Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot
Chang-rae Lee, My Year Abroad
Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat
Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends
Francis Spufford, Light Perpetual
Dawn Turner, Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood
Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground

4 lists:

Natasha Brown, Assembly
Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers
Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears
Ash Davidson, Damnation Spring
Omar El Akkad, What Strange Paradise
Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City
Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir
Percival Everett, The Trees
Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water
Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
Benjamin Labatut, tr. Adrian Nathan West, When We Cease to Understand the World
Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present
Elizabeth McCracken, The Souvenir Museum
Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Velvet Was the Night
Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts
Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland
Wole Soyinka, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals
Miriam Toews, Fight Night
Colm Tóibín, The Magician
Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country: A Memoir
Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

3 lists:

Donald Antrim, One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival
Jo Ann Beard, Festival Days
Matt Bell, Appleseed
Brian Broome, Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir
Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
Myriam J.A. Chancy, What Storm, What Thunder
Kat Chow, Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir
Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
Alexis Daria, A Lot Like Adiós
Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
Nicole Eustace, Covered With Night
Glenn Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
Gabrielle Glaser, American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Read Until You Understand
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat
Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life
Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser
Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation
Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here
Brandon Hobson, The Removed
Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present
Ladee Hubbard,The Rib King
Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby
Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blaine, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Maylis de Kerangal, tr. Jessica Moore, Painting Time
John Le Carré, Silverview
Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly
Deborah Levy, Real Estate
Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us
Louis Menand,The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
Dantiel W. Moniz,Milk Blood Heat
Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness
Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays
Eyal Press, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
Kelefa Sanneh, Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres
Diane Seuss, Frank: Sonnets
Maria Stepanova, tr. Sasha Dugdale, In Memory of Memory
Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander
Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful
Jackie Wang, The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us From the Void
Elissa Washuta, White Magic
Tia Williams, Seven Days in June
Jessica Winter, The Fourth Child
Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

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The List of Lists Surveyed:

The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2021 and The 10 Best Books of 2021 • TIME’s The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 and The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021 and The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2021 • Kirkus’ Best Fiction Books of the Year and Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction and 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction and The 10 Best Books of 2021 • BuzzFeed’s Here Are The Best Books of 2021 • Esquire’s The 50 Best Books of 2021 • Vulture’s The Best Books of 2021 • EW’s 10 Best Books of 2021 • Vogue’s The Best Books to Read in 2021 • The A.V. Club’s 15 Favorite Books of 2021 • People’s Top 10 Books of 2021 • The Boston Globe‘s Best Books of 2021 • The Guardian’s Best Books of 2021 • Slate’s The Best Books of 2021 • NPR’s Maureen Corrigan’s 2021 Best Books List • USA Today’s The Best Books of 2021 • The Economist’s The Best Books of 2021 • Barnes & Noble’s Top 10 Books of 2021 • Publishers Weekly’s Best Books 2021: Top 10; Fiction; Mystery/Thriller; Poetry; Romance; SF/Fantasy/Horror; Nonfiction; Comics • The Independent’s 20 Best Books of 2021 • Oprah Daily’s Our 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Powells’ Best Fiction of 2021 and Best Nonfiction of 2021 and Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Romance & Graphic Novels of 2021 • Bookforum’s Best Books of the Year • Real Simple’s 59 Best Books of 2021 • The Chicago Tribune’s Best of Books 2021 • Town & Country’s Best Books of 2021 • The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Books of 2021 • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Reads of 2021 • The New York Public Library’s Best Books for Adults 2021 • The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Best Books of 2021 • BookPage’s Best Fiction of 2021 and Best Nonfiction of 2021 • Thrillist’s Best Books of 2021 • and of course, Literary Hub’s 48 Favorite Books of 2021