A Table of Best Books of the 21st Century

So this month, the New York Times published their list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.  They obviously got some pushback from readers (Readers Have Thoughts about 'The Best Books of the 21st Century) and consequently published Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

Now I am a data geek.  I like to futz with lists. Unfortunately, for me, the New York Times doesn't publish their lists in a way that I can play with them, compare them, look at them relative to other lists. I have to do the grunt work of copying them to a Sheets file and cleaning them up. So that's what I did.

I also retrieved lists that represent Goodread readers, The Guardian, and Vulture. Now, granted, some of these lists are older, but they give me a sense of what other readers and critiques think of books published this century.

Column Name	SOURCE OF DATA
1	New York Times: The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Jul 2024
2	Goodreads: list of best 21st Century Books created May 2008 (200 items)
3	Goodreads: Best Literary Fiction of the 21st Century created July 2016 (200 items)
4	The Guardian: The 100 best books of the 21st century Sep 2019
5	Vulture A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Cannon Sep 2018
6	Goodreads: Best 21st Century Nonfiction created Jul 2012 (200 items)
7	count of inclusion on other lists

The table below is based on Readers Pick Their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (the RANK column). The numbered columns include rankings from the sources listed above.

You'll notice that Column 7 is a count of how many of the six other lists the book showed up in. I've sorted the table based on these counts. Of the 100 NYT Readers' List, 80 are on at least one other list.

RANK	TITLE	AUTHOR	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
9	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	9	33	7	4	26		5
15	The Road	Cormac McCarthy	13	15	2	17	35		5
17	Atonement	Ian McEwan	26	24	8	41	4		5
26	The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen	5	52	30	16	8		5
36	The Year of Magical Thinking	Joan Didion	12	91		40	28	81	5
4	The Goldfinch	Donna Tartt	46	103	6		72		4
14	Wolf Hall	Hilary Mantel	3		5	1	48		4
18	Middlesex	Jeffrey Eugenides	59	20	11		12		4
25	Gilead	Marilynne Robinson	10	89	12	2			4
34	Cloud Atlas	David Mitchell	28	35	9	9			4
42	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao	Junot Díaz	11	53	14		39		4
88	The Plot Against America	Philip Roth	65	141		12	24		4
8	My Brilliant Friend	Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein	1		1	11			3
13	The Underground Railroad	Colson Whitehead	7		28	30			3
20	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	Michael Chabon	16		23		1		3
24	Bel Canto	Ann Patchett	98	60	61				3
30	A Visit From the Goon Squad	Jennifer Egan	39	148		24			3
41	Life After Life	Kate Atkinson	51		42	20			3
43	Between the World and Me	Ta-Nehisi Coates	36			7		17	3
49	Gone Girl	Gillian Flynn		48		65	63		3
58	White Teeth	Zadie Smith	31		13	39			3
62	The Sympathizer	Viet Thanh Nguyen	90		40		85		3
81	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot		105		63		4	3
2	All the Light We Cannot See	Anthony Doerr		61	3				2
10	Station Eleven	Emily St John Mandel	93		53				2
11	A Little Life	Hanya Yanagihara			32	96			2
16	Lincoln in the Bardo	George Saunders	18		111				2
19	Americanah	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	27		4				2
27	Normal People	Sally Rooney			50	25			2
33	The Book Thief	Markus Zusak		4	70				2
38	The Great Believers	Rebecca Makkai	64		141				2
39	Olive Kitteridge	Elizabeth Strout	74		95				2
40	The Kite Runner	Khaled Hosseini		3	16				2
46	The Song of Achilles	Madeline Miller		177	26				2
71	Sing, Unburied, Sing	Jesmyn Ward	30		87				2
78	Kafka on the Shore	Haruki Murakami; translated by Philip Gabriel		42	17				2
84	Tenth of December	George Saunders	54			22			2
86	Life of Pi	Yann Martel		9	29				2
89	The Glass Castle	Jeannette Walls		28				9	2
95	A Thousand Splendid Suns	Khaled Hosseini		8	116				2
1	Demon Copperhead	Barbara Kingsolver	61						1
3	A Gentleman in Moscow	Amor Towles			38				1
5	Pachinko	Min Jin Lee	15						1
6	Educated	Tara Westover						7	1
7	Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow	Gabrielle Zevin	76						1
12	The Overstory	Richard Powers	24						1
21	Homegoing	Yaa Gyasi			98				1
22	Hamnet	Maggie O’Farrell			144				1
23	The Warmth of Other Suns	Isabel Wilkerson	2						1
28	Cutting for Stone	Abraham Verghese		102					1
29	Say Nothing	Patrick Radden Keefe	19						1
31	Circe	Madeline Miller			44				1
37	The Nickel Boys	Colson Whitehead			148				1
45	There There	Tommy Orange			60				1
52	The Nightingale	Kristin Hannah		176					1
53	Trust	Hernan Diaz	50						1
56	The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins		2					1
57	Small Things Like These	Claire Keegan	41						1
64	2666	Roberto Bolaño; translated by Natasha Wimmer	6						1
65	Evicted	Matthew Desmond	21						1
66	Just Kids	Patti Smith						24	1
68	The Devil in the White City	Erik Larson		54					1
74	Klara and the Sun	Kazuo Ishiguro			107				1
76	Just Mercy	Bryan Stevenson						98	1
79	1Q84	Haruki Murakami; translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel					55		1
83	Let the Great World Spin	Colum McCann		156					1
85	When Breath Becomes Air	Paul Kalanithi						28	1
87	Girl, Woman, Other	Bernardine Evaristo			145				1
92	Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead	Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones				75			1
96	The Vanishing Half	Brit Bennett			147				1
97	My Year of Rest and Relaxation	Ottessa Moshfegh			158				1
32	Cloud Cuckoo Land	Anthony Doerr							0
35	The Covenant of Water	Abraham Verghese							0
44	The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store	James McBride							0
47	Lessons in Chemistry	Bonnie Garmus							0
48	On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous	Ocean Vuong							0
50	James	Percival Everett							0
51	Caste	Isabel Wilkerson							0
54	11/22/63	Stephen King							0
55	Braiding Sweetgrass	Robin Wall Kimmerer							0
59	Where the Crawdads Sing	Delia Owens							0
60	The Dutch House	Ann Patchett							0
61	North Woods	Daniel Mason							0
63	The Fifth Seaso		.						0
67	Piranesi	Susanna Clarke							0
69	Killers of the Flower Moon	David Grann							0
70	Know My Name	Chanel Miller							0
72	Crying in H Mart	Michelle Zauner							0
73	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow		.						0
75	The Lincoln Highway	Amor Towles							0
77	SapiensYuval Noah Harari								0
80	Deacon King Kong	James McBride							0
82	Tom Lake	Ann Patchett							0
90	In the Dream House	Carmen Maria Machado							0
91	Project Hail Mary	Andy Weir							0
93	Remarkably Bright Creatures	Shelby Van Pelt							0
94	The Bee Sting	Paul Murray							0
98	Shuggie Bain	Douglas Stuart							0
99	Empire of Pain	Patrick Radden Keefe							0
100	A Man Called Ove	Fredrik Backman; translated by Henning Koch							0
		COUNTS	38	28	42	21	14	8

After my first attempt I decided to include Goodreads: Best 21st Century Nonfiction and increase the number of items on the Goodread lisst from 100 to 200. The result was an additional 15 items that are on at least two lists.

100 Days of Drawing (week 13)

This week

• Day 87: yokai manga
• Day 88: zentangles
• Day 89: gesture drawing
• Day 90: manga hair
• Day 91: outdoor drawings
• Day 92: drawing comics
• Day 93: texture: hair

Materials:

• pencil
• pen
• eraser
• paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
• colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
• alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app.

Day 87: yokai

I found this book at the library, Manga Art for Everyone by Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya, and thought it would be a good jumping off point for a drawing.  I choose the four characters in the book that appealed to me:

• shojo manga (shojo girl in Japanese; manga targeting teenage girls)
• shonen manga (boys’ comics; manga targeting adolescent boys)
• nekojin (cat person)
• yokai (beings from old Japanese folklore)

I then looked for youtube demonstrations of these four. This is the last manga from this series.

THE YOKAI

I found the Brief History of Yokai by Zack Davisson interesting.

More interesting, for our puposes, is Japan A venue’s The Yokai. It provides an illustrated list that we can use to find a drawing to copy:

• Oni, the Japanese Demon
• Tengu, the long nosed guardian of the mountain 
• How to Draw a Tengu mask by theBrokenPuppet. Rick is a tattoo artist and you can see how this discipline affects his design, creating a careful line drawing with distinct colorations that can be duplicated in a tattoo.
• Yurei, the ghost worthy of horror movies
• Kappa, the sneaky boy from the river
• In Kappa's Dream: Making a yokai illustration by Atelier Sentô (6 minutes, 12K views) the artist traces the drawing and colors it with watercolor.
• Akaname, the bathroom monster
• Ashiarai Yashiki, the giant foot
• Tanuki, the spirit of the forest
• Kitsune, the multifaceted fox
• Bakeneko, the ghost cat
• Rokurokubi, the long necked monster
• Yama Uba, the witch wearing a kimino
• Kasa-obake, the prankster umbrella

I suggest that you browse these monsters and select one that appeals to you.  I chose Tengu as my model.

Day 88: zentangles

Zentagles are a kind of doodle. Here's a way to get started: 

• First create a palette of doodle designs. 
• On a piece of paper, draw lines to create 9 rectangles. 
• In each rectangle draw a doodle pattern.  
• On a clean piece of paper draw the outline of the first letter of your name
• Using your palette of doodles as guides, fill in the outside of your letter's design.

Charvi Ashtekar has a video where she makes 24 Doodle Patterns (21 minutes, 1M views).

The Art gEEK Beginners Guide to Start Zentangles (8 minutes, 489K views)

Here is the zentangles ‘palette’ that I created:

Here are the videos of the zentangles palette and the my zentangles “A”:

Day 89: gesture drawing

Gesture drawings are exercises that we do at the beginning of a figure drawing session. They are a way for us to warm up our bodies and minds to focus on drawing. The model will take a series of one minute poses, followed by a few two minute poses.  Our goal is to capture the essence of the poses in one and two minutes. 

Jess Karp guides us through her preparation and implementation of gesture drawing practice. I particularly like her reminder to herself of “BYE BYE PERFECTION”.

I’ve created an album of gesture drawing references for us to use. I recommend  that you do three 1-minute gesture drawing and two 2-minute gesture drawing.

Here is Proko giving us  Gesture Drawing Examples - 2 Minute Poses (5 minutes, 834K views)

Here is my 11 second video of gesture drawings

Day 90: manga hair

Art Senpai How to Draw Anime Hair Like a Pro (8 minutes, 4.1K views)

Art Senpai leads us through five elements for drawing anime hair:

1. Structure and shape
2. Proportion
3. Perspective
4. Line Art
5. Details

First, in structure and shape, we look at the hair as a form and not as something made up of individual hairs. Art breaks the hair form into three main sections: the bangs, the sides and the back. He labels the origin of these three sections as the swirl.

For proportion, Art introduces the use of a three to one ratio.  To do this he divides 10 into the numbers 6, 3, and 1 and applies it to drawing the three sections based on which is closest to the viewer. He further uses the 631 proportions to drawing hair section details.

For perspective, art uses a cube as a guide sketching the skull and the hair form.

Line art involves using line weight to indicate light and shadow in the hair form: thin lines on the section side facing the light source and heavy lines on the sides of thge sections away from the light source.

Finally, details. This is a style question for you to decide how much detail you want to include. 

Whyt Manga How to draw hair. (20 minutes, 1.2M views)

Day 91: outdoor sketching

If you think about it, we human beings having been doing our art outdoors a whole lot longer than we've

even had an indoors. Artists who work outdoors currently include landscape artists, seascape artists, plein air artists, urban sketchers, and artists like you and me. 

As we think about taking our art outside we are challenged with the question: "What do we need?"

At a minimum we need something to draw with and something to draw on. Since many of us are just starting to explore drawing outside, let's keep it simple: a pencil, an eraser,  a pen and paper on a stiff surface. 

Next we need to find a place to do our outdoor sketching.  Today the temperature where I live will be about 108 F.  If I go outside to sketch I'd be sweating and miserable.  So I'll be doing my outdoor drawing from indoors (remember art's first 3 rules). I'll find a place where I can comfortably sit by a window and draw something outdoors that captures my attention. If it wasn't so hot, I would find someplace to sit outside and draw.  

So let's get started! Find something that "smiles at you" and draw it. (My wife, Chris, introduced me to the idea of "smiles at you" when I asked her how she shopped for clothes.  She told me that she would meander around the clothes department until something "smiled at her".  Being a rational person, this made absolutely no sense!  How could a piece of cloth "smile at her"! Over the 50+ years we've been together I had glimpses of what "smiles at you" means. Baby steps to learning this was being coached by an art teacher on how to view pictures at an exhibit. He said to go into each gallery, find an unobtrusive location and just look. Eventually something will catch your eye.  If nothing catches your eye, go to the next gallery. That 'something catching your eye' is the beginning of a "smile at you"). 

Day 92: drawing comics

Ryan Benjamin, an artist who has worked with Marvel for decades, gives us tips for drawing comics:

• basic materials: Ryan suggests using pencils between 2H and 2B (2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B) 
• red and blue pencils: he uses red pencils to lightly rough in his designs. He then uses his 2B to pencil in his preliminary design. He scans this and eliminates the red lines in his digital drawing app.
• getting started: Ryan demonstrates making various marks with the tip and sides of his pencil. 
• primitive shapes:
• thinking with primitive forms

How to Start Drawing Comics - Working with Primitives.

Day 93: texture: hair

In How to Draw Hair (7 minutes, 2M views) Stan Prokopenko once again does a wonderful job of giving us an overview of the do's and don'ts of drawing hair followed by guiding us through the process he uses to create a well formed drawing of hair.