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Great choices! Love your energy!

The Colony was incredible, I saw it blurred in the thumbnail and got so excited. Excellent taste :)

You need to put Dr Michael Heiser’s book “Unseen Realm” on the list.

So glad to see The Marriage Plot on your list! That book changed my life in a way too, and tuned me into the works of Barthes. ❤

Eh, 21st Century literature, I really don't like it. It's a bit of a turn towards anxious writing and more or less childish antics followed by infantile themes. I don't trust these writers' intentions - but maybe I'm just paranoid, haha, or far too critical for my own good. Or maybe my idealism doesn't translate well into an overwrought and tired world and literary tradition. Haha. Or maybe I'm just a prude....

Oh boy, the long, arduous road to self-discovery

Keep on asking, the more you ask, the more you will receive

By asking questions, we get to the answers.

Nice list. I have to put nonfiction in mine. The Cromwell trilogy by Hilary Mantel Ernest Hemingway: A Biography by Mary Dearborn The Force by Don Winslow Cultural Amnesia by Clive James Wellness by Nathan Hill From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter by Seamus McGraw The Ruins by Scott Smith Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

You're so adorable!

Love your list! I just started Never Let Me Go (about 50 pages in and loving it...and trying to emotionally prepare for it ruining me), and plan on reading some of the others you mentioned. Here's my list (in no particular order): Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel Circe - Madeline Miller The Housekeeper & the Professor - Yoko Ogawa The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan The English Understand Wool - Helen DeWitt All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr Just Kids - Patti Smith

I have had Mary Oliver’s Upstream on my coffee table all year. I really want to read it but I just haven’t been in that headspace yet. But now (after hearing you talk about it) I’m going to make it a priority! After I finish Breakfast at Tiffany’s 😊

I love it, people shoving the Times list to the curve and saying, no, no, here's MY list bitch! That's a good thing in a way, making up your own damn mind as the Oracle would say to Morpheus and the gang Mckenzie letting us know she can't resist that hot cup of chocolate ☕: Baldwin, Morrison, Adichie, Jones. Lord! 💓🧡 Haha Mary Oliver is a very interesting choice, since she's known for her poetry. Nice video!

DEEEEEEEEMON COPPERHEAD

Great list!

You mean to say this was your American modern classics. My five: mockingbird, blood meridian by Cormac McCarthy, the old man and the sea, on the road by jack keroauc, and catch 22.

So many books and so little time. Best wishes.

Hi! Good day! I wrote a novel, titled: Archangel world at war. I watched your informative videos and it's my pleasure that someday you will review my book on one of your vlogs. It was not edited yet, nevertheless I published it to major EReading apps like Amazon and Kobo. Thank you in advance. Hopefully I can send you a physical copy in the final format of my book in the future. God bless.

Hi! Good day! I wrote a novel, titled: Archangel world at war. I watched your informative videos and it's my pleasure that someday you will review my book on one of your vlogs. It was not edited yet, nevertheless I published it to major EReading apps like Amazon and Kobo. Thank you in advance. Hopefully I can send you a physical copy in the final format of my book in the future. God bless.

My favourite modern classic is The Color Purple by Alice Walker it's beautiful coming of age story but it's brutal in places.

Hi Kate, my name is Madi and I like your videos. I have a suggestion for you. You read so much, why don't you write something of your own?!

Seriously good choices.

Just found your channel and it is the third video I am watching ❤ I have never agreed 100% with any booktuber on this app! Love your taste in books❤

Nice list! I'm also a big fan of Vonnegut. My favorite book by him is actually Bluebeard, which I rarely hear people talk about. Also it's so funny I decided to watch this video right now when an hour ago I was actually rereading a couple chapters from Giovanni's Room and thinking about how sad it is😭 AND I was thinking about how similar CMBYN is to it lol. I saw an interview with Baldwin once where he said Giovanni's Room isn't necessarily about homosexuality as much as it's about "what happens to you when you cannot love", which I thought was very interesting. I also love his essay "Notes of a Native Son," and I want to read more by him. Also my favorite 20th century classics would be East of Eden by Steinbeck and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.

Liked and subbed. That Bakersfield quake was a surprise recently!

I’ve been reading more 19th century classics, so learning more about 20th century classics is just what I was looking for

Ah, that was my first Vonnegut! I read him in school because he was on a list of topics for a final exam (I was the only one who picked him). I became completely hooked! And the rest of your list is pretty good, too!

Great list! I still need to read Vonnegut. I think I have Breakfast of Champions somewhere on my shelves. A couple of favourite modern classics of mine - everything Steinbeck but the Cannery Row/Sweet Thursday duology is a good time and on the shorter side. I enjoyed Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight and The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato a lot too.

My five would be: Borges' short stories (especially the ones he wrote before he went blind). Lonsome Dove by Larry McMurtry The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty The Trial by Kafka The Lord of the Rings

I just finished The Fire Next Time yesterday! So educational and defo required reading to even start understanding how African Americans have fought through prejudice and hate. So good. And last week I read Giovannis Room and The Amen Corner. Both brilliant! I have Another Country on my bookshelf as well that I can’t wait to read. 😊

😎

1984 Rebecca Mrs Dalloway Sula The Secret History The Catcher in the Rye Giovannis Room American Psycho The Haunting of Hill House are my favourites 😊 It’s nice to see someone with similar reading taste to mine!

Pleased to know you're a James Baldwin and Toni Morrison fan 👍. Baldwin is experiencing a post-humous literary renaissance. In his own lifetime, however, he was not very popular amongst blacks/ white liberals in particular (like MLK) and spent many of his active years in Turkish exile where he wrote his books outside the "nightmare" of America. Something to keep in mind. Still, nice share!

I read Slaughterhouse-5 this year and I loved it. I really need to get to Cat’s Cradle, sounds so interesting!

I love how chill you are when there's an earthquake. I'm in the Midwest and I would be a basket case if there was an earthquake.

James Baldwin was indeed earth shakingly good.

Modern classics y'say? Yes I have a few from Faulkner to Joyce. I recently finished "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce and really liked it. I'm reading "In Search of Lost Time" right now and enjoying that as well. Not much else to say, but here's one of my 30 second poems (where I try to write a poem in 30 seconds, lol). The grimy rocks of sordid spells Cause such bodies to rumble And entreat the groves of light and thunder Toward the sound a bee of bumble. In flashed the eye of color and vision Beside the one who infers its Intellect To which perfection abides the image A Notion of the one and only dialect. Lol.

Ah! your birth month explains your sunny personality quite well! The enthusiasm to read worldly literatures; to be enraptured by them; your liveliness. Your resolve to finish the reading journey till you're exhausted to a white dwarf star. Tolkien was a staunch Catholic. If you see uncanny similarities to Genesis in The Silmarillion 💡, it becomes self-explanatory.And Vintage books are lovely, creatures aren't they? I've noticed myself, hmmm. Let's be honest McKenzie. Some of dem classic books are themselves big asses: Augustine's "City of God." "The Count of Monte Cristo." "The Tale of Genji." Just sayin🤣

Tolstoy is also my favorite writer!!! And I wonder if you like another brilliant Russia writer Dostoyevsky. They’re tied as my favorite writer 🎉🎉

Ok, about Ulysses... "Difficult" isn't the right word at all. Beowulf in its original is truly difficult, and language dense. Ulysses is just far more interesting with the subtext and the indistinct themes illuminated. The narrative itself is just a normal day in Dublin for these characters and how they weave together. But once the annotations are added, a whole new book comes alive for the reader. Kind of like those magic eye pictures that were popular in the 90s (might have to look those up if they're out of context for you). I used three external sources (again, not because it's difficult but because I love having multiple perspectives) - an audiobook, The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses by Patrick Hadtings (he has a great voice for this), a professor on TH-cam who gave a chapter-by-chapter class, and Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford. I also had fun talking with my brother who's dissertation was on Ulysses. As for The Divine Comedy (high school for me), I didn't read anything before I read this. I understood it just fine. In fact, the opposite direction may have worked better for me. I had no idea where it was going or why and that's probably what made it imprint for life. The "explanations" that came years later are only nebulous backfill.

It's not soo simple gettin McKenzie to adore a book. Isabel Allende is a good case in point. Alexandre Dumas ✅. Tricky really. You gotta sink to the melodramatic depths of the Titanic at the bottomless pit of the Atlantic. There's Bret Easton Ellis surface level narration: direct but superficial, and there's Tolstoy's layered complexity stretching its arms over generations, countless characters. You gotta avoid chalking up unlikable female characters too. I get the feelin bloviating prose isn't her cup of ☕. Like yeh! And please, don't throw a 1,000 page book on her lap. She'll just look at you in the eyes, tilt her head and say, "dude, this is so unnecessary. Trim down the excess trans fat, and it'll be aite."

O dear! Sounds like you've taken a dreary, long-winded road with no street signs to guide you along, which only adds to the sense of confusion. At least you've had some doughnuts to keep you chugging along.🍩

I would think you were unboxing trinkets for Christmas, so infectious is your enthusiasm at seeing the paradise of NYRB titles, in pristine condition, new and unread, waiting to be perused

It's quite fascinating to see a BookTuber get all excited over a prize list 🏆that passes over people's heads anyways.

Great reviews! Happy to see people shouting out the Greek plays and not just Homer

2:06 Hello, I started reading Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor. The title and the cover got me interested. I love litfic.

Ah, I felt that way about On the Road too - I only gave it 3 stars but it lives in my head rent free. I’ve since read The Dharma Bums and loved that. There’s something really meditative about Kerouac’s writing.

I feel like I would have liked the Scarlet Letter if it wasn't assigned to me in high school.

Lol. Mckenzie goes on a bit of a rabbit trail at about the two-minute mark, catches herself, and gets back on topic. Adorable.

Although not pre-20th century, one of my favorite classics is All Quiet on the Western Front. My sister watched me sob on the bed after I finished the book. Same with Where the Red Fern Grows. 🥲