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The 2000s saw a steep increase in the acceptability of literature of all types, inspired by the coming-of-age of millions of people who enjoyed the works of such writers as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in their youths. Neil Gaiman, for instance, one of the decade's most popular writers of speculative fiction, cites Tolkien, Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton as his three biggest influences growing up. J. K. Rowling admits to being heavily influenced by Lewis as well. Philip Pullman's gritty young adult His Dark Materials trilogy, written and published in the late 1990s, increased in popularity and was more widely read during the 2000s. The popularity of Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, and Rowling was spurred on by movies which proved to be some of the biggest of the 2000s. The 2000s also saw the popularization of manga, or Japanese comics, among international audiences, particularly in English-speaking nations.

Popular and influential books of the 2000s include:

• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
• A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
• Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
• He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
• How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Manliness (book) by Harvey C. Mansfield
• Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
• State of Fear by Michael Crichton
• Stephen King completes his Dark Tower Cycle, a work which took him almost thirty years to finish.
• The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
• Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
• The Broker, by John Grisham
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
• The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
• Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• The Zero by Jess Walter
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
• Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
• Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
• Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 1776 by David McCullough
• You: The Owner's Manual by Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen
• Showdown by Ted Dekker
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Highland Wolf by Monica McCarthy
• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

[edit] See also

• 2000 in literature
• 2001 in literature
• 2002 in literature
• 2003 in literature
• 2004 in literature
• 2005 in literature
• 2006 in literature
• 2007 in literature
• 2008 in literature
• 2009 in literature
• 21st century in literature