Book Log Extra: New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

The New York Times took a break from trying to get Joe Biden to drop out of the Presidential race to slow-release its list of the 100 best books of the current century (it did it in groups of 20 over the course of the week). I was going to say that this seemed a little presumptuous, except that The Guardian did the same thing... in 2019 (their top pick was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which in true American fashion I've not read but have seen the TV adaptation). 

The NYT's list is paywalled, so no link for you. But here's the list, with the ones I've read in bold (17 as opposed to 22 on the Guardian's list, though I did start The Last Samurai and bailed on it).

100. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

99. How to Be Both by Ali Smith

98. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

97. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

96. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

95. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

94. On Beauty by Zadie Smith

93. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

92. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

91. The Human Stain by Philip Roth

90. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

89. The Return by Hisham Matar

88. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis

87. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

86. Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight

85. Pastoralia by George Saunders

84. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

83. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

82. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

81. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan

80. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

79. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

78. Septology by Jon Fosse

77. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

76. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

75. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

74. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

73. The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

72. Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

71. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

70. All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

69. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

68. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

67. Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon

66. We the Animals by Justin Torres

65. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

64. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

63. Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

62. 10:04 by Ben Lerner

61. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

60. Heavy by Kiese Laymon

59. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

58. Stay True by Hua Hsu

57. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

56. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

55. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

54. Tenth of December by George Saunders

53. Runaway by Alice Munro

52. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

51. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

50. Trust by Hernan Diaz

49. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

47. A Mercy by Toni Morrison

46. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

45. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

44. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

43. Postwar by Tony Judt

42. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

41. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

40. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

39. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

38. The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolano

37. The Years by Annie Ernaux

36. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

35. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

34. Citizen by Claudia Rankine

33. Savage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

32. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

31. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

30. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

29. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

28. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

27. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

26. Atonement by Ian McEwan

25. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

24. The Overstory by Richard Powers

23. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

22. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

21. Evicted by Matthew Desmond

20. Erasure, Percival Everett

19. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

18. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

17. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

16. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

15. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

14. Outline by Rachel Cusk

13. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

12. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

8. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

6. 2666 by Roberto Bolano

5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

4. The Known World by Edward P. Jones

3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

For want of anything better to post, here's a breakdown of if I've been to the most populous 100 cities in the US, and if so for how long:

More than a week in total: Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Orlando

More than a weekend, up to a week: New York, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Nashville, Atlanta, Tulsa, New Orleans, Anaheim, Pittsburgh

A weekend to a longish weekend: Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, Columbus, Indianapolis, Seattle, Las Vegas, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Cleveland, St. Louis, Buffalo, Madison

In for the day: San Antonio, Virginia Beach

Less than a day, including being in transit only: Dallas, Jacksonville, San Jose, Charlotte, Denver, Long Beach, Oakland, Minneapolis, Henderson (NV), Newark, Toledo, Norfolk, Richmond

To the best of my knowledge, I've never been: Phoenix, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, El Paso, Portland (OR), Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Albuquerque, Tucson, Fresno, Sacramento, Mesa, Colorado Springs, Omaha, Raleigh, Miami, Bakersfield, Tampa, Wichita, Arlington (TX), Aurora (CO), Honolulu, Stockton, Riverside, Lexington (KY), Corpus Christi, Irvine, Cincinnati, Santa Ana, Saint Paul, Greensboro, Lincoln, Durham, Plano, Anchorage, Jersey City, Chandler, North Las Vegas, Chula Vista, Gilbert, Reno, Fort Wayne, Lubbock, St. Petersburg, Laredo, Irving, Chesapeake, Glendale, Winston-Salem, Scottsdale, Garland, Boise, Port St. Lucie, Spokane, Fremont, Huntsville

It's possible I've been in a few of these, even briefly (Chesapeake and Jersey City seem most likely). It looks like I could knock off a bunch of these by driving around the Metroplex and the Phoenix area for a couple of hours.

 As a sort of follow-up to the post about cities I've only been to through their airports, here are the US states I've been to for less than 24 hours.

Arizona - when we visited the Hoover Dam, the wife and I walked across from Nevada to Arizona. There being nothing on the Arizona side but barren landscape, we maybe stayed for two minutes. Hands down the state I've been to but spent the least amount of time.

Colorado - as mentioned in that other post, I've only been to Colorado due to flying through Denver once. 

Idaho - on our road trip from Salt Lake City to Chicago, we went through Idaho pretty much so we could say we'd been there. We overnighted in Pocatello, and got to see both some of the Idaho State campus and the much improved city flag. 

Kansas - on a visit to Kansas City, some friends and I drove over to Overland Park to visit the NCAA headquarters. It was closed. We drove back to KC.

Kentucky - the sum total of my Bluegrass State visitation is time spent connecting through the "Cincinnati" airport in Covington.

Minnesota - on the same road trip where we stopped in Idaho, we stopped overnight in Minnesota mostly because the kids wanted to go to the Mall of America. This is probably the state on the list in which I've spent the most time.

West Virginia - all of my time in West Virginia has been due to Scout trips. In high school we cut through one of the spiky bits when driving from Shenandoah National Park to Gettysburg. As an adult, I spent an afternoon in Harpers Ferry while chaperoning a Scout trip to both Gettysburg and Antietam.

And while we're at it, the countries I've been to for less than 24 hours:

Bahamas - stopped at Disney's resort island while on a cruise, so no real experience with Bahamian culture or people at all.

Germany - one of our visits to the UK had us fly home through Frankfurt.

Mexico - same cruise as the Bahamas stop, spent a day ashore in and around Cozumel.

Turkey - flew through coming and going to Italy

Vatican City - same Italy trip, spent one of the days at the Vatican Museum and then in St. Peter's square while others went into the basilica (I passed as my knee wasn't up to standing in line for a couple of hours).

Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 40: Cadfael

Born in Wales, Cadfael left home to become as servant to a wool merchant in the English town of Shrewsbury, but would spend several years as a sailor or soldier, participating in the First Crusade and Henry I's conquest of Normandy.  After Normany, Cadfael returned to England in the service of a lord who kidnapped the abbot of Shrewsbury Abbey in an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit the abbey was bringing against the lord. Cadfael freed the abbot, and now being free of his oath to the kidnapping lord, opted to become a brother at Shrewsbury.

As much as Cadfael appreciates monastic life and his position as the abbey's herbalist, his secular experience and natural curiosity often lead him into conflict with the rules and expectations of religious life. Not surprisingly, those things that make him a less than ideal monk make him an excellent detective. His experience with the outside world also gives him the confidence and skill to venture outside the walls in pursuit of the truth, at some danger to himself during the time of The Anarchy.

And for all of the crime solving, Cadfael also finds time to attend to affairs of the heart, as many of the mysteries include a romantic subplot involving a murder suspect. He's also apt to mete out some rough justice, usually to the detriment of the authorities, though he is still great friends with the local sheriff (and godfather to his son).

I enjoyed the Cadfael series quite a bit, and found that author Ellis Peters (the pen name of Edith Pargeter) had an excellent handle on how to balance the religious and secular forces that weighed on Cadfael during his investigations. Both the period detail and local detail were outstanding, making me feel like I really understood what life was like at that time and in that place.

Thus ends another Lentorama, one of the few I actually finished on time. I apparently just need to pick topics that actually interest me, who'd have thought it? See you next year.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 39: Sister Agatha

Once investigative reporter and professor Mary Naughton, Sister Agatha is now a nun at the Our Lady of Hope monastery in New Mexico. She is an extern nun, meaning that she is able to interact with the outside world on behalf of her cloistered counterparts. This becomes important when one of the monastery's priests is poisoned mid-Mass, putting all of Sister Agatha's secular senses on high alert. She has to solve the murder before any attendant scandal pushes the financially unstable monastery into closing for good.

Sister Agatha goes on to solve other crimes - not always murder, but often - and becomes well-known locally for her skills in this regard. 

Unusually, this series was penned by a pair of authors, Aimee and David Thurlo. He is a New Mexico native, having grown up on a Navajo reservation, while she was born in Cuba but lived in New Mexico for most of her life. They also penned a mystery series where the main character is a former FBI agent turned Navajo police investigator, and another about a New Mexico state police detective who is both Navajo and a vampire.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 38: Reverend Martin Buell

The Rev. Dr. Martin Buell is dispatched to Farrington, Colorado to take on Christ Church parish. He was ambivalent about the assignment, and his attitude doesn't improve upon meeting Seneca Wibble, who considers herself the leading authority on the town and matters of Christ Church. And then on his first night, he finds a body. With more to come, all of which the local sherrif would like to pin on him.

This series was one of three penned in the mid-20th century by Margaret Scherf (the other two involved a couple that painted furniture and a retired pathologist). She also wrote some juvenile mysteries and a Nancy Drew mystery, all as part of a varied career of writing, editing, and administrative work. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 37: Father John O'Malley

John O'Malley is the priest at the St. Francis Mission, located on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation. In addition to his usual duties he also solves murders committed on tribal land, or involving members of the Arapaho nation, usually assisted by attorney Vicky Holden. 

Author Margaret Coel is a native Coloradan, and her career as a journlist helped her find actual events and stories to adapt into her novels. Coel wrote 20 books in the series in total before ending it in 2016.

Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 36: Claire Fergusson

Claire Fergusson is the new priest at St. Albans Episcopal Church in Millers Kill, New York. She's not exactly what the parishoners expected, as she's a former Army chopper pilot with a no-nonsense attitude. When a baby is left at the church, she enlists the help of the town's police chief - ex-Army himself - to find the parents, a mission that uncovers secrets, murder, and perhaps a budding romance?

Author Julia Spencer-Fleming does not appear to have entertained a religious vocation or served in the military. She does originally come from upstate New York, but lives in Maine now. Unlike many of these series this one is still active.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 35: Elizabeth Elliot

Elizabeth Elliot is a lifelong Quaker, and has just been elected the clerk of her Harvard Square meeting. Where Quakers do not have clergy, the clerk takes on many of the administrative duties for the meeting that a priest or other religious would for a church or similar community (though the clerk may also record any agreement made during a worship meeting).

Elizabeth is worried about her ability to handle the clerk position, and her concerns aren't helped when another member is killed in his garden. The police arrest a homeless man who the member occasionally hired to help in his garden, but Elizabeth thinks that the killing was more likely inspired by the rumored changes the member was going to make to his will.  Using her natural investigatory talents, backed up by a lifetime of Quaker practice and moral teaching, Elizabeth solves the first in a series of murders, both in Cambridge and beyond.

And as is the case with so many of these series, the author writes from a certain area of experience. Irene Allen is the pen name of Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a geology professor from Washington state who is also a practicing Quaker. She earned her doctorate at Harvard, and attended meetings in Cambridge.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 34: Father Mark Townsend

Father Mark is a Jesuit priest in the Seattle area who first gets involved in a murder inquiry when a lawyer is found stabbed to death with an artifact from an Alaskan tribe that he worked with during time assigned to that state. The priest has to return to the Last Frontier in order to find who the killer is, and how they are connected to the tribe and this particular object.

The series sees Father Mark investigate cases that mostly involve indigenous people (with the last book in the series focusing on migrant farm workers). All of the books are set in the Pacific Northwest, which is where the author, Brad Reynolds (himself a Jesuit) resides.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 33: Rev. Lily Connor

Lily Connor is what's known as a "tentmaker," a priest who specializes in filling in when a parish is between permanent priests. She's home in Texas, where she had been helping care for her father, who recently died from cancer. A friend calls asking if she'll take a temporary assignment in the Boston area - their priest died of a heart attack - and she accepts the job. Only problem is that when she gets to the parish, she begins to suspect that his death wasn't what is seemed.

The Lily Connor trilogy was written by Michelle Blake, who was on the path to becoming an Episcopal priest herself but opted for writing as a career. She is primarily an essayist and poet, with these books being her only published prose works. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 32: Rev. Septimus Treolar

Another law enforcement officer turned cleric, the Reverend Treolar retired as a chief inspector of the CID and became the parson of the rural St.Mary's Danedyke. But when the locals suspect that the church is haunted, Septimus dusts off his investigatory skills to sort out who is behind what appear to be supernatural events. 

I've seen this series described as mysteries written for children or YA readers, which may explain the lack of a body count. The series is credited to Stephen Chance, which was the pen name of Philip Turner, who wrote a different children's series set in Darnley Mills, a town in northeast England. There is a prequel Septimus Treolar novel which follows his exploits during World War II, where the stakes are higher (he's trying to track down a spy) but still age-appropriate.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 31: Sister Lou

Louise "Lou" LaSalle gave up the bright lights of Los Angeles for the quieter precincts of Briar Coast, New York. She's looking forward to some peace, and her nephew works for the college her order founded in the area.

Of course, murder gets in the way of her plans. A controversial theologian, whom Lou invited to speak at a feast day observance, turns up dead. Lou, sensing that the local police are off track in their investigation, teams up with a local reporter to look into the dead man's past for something (or someone) that would lead to his killing.

There are only three books in the Sister Lou series, which see he involved in crimes both her sisters and the wider Briar Coast community. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 30: Father Brown

Perhaps the quintessential example of a clerical crime solver, Father Brown appeared in 53 short stories by G. K. Chesterton, written in the early 20th century.  Father Brown is Catholic, but that's about all we know about him personally. The stories shed little to no light on his parish, his bio, or even his first name (and what information we do get is often conflicting). 

What we do see in Father Brown is someone who can use his innate understanding of human behavior and vast knowledge of aberrant behavior (gained through a career of parishoner confessions) to figure out who committed the crime. He also benefits by his personal appearance and manners, which are unprepossessing and thus make him easy to undersestimate.

Chesterton created the characer based on John O'Connor, a priest and long time friend who played a pivotal role in Chsterton's conversion to Catholicism. As far as I can tell he did not solve crimes.

The Father Brown stories have been adapted several times for film, radio, and TV. The BBC brought Father Brown back in 2012, and are now on the 12th series of episodes (these are shown in the US on PBS). 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 29: John Jordan

John Jordan was a cop in Atlanta, until the job got to be too much and he embarked on a major life change, as he put down his gun and picked up a Bible in becoming a prison chaplain in his native Florida. Now serving the inmates of the Potter Correctional Institution, he gets pulled into murder within the walls, combining his access as a chaplain with the investigatory skills honed on the force. 

Jordan shares a lot of his bio with his creator, Michael Lister, who was himself a prison chaplain on the Florida panhandle for years before turning to a full time writing careeer. Jordan also eventually leaves the prison (or at least he starts picking up cases outside of it), and later books have his father and daughter involved in the cases, too. 

One review I read suggested that the books would appeal to a Christian audience more than a general one, not sure if that was solely based off of Jordan being a chaplain or if the books have more of a religious or spiritual orientation than your average mystery. I didn't get a sense that the series was specifically Christian from the author's website. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 28: Brother Athelstan

Brother Athelstan is a Dominican friar, priest of St. Erconwald's in London's Southwark district, and secretary to the city of London's coroner.  Most of the mysteries that Athelstan gets involved in fall into the locked room variety - sometimes literally - where he has to figure out how someone was able to commit a murder under impossible circumstances.

As with many of the series set in English history, Athelstan also has to juggle his religious and detective work with political upheavals. The series is set in the 14th century during the reign of Richard II, which was never particularly stable, and covers the period leading up to and including the Peasant's Revolt, also know as Wat Tyler's Rebellion.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 27: David Winter

David Winter is an Orthodox rabbi in Los Angeles who, kind of like David Small on the opposite coast, gets into investigating murder when he becomes the prime suspect in one. In this case, it's the killing of a feminist rabbi who had been a guest on his weekly radio show. 

From what I can tell from reading synopses, though, Rabbi Winter's deductive process is a little more instructive in Jewish practice and folklore. This tracks with the interests of his creator, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, whose bibliography is largely non-fiction and covers a range of topics from Judaism. 

Note that Winter's first case actually appears in two different books, where the victim has a different name but the crime is more or less the same.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 26: Rev. Francis Oughterard

Set in 1950s Surrey, Oughterard is a little unusual among those we've encountered this Lentorama by being as likely to be involved in crime as he is in solving crime. The first book in the series sets up this dichotomy in later ones, with Oughterard not being a victim per se, but not really a willing participant in the various schemes that come his way. The series is also unique in that the stories are told from three points of view, two of which are from animals.

I have to admit I'm kind of intrigued by this series. There is also at least one spin-off novel featuring Oughterard's sister Primrose, an artist who gets into similar morally ambiguous situations. 

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 25: Theodora Braithwaite

Theodora is a deaconess and curate at Medewich Cathedral, and she gets pulled into her initial case when a woman interviewing to become the cathedral's secretary finds the head of a visiting - and controversial -priest resting on a baptismal font. Theodora reluctantly gets involved in the case, and her success in solving it sets her up for future cases, typically as she visits other cathedrals or takes on new positions.

The author of this series, D. M. Greenwood, once described herself as a "low level ecclesiastical civil servant," which makes me think that the series is in some respect semi-autobiographical. If nothing else, her career likely provided a wealth of source material from which she could develop mysteries.

 Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solver

Day 24: Father Tom Christmas

Tom Christmas takes on a parish in the rural town of Thornford Regis after the murder of his wife in London, thinking that the change of scenery will help him and his nine year old daughter cope with their loss and regain a sense of security. Of course, those plans get blown up when a parishoner is found murdered in a drum. Father Christmas gets pulled into solving the crime as it appear that pretty much every member of his flock had some reason to want the man dead.

While the books in the series aren't necessarily set during the holidays, book titles and the general plot of each book are derived from "The Twelve Days of Christmas," though it's been a good ten years since the last novel in this series (there was a 2020 novella featuring Father Christmas that isn't part of the series).