NYT -- Readers' Picks -- 100 Best Books

NYT Readers Pick
Their 100 Best Books
of the 21st Century

When The New York Times Book Review published a list of the 100 best books of the century a few weeks ago, they knew they’d hear from readers who were incensed or sad their favorite books didn't make the list. After giving these readers a chance to vote on their favorites, the NYT published a list of the Readers Picks: The 100 Best Books of the Century this week. The Book Review voters (list 1) and the Readers (list 2) overlap on 39 choices, noted in the comment column below. "As for the 61 new entries here, what stands out most is that they’re the books that captured cultural moments and sparked lively literary conversations."

No.	Title / Author	Comments	Read?
1	Demon Copperhead / Kingsolver	#61 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
2	All the Light We Cannot See / Doerr		Yes
3	A Gentleman in Moscow / Towles		Yes
4	The Goldfinch / Tartt	#46 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
5	Pachinko / Lee	#15 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
6	Educated / Westover		Yes
7	Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow / Zevin		Yes
8	My Brilliant Friend / Ferrante	#1 on NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
9	Never Let Me Go / Ishiguro	#9 on NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
10	Station Eleven / St. John Mandel	#93 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
11	A Little Life / Yanagihara		No
12	The Overstory / Powers	#24 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
13	The Underground Railroad / Whitehead	#7 on NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
14	Wolf Hall / Mantel	#3 on NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
15	The Road / McCarthy	#13 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
16	Lincoln in the Bardo / Saunders	#18 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
17	Atonement / McEwan	#26 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
18	Middlesex / Eugenides	#59 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
19	Americanah / Adichie	#27 NYT Book Review’s list	No
20	Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay / Chabon	#16 on NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
21	Homegoing / Gyasi		Yes
22	Hamnet / O’Farrell		Yes
23	The Warmth of Other Suns / Wilkerson	#2 on NYT Book Review’s list	No
24	Bel Canto / Patchett	#98 NYT Book Review’s list	No
25	Gilead / Robinson	#10 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes

No.	Title / Author	Comments	Read?
26	The Corrections / Franzen	#5 NYT Book Review’s list	No
27	Normal People / Rooney		Yes
28	Cutting for Stone / Verghese		Yes
29	Say Nothing / Keefe	#19 NYT Book Review’s list	No
30	A Visit from the Goon Squad / Egan	#39 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
31	Circe / Miller		Yes
32	Cloud Cuckoo Land / Doerr		Yes
33	The Book Thief / Zusak		Yes
34	Cloud Atlas / Mitchell	#28 NYT Book Review’s list	No
35	The Covenant of Water / Verghese		Yes
36	The Year of Magical Thinking	#12 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
37	The Nickel Boys / Whitehead		Yes
38	The Great Believers / Makkai	#64 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
39	Olive Kitteridge / Strout	#74 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
40	The Kite Runner / Hosseini		Yes
41	Life After Life / Atkinson	#51 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
42	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao /Junot	#11 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
43	Between the World and Me / Coates	#36 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
44	The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store / McBride		Yes
45	There There / Orange		Yes
46	The Song of Achilles / Miller		Yes
47	Lessons in Chemistry / Garmus		Yes
48	On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous / Vuong		Yes
49	Gone Girl / Flynn		Yes
50	James / Everett		No

No.	Title / Author	Comments	Read?
51	Caste / Wilkerson		No
52	The Nightingale / Hannah		Yes
53	Trust / Diaz	#50 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
54	11/22/63 / King		No
55	Braiding Sweetgrass / Kimmerer		Yes
56	The Hunger Games / Collins		Yes
57	Small Things Like These / Keegan	#41 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
58	White Teeth / Smith	#31 NYT Book Review’s list	DNF
59	Where the Crawdads Sing / Owens		Yes
60	The Dutch House / Patchett		Yes
61	North Woods / Mason		Yes
62	The Sympathizer / Nguyen	#90 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
63	The Fifth Season / Jemisin	#44 NYT Book Review’s list	No
64	2666 / Bolano	#6 on NYT Book Review’s list	No
65	Evicted / Desmond	#21 NYT Book Review’s list	No
66	Just Kids / Smith		No
67	Piranesi / Clarke		No
68	The Devil in the White City / Larson		Yes
69	Killers of the Flower Moon / Grann		Yes
70	Know My Name / Miller		No
71	Sing, Unburied, Sing / Ward	#30 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
72	Crying in the H Mart		Yes
73	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows		Yes
74	Klara and the Sun / Ishiguro		Yes
75	The Lincoln Highway / Towles		Yes

No.	Title / Author	Comments	Read?
76	Just Mercy / Stevenson		Yes
77	Sapiens / Harari		No
78	Kafka on the Shore / Murakami		No
79	1Q84 / Murakami		No
80	Deacon King Kong / McBride		Yes
81	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks / Skloot		Yes
82	Tom Lake / Patchett		Yes
83	Let the Great World Spin / McCann		Yes
84	Tenth of December / Saunders	#54 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
85	When Breath Becomes Air / Kalanithi		Yes
86	Life of Pi / Martel		Yes
87	Girl, Woman, Other / Evaristo		No
88	The Plot Against America / Roth	#65 NYT Book Review’s list	Yes
89	The Glass Castle / Walls		Yes
90	In the Dream House / Machado		No
91	Project Hail Mary / Weir		Yes
92	Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead / Tokarczuk		No
93	Remarkably Bright Creatures / Van Pelt		Yes
94	The Bee Sting / Murray		DNF
95	A Thousand Splendid Suns / Hosseini		Yes
96	The Vanishing Half / Bennett		Yes
97	My Year of Rest and Relaxation / Moshfegh		No
98	Shuggie Bain / Stuart		No
99	Empire of Pain / Keefe		No
100	A Man Called Ove / Backman		Yes

My analysis and commentary:

     After the Best Books of the 21st Century Book Review List was published in mid-July, I wrote a quick post highlighting the top 20 books . I also included images of the 36 books I've read from their top 100 list and another image of the books I'd like to read. At the time I was was pretty shocked by how many books on the list I'd never even heard of before, 29, since I am the kind of gal who pays attention to books and book lists. To my mind the best books of the century shouldn't be made up of books no one has read, even if they are well written. If you can't get through the paywall at the NYT to see their list, Deb Nance at Reader Buzz created a google doc of all 100 books. Find it here.

     In my post I also identified a few book titles which I thought were shockingly absent in the Book Review list: The Lincoln Highway or A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; All the Light We Cannot See or Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr; Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann; There There by Tommy Orange or La Rose by Louise Erdrich. Those were just a few titles I quickly thought of as I was typing up the post. All of them are fiction. I didn't even give pause at the time to reflect on nonfiction titles. I wish I had continued to pay attention to the NYT days following the publication of their Book Review list. If I had I would have noticed that they created a space for their readers to share their ten favorites. The list above is the product of the synthesis of readers suggestions. 39 titles are on both lists. 

      I thought the readers' picks are skewed a bit too heavy toward recent books, ignoring excellent books published at the beginning of the century, but after analyzing publication dates I found that both lists weren't that different. The Book Review list averaged a publication date in 2011 and the Readers' Picks in 2013. So both averages demonstrate that selections were made over the spectrum of the century so far. I am still skeptical about books which were published this year or last and questions their staying power. It seems to me readers may have just finished a book like James, which was published this year, liked it and so added it to their list of ten favorites. Only time will tell if a book has staying power.

      So what did I like about the Readers' picks? Many of my favorite books published in this century made the list. In fact, I've read 78 81 of them and had another ten on my TBR. I was especially happy to see books by Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr, and Tommy Orange among the 100 favorites. I smiled to see three middle grade/YA titles: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hunger Games, and The Book Thief. Leaving YA lit off the initial list was a big error. Think of what Harry Potter did for publishing in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. The Hunger Games spawned a whole new genre of futuristic dystopian YA novels. And The Book Thief is just wonderful, great literature. I like it that nonfiction books made both lists -- twenty-one on the first and seventeen on the second.

      So what did I NOT like about the Readers' picks? For one thing, I think there were too many popular books without a lot of literary merit. Don't get me wrong. I love Lessons in Chemistry, Normal People, and Where the Crawdads Sing, I'm just not sure they are the best the century has to offer. Popular, yes. Literary umph, no. I was really glad to see some of my favorite authors made the list: Ann Patchett (3 books?!); Barbara Kingsolver (in the #1 spot, but what about her other books?); James McBride; and Abraham Verghese. But I still notice voids like no Louise Erdrich, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie. Also missing were works by these nonfiction writers: Timothy Egan (The Worst Hard Times); Laura Hillenbrand (Unbroken); Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction); and Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat.) These books are so excellent it is hard to imagine how they could possibly be left off both lists. I bet readers like me when I was jotting off my last post on the subject, thought about their favorite novels, forgetting about the excellent examples of 21st century nonfiction titles.

      Because I am nerd about book awards I thought I'd analyze the two lists for major award winners/finalists. Let's see how they match up:

Award	Book Review List	Readers’ Picks
Pulitzer Prize or finalist	24	17
National Book Award or on short list	14	11
Women’s Prize (Orange Prize)	9	9
Booker Prize or finalist	11	6
Nobel	3	0

Note: since there are 39 books in common on the two lists, these numbers aren't as dramatically different as I first suspected. Awards have changed names over the years and I may have inadvertently missed one or two, not knowing the previous name of an awards.  I realized, as I was making this chart, how few fantasy/sci-fi/mystery titles are on the lists, but there was was one Hugo Award winner, and several Edgar Award winners or finalists. There were also a ton of other book awards represented, among them Goodreads Awards, which are purely based on popularity.

So what about you? What do you think of the various between the two lists? What books do you think are missing? How do you feel about book lists in general? Let's discuss. Leave your comments below and I will reply to your thoughts.

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-Anne