People always seem to remember that Sept. 11, 2001, was a beautiful day, with clear skies. From there, everyone’s story diverges. Mine involves being shuffled into the school gym, overhearing grown-ups worry because they closed down the Port Authority. I misheard and thought they were talking about The Sports Authority, so it seemed to me like everyone was really overreacting. All the cool kids in Brooklyn went to Modell’s for sports gear anyway.

In the 25 years that followed, writers have been trying to process that day (and everything that happened after) in different ways. In the realm of fiction, there was Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. In non-fiction, the 9/11 Commission Report became a bestseller, and paved the way for other congressional reports to become hot items in publishing. Over in comic book land, I remember reading a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2 #36, which featured various Marvel characters feeling sad and solemn about the attacks (including super villains, which, if you think about it for two seconds, is a bit stupid and nonsensical, but I can tell you for at least one kid at the time in New York City it worked as a tearjerker).

This isn’t even mentioning the longform journalism that came after, the sweeping family dramas where 9/11 had to be included as a plot point, the military thrillers using the War on Terror as a backdrop, and the novels that aren’t on the face of it about 9/11, but can be read as post-9/11 novels. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes to mind there, or even The Hunger Games series. No surprise, I guess, that they’re both post-apocalyptic works.

“Favorite” is a weird word to use in this context, but is there a piece of literature responding to the attacks that you’ve found memorable? Are there any trends in literature you’ve noticed over the past quarter-century that you think could be attributable to 9/11? Let us know what you think – bookoftheday@npr.org.