In case you missed it, last week The New York Times released its list of the Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. So, we thought we’d compare how BookBrowse did at featuring these books over the past 25 years, and have included a helpful table for you to see the full breakdown.
The answer: pretty good! We reviewed and recommended in full 40 of the 100, and briefed an additional 44, for a total coverage of 84 / 100 – we also covered 19 of the top 20. This overlap is all the more impressive when we consider how selective we are about the books we cover – roughly 1,400 covered in brief each year, with only around 220 reviewed and recommended in full each year. For the 16 books we did not cover, we’ve added brief pages, but noted in the table below where we didn’t have a review or brief prior to the list being published.
While the NYT surveyed 500+ ‘literary luminaries’ to assemble their list, we rely on our small team of editors and reviewers to choose what we brief and review. It’s nice to think that over the past 25 years, we have made a small contribution to highlighting and elevating the excellent work of these authors.
You can review the full NYT list below, as well as the author, year, and our coverage. If you’d like to learn more about any books on the list, each title is linked to the corresponding BookBrowse page for the book.
NYT Rank
|
Book Title
|
Author
|
Year Published
|
BookBrowse: Reviewed, Briefed, or Didn’t Cover? |
100 | Tree of Smoke | Denis Johnson | 2007 | Reviewed |
99 | How to Be Both | Ali Smith | 2014 | Reviewed |
98 | Bel Canto | Ann Patchett | 2001 | Briefed |
97 | Men We Reaped | Jesmyn Ward | 2013 | Briefed |
96 | Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments | Saidiya Hartman | 2019 | Briefed |
95 | Bring Up the Bodies | Hilary Mantel | 2012 | Briefed |
94 | On Beauty | Zadie Smith | 2005 | Reviewed |
93 | Station Eleven | Emily St. John Mandel | 2014 | Reviewed |
92 | The Days of Abandonment | Elena Ferrante | 2005 | Didn’t Cover |
91 | The Human Stain | Philip Roth | 2000 | Didn’t Cover |
90 | The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen | 2015 | Reviewed |
89 | The Return | Hisham Matar | 2016 | Briefed |
88 | The Collected Storiesof Lydia Davis | Lydia Davis | 2009 | Didn’t Cover |
87 | Detransition, Baby | Torrey Peters | 2021 | Reviewed |
86 | Frederick Douglass | David W. Blight | 2018 | Briefed |
85 | Pastoralia | George Saunders | 2000 | Briefed |
84 | The Emperor of All Maladies | Siddhartha Mukherjee | 2010 | Briefed |
83 | When We Cease to Understand the World | Benjamín Labatut | 2021 | Didn’t Cover |
82 | Hurricane Season | Fernanda Melchor | 2020 | Briefed |
81 | Pulphead | John Jeremiah Sullivan | 2011 | Didn’t Cover |
80 | The Story of the Lost Child | Elena Ferrante | 2015 | Briefed |
79 | A Manual for Cleaning Women | Lucia Berlin | 2015 | Briefed |
78 | Septology | Jon Fosse; translated by Damion Searls | 2022 | Briefed |
77 | An American Marriage | Tayari Jones | 2018 | Reviewed |
76 | Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | Gabrielle Zevin | 2022 | Reviewed |
75 | Exit West | Mohsin Hamid | 2017 | Briefed |
74 | Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout | 2008 | Briefed |
73 | The Passage of Power | Robert Caro | 2012 | Briefed |
72 | Secondhand Time | Svetlana Alexievich | 2016 | Briefed |
71 | The Copenhagen Trilogy | Tove Ditlevsen | 2021 | Didn’t Cover |
70 | All Aunt Hagar’s Children | Edward P. Jones | 2006 | Reviewed |
69 | The New Jim Crow | Michelle Alexander | 2010 | Briefed |
68 | The Friend | Sigrid Nunez | 2018 | Reviewed |
67 | Far From the Tree | Andrew Solomon | 2012 | Reviewed |
66 | We the Animals | Justin Torres | 2011 | Briefed |
65 | The Plot Against America | Philip Roth | 2004 | Reviewed |
64 | The Great Believers | Rebecca Makkai | 2018 | Briefed |
63 | Veronica | Mary Gaitskill | 2005 | Briefed |
62 | 10:04 | Ben Lerner | 2014 | Didn’t Cover |
61 | Demon Copperhead | Barbara Kingsolver | 2022 | Reviewed |
60 | Heavy | Kiese Laymon | 2018 | Didn’t Cover |
59 | Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | 2002 | Briefed |
58 | Stay True | Hua Hsu | 2022 | Reviewed |
57 | Nickel and Dimed | Barbara Ehrenreich | 2001 | Briefed |
56 | The Flamethrowers | Rachel Kushner | 2013 | Briefed |
55 | The Looming Tower | Lawrence Wright | 2006 | Briefed |
54 | Tenth of December | George Saunders | 2013 | Reviewed |
53 | Runaway | Alice Munro | 2004 | Reviewed |
52 | Train Dreams | Denis Johnson | 2011 | Briefed |
51 | Life After Life | Kate Atkinson | 2013 | Reviewed |
50 | Trust | Hernan Diaz | 2022 | Reviewed |
49 | The Vegetarian | Han Kang | 2016 | Briefed |
48 | Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | 2003 | Didn’t Cover |
47 | A Mercy | Toni Morrison | 2008 | Reviewed |
46 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | 2013 | Reviewed |
45 | The Argonauts | Maggie Nelson | 2015 | Briefed |
44 | The Fifth Season | N.K. Jemisin | 2015 | Briefed |
43 | Postwar | Tony Judt | 2005 | Didn’t Cover |
42 | A Brief History of Seven Killings | Marlon James | 2014 | Reviewed |
41 | Small Things Like These | Claire Keegan | 2021 | Briefed |
40 | H Is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald | 2015 | Reviewed |
39 | A Visit From the Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan | 2010 | Reviewed |
38 | The Savage Detectives | Roberto Bolaño | 2007 | Reviewed |
37 | The Years | Annie Ernaux | 2018 | Didn’t Cover |
36 | Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates | 2015 | Briefed |
35 | Fun Home | Alison Bechdel | 2006 | Didn’t Cover |
34 | Citizen | Claudia Rankine | 2014 | Briefed |
33 | Salvage the Bones | Jesmyn Ward | 2011 | Briefed |
32 | The Line of Beauty | Alan Hollinghurst | 2004 | Reviewed |
31 | White Teeth | Zadie Smith | 2000 | Briefed |
30 | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Jesmyn Ward | 2017 | Reviewed |
29 | The Last Samurai | Helen DeWitt | 2000 | Didn’t Cover |
28 | Cloud Atlas | David Mitchell | 2004 | Briefed |
27 | Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 2013 | Reviewed |
26 | Atonement | Ian McEwan | 2002 | Briefed |
25 | Random Family | Adrian Nicole LeBlanc | 2003 | Didn’t Cover |
24 | The Overstory | Richard Powers | 2018 | Reviewed |
23 | Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage | Alice Munro | 2001 | Didn’t Cover |
22 | Behind the Beautiful Forevers | Katherine Boo | 2012 | Reviewed |
21 | Evicted | Matthew Desmond | 2016 | Reviewed |
20 | Erasure | Percival Everett | 2001 | Didn’t Cover |
19 | Say Nothing | Patrick Radden Keefe | 2019 | Briefed |
18 | Lincoln in the Bardo | George Saunders | 2017 | Reviewed |
17 | The Sellout | Paul Beatty | 2015 | Reviewed |
16 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon | 2000 | Briefed |
15 | Pachinko | Min Jin Lee | 2017 | Reviewed |
14 | Outline | Rachel Cusk | 2015 | Reviewed |
13 | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 2006 | Reviewed |
12 | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | 2005 | Briefed |
11 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Díaz | 2007 | Reviewed |
10 | Gilead | Marilynne Robinson | 2004 | Reviewed |
9 | Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | 2005 | Reviewed |
8 | Austerlitz | W.G. Sebald | 2001 | Briefed |
7 | The Underground Railroad | Colson Whitehead | 2016 | Reviewed |
6 | 2666 | Roberto Bolaño | 2008 | Briefed |
5 | The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | 2001 | Briefed |
4 | The Known World | Edward P. Jones | 2003 | Briefed |
3 | Wolf Hall | Hilary Mantel | 2009 | Reviewed |
2 | The Warmth of Other Suns | Isabel Wilkerson | 2010 | Briefed |
1 | My Brilliant Friend | Elena Ferrante | 2012 | Briefed |