After I published the data analysis on the 100 Essential Novels List, I realized that another book list was being heavily discussed in online literary circles: the NY Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

In July this year, the NY Times released a list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. This list was created through a voting process, and the books were chosen by “503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers – with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.”

If you want to know more about that process, I recommend watching this video by Jack Edwards, as he was one of the selected specialists.

Having all that in mind and seeing that a lot of people were critical of the list, I decided to set myself again on the inglorious task of cataloging all authors on a spreadsheet to see what patterns come out.

One of my goals was to compare this with the 100 Essential Novels – which includes books from all times. The NY Times list is for books (or translations) published after the year 2000, so looking at it can help answer a key question: Did anything change in the publishing industry and literary critic’s minds in the 21st century? Did our literary landscape change? If so, how? Let’s find out.

I’ve added the list of books to the previous spreadsheet if you want to have a look. – let me know if you spot something wrong!

Here are some of the conclusions:

1. More geographic diversity

While in the previous list, we only had 6 authors from outside North America and Europe, on the NY Times list this number is at 14. And we have more continents too. Central America and the Middle East are present with a total of 3 books. We still have no authors from Oceania. Also, the total number of countries also went from 17 to 22.

2. Even more American authors

Interestingly, this addition of books from other countries in the critics’ interest was done to the detriment of British books. While in the all-time best list we had 25 books from the UK, on the 21st century list we have 13.

The United Kingdom is still the second most-read country on the list, but it seems now that its influence is smaller. That’s an interesting data point, and my conclusion is that many British books were classics from the 20th century and before.

On another note, we also have no Russian authors on this list, while in the classics list, we have 4 – two by Vladimir Nabokov, one by Leo Tolstoy and one by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Those books were written in the late 1800s or mid-1900s. It’s interesting to note that modern Russian authors are not making the cut.

What didn’t shrink was the share of American books. On the opposite, the U.S. has 5 extra books on this list, not to mention the foreign authors that actually reside in the U.S.

This is aligned with the critique that a lot of people are making – that the list is very Anglo-centric. And the data confirms that: out of the 100 books, only 13 were translations, and 87 were originally published in English.

3. Female writers are the majority

On the other side, more women are making the cut! They had less than a quarter of the publications before, and now they have more than half. This might be a good sign that the publishing industry is more accepting of female authors nowadays.

Nevertheless, it would be interesting to look into more data on that topic. How are women doing in the Sci-Fi area, or even Non-Fiction? Are there areas that are still dominated by one gender or the other? Maybe one day I’ll look into that.

4. More racial diversity

Another area that improved in terms of diversity is racial categorization. We had only 9 non-white authors before, and now we have 27. A lot of it has to do with the inclusion of more Black authors.

We also started to have Asian authors on this list, but strangely, the only Indigenous author that existed before disappeared, and we have now zero indigenous representation.

5. White women are now the largest demographic group

With the shifts in gender and race, we now have a different majority demographic group – White Women now make 40% of the list’s publications, ahead of White men, with 33%. But the share of people of colour from both genders grew – each group got 10 extra books on the list.

6. White American and British authors are still the majority

Remember when I said that 54% of the 100 Essential Novels list was made by American or British White men? Well, now we have a different group, and the NY Times list for the 21st century is composed of 53% American or British White Authors, both male and female.

The proportion is the same, but now the group opened one diversity point and includes the presence of women. At this rate maybe we’ll be able to include racial diversity for the 22nd-century list and geographical diversity for the 23rd-century list.

I’m kidding. I admire the progress that was made. I don’t know the proportion of immigrants among the specialists who selected the books, but I’m assuming the majority at least lives in the U.S., so it’s no surprise that they read more American literature.

Despite the lack of translation and foreign publications, it warms my heart to know that the most influential literary critics are reading more women and authors of colour.

And this is not just a check box to get x amount of Women or Black writers on a list. This is about the publishing industry, about what books get to be published and who gets to be seen as a serious author that is worth to be re-read for generations.

And in the end who wins is us, the readers, because fewer racial barriers means that more work gets evaluated by their literary merits, which means better books on the market.

Yes, I know, the system is not perfect and the very way we approach social justice still needs a lot of thought and improvement. But that’s a discussion for another day.