There are numerous best book lists knocking about to help us decide what to read next. The New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian/Observer, The Telegraph, The Booker Prizes, Faber & Faber, Penguin, and many others frequently push out book recommendation lists. And then there are the ratings on websites like Goodreads and Amazon to consider. Whose tastes do these lists and ratings reflect? Are they likely to reflect yours?
I embarked on a journey to understand how consistent book recommendations are across various sources. After all, what I define to be the best may differ from what you or critics consider the best reads. With that in mind, is there any point in consulting lists at all, beyond narrowing down the dizzyingly wide choice?
To get some clarity I compared the New York Times’ 100 best books of the 21st century list, published in July this year, with the ranking of the same 100 books based on readers’ ratings received on Goodreads and Amazon. The New York Times list has been derived from the opinions of 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, librarians, poets, booksellers, editors, critics, and journalists. In other words, the intellectual elite. The Amazon and Goodreads ranking of the same 100 books, a reliable proxy for the more mainstream tastes of the general public, was based on the proportion of the 152,374 Goodreads and 14,217 Amazon readers who had given each of these books a top rating of 5 (on a scale of 1 to 5).
My analysis revealed that there is a noteworthy divergence between the choices of the NYT’s opinion formers and those of the general public (see the weak correlation uncovered in graph 1 below). For example, the best rated book according to NYT’s list, “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante, was ranked 50 th on Goodreads and 91 st on Amazon. Furthermore, out of the top 18 books on the NYT best books list, only one made it into the top 18 according to Amazon and Goodreads readers (more about this later).
Interestingly, as graph 2 below shows, Amazon and Goodreads readers awarded 5-star ratings to the top NYT 100 books in a distinctly similar pattern, but no positive relationship emerged between either of these rankings and that given by NYT’s crème de la crème book lovers (see graph 1). In other words, readers who use Amazon and Goodreads are likely to rate books similarly but differently from the literary experts who decided what the best books of this century were for NYT’s list.
Graph 1: The weak correlation between NYT's best books ranking and Goodreads’ ranking of the same 100 books based on readers’ 5-star ratings
Graph 2: The strong correlation between Amazon and Goodreads readers' 5-star scores of the best 100 books of this century as defined by NYT
If you consider yourself a book connoisseur and a trailblazer when it comes to the written form, you may want to check out The New York Times’ best 100 books list. On the other hand, if you consider yourself more of a mainstream reader and want to read books that most of your acquaintances are likely to read too, then it might be best to be guided by Amazon and Goodreads recommendations.
The important thing I learned from interrogating these lists was that whether they reflect your taste may depend to a great degree on whether you consider yourself to be in the vanguard of book taste or more mainstream. Before engaging with a book recommendation list, ask yourself who has produced the ranking and whether their tastes are likely to reflect yours. If you think your tastes will be honoured in that list, then it is most certainly worth delving into.
One more question arose in my head, demanding an answer. Were there any books that readers and critics ranked equally highly?
I discovered that three books have been rated similarly highly by the crowds on Amazon/Goodreads and the literary experts on NYT. One book stands out as exceptional.
As we have established already, not many books unified the opinions of critics and ordinary book readers. However, there was one book that stood out as greatly admired by all. The Warmth of Other Suns, a historical non-fiction book by Isabel Wilkerson published in 2010 about the great migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West in the 20th century was ranked 2nd on NYT’s best list and third according to both Goodreads and Amazon. The New York Times’ review deemed it “intimate, stirring, meticulously researched and myth-dispelling” and “the most vital and compulsively readable work of history in recent memory.” I will be sure to read it!
Two other books, also non-fiction, are worth your attention for they too ranked highly in all three rankings. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, exploring the housing crisis in the US through the lens of eight Milwaukee families, was rated 21st on the NYT’s best book list and 8th and 10th on Amazon and Goodreads rankings. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, introducing the reader to the lives of people experiencing “deep hardship in their full, lush humanity” was ranked 25th in the NYT best books list and 18th and 22nd according to Amazon and Goodreads readers’ ranking of the same 100 books.
So, if you are looking for your next book and are into American history and current affairs, consider one of these three books, all of which are anchored in individual human stories. You are unlikely to go wrong.
A note of gratitude: I am deeply grateful to Richard Addy and Hannan Rais for compiling the database of 100 books with all rankings/ratings as well as producing the graphs used in this essay.
