The Curious Case of Rhetorical Ranking
The Other Side of New York Times' Best Books of 21st Century
Re-intro
On July 12, 2024, The New York Times released a list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century and set the internet ablaze. Since it was the NYT, it was a prominent affair in book publishing. Readers and writers worldwide, including me, shared their thoughts on the rankings, selection process, and inclusions/exclusions and proposed their riffs.
The controversial ranking was a huge publicity success for the news outlet. Multiple complimentary blogs and articles surfaced in the following weeks, highlighting hits and misses, pros and cons, etc. It was a big project aimed to attract as many readers as possible to the official website and sign up for their newsletter. The 21st-century tag gave birth to an ongoing series of posts on the said list—like an interview-styled opinion piece by the inhouse critics of the Whys and Hows; or an interactive sub-genre guide to choose out of the 100 picks. There was even a dedicated podcast about it! They literally planned on capitalizing on every aspect of it from the get-go.
The Reader’s List
The biggest selling point of this ranking was the panel of authors involved. Prominent names were mentioned at the top of the list, with links to their entries. This was quite a masterstroke. It not only provided a window for the fans to look at what their idols regard as the best. But it also pushed them toward voting for their best 10, with the definition of best still up for debate. And out of the blue, NYT released the reader’s choice version of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
Breakdown of Readers’ Picks
Although NYT spewed the loveliest words to describe this version, for a seasoned reader, the halfhearted approach was clear as day. Unlike the original list with its now iconic shot, (the OG 100 books stack,) no thumbnail was at the helm. There were no dedicated blurbs, famous quotes, or similar titles. There was no mention of the superstar authors below the titles they voted for. The sequence avoided any buildup whatsoever, and started straight with 1, 2, 3…There weren’t even publication years below respective titles.
(Rest assured, I mentioned them all at the end of this post)
Half of the expert staff probably hated the readers’ picks. And understandably so. In the one week or so they kept the polling open, the alternatives had already changed 61% of the original. Here are a few highlights:
Demon Copperhead, a 2022 release by Barbara Kingsolver scores the top spot.
All the Light We Cannot See is the runner-up.
The sensational 2015 Asian book Pachinko by Min Jin Lee makes it to the top 5.
Popular genre fiction titles like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter drop in, too.
Stephen King’s 11/22/63 can also be seen—it’s not the one he submitted on his ballot.
Not one, but two books by Haruki Murakami are favored by the readers.
The Book Thief—reviewed by JOHN GREEN on NYT and loved by Booktubers— is finally getting the recognition it deserves.
Hollywood sweethearts like Gone Girl, Killers of the Flower Moon, Where the Crawdads Sing, etc. also make a cameo.
Exotics like The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller are here, too.
Sapiens and Life of Pi, the defaults for casual readers, mark their attendance.
Empire of Pain, the book detailing the American Opioid Crisis, is at 99.
Other modern gems include A Man Called Ove, Piranesi, Normal People, Klara and the Sun, The Nightingale, and so many others are hand-picked by readers of popular literature.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Guardian as the Book of the Decade in 2003, is also on the list along with A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Trends Change | Parallels
As with any reader’s choice list, and reflected in the highlights above, there is a high prevalence of recency bias while sampling. It is important to note that this ranking is directly proportional to vote counts by readers on the web. This might explain the numbers behind Demon Copperfield, a book released in the last quarter of 2022 and made headlines during the 2023 Pulitzer race. Such a bias is evident from the drastic highs in counts after 2018.
While 8 of the top 10 books from the original list are in the readers’ list, their position is fairly low. Only Never Let Me Go maintains its #9 position, whereas the only other top entry (#8) is the previous winner, My Brilliant Friend. They might have been vastly different if the polls were open longer. If mass readers added their favorite titles, chances could be unevenly split.
Behind The Rankings | Literature Directory
A couple of days before releasing the Reader’s Pick, NYT released a piece on what readers have thought about their original list. Although the responses were chosen from a small pool of readers subscribed to NYT, the consensus echoed familiar sentiments to many from elsewhere. The editors kicked off with a handful of rave comments, but faults and fusses covered the rest. Apart from the common issue of valuation (aka Why not this?), most readers wondered about the whereabouts of other mediums of literature—like poetry.
The NYT offered free reins to their extravagant group of staff and authors and decided to play it in the open. But they forgot to identify the demographic constraints of their own intellectual circle. The rules encouraged the 500 luminaries in their unit to put forward any ten books they think are best. But that only fared to register around 3228 books. That's far less than the number of new literature created in the last 25 years. Poetry was not the only missing category of books. There is another niche that has dominated the 21st century to a much greater extent—Graphic Novels.
Whether illustrated stories, Graphic novels, Comics, and others should be considered true literature is a timeless quest. Acclaimed authors like Neil Gaiman and Khaled Hosseini have released masterpieces in this corner, but talk about official recognition and book critics always turn the cold shoulder. In theory, all books are welcomed, and even in the ballot rules, there is a mention of submitting Children's books (the deemed umbrella for all graphic works). In reality, there is little effort to consider atypical mediums to cut, even if they include one of the best stories ever told. The above-shown results are one of the very few that are present in the New York Times directory. The authors probably don’t even know about them. Meanwhile, established Western authors like Patrick Ness don't have their illustrated novels (And The Ocean Was Our Sky) in the directory.
There is an option to add your title, and it's always there, but the nerds of the comic world know it is a hopeless direction. The fine line between classical forms of literature and graphic stories is disappearing. Media bodies like NYT are gradually acknowledging this attribute, and are in the transition phase. However, the inclusion of graphic works in this ranking would always be considered a missed opportunity. By 2050, auteurs like Oda and Hickman will likely become literary icons and get their digital Pulitzers.
Outro:
Fun or folly, making a ranked list of books is not an easy task. NYT’s critics’ list showed that even the big-time reviewers are nowhere near encompassing the global imprint of literature. Further, the blow-dried readers’ list confirmed, yet again, that curating a global list would need its own dedicated/coordinated election. A myopic bunch of readers may inversely affect vernacular literature, as the count for translated works dropped from 13 to 6 in the readers’ picks (see the list below).
In the end, it is plausible to concur that all of these titles are not the top pics of this century. They are just some of the best works of the first 24 years and 6 months of the 21st century. Instead, we should point out the notable error in the title of any ranking that is going to tip the influence in people’s heads.
The Complete Readers’ Top 100 Titles with Year of Release
Demon Copperhead
2022
Barbara Kingsolver
All the Light We Cannot See
2014
Anthony Doerr
A Gentleman in Moscow
2016
Amor Towles
The Goldfinch
2014
Donna Tartt
Pachinko
2017
Min Jin Lee
Educated
2018
Tara Westover
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
2022
Gabrielle Zevin
My Brilliant Friend
2011
Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein
Never Let Me Go
2005
Kazuo Ishiguro
Station Eleven
2014
Emily St. John Mandel
A Little Life
2015
Hanya Yanagihara
The Overstory
2018
Richard Powers
The Underground Railroad
2016
Colson Whitehead
Wolf Hall
2009
Hilary Mantel
The Road
2006
Cormac McCarthy
Lincoln in the Bardo
2017
George Saunders
Atonement
2001
Ian McEwan
Middlesex
2002
Jeffrey Eugenides
Americanah
2013
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2000
Michael Chabon
Homegoing
2016
Yaa Gyasi
Hamnet
2020
Maggie O’Farrell
The Warmth of Other Suns
2010
Isabel Wilkerson
Bel Canto
2001
Ann Patchett
Gilead
2004
Marilynne Robinson
The Corrections
2001
Jonathan Franzen
Normal People
2018
Sally Rooney
Cutting for Stone
2009
Abraham Verghese
Say Nothing
2018
Patrick Radden Keefe
A Visit From the Goon Squad
2011
Jennifer Egan
Circe
2018
Madeline Miller
Cloud Cuckoo Land
2021
Anthony Doerr
The Book Thief
2005
Markus Zusak
Cloud Atlas
2005
David Mitchell
The Covenant of Water
2023
Abraham Verghese
The Year of Magical Thinking
2005
Joan Didion
The Nickel Boys
2019
Colson Whitehead
The Great Believers
2018
Rebecca Makkai
Olive Kitteridge
2008
Elizabeth Strout
The Kite Runner
2003
Khaled Hosseini
Life After Life
2013
Kate Atkinson
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2007
Junot Díaz
Between the World and Me
2015
Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
2023
James McBride
There There
2018
Tommy Orange
The Song of Achilles
2011
Madeline Miller
Lessons in Chemistry
2022
Bonnie Garmus
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
2019
Ocean Vuong
Gone Girl
2012
Gillian Flynn
James
2024
Percival Everett
Caste
2020
Isabel Wilkerson
The Nightingale
2015
Kristin Hannah
Trust
2022
Hernan Diaz
11/22/63
2011
Stephen King
Braiding Sweetgrass
2013
Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Hunger Games
2008
Suzanne Collins
Small Things Like These
2021
Claire Keegan
White Teeth
2000
Zadie Smith
Where the Crawdads Sing
2018
Delia Owens
The Dutch House
2019
Ann Patchett
North Woods
2023
Daniel Mason
The Sympathizer
2015
Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Fifth Season
2015
N.K. Jemisin
2666
2004
Roberto Bolaño; translated by Natasha Wimmer
Evicted
2016
Matthew Desmond
Just Kids
2010
Patti Smith
Piranesi
2021
Susanna Clarke
The Devil in the White City
2003
Erik Larson
Killers of the Flower Moon
2017
David Grann
Know My Name
2019
Chanel Miller
Sing, Unburied, Sing
2017
Jesmyn Ward
Crying in H Mart
2021
Michelle Zauner
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2007
J.K. Rowling
Klara and the Sun
2021
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lincoln Highway
2021
Amor Towles
Just Mercy
2014
Bryan Stevenson
Sapiens
2011
Yuval Noah Harari
Kafka on the Shore
2002
Haruki Murakami; translated by Philip Gabriel
1Q84
2009
Haruki Murakami; translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel
Deacon King Kong
2020
James McBride
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
2010
Rebecca Skloot
Tom Lake
2023
Ann Patchett
Let the Great World Spin
2009
Colum McCann
Tenth of December
2013
George Saunders
When Breath Becomes Air
2016
Paul Kalanithi
Life of Pi
2001
Yann Martel
Girl, Woman, Other
2019
Bernardine Evaristo
The Plot Against America
2004
Philip Roth
The Glass Castle
2005
Jeannette Walls
In the Dream House
2019
Carmen Maria Machado
Project Hail Mary
2021
Andy Weir
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
2018
Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Remarkably Bright Creatures
2023
Shelby Van Pelt
The Bee Sting
2023
Paul Murray
A Thousand Splendid Suns
2007
Khaled Hosseini
The Vanishing Half
2020
Brit Bennett
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
2018
Ottessa Moshfegh
Shuggie Bain
2020
Douglas Stuart
Empire of Pain
2021
Patrick Radden Keefe
A Man Called Ove
2012
Fredrik Backman; translated by Henning Koch