Unabridged: That New York Times List Discussed and Debated- Transcript

This edition of The Stacks Unabridged is dedicated to the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. First we talk with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the NYT Book Review, about the creation of the list and all the excitement it generated. Then, we welcome a panel of readers - Sara Hildreth, Hunter McClendon and Lupita Aquino - to discuss and debate the list, sharing our biggest takeaways, what we loved and hated, and which books we would add. We also try to figure out what the list says about US culture at large.

TRANSCRIPT

Traci Thomas 0:00

Hello everyone it's me Traci Thomas host of The Stacks I am here today with another bonus episode of the podcast The Stacks Unabridged. Today's episode I am thrilled about. You might have heard last week, the New York Times released a list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The list caused me to lose sleep, maybe go a little bit insane. It was a totally fantastic week to be a reader. And today I am joined first by Gilbert Cruz, who is the editor of the book section at the New York Times. He was in charge of this project. I get to ask him my most pressing questions about procedure and voters and how the list came together. And then I have put together a panel of three of my favorite reader friends to discuss the list- what we liked, what we didn't like, all of that. I am joined by Sarah Hildreth, Lupita Aquino, and Hunter McClendon, and we talk about this list. We're going deep, people. All right, enough of me; now it is time to get into this episode all about the New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century.

Alright, everybody, I am so excited. If you have been following me on Instagram, you know that the New York Times just released a list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, and it has occupied every single brain cell that I had, and some that I did not even know I had, it has become an obsession. It is all I talk about. And so when I got the opportunity to have this guest come on, and talk to us about the list, my immediate reaction was holy shit. Yes. I am talking today to Gilbert Cruz, who is the editor of the New York Times books section. Gilbert, welcome to The Stacks.

Gilbert Cruz 1:50

Traci, thank you for having me on.

Traci Thomas 1:52

Thank you for saying yes. Well, actually, you guys came to me. And I was like, do they know how obsessed I am right now? Because it is all I'm thinking about is I missed a deadline last week, because I couldn't focus on the books I needed to write about because I was so obsessed with this list.

Gilbert Cruz 2:09

That's I want to hear that people are screwing their lives up because they are obsessed with this list. Thank you.

Traci Thomas 2:14

I was so obsessed with it. Last week, I had therapy. And I was saying oh my god, I talked to my therapist about the most hilarious thing. And someone was like, did you talk about the list? And I was like, no, okay, I did it. It was a different thing. It was a nemesis thing. But just I thought it was funny that someone thought that I had actually gotten that far. And that I guess is the limit for me. I'm not going to waste my out of pocket therapy money on the list. I have friends to do it with you know. Okay, for folks who don't know, the list is the 100 best books as voted on by 503 literary luminaries, writers, librarians, influencers, editors, critics, etc. And then you guys, you guys took those votes, you aggregated them into a top 100 highest vote getter, number one lowest vote getter, number 100. And everybody else, somewhere hidden in the archive. Where did you get this idea? And why did you want to do it this way?

Gilbert Cruz 3:12

Sure. So we are coming close to 2025, next year. But we said quarter century seems like a good time to start thinking about- And this is not definitive in any way- But just to start the conversation about what the great works of literature are and of nonfiction, the rules around this where if you put a book out, if you voted for a book on the list, it needed to be a book that was published post 2000, in the English language in America. And the reason we did that is because the New York Times Book Review, that's what we cover, we don't necessarily cover books that come out in England, which are also in the English language, or in other languages outside of the US. And so 2025 is coming up. We've talked so much about the great works of the 20th century. And while we can keep talking about those, and we will talk about them forever, it seemed like there was an opportunity to do so now and focus on this century, and start the conversation. And so we said we can do this on our own. We can get our you know, the book review staff is about 2527 people, we have editors, we have critics, we could just do this on our own. But part of the book review is using outside writers, novelists, nonfiction writers, etc. Tom Hanks wrote a review for us this year to write about books for us. So why not do a thing that we don't do that often which is go out to the world go out to that literary world and say, let's do this together. And let's not just have it be the New York Times coming down from on high but let's get as many people as possible in the conversation. So we reached out to we we came up with a bunch of names on staff If we came up with, I don't know, like 1500 names. And the way we came up with those names is, you know, we have our editors on our staff, their job is to reach out to writers all the time and to know who's out there and who is writing, and who's reading and who's paying attention to books. And so we just went out to our staff of 20 Something people and said, add as many names to this list as possible. And we did that over a month. We went out to other people in New York Times and said, we got the writers down, we got the people in publishing down, are there famous people in other fields who are big readers who should who should be on this list, we looked at that list as a whole, we sort of started to narrow it down. You know, this, this person doesn't really engage with the world, they're probably not going to respond to this poll, even if we want them to, TK famous writer. And then in the end, we sent emails out to 1000 people, over 1000 people, probably about 1100 people. And 500 people responded, that's pretty good. And it was an anonymous poll, it was an anonymous poll. We said to people don't be afraid about others, seeing what your choices are. If you want to pick your own books, if you want to pick your friends books, if you want to interpret best because we didn't tell people what best was, we just said you choose. Some people chose that to mean most pleasurable. Some people chose that to me and most influential, some people chose that to mean a modern classic. Some people chose sort of a more strategic thing, I'm willing to put writers of color on my list, because I think that other people that are voting are probably going to be under emphasizing writers of color for etc. So we didn't tell him what to do. We said to anonymous, so you don't have to be worried about people seeing but we did reach out to some very well known writers and said, Hey, we saw you. We told you about it. Now that we did it, you want to help us out here, put your name on this thing. And so some of them did.

Traci Thomas 7:00

You were like, We're the New York Times, but we also need content. We'd love for you to show your face.

Gilbert Cruz 7:06

Help us. Help us.

Traci Thomas 7:09

Okay, so many things you've said so far already have questions about my first question, which is one of the first things you said, which was you all could have done it yourself in house. How do you think the list would have turned out differently? If it was just the 25, 27 of you books people?

Gilbert Cruz 7:26

Hmm, there probably would have been more poetry on it. I think there are definitely some literary genres that probably would have been more well represented, such as poetry. And it's possible, though, I can't guarantee that genre books maybe would have been, I'd like to think genre books would have been more well represented than they than they are now. Because in the end, you have a, you know, an NK Jemisin sci fi book on here, you have a couple things that are like thriller adjacent. There's not any romance, there's not really any horror, there are no children's books, there's a lot that's not on here. There's a lot that is on here. But there's a lot that's not on here, because as many as 100 books are. And that seems like a lot of books. When you think about all the books that are published in English in America every year times 24. It's actually not that many.

Traci Thomas 8:19

It's not that many. Okay, to that point. Now, why did you all allow for books that were published in another language previously to 2000 to be on this list if they were published in English after that date?

Gilbert Cruz 8:37

Because that's when most American readers probably discovered a book, you know, you look at a book like The Copenhagen Trilogy, which is, you know, a collection of memoirs that were published decades ago, most English readers did not know this existed, they only knew it and it only became a best seller and only became something that was on people's radar once it was translated, and published into English. And it's so to us, that is when what we see as our zone of coverage. Passionate readers in the English language speaking world really would have encountered a book.

Traci Thomas 9:14

Okay, and how, how much massaging did you all have to do before you sent things out to figure out what the Ask was going to be? If you were going to allow books that were written previously to the date but had been translated, like were those debates that you and your team were having prior to sending it out?

Gilbert Cruz 9:33

Absolutely. I mean, you know, once we set the rules, and I think we sent out the survey in early May, once we set the rules, we tried to put the rules on as many places as possible so that we know that people don't always read all the way through and even with all those rules, there's still people that put books that came out before 2000 on this list, and so we tried to be as clear as possible, we tried to say, you know, if you put a book on the list that doesn't fall into these categories, we will, it will be invalid. Also, do not feel limited to the books that you think the New York Times is only interested in. If you want to put a children's book on there, if you want to put his yonder book on there, go ahead. Clearly, people don't listen to that part of it. Those kinds of those kinds of books are missing. I also think that the people who responded were probably writers who skew more towards a literary bent, because the thing I learned, and there's so many lessons that we learned, and when we do our retrospective, we're gonna go down the whole list of like, how could we have done this better? One thing that we really didn't truly understand until this poll went out to over 1000 people is that so many of those email addresses got bounced back to us. I mean, so many people we knew we thought we had their contact information, their agents, contact information, what have you, and we didn't. And so it was like three weeks of poking individual people be like, Hey, can you check your spam? Hey, I don't know if you saw this. Traci, you might find it very surprising to know that when a writer is writing a book, many of them just put a message on their email and says, Don't bother me for three months. I was like, What?

Traci Thomas 11:25

No, I'm familiar with that. Because I interview authors, and it's difficult to- they need their time and their space.

Gilbert Cruz 11:31

They do. I just- we didn't take that into account.

Traci Thomas 11:34

Yeah. Okay, so speaking of things that you think you might do differently, because, okay, I'm gonna be 100% honest with you, Gilbert. I love your show, please. I love the idea of the list. I don't love the list. But I love what the list made me think about made my the people that I'm in community with in book spaces talk about, and I and I am a lover of lists. I am not one of those people that's like lists don't matter. They might not matter. But I'm gonna obsess over them no matter what, like I love because I think that the lists say something bigger about the culture, whether that's book culture, or American culture, or the world at large, whatever your purview is, and your list is about, I love it. And I a sports person. And ranking in sports is par for the course I know, people get weird about it, and are but not me. I love it. I love the idea of the list. I struggle with the final result, because I think the as you've mentioned, there are gaps on the list. And I'm wondering if you all and your team thought about, like, do we have to massage this list? Because this is a reflection of the New York Times this is a reflection of me, Gilbert Cruz person in charge at this moment. And we don't have a single Native American author on this list. Can I put that out? Can we put that out? What What were those conversations? Or? Or maybe do we send out to more people? Do we try to broaden the pool? Or do we say this is the moment? And this is what happened? And it's out of our hands? We were conducting a survey.

Gilbert Cruz 13:09

Yeah. I mean, the decision was made when we decided to do it this way. We, the book review worked with a team at the New York Times called The upshot. They're the ones that run our all the polls that we did, and they're very busy this year, because we're but somehow they said, this seems fun, we're going to participate. And so, you know, once you say where to do this, with math, as opposed to, you know, I used to work in Vulture, I was the editor of vulture for a year. And so I know lists, I've done lists, movie lists, music lists, book lists, TV lists, I've done them all. And once you say, We're gonna base this on these poll results, then even if you're like, where is why is there they're not on there or something like that, you know, it's like you can't like we made this decision. And to do anything counter to that like to say we need more of this, it would sort of invalidate it. And we couldn't explain the math or the science behind it in a way that I would have felt comfortable with. So there are there are so many gaps. There are gaps when it comes to author representation there caps gaps when it comes to genre. There are gaps when it comes to all sorts of categories. And all I can say is, you know, this is a list that represents this moment. I think if we sent the survey out in August, it would be a different list. You probably wouldn't have to Alison wrote books on there, for example. You know, there are lots of things that would be different if we had more time. If we had given ourselves six weeks to beg and bother and poke authors then maybe we would have gotten more authors and that would have changed the list but you know, we had a timetable. We knew, frankly, the Republican and Democratic national conventions were coming, the Olympics were coming, we saw a narrow window, in which we could try to take advantage of the conversation. And this was the window. And after that, you got the RNC, the DNC, the Olympics, and then the fall election and fall breaks. And so this was it. And so yeah, there are a lot of things we could have done differently. But we didn't.

Traci Thomas 15:26

Right. What about what happened in the event of a tie? Because I assume some books got 10 vote, everybody got 10 votes or something? Maybe more than that. But how did you do that?

Gilbert Cruz 15:40

Yeah, so what the experience set, anyone who took the survey had was you had a page that had your name on top. And it was, you know, there was your link was designed for you. And we worked very hard on the back end to make sure that the, you know, no one can see those links, no could share those links, and no one would accidentally vote for someone else. So you go onto your page. And you can input up to 10 books, most people put 10 books. And then there's a second experience. And that experience is you have two books next to each other to book jackets, some of them are the books that you just picked on your list, and some of them are not. And you have to sort of vote against them, right? Even if you've never read them, even if there's a button that says some people probably picked even though they've never read them, but there was a button underneath that says, I haven't read this book, and then another one would appear. And participants, anyone who took the poll to have this experience, and a lot of people like did this hundreds of times, like it was an addictive thing. And the reason we did that is because we knew there would be some ties. And we wanted a second signal to tell us whether or not people were more passionate about one book than another. And so we used that data, along with the votes. And the votes are really the thing that carried the day, they weren't like a ton of ties, they were actually more ties towards, you know, in like the two hundreds than the we're in the top 100 In order to break those ties, because the thing that we learned, I don't know anything about statistics, I know slightly more now, is that you have a lot of people picking those top 100 books. And then you have this sort of long tail people cannot see what I'm doing of like, a 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of books, only picked by one person, or two. And so, you know, we have 100 books on here in our top 100. But in terms of the number of books that people voted for, there were 1000s of books.

Traci Thomas 17:43

Will you all release any of that information of like, maybe not like the rankings? But what other books like were thought of? Or? Or also like, will you ever release the demographics of the private votes? Not necessarily, like this person would have this, but like we had this many librarians who turned their thing, and this many people have between 25 and 35. And because that, to me, is the hardest part of this list. Because usually when I read a list like this, I know who's behind it. And you guys have sort of said generally who's behind it, but I'm like, Oh, if the list is a bunch of people in their 60s and 70s, that says something different to me about literature than a book with a lot of people in their 20s, you know, because they were a different age when the lists came out, or the books came out?

Gilbert Cruz 18:30

I absolutely agree that the mystery behind it to some maybe too many sort of like, well, you know, I don't know, I'm sure if we're not going to release the demographics just to answer your question directly. Partly because, and again, this is something that if we ever did this again, in the future, like if we did this, again, five or 10 years from now, part of the inspiration for this list for me was a magazine called sight and sound. Do you know what this is? It's a British Film Journal every 10 years? Yeah, since 1952, they do this poll of critics and directors. And they've been doing this, they do it every 10 years to show the change in time of taste and stuff like that. Right? So who knows where I will be in five years, 10 years, where the New York Times will be? If we did it again, then maybe we would rethink the idea of automatically giving people anonymity, right. Because in order I do think in order to really dig into the numbers, the demographics and all this stuff, you need to be comfortable with having people say yes, you could say that I am one of the people over 65 that participate in this and and the reason we decided to go with anonymity is because again, we had a feeling and I can't prove or disprove this, that if we didn't our our response rate would be much lower. And I really just wanted to be frank, as many people to participate in this as possible. So yeah, I don't think we're gonna release the demographics, but I understand how the absence of that information would lead. Many people are this physically like, well, who but who? Who are these 500 303 people? I know these 40 people that you listed that I know, you know, sort of vaguely who's at the New York Times Book Review. But who are the other 400 people? I get it, I get it.

Traci Thomas 20:23

Okay. And to that, to that vein, I don't know if you all have done this yet. I probably will do it if you haven't done it. But I'm curious to know, if you all took the books that showed up on the list and compare them to the previous like 25 years of most notable New York Times picks on like how they stacked up there, or Pulitzer Prize winners or National Book Award winners. And like how your list compares to sort of the overall canonical building of the last quarter century?

Gilbert Cruz 20:49

Yeah, I think. So one of the things we did before we sent the survey out was we we built a searchable database, any any of your listeners can find it. But we designed it for people taking the survey of all of the New York Times top 10 books and 100 notable books over the past four years, because we wanted people to have a starting database to look through. They weren't limited to it. But it's hard to remember what came out in 2003, for example, right? So you could sort of search search by year search by genre search bug, whatever. And I think certainly there's a lot of overlap there. There's a there's a lot of overlap with the the Pulitzers National Book Awards, the Booker Prize, the Nobel it's, you know, I mean, those are for good, or ill, those are the things that signal both to the general reader and to people in the industry that these are books and authors that we should pay attention to that we should read, you know, maybe even at the expense of author authors, so I think there is a lot of crossover there.

Traci Thomas 21:51

Okay, this is a show your skills, Gilbert, how many of the books have you yourself read?

Gilbert Cruz 21:58

There's absolutely no way I'm going to answer that question. You've got to be kidding me.

Traci Thomas 22:04

I've read 31.

Gilbert Cruz 22:05

Look, I'll say this, I've read fewer than you. I'm gonna get fired now. Thank you.

Traci Thomas 22:10

That's okay. Here's the thing; I was, I was so shocked how many books on the list I had never even heard of. Yeah, to me, that was like, so confusing, because I'm like, I feel like I know every book that's ever come out. Obviously, I didn't start working in books in 2000 because I was in high school. And yes, I was graduating Middle School. But I was really surprised by how many things I didn't know. And I think there are definitely things that I was able to glean from the list. For example, like George Saunders having three books says something to me about people who voted on the list like there are books that writer that are for writers, by writers and people that writers admire that show up on the list that made me feel like okay, it feels like a lot of writers participated in this will you answer this question? If you could put one book on the list? Just one once one book that you wish had showed up?

Gilbert Cruz 23:07

Yes, I will answer that. I did come on this podcast to answer questions. Just not the last one. I would have I would have put Gone Girl I would have put Gone Girl on that list. And I think a lot of people expected to see it.

Traci Thomas 23:19

And you know what's funny though, about that book is like if you had asked me two weeks ago if that was one of the best books what are the best 100 books of the last 25 years? I don't know that it would have popped into my head but not seeing it there. I was like, How dare they even though I don't even know that I love that book. But for some reason that's really the one to me.

Gilbert Cruz 23:42

I think a lot of people were surprised by that a lot of people were surprised it's a complete opposite book to not see any of the My Struggle books. He wrote six of them which probably is why like no one could pick the which one up on there. Yeah, I think you know what's gonna be interesting we are going to publish I don't know when this was going to air but but later this week, we're going to publish the people's list, the readers of The New York Times have an opportunity since Thursday to vote on their books. So that already it looks different already. I'm sure but you know, some of the books are on our list just in a different order. And then there are many dozens of books that did not appear on the list at all. I mean, yeah, I don't know if this will end up on there in the end, but like, you know, people are voting for The Hunger Games people are voting for life books by a more tolls people are voting for you know, there are lots of very, I got to look at the list again.

Traci Thomas 24:54

This episode will air on this Friday. So I think probably the list will be out and I will link to it in the show notes if it is.

Gilbert Cruz 25:01

Yeah, I'm we're hoping to publish it Thursday. And so even seeing that, but but, again, to your point earlier, it's like those are readers of The New York Times. And so who's to say that if this published at a different site and a different, you know, subscriber registered user base, we're voting for that, that the list would not be completely different. Lists are so fun, they are so frustrating at the same time, because you can only put so many things out there. And to me, because I heard a lot of feedback last week, a lot of a lot of feedback. Some good, some not so good. Feel like you can't rank art and all this stuff.

Traci Thomas 25:43

And that's, that's the task of the list.

Gilbert Cruz 25:47

We've been ranking art literally for as long as art has been around. So so I don't buy that argument. But I think if someone found a couple of books on here that they had not heard of before and are interested in, then that's fine. That's good. That's like a good outcome. If you look at this list, and you say, What a piece of crap. My 100 would have been this, and you're talking to your friends about it, you're talking to your friends about how bad our list is, why aren't these books on here? That's also not a bad outcome. You know what a lot of people were talking about books last week in like, a very concentrated way. And that's amazing. That's amazing.

Traci Thomas 26:25

I mean, it was great. As a person who loves books, the person who works in books, I kept saying last week was a great week to be a reader. No matter what it was a great week to be a reader. We got to be front and center in this conversation from the paper of No, obviously, a lot of other things happened last week. But this was one of those things. I was waking up at five in the morning to check the list because my phone I was getting text messages as soon as it would drop at like 3am cuz I'm in California. I was like waking up going to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, not going to the bathroom, but just not trying to avoid bugging my husband being like, what is it? Oh, my God, I can't believe this. So it was a total joy. And I love the list. And I hate the list. And every day I go back and forth on what I think. And like, on Thursday, I spent the entire day writing a list of what I thought absolutely either had to be in the top 20 could be based on the importance I think it has in the culture. And maybe I was trying to detective from the 40 ballots, I saw some books that I thought maybe would show up. And my list was 32 books, and I texted my friend and I said, Holy shit, there's going to be so many snubs, because there's so many books that were on my list that I thought they should definitely be on the list, but maybe not in the top 20. Yeah, but also they can't not be on and then they were not odd. And like all of that excitement is just thrilling to me as a book lover and a person who talks about books all day. And I look at the list, I have the list saved. So here are things that didn't make it. I thought maybe the Devil's Highway would be on there. I did think Hunger Games. I thought that was going to be our one children's book. Yeah, I was surprised not to see any Dave Eggers. And I think that's just a moment of time. He's not as in vogue as he was.

Gilbert Cruz 28:13

One of our critics texted me and said, No Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?

Traci Thomas 28:18

Or What Is the What. I'm a nonfiction lover. So I thought more nonfiction would be on. I think, the namesake and The Kite Runner. The Nickel Boys, A Little Life. There's no Sally Rooney. I wasn't sure about some of these like The Omnivore's Dilemma. I thought that would be on the list. Maybe not at the top. But that was such a huge book.

Gilbert Cruz 28:43

So let me you know, one of the conversations we had early on was should this be two lists? Should this be fiction and nonfiction? And in the end, we decided to do one list and there were 25 or 26 nonfiction books on there one of them very high, the number two book The Warmth of Other Suns.

Traci Thomas 28:59

One of the greatest books on my entire life. That was my number one pick.

Gilbert Cruz 29:02

Incredible book. And and you know, I think in the reader list, I wouldn't be surprised if Her most recent book also was on there- Caste. But um, you know, the feeling was we maybe we only have one shot to capture this energy. Like, if we did this to lists a year apart, then maybe it just wouldn't have the same impact. So even if nonfiction got a little bit of the short shrift, because it was only a quarter of the list. It just felt like there was one chance one major massive opportunity to capture the conversation. And I do think, you know, our critics who voted, you know, they were three or four of the 503 people that voted, had a conversation that was published on the New York Times today. We're talking on Monday. And one of the things that even our nonfiction critic says we have a critic who's devoted to nonfiction. You know, she picked more fiction than nonfiction because a lot of times nonfiction just can conveys information. There are nonfiction books that last, The Warmth of Other Suns say nothing, random family, you know all these books on our list. But fiction often is the thing that makes you feel. And when you feel you remember, and you don't necessarily remember just reading like an information download that is relevant at the time, but that maybe doesn't stick with you. So that might be served the reason for fewer nonfiction books.

Traci Thomas 30:27

I actually really liked that you had fiction and nonfiction together because most people read both. Yeah, even if, like I the idea of separating them. It's like, No, I'm gonna read a fiction book back to back with a nonfiction book. I don't separate my year and say January to June, I'm reading nonfiction in July, you know, like, so I appreciated that. I, the one nonfiction writer, who's one of my all time faves that I was surprised not to see was Jon Krakauer, because I he makes so much possible for someone like Patrick Radden, Keefe, like they're in that same tradition. And he wrote under the banner of Heaven in that timeline, and that book was so big. And so that was one that's like, my personal sort of like, come on, John, rooting for you. But I get it, I get it.

Gilbert Cruz 31:11

I also think, and, again, we're not gonna do this. But if someone were able to see 100 to 150, still be like, holy cow, those also some of the best books of the 20th century. So far, it's just, there are 100 a list number, it's like, it's the one you pick, I got, again, so many books, and the delight to me of any list. Whether it's a book list, or a movie list, or a list of restaurants is like, oh, I want to do that. I want to go there. I want to read that. I want to watch that. And if I find something, if people who look at this find something, that's a success to me.

Traci Thomas 31:51

I love it. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you for answering my questions. And thank you for putting this list together. It was an absolute joy for a week to be in the center of the thing. And I do sincerely hope you all will continue doing this because I think it is just so great. I look forward to the 10 best books at the end of the year, every year. It's like a holiday for me. And I do I do hope in five or 10 or 25 years, you all will revisit this. I hope I'm alive to see it same. So yeah, I hope we're all live to see it. But I do I love it. And someone suggested that in the near future, you all consider doing the 100 most influential or best authors because a lot of people were butthurt about certain people having multiple books. And I personally feel if you write three bangers, you get three bangers on the list. But I do think it would, the list would be different. And there'll be some crossover, but I certainly think certain people would appear who maybe didn't appear on this list because they have too big of a catalog or because they have you know, for whatever reason. So thank you, Gilbert. I'm gonna link to everything we talked about today in the shownotes. And everyone at home if you have not found the list, you can find it by going to the New York Times I will link to it. If money is tight, your library can help as well. So check that out.

Gilbert Cruz 33:11

Get someone to send you a gift link.

Traci Thomas 33:13

Yes, there are we've been sending them out like they are real presents. I'm like, Oh, happy birthday. Read this list. Thank you so much, Gilbert, and thank you to everyone at the New York Times who was part of this I'm so grateful.

Gilbert Cruz 33:24

Traci, thanks for letting me come on and talk about it.

Traci Thomas 33:35

Everybody, welcome back. This is part two of our in depth investigative journalism into the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I was like who the fuck can I talk to about this book or about this list? And so here is who I brought on and and then I'll tell you why I brought them on. I brought on Lupita Aquino, who you might know as Lupita Reads, I brought on Hunter McClendon, who you might know is Shelf by Shelf. And I brought on Sara Hildreth, who you might know as Fiction Matters, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Stacks.

Lupita Aquino 34:08

Thank you so much for having me.

Hunter McClendon 34:09

Thank you.

Traci Thomas 34:10

Now I'm going to tell you why I invited each of these people because I thought about it. And this is the this is the group I want to talk to one, because all three of them are people who have different tastes than me, but are extremely good at articulating what it is that they like and don't like about books. They're also all extremely well read. They're also all people that I go to in the DMS or on text message to be like, I feeling like this, is this wrong? Am I crazy? Bring me back to Earth. And I think vice versa sometimes. And also, they are all people who care deeply about being a reader about reading and public about the perception of books and representation and culture and what all of this means. And so I thought I got I got to I got to get them all I got to get them all and you know what they said yes on very short notice, so thank you all for being here. And we're going to start where I like to start all the time, which is will each of you just sort of generally tell me what you thought of the list? Come Friday when you saw the whole thing? What was your general like, reaction?

Hunter McClendon 35:19

Not gonna lie. I immediately scrolled through for a single Lauren Groff book and did not see one and thought, well, too late now. I'm done.

Traci Thomas 35:29

Okay, okay.

Lupita Aquino 35:31

I feel like that checks for you, Hunter And now that I think about it what? Not okay. No!

Traci Thomas 35:40

I've never read a Lauren Groff book.

Lupita Aquino 35:42

Not okay. Not okay. Not okay. No, I honestly, like I was a little disappointed, but also not surprised. So I'll leave it at that.

Sara Hildreth 35:56

I mean, I just had so much fun over the course of the week that it's kind of hard to separate the fun of the rollout of the list and the conversation around it from the list itself. So I mean, I have many quibbles, and many like, more than quibbles with the list itself. But I just thought as a project, it was rolled out so well, that I almost couldn't be mad. While I was mad, I could add about those things. But like, I've talked to people about books more than this week than I really ever do. And I talk about books professionally. So I loved it for that. So we can get into the things that made us mad.

Traci Thomas 36:43

We're definitely going to. So my two big takeaways. And I guess my my first big takeaway, I realized on Thursday afternoon, and I think that is when I was like the most active which is like, holy shit, there will be snubs, like capital at like I realized on Thursday when we had everything but the top 20. And I started to try to think of what is going to be on the top 20. I was like, just writing a list like quickly, and I had 33 books. And I was like, well, at least 13 of these won't be there. And so that made me feel panic and thrill. And then the other thing is that I like Sarah had so much fun discussing the list, even though I think the list is sort of devoid of fun. But I did I loved I loved every second of the week, I loved how many people were in my DMs, I love 20 People had opinions that I hated. I loved how many people were agreeing with me, like, I just had so much fun. And it was such a great week to be a reader. And especially knowing that it was the week before the Republican National Convention. And we're right before the Olympics, and nobody's going to be talking about books again, until we get to the end of your lists, like on a big scale. So it was sort of just like the perfect timing to just like, ah, have a book moment.

Sara Hildreth 38:10

I also think that on Bookstagram. And I don't know, if, if all of us do this so much. But just as a as a body of people Bookstagram like to bend over backwards not to talk about best and what books are and what books are not good. And then this week, it was like, Oh, see, you all have these opinions. You're just afraid to share them. And now this week, you're like, oh, that book sucks. This is way better. And I loved that energy coming out.

Traci Thomas 38:43

How do you all generally feel about lists for things?

Lupita Aquino 38:49

You know, Sarah, like, I didn't think about that, honestly. And I was like, I don't do that. I just say things are best. And then I remember no, Tracy's always gonna be behind me. Did I do that? No, but I mean, I think that you're right, you're absolutely right. We tend to just shy away from calling something best on Bookstagram you know, because we have that whole like people care about your feelings and like there's authors on there and what if it's hard to write a book it's hard to write a book so all this great stuff that people are like they they're trying to you know consider they keep in mind so you're right I think that there was for a while nobody really had like an opinion they could say oh no I agree or you know, I like this better it was a very polite and then this brought out like some some really solid like Yeah, and it was fine. Like it was so I think I agree with so much fun.

Traci Thomas 39:42

I feel vindicated as a person who loves thing this was bad and this was good at how much joy I was seeing in other people because I've been saying for years talking shit about books is good for books. And a lot of people don't like it. I've been called some names about it which fine fuck you too, but this was a joy that was so good for books. But to my question, how do you generally feel about lists? Are you usually into lists? Are you usually like, I don't care about a list lists are stupid, you can't rank art.

Hunter McClendon 40:13

I love a list as far as like, as a resource, right? Like, I love to be like, Oh, I forgot about that book, or I overlooked that book, or I haven't heard, but I love it as a tool. I don't always like I obviously, like, I'm gonna disagree with a lot of things about hospitalists. I see. But I still think they're exciting. And as a resource, I won't.

Lupita Aquino 40:36

Yeah, I mean, I love lists, I make lists. I you know, I freelance lists. I do that. And I think, I think really hard about how to make lists and what goes into making a good list. Here, we're gonna go with like best and good. And and you know what that means to me versus what and what that means to like the audience that's going to get the list. So I'm for lists. I'm not necessarily for ranking.

Traci Thomas 41:04

I am. Give me a number.

Lupita Aquino 41:08

I think ranking is where I'm like, I don't know, but but in the list in general, like, I think themeless are cool. I do themeless all the time. So I love a list.

Hunter McClendon 41:20

I also just have to say it's so funny, because a lot of people I have like I like let people know, I had opinions about the list. And they were like, oh, yeah, you're you're not into it. I was like, no, no, no, I love I love the fact that this like, I love it. I disagreed with a lot of it. That is exciting to me. I love the conversation. I love to be passionate about it. And like I don't think people understand that. Like, if you're, if you love something, you're gonna be passionate about it. You're gonna have disagreements and that's I find it thrilling.

Traci Thomas 41:43

Yeah, yeah. Sara, where do you come down on a on a list versus a ranked list?

Sara Hildreth 41:48

Oh, I love a list. And I love a ranked list. I think Tracy you and I both rank our monthly reads. And I mean, I always feel like, okay, if you asked me next week, I might rank them differently. But it's still just really fun to make books go head to head and decide which one is better. I think it takes me back like a little bit to the classroom. And as a teacher trying to figure out like, which are the eight best books to possibly bring into the classroom in a in a given year. And you have to be cutthroat and you, you know, you have to make like, you'd have to look at the balance and all of that. I kind of hated doing that when I was teaching. But I feel like this week, I was like, Oh, I kind of missed, kind of missed lists.

Traci Thomas 42:37

I think you make a great point, Sara, of like, when when you are a person who ranks or even the New York Times, if they had asked people to make the same group of people to make the same decisions. In November of this year, let's say after the election, I bet the list turns out totally different. Yeah. Right. Like, and I think about you guys all know, I love sports. And I think part of the reason I love rankings is because I love sports. And I know that head to head, you could have the two greatest runners run 10 races, and someone might win seven times, and someone might win three times. And they're both the best probably in the world. But like, maybe Usain Bolt has an off day, right? And like that the rankings or the rankings in the moment that it exists. And I love that too. And that takes me to my next question, which is like, what does this list in this moment, say about books? Or reading in America? What does it say about reading culture right now in America? Because yes, there are books from other countries on the list. Yes, there are books and translation. But the New York Times is an American publication. And it is so servicing an American cultural viewpoint, I would say and I'm using American broadly, but more specifically to meet people in America who are reading books. So I'm curious what you all sighs like the takeaway from the list?

Hunter McClendon 43:58

When you said that I literally just thought about the you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came up for you? Yeah, it's so funny, because I do think I can, I can definitely tell that like a lot of a lot of people from the literary establishment. Like, especially from like, I don't wanna say like the old guard, but like just people who definitely had a lot of reverence for some of these, like people who aren't even as read now as they were 1015 20 years ago.

Traci Thomas 44:26

Like, what books what books cued you into that?

Hunter McClendon 44:29

So I definitely think that having having three George Saunders books, I was like, okay, and to be clear, I love the amazing adventures of capillary clay, which came out in 2000. But okay, but I will never I also know that it's not a book that is as widely discussed. Now, as it's not what I see like kind of floating about as much. And there were several other books that I was like, Oh, this this definitely feels like it's Sarah brought up a really good point the other day about how it's definitely these, you know, it's like the writers writers write, it's the people who you're going to to. And so that's what I saw out of those. I was like, these are the people who would not really be recognizable names if they were not people who are inspiring writers, for every generation.

Lupita Aquino 45:12

Yeah, I think my take my takeaway was similar to hunters. In that also, I felt like I had this epiphany. And I'm like, why is it this is nothing new, right? This idea that, you know, kind of what we teach, what we give, like what is like, you know, known as a prestigious, for example, George Saunders. Right? We got, I don't know, we don't know if we're gonna get into it. But the podcast talked about how the majority of those authors and writers invited were literary fiction writers, right. And there's that assumption that perhaps literary fiction writers are more likely to get an MFA. And so what are those MFA programs teaching and studying? And so, again, I think my epiphany, my takeaway was just like, it's formative, like a lot of this stuff, a lot of these, like, at least this list, in terms of best 21st century is like stuff that was formative for a lot of writers, for the people that, you know, were surveyed and polled. And I don't know, I think that's different than influential, you know, and books that like, we're to we see, and we talk about and that are pushing, like literature into past the 21st century. You know, that was my takeaway from the list.

Sara Hildreth 46:26

Yeah, I completely agree. Lupita. It's, like, influential, but in an insular way, like, these writers are influencing each other, but not so much influencing culture at large as some of the snubs maybe were. I also felt like, like, I agree with you on this Lupita, too, that a lot of the books at least, you know, the ones that I've read enough and familiar with, are fairly traditional narratives like not necessarily like all like the most. I don't know traditional stories, but like, narratively, there are a lot of big sweeping stories. There. There aren't too many experimental books, experimental structures, like very little, if any auto fiction, which is so prevalent right now, or has been maybe for like, 10 years. So it seemed like maybe, and maybe this was because when people were making their lists, they were thinking more about what stuck with them over the past decade or two, rather than the books that have really hit them recently, because I don't think were there any 2022?

Traci Thomas 47:42

2022 was the last was the most recent year represented. I agree with everything you all are saying. The other thing I want to throw in about what this book says or maybe doesn't say, is that as I think we've all talked about independently, but I don't know if I've actually said this into a microphone. There were no Native American authors on the list. There were no, there were only four lists. Let Latin a authors on the list. There was only one poetry book on the list. There were 13 books in translation, but I actually was surprised. I thought that one seemed like a lot, considering it is an American list. And so few Americans read translated literature. Whew, man, I think that maybe speaks to what you guys were talking about writers being the ones who do it, and a lot of them are high up, and a lot of them were there were three translated books in the top 10. That's why. But what I think that this list says is that this idea of like reading diversely, is not actually when push comes to shove, when you get to pick your 10 Best is not where people are going to put their 10 Best necessarily, and I'm saying people broadly, because we don't know who was voting they I asked Gilbert in the previous segment, if they would release any of the demographic information. And he said no, but mostly because they don't have it, because they didn't ask for it because they allow people to have audit anonymity. But that being said, like it says to me something about the performance of diversity in when you are public versus when you get to have a private ballot. But I do want to add this, there is only one white man in the top 10. And that's Jonathan Franzen. So I do think there is a shift a little bit, but overwhelmingly, the collective list like it shows, I think it shows that maybe we're shifting in certain ways. The top three were all women writers. So you know, we're seeing that but also like, there was no romance. There were no like, there were so few queer stories on the list. Like, I think the idea of diversity is, is on the table when you look at a list like look at this particular list.

Lupita Aquino 49:55

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's exactly what also I was trying to say With the antecedent, like, and it feels terrible, because we know this, right, this is not new information. And so I think that's why initially, I was disappointed. But then I was like, I'm not surprised.

Hunter McClendon 50:10

Right, right. Well, I also like the idea of like, a certain lack of diversity in the list, I thought a lot about the conversations that I that I grew up having. And I grew up in South Georgia. And pretty much when people discuss like anything race related, it's like black and white. And that's it like that. There's, it's very isolated. And I think that in some small ways that you can kind of see that in how people look at literature and like, the books they're drawn to, and what, like, the things that are ready to confront. And like, I think that some reality is, is that people aren't ready to see certain queer stories are not ready to like, it's the same way that like some people aren't. They're like, Oh, I can handle like the gay thing, but I can't handle like, trans but like, there's certain things that keep like still rubbing up against and they're like, I don't like this because it makes me confront more than I'm comfortable with. And I think that people, that's the reason I like to help the middle one. Anything else? Right?

Traci Thomas 51:00

Right. Yeah. Like which which stories of people from marginalized backgrounds are even allowed. I mean, I was shocked to see D transition baby on the list. I think all of the surprises, that one was probably one of the biggest ones. Because I don't feel like that book is even really talked about that much anymore. I think it had a huge year when it came out. But like, I don't see it around. I don't hear like, you know, I don't think anyone's ever I think one author ever mentioned it on the stacks as a book that they like recommended. And so that one was a surprise in a pot in a positive way to me.

Lupita Aquino 51:39

I will say to go back to Hunter, I you know, I did try to have these conversations around, at least with Latino literature. I'm like, what is it about this? Is it that people aren't reading it? Or is that at the craft level? It's just not there. Like, you know, I use the term behind, and I made it really broad. And I was just like, what, what is it? And I had so many interesting conversations in my DMs with people who were like, yeah, there was plenty of amazing Latina books that I've read that I would totally have put on some list. But when it comes, like comes to my top 10, I just wouldn't make it.

Traci Thomas 52:14

I was surprised that the Devil's Highway didn't make the list at all. That was one that I thought because that was a quintessential book by a acclaimed writer. And I thought that felt canonical to me in a way that, because that's the thing, some of these books, it's like, we're not talking about just any book you like, it has to be good enough, beloved enough, I mean, good and air quotes, but has to be impactful, exciting, resonant, whatever enough to be in your 10.

Sara Hildreth 52:47

Well, and then there has to be consensus, right?

Traci Thomas 52:50

And other people's 10. When I spoke to Gilbert, he mentioned that the curve of the list was like, a lot like he said the one through 100. There weren't that many ties. There were a lot of ties at 100 through 150. And then there were 1000s of books at the bottom that got one or two votes.

Sara Hildreth 53:12

I wouldn't know about all of them.

Traci Thomas 53:15

I asked about them. He said they're not sharing.

Sara Hildreth 53:17

Oh, but that's why I'm so glad they at least released some of the individual ballots because I found that way more interesting to be like, yeah, Marlon James is 10 favorite or like 10 Best Books. I need to know.

Hunter McClendon 53:32

Stephen King, putting himself but not even his best book, like not even in his top ten best books. I was like, I'm living. This is ridiculous.

Traci Thomas 53:40

That's what he thinks is. I mean, a lot of people were shocked On Writing wasn't on the list, because it was such a writer heavy list. I that didn't even occur to me because I never read a Stephen King a day in my life because I'm scared like a little baby. But I think a lot of writers did put their own books because I've had some offline conversations with people who are like, I'm so glad I stayed private, because I did put my book and you guys are dragging Stephen King. And I was like, it's because it Stephen King.

Sara Hildreth 54:04

I saw Jennifer Weiner, you know, she writes like, like quintessential, quote unquote. Chick lit. She shared her ballot in her Substack. She put her own book on the list.

Traci Thomas 54:14

Someone put two of their own books. I can't remember who it was.

Sara Hildreth 54:17

It was Roxana Robinson. Two! Ahe didn't even fill out 10 books. I think she just included eight and two of her.

Traci Thomas 54:26

She's like fuck you guys, I wrote the two best books and then I have six friends.

Hunter McClendon 54:33

Oh, let me tell you if I were an author, I would. I would do whatever favors I needed to to get my book on this list. I'd be like what it like I will pay you, whatever you need.

Traci Thomas 54:43

I will give you a body roll. I will give you a lap and I will do whatever it takes. For sure. Okay, wait. I do want to ask Lupita you actually were an official voter. You were a voter on this list. You got the call up from the New York Times. Big time congratulations. Thank you for representing the rest of us. We love you.

Lupita Aquino 55:05

I kinda wanted to hide under a rock after it came all out, but you know, yeah, it was like, ah, that's just didn't go the way I thought it would go, but-

Traci Thomas 55:14

But no, no, but I mean, you're not responsible for the list; you got 10 books. But what I want to ask and the New York Times said, we asked everyone to pick their 10 best books they did not define best. I would love to know from the three of you. How you because I think did we all make ballot? Like for fun if we didn't do one officially? I didn't post mine, but I did. But you did it. Okay. How did you define best for yourself? I can go first. I went to my handy dandy spreadsheet. I sorted by five star reads. And a few popped into my head right away. I knew heavy heavy is the best memoir. Like I knew that for sure. Nickel boys is one of the best novels I've ever read. I knew that for sure. And what I started to see is when I made my first draft, it was all a lot of more recent stuff. So that I went into my Goodreads because I've been on Goodreads since 2009. And I went through those five star reads. And that's when I was like, oh, right, of course The Kite Runner, one of my favorite books ever. Like I love that book. And I basically did books that I loved that I also thought were really good because I do love some bad books. Like there's something like I loved 50 Shades of Grey, a joy. You Yeah, I read that in 2012. I read it and like two days, I read the whole thing in like two days. But that's not the best book. So I kind of tried to pick like things that I loved, and things that had a huge impact on me, but also things that I was like, I am proud to love these books because I think they're so good. That's how I did it. But I did it quick. I did mine in about 15 minutes. I did not some people I didn't write it all out, you know, I just was like, like, I had home fire on him. And I was like, No, it's got to be Kite Runner. And like I had like, I had one job Krakauer on and I'm like, No, it's gotta be this other Jon Krakauer. But other than that, I was pretty quick and just quick and dirty.

Lupita Aquino 57:11

I went off the vibes, you're gonna hate that, but I was just vibing. No, they didn't include, like, they include a definition. But I think what they said, you know, they said that each of you may define the term differently, obviously, it could be brilliantly written, it could be utterly pleasurable, powerfully important, use your judgment. And so I kind of really just vibed off of that, and thought thought about those terms. And then on my own, I really made me think about how in the 21st century, I like, that's when I've really got into reading where I was, like, I'm reading and I'm realizing the importance of literature, the impact, it's making it my personal life, like, books saved me write yada, yada, yada. So that's kind of where I was thinking, like, I was like, it's gotta be, it's gotta be brilliantly written, it's got to be something I have not forgotten that I, when I first read, I didn't want to put it down. Or maybe I put it down. But it was because I needed an emotional break from it, it had to be important. So that's how I defined best for mine. And I just from my mind was like, Okay, what comes to mind heavy, obviously, immediately, like, I was like, No, a heavy has to be on that list. And then I just kind of kept going. And then I went back to good rates just like you. I went through my good rhythm. Like what? Hit? And that's about it. And you're right, it did not take me very long. But I did have to come up with at least like 80 I think it was like, I landed up around 80, 90 titles that I initially came up with.

Traci Thomas 58:41

Holy shit. I can't even think of 80, 90 titles that I like.

Lupita Aquino 58:44

Yeah. A lot of books. Because, you know, again, I went really far back. Just thinking about the books that I really vibed with. Yeah. And then once I did that, it was just like, Okay, what is definitely stand out no matter what. And again, I can't say it enough. Heavy standout no matter what, like.

Traci Thomas 59:06

Sara, what about you? I know you wrote about this on your Substack, too.

Sara Hildreth 59:10

Yeah, I. So I made my list pretty very quickly. I just wanted to go with my gut because I knew I could overthink it. But I did go back through Goodreads to see if there was anything I was forgetting. But then I was like, what if I forgot about it, it shouldn't be on my top 10. So I really just went with my gut. But what I realized when I finalize my list, seven of my 10 books, I have read more than once. And the other three are books that I'm like, I would really love to read that again. And so this is what I wrote about my substack Calvino who I have read very little love, but he's a classic writer and he has his own like set of definitions of what makes a book a classic, which is different than best but one of his definitions is is a classic is a book that is never finished saying what it has to say. And that just really resonates with me, to me, that is part of what makes a book a best. Like if I want to read it multiple times, because I know I'm gonna get something new from it each time. That is a best book. So and what's tough about that is, it's not necessarily super subjective, but it is super unpredictable, right? Like, what books are going to stand the test of time, or are going to give you a fresh reading if you approach it, but, but I, I'd like to try to predict that and certainly like that, bear it out in my list where I went with my gut and seven books were ones that I had revisited, and they gave me something new when I read them a second or third time.

Lupita Aquino 1:00:52

I'm gonna have to go back to my list and look and look to see, but I think I feel like I would want to read every single book.

Traci Thomas 1:00:59

Yeah, my top 10. Yeah, I was thinking about I was like, Do I have time to reread all of these haven't reread a few of them. I've reread, but not all of them.

Sara Hildreth 1:01:07

Because, there are books that I love. But I'm like, have no interest in revisiting them again, like doesn't even pique my curiosity to think about that.

Lupita Aquino 1:01:17

You know, what's really interesting, though, when I was coming down to doing my ballot, I wasn't thinking about diversity. So I wasn't like, oh, you know, do I have a Native American author on here are Native American, you know, a book by an indigenous author on here. I was just, I just kind of went with my feelings.

Traci Thomas 1:01:35

And one thing I consider diversity wise, was when was the book published, I didn't want to pick only books that were recent, because I knew that I had read things that had been really impactful long before I was on Bookstagram. And but those just aren't the freshest, because like, I haven't done episodes on them or haven't, like, put them on as many lists. And some of them I don't have on my house anymore. And so I was really like, I gotta go back to what I was reading before. Because so many of my absolute favorite books are books I read before I ever was on Bookstagram.

Hunter McClendon 1:02:05

So I've made a list of like, 30 books to choose from, from my top 10. And I was like, Oh, wow, I am a 43 year old, newly single white lady. Because that's my date. My taste is so bad. And so I was like, I was like, okay, so have these books. I'm just going to next because I know that they're only because I have like white lady in me. But no, but I I definitely think this idea of like, if a book has the like, what Sarah said about, like, if you can continue to read it and get something out of it. I definitely thought a lot about I thought about things like it's so funny, right? Because I know that Sarah has strong feelings about a little life. I do like a little life. But I did think about how to me Edinburgh, Edinburgh by Alexander chi explores a lot of similar themes, but does it much more compactly. And they handle certain situations a lot better, I think. And it's beautifully written, it's very strong. And so I found a lot about like, okay, are these books doing similar things? Like, and like kind of reasoning with that, too.

Traci Thomas 1:03:07

So you did your own this or that?

Hunter McClendon 1:03:09

Yeah, well, like okay, hot take, but like, like, if you ever read trust and basic theories, like back to back, those two books are doing a lot of very similar things. And so I was like the other, I love putting them side to side, there were a lot of great conversation together. But I was like these, it's just, I don't know, but so I thought about stuff like that. And I was like, connection.

Lupita Aquino 1:03:29

That's interesting. I would pick Fates and Furies over Trust. Did not like Trust.

Hunter McClendon 1:03:34

Okay, like, I have to, anyway.

Traci Thomas 1:03:39

Okay, we're sort of running out of time. But there's a few more things I want to talk about. One of them is that, obviously, I think all of us heard from a lot of readers that are in our communities, probably someone was heard from the same people who were having their own big thoughts and feelings about the list. And one of the things I kept hearing is that the, the list is so elitist, and it's just people trying to look smart. Did you all feel like that about the list? Or did you feel like it was authentic? I don't know. I don't even know what the question is. I don't know.

Hunter McClendon 1:04:11

Well, if you're smart, and this is your taste, and you don't have- no I'm just kidding!

Traci Thomas 1:04:17

I mean, it's the New York Times, of course, everyone is gonna think it's elitist. But a lot of that, to me came from people being like, I've only read five books on this list. It's so elitist. And like, it is hard to separate your own personal taste from a thing. But like, I knew that some of my favorite books were not going to make the list because I just knew either they'd come out too recently. So not enough people had read them to vote them. And they're like, random obscure nonfiction titles that like I loved in 2007 that like nobody talks about anymore, but that doesn't mean that the list is elitist. It just means that like the consensus part of it is harder to get to because the consensus is going to bring like, like a lowest common denominator type situation.

Sara Hildreth 1:05:01

That's exactly what I was going to say there is a lowest common denominator situation. And I think that there, again, you only got 10. So even if everybody reserved like one of their slots for something like low brow or fun, like it probably wouldn't be that probably wouldn't match up for a lot of people. But the consensus around some of these more literary books does. I did think the most elitist part of this whole thing was listening to the podcast on it, which I thought was so great.

Traci Thomas 1:05:35

That was drivel. I'm sorry, it was great, but also awful. It was one of the worst 35 minutes of my week last week.

Sara Hildreth 1:05:43

The part where he was like, there are no fun books on the list, like what would which I think there really is an absence of fun books and the white woman was like, Pasturaelia by George Saunders. And I was like, no!

Traci Thomas 1:05:58

I was like, wait, wait. Yeah, it was like some book where they said they laughed out loud. I was like, that book is not funny. It was Fun Home. Like, slapstick comedy?!

Sara Hildreth 1:06:13

Just because fun is in the title does not make it a fun book.

Traci Thomas 1:06:15

Just because there's drawings.

Lupita Aquino 1:06:16

It's very traumatic too; I've read it. It's trauma heavy. Like, it's beautiful in that regard.

Traci Thomas 1:06:22

It's a great book, but it's not like I thought she was gonna like one book that I laughed out loud with was like Erasure. And I was gonna be like, yes, yeah, sure. Yeah, that podcast episode, which I will link to in the show notes. I also found what I found irritating about it was the way that they were acting like they had nothing to do with the list like, Oops, this book's not here. Like, who cares? Which it sounds like they didn't. But also, I'm like, but it is your organization, you guys are the representatives like you need to own it a little bit more. It's sort of how I felt about the tone of the of the conversation. I guess to that point, do you think that the New York Times should have been more involved in shaping the list should they have said, we originally were going to do this whole database thing. But actually, we hate how this turned out, we want to make sure there's a Native American author, at least one on the list, we want to make sure there's some fun books on the list, we want to decide that our votes count triple, because we want to make a list that we feel is representative of who this institution wants to be, or are you okay with the snubs because that's the way the cookie crumbles in a list like this, with this procedure?

Sara Hildreth 1:07:38

I mean, ideally, I would love to side by side lists, because I think that would be fascinating. I mean, I do think that obviously, there are huge pros and cons for like an editorial board style list. But I do think a major pro is considering the balance up at all. And I would love to see what that looks like. But the other thing they kept saying to the podcast was like how much work this was and how they didn't want to do any more work. So I'm not going to make anymore lists. I'm like this is your literal job, please give us more lists.

Traci Thomas 1:08:16

More lists, more lists.

Lupita Aquino 1:08:18

I can I will say I, I feel like I want more instead from them. I would want their, like actual opinion about the list. And I know that they sat like they really shy away from that even in the podcast. It was very like just like, this was a lot of work. And you know, yeah, Gone Girl should have been on there. But like I really just what, what is what is the list? Like, let's get some real serious hardcore opinions about the list that involves diversity that involves speaking on the fact that there were no indigenous authors.

Traci Thomas 1:08:50

Like they didn't even mention that on the podcast.

Sara Hildreth 1:08:53

Yeah, that was upsetting.

Lupita Aquino 1:08:54

And that involved more than just saying like, Oh, you know, we invited all these, you know, literary fiction writers. And no wonder that, you know, they got their MFA and yada yada, no wonder they picked all these people are speculation of that. But like, put that in print. Like, let's really like focus on why we have this problem in literature.

Sara Hildreth 1:09:12

I agree. Because I think that, I mean, we're all having this conversation, but publishing the list, and then people who are consuming the list without this degree of conversation around it, like I mentioned. I mentioned that too. I'm on vacation with my family. We've all been talking about the list all week, which is super fun. And I mentioned like the fact that there are no indigenous authors on the list and somebody said like, not cruelly but like offhandedly like, Well, are there any that would be the best in the last 25 years and I was like, just started like naming Louise Eldridge and Tommy Orange books. And at but that is going to be the impression that yes, all right. At. And that is the problem because it's an added commentary. Even if they're not willing to massage the list, some add, like, let's do a feature in the New York Times Book Review next week about some of the great indigenous authors that are writing today, you know.

Traci Thomas 1:10:20

Yeah, and today or yesterday, as of a recording this three critics from the New York Times talked about the list and they posted it. And even in that it was, I can't remember their names. Anyways, it was three of them, I'll link to it. But they never mentioned, again, this diversity problem, they do mention why they think there was more fiction than nonfiction. They do mention the books that they that were on their list that didn't make the main list, but they don't get into sort of like, the question of what is missing and what that means or what that says, or how that impacts literature. And I think that's really disappointed. It's like they need an ombudsman to do like a piece on the list, right, like an outside objective, literary person to come in, not in a snarky or bitchy way, but in a way that's like, we this is where this failed, they failed in jury selection. I think that's really the failure of the list is that they asked 1100 People 503 said, Yes. And instead of saying, Okay, well, let's ask another 500 people and like, take a look at who we have who've said Yes, before we send out the ballot and say, we actually don't have enough genre, people who said, Yes, we have too many literary fiction writers who said, Yes, like, we need to bring in some more, why a authors or whatever, or say, we're not going to allow ya on the list at all. Right? Or say, we're not going to have any poetry on the list at all, because we didn't get enough poetry to make it feel representative. And it feels unfair to compare this thing with that thing at this point, you know, like, I wish they had just sort of taken more seriously the responsibility of the project as the New York Times capital N Y. T, you know what I mean?

Lupita Aquino 1:12:11

Yeah, and absolutely, Sara, like, Absolutely. 100% point- no, people aren't, that aren't in like our world discussing this and breaking it down. They're just going to take that for what it is. And that's what gets archived. And then we're talking about history and in the future, you know what I mean? Without that added context.

Sara Hildreth 1:12:28

Right, and now, like we've we've, we've talked about how cyclical This is of how so many of these books influenced other writers. So like, now, are people going to want to be writers are turning to lists like this for what to read? Or what to model their own writing on? And what are we offering?

Hunter McClendon 1:12:46

So like, something I've been thinking a lot about over the past several years. So like, you know, I've been I've been doing like this reading project where I read all these NBA books, National Book Award books for not not basketball. But I've been reading, I was reading a lot of us fiction. And then my friend, Bernie Lombardi was like, You need to read stuff like outside of the US, like you're, you have like with great American lens, and I can, he's like, I can tell him in your criticism. And I was like, Oh, okay. And so I started reading like books outside of the US. And then I also started realizing that I started to realize it in the same way that I was viewing. Like, this is the way to write a book, because it's like, this is like the like American Standard, almost, I was realizing that like, I was also not always giving credit where it was due to technical innovation in whether it's like queer, queer writers, or POC or whatever it was, I was not recognizing that what they're doing is it's it's ingenious and stiff, it's different than what I was thinking was was good, but it's like, this is this goes back to what you're saying about like, it's so important, have diversity in who's making these lists. Because just because I have an awareness of like, what's good to me does not mean that I'm like, just like the arbiter of all good tastes, right? And like, and I'm not always going to recognize certain storytelling innovations and stuff in the same way. I'm not going to recognize these. I don't know, do you know what I'm saying?

Traci Thomas 1:14:06

Yes. And also, to your point, I think this is part of your point, is also that like, you're influenced by what you read. And so for your best things, it's what you're inputting. And so yes, you're not the arbiter of all good things, because your taste is influenced by the things that you've been told are good, and the things that you've decided are good based on what you've been told. And I think like, for me, a person who reads a lot more nonfiction, a lot of people I'm in community with on Bookstagram. I think that's why I bump up against a lot of fiction books that people love. Because what I think is good is based on what I've been told is good by the nonfiction that I consume. So like when the fiction bumps up against that for me, whether it's like there's not enough plot, because nonfiction usually has a lot of plot, especially what I like, which is investigative journalism. Like you're driving towards a thing, right or memoir. It's this one moment in time and we're talking about everything that happened, and then I get one A feelings character driven book. I'm like, This is not good. But it's not because it's not good. It's because my input bank and what I've decided is good based on what I've been told is good is shaping that. And so a list like this reinforces certain kinds of what's good and what's not good, because it reinforces a certain perspective on American air quotes or American standard literature canon, whatever. Okay, we're like out of time, but I have to ask this, this is my fun question for everybody. And I'm gonna take a few books off the table. You cannot say anything by Louise Erdrich because we all agree that that is a huge snob. You cannot say Gone Girl, because I've said it, Sara said it. So did Gilbert Cruz, everybody has said, Gone Girl. What is the one book you are adding to this list? And what book are you taking off to make space for it? Also, I'm going to add I will not say Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the book I'm taking off because I will take that book off instantly. And I don't think we should say that one because I think we all agree it is a it is a dud on the list. I feel like I keep hearing the same three books. Yeah, There There, something by Louise Erdrich and Gone Girl. So those ones I'm removing. Have fun.

I'm scrambling. I don't know if anyone else is feeling this way. I mean, absolutely. The book that I would add to the list is Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House. It definitely should have been added on there. The book that I am taking off. Can I take one off that I haven't read?

Sure. Listen, people could do whatever they want here with me.

Speaker 1 1:16:01

Perfect. The Great Believers. I don't know why people are so obsessed. Maybe I should go read it. So what there's my disclosure, you all know I haven't read it. I'm just I'm just doing it because we have to do it. So you have to do it.

Traci Thomas 1:16:53

Thank you. Thank you for taking me seriously.

Hunter McClendon 1:16:56

Okay, I have to I love Salvage the Bones.

Sara Hildreth 1:17:01

Hunter, don't do this.

Lupita Aquino 1:17:06

Walk it back.

Hunter McClendon 1:17:08

I love it. It's my favorite of hers. I would also keep I would also keep Men We Reaped. I do not know if I would keep Sing, Unburied, Sing. Which and I listen, that book was one of the great books of that year. I just don't know if I keep it. I'm sweating. I would probably put Fates and Furies in its place.

Sara Hildreth 1:17:34

I thought you were gonna take off Salvage the Bones. That's my favorite of hers too. It's just the best I think I do. I think that you're trying to be nice because then Jesmyn Ward still gets to two slots. But I love that she has three. I know people are upset that some authors got more than one and I think it's fun to be upset that certain authors got more than one but I think that really makes this like a Best Books list- like cutthroat Okay, I am gonna take off-

Traci Thomas 1:18:08

I have so many books to take off. I just want you guys to know I like have like 20 books and I'm like you can fucking go.

Sara Hildreth 1:18:14

Can you tell us some of yours Traci or you want us to get to do ours first?

Traci Thomas 1:18:17

I want you to do yours first and then I will share a handful of mine.

Sara Hildreth 1:18:20

Okay, I'm going to take off Bel Canto I love Anne Patchitt. I don't really like that particular one, I think Anne Patchitt deserves a spot on this list. But I'm not going to do a swapsies. I'm going to put A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki on this list instead. It's so good, it's experimental. It's kind of like autofiction kind of metafiction there's, it's like it's sweeping, but also just very weird and full of footnotes and I think this I think this list needs a little bit of weirdness and a little bit of experimenting. And that book is just, it's one of my favorites.

Traci Thomas 1:19:09

I love it. Okay, I'm gonna take three off the first one I'm going to take off immediately and this does not include taking off Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow; that is gone. That didn't even get published. Okay, it's in the trash can somewhere it's a draft. Okay, I'm taking off Middlesex, a book I have despised since the moment I read it the most boring book of my life. Goodbye. I am taking off Stay True. Another I found truly boring memoir. That was supposed to be a memoir that was gonna make me feel things about his friends murder, made me feel nothing except for annoyed. And then this is a book that I think is very good but does not belong on this list and is clearly a body of work award and it is A Mercy by Toni Morrison.

Sara Hildreth 1:20:00

Oh yeah.

Traci Thomas 1:20:01

I just am like she did her best work in the 20th century. And that is okay. I get it. You want to have her there? I actually really liked A Mercy. I thought it led to one of our best book club discussions ever on the podcast. But I also am just like, I don't know, here's what I'm adding. I'm adding Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, because I feel strongly he should be on the list. There is no Patrick Radden Keefe, without him that style of investigative journalism. I credit Jon Krakauer with I am adding Hunger Games, because fuck you hos Hunger Games is fucking perfect. I'm talking about fun. I'm giving you the first one. But after you read that you can read all three. And then I am going to add the Omnivore's Dilemma. Because I think that book was such a huge book when it came out. It's so interesting, it made food writing like elite in a way that it wasn't before that, and I feel like this that speaks to something both Jon Krakauer and Omnivore's Dilemma, speak to this moment of like things that were really popular earlier in the century, have gone out of vogue, even though they were like huge, huge bucks at the time. So those are the ones I'm adding, but there's plenty of other books I could take off. And actually all None, none of those three, were on my personal Top 10. I'm just adding them because I think that they deserve a spot on a list like this, like as a piece of the last 25ish years.

Sara Hildreth 1:21:31

The Hunger Games is one I've been thinking about a lot, because I did reread it this year. So yeah, reading it, it's it's going to be a classic like it. We're going to read it hundreds of years from now. It's so good. And there was no young adult, no genre when like we were growing, maybe you Hunter, because I know you're a baby. But there that didn't exist, like you read the middle grade books or whatever they were called. And then you got pushed off the deep end into adult books. And that invented an entire market.

Traci Thomas 1:22:06

Yeah. I love our list better already. Um, anything else? Anyone is just dying to get off their chest about this list?

Sara Hildreth 1:22:13

Well, Traci, I'm curious. Like, The Warmth of Other Suns was number two.

Traci Thomas 1:22:19

I love it for me. No, that's my that's a book of my life. Yeah, I didn't think it would be that high. I didn't think it'd be that high at all. But I was thrilled. thrilled.

Sara Hildreth 1:22:30

I think it's amazing. And I just really haven't heard people comment on that so much.

Traci Thomas 1:22:35

I think everybody agrees. I've heard I've heard some chitter chatter about my low friend middle francais friend. I've heard some chatter about Wolf Hall. But that number two spot I just, it's an impeachable book. I feel like if you have read it, even if you don't love it, you cannot deny the level of skill in storytelling, research commitment to the project, like it is such a behemoth of a thing. And so deserving. I know some people don't like it, but it is a book of my life. It is probably the book of my life.

Sara Hildreth 1:23:11

I think it's so cool that it was number two, very deserving. But based on everything we talked about, with like, consensus, and I guess I I didn't realize how widely read that was. And that just made me so happy to see it so high something that this list really got right.

Traci Thomas 1:23:32

Yeah, I guess we should finish on what did the list get right? So definitely that. Anything else?

Lupita Aquino 1:23:38

Oh, I love that we can end on hope. Because you're right. You're right.

Traci Thomas 1:23:41

I was gonna end on substituting shit out. But then Sara reminded me perhaps that I should try to find kindness and generosity in my deep, bitchy-ass soul. Okay, so we think they got that right. Anything else we think they got right?

Lupita Aquino 1:23:54

Justin Torres, We The Animals.

Sara Hildreth 1:23:57

Oh my gosh, so good.

Traci Thomas 1:23:59

I haven't read it. But I have it a signed copy because I met him at the LA Times Book Festival.

Sara Hildreth 1:24:03

It's short, Traci.

Traci Thomas 1:24:04

I know. It's so short. That's why I bought it. I was like, let me see if I like you before I go to Blackouts, which I also bought. But I'mma start there. What else did it get right?

Sara Hildreth 1:24:17

I'll say again, three Jesmyn Wards is awesome.

Hunter McClendon 1:24:20

Yeah, I was really happy to see certain books on here that we're going to be controversial picks either because of the work themselves or because of the the author's but I still felt like we're that the work itself was very impactful and and influential in all the ways that this list is talking about.

Traci Thomas 1:24:39

Yeah, I think the other thing that the list got right, which is where we started was the rollout. Yeah, they fucking mailed in 20 books a day. Because if they had just dropped 100 books, I would have read it and been like these people are idiots and then moved on. No, I spent every day thinking texting. Like I didn't. I'm so behind. done a deadline because I couldn't write last week, I just was like, tech, I could only write texts, and lists and lists. So I think they, I think, ultimately, they executed the thing they wanted to execute, which was make a list that would get people talking, that would get people paying attention to books that would get people fighting. And that's what these lists are built to do. And I think whether you love it or hate it, or like me both, I strongly love this list and extremely despise this list. And like, that's it. That's the that's the ask. And I feel like thank God.

Lupita Aquino 1:25:33

I mean, the little graphics generator too was really cool.

Traci Thomas 1:25:37

That was great, though. It was hard to see the books because some of them were so beat up and like, open I was like, like, when you'd get, I'd be like, what is that? Oh, actually I do know where to end. How many books did each of you read from the list?

Lupita Aquino 1:25:50

Okay, do you want me to go first? So I kept mine because I did do the, I've read and then I want to read. So I've read 32 on the list, and I want to read 29.

Traci Thomas 1:26:03

Oh, you want to read a lot. Okay, what about you, Sara?

Sara Hildreth 1:26:08

I've read 49. But I will say that there are some short story collections on this list that I have not read cover to cover, but I firmly believe if you've read half of the short stories in a collection, you can say you've read so and I said that I want to read 30 But I don't know if I really want to read all 30 I just wanted to keep track of those 30 I'll decide later if I really want to read them. But because it made you the little list. I was like I can't lose can't lose track of these guys.

Traci Thomas 1:26:44

Right right right.

Hunter McClendon 1:26:45

Um, I have finished 54 And I have read 50% of like 13 or 14 others and then I've read like 20 to 30% of like eight or nine others.

Sara Hildreth 1:26:57

Hunter also shared a tweet that like I've been dying laughing that since you did Hunter where you're like, I was like, I can't share my graphic because I can't admit which books I've only pretended to read.

Traci Thomas 1:27:17

I've read 31; two of those I DNFed. I read like over 100 pages of one of them. The other one I read it was short stories. I read the first two stories and I was like Life's too short. Okay, we've gotten so much over sorry everyone for wasting your time but I had to get these questions off and hopefully you're still listening and if you are thank you for supporting the podcast. And you can find Lupita Sara and hunter in the links in the show notes. I'm linking to all of their social medias, their sub stacks wherever they are. I will link to that if you're not following them or subscribe to their stuff. What the fuck is wrong with you? Honestly, why are you even listening to me if you don't ride with my homies but we love you all. Thank you all so thank you three for being here. I'm so grateful.

Lupita Aquino 1:28:05

Well, this was an honor and so much fun. I love you everybody here- Sara and Hunter.

Sara Hildreth 1:28:09

This was so fun. We should do this more often.

Traci Thomas 1:28:12

More lists! And everyone else, we will see you in the stacks.

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