The Millions

Best of the Millennium

Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far): The Longlist

1. Tom Beshear
   at 11:22 am on October 2, 2009

   That explains a lot.

2. Best of the Millennium Long List « SONYA CHUNG
   at 12:15 pm on October 2, 2009

   [...] case you are looking for some suggested reading, here’s the list of all works of fiction that were nominated for the Best of the Millenium (So Far) at The Millions.  It makes one a little breathless to [...]

3. Kati
   at 5:13 pm on October 2, 2009

   I didn’t realize What is the What counted. That was a great book. Definitely my top 10.

4. Matt
   at 9:13 pm on October 2, 2009

   Surprised that Tree of Smoke didn’t appear on any of these lists. Also, say what you will, but I believe that The Kindly Ones also deserves a mention.

5. Bites: That guy from The Princess Bride, chapbook reviews, Grouper at ATP, intellectual bankruptcy, and more « Vol. 1 Brooklyn
   at 9:05 am on October 3, 2009

   [...] Millions releases the group of nominated books that did not make it on their best fiction of the millennium list.  James Wood, Margaret Atwood, and Gary Shteyngart all make [...]

6. avp
   at 6:59 pm on October 3, 2009

   Surprised not to see Brief and Wonderous Life. Excited to see The Thin Place.

7. Edan Lepucki
   at 7:52 pm on October 3, 2009

   Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was on the top 20 list–all books that were nominated but didn’t make the top 20 or runners up lists, are here.

8. scott
   at 5:16 pm on October 4, 2009

   Am i the only one who thinks Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai should have been way up there? not even one vote?

9. Garth Risk Hallberg
   at 8:13 pm on October 4, 2009

   Indeed, Scott, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai SHOULD have been on there – one of our panelists did vote for it (as this panelist would have, given the opportunity to pick about eight titles instead of five.) (See: http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/march-second-glance/)

   Unaccountably, at some point in the email-to-google docs-to-text edit-to-html transfer, this title got misplaced. This omission was a fluke, and independent of Helen’s dissenting remarks at her excellent blog paperpools. (http://paperpools.blogspot.com/2009/09/lists.html) Anyway, it’s been restored above.

   And, Matt, Tree of Smoke was already on here, under “T.”

   Vis-a-vis Helen’s remarks, all panelists were allowed to nominate whoever they wanted, and, as Helen had suggested, it was our intention – spelled out in our introductory post – to post, in addition to a Top 20, all titles that got a mention. What was “silly” was our failure to make this explicit in our invitation to our panelists, which apparently caused her to decline to participate.

10. Helen DeWitt
    at 3:28 am on October 5, 2009

    Erm, sorry, it wasn’t really worries about (unfounded) belief that the longlist would not appear. The top 5 pieces of writing that came to mind, before constraints were taken into account, were Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence (published, in English, but not fiction), Danilo Martuccelli’s Grammaires de l’individu (not in English and not fiction), a substantial corpus of Ilya Gridneff’s emails (unpublished, in fiction only in book with me which probably falls foul of ‘don’t vote for yourself’ rule even though only written as a way of casting a vote for IG), Mithridates’ blog Night Hauling (unpublished, not fiction) – and Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang.

    So taking part would have meant trying to come up with four replacements that qualified – which might have been all right if four outstanding candidates had come to mind, but nothing came remotely close in interest. Could have put in a vote for PC, I guess, but I don’t think a writer of his stature really needs my help.

    Beautiful Evidence is not (to my mind) Tufte’s best book, but it’s the only one that has come out since 2000; if I could pick one writer with the power to transform the way any reader will see the world, it would be ET.

11. scott
    at 4:05 pm on October 5, 2009

    Well it appears i opened up an unrelated issue but anyways helen as long as you are here reading these posts i just want to suck up a little and say although any list like this is going to have to omit some really good books and im probably not as well read as many of the panelists but in my list it’s not just one of the best of the millenium but one of the ten or twenty best novels i’ve ever read. ok, kiss ass fest over:)

12. The Second Pass
    at 2:42 pm on October 6, 2009

    [...] it up. . . . The Millions keeps on giving with its Best Fiction of the Millennium feature. Here’s every book that got a vote. Quite a checklist for the ambitious reader of contemporary fiction. . . . A defense of the Great [...]

13. First of all… « a home between the pages
    at 12:25 pm on October 9, 2009

    [...] And the longlist which is all the books that were nominated but didn’t appear on the top 20 or honorable mention lists http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/best-fiction-of-the-millennium-so-far-the-longlist.html [...]