Here's how many books on the NYTimes best books list are written by women

What you probably already know: The New York Times this week released a list of the Book Review’s best books since 2000, an overview of all the publication’s top picks of the 21st Century.

Why? It’s a fun list to peruse, especially if you’re looking for your next great read. If you want to support women writers, though, we added up how many of the authors in the fiction and nonfiction category were women. Turns out, it’s a pretty good showing.

The Book Review’s author list is 45% female authors, or 106 books out of 235 written by women. Worth noting: four of those books are all by Zadie Smith, who, it looks like has the best showing of all the authors of the 21st Century.

What it means: In the 19th century, only 10 percent of books in the Library of Congress have authors with female first names. By the 1970s, though, women were getting published as often as men, and by 2000, women published authors exceeded men, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. On the Times list, female authors began exceeding males on the yearly lists first in 2009 and now regularly it’s at least 50% female authors.

What happens now? The average female author has higher book sales than her male counterpart, and engagement rates for women writers are higher. This is likely tied to a significant gender gap when it comes to reading: In a 2018 study, 40% of girls reported reading 30 minutes a day while only 25% of boys did. As those kids grow up, one could only expect that the girls will gravitate toward women authors and shift the market even more toward women writers.