HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DEAR ERIC HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUUU MAY GOD BLESS YOU MAY GOD BLESS YOU MAY GOD BLESS YOU HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUU.
Happy Birthday! This was a wonderful video! I haven't dared to go back and look at my reading journals from teenage years and twenties. On one hand I'm afraid I would be embarrassed about my tastes. On the other hand I read so many more classics and modern classics then than I do now. Now that I've finally gathered my courage and made a (my first ever?) comment, I think it's high time I introduced myself and gave thanks. I'm a 40+ year old librarian from Finland who has read your blog and watched your videos for several years. You have introduced me to so many wonderful books over the years. Thank you so much! And as always, you have enlarged my TBR. A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell sounds great, and I've never read it.
Thank you! It's wonderful to meet you and I'm so glad I've been able to give you some book suggestions. I remember enjoying that Orwell novel immensely so I hope you do as well. Oh and I think it's still worth going back to see how your tastes have changed and things you might have forgotten.
Happy Birthday. That's really cool you found that list. I can't remember my 20's lol! Added a lot to my long list of books to try. Would love to see if you reread your 20's books if you still really like them. I have no time to reread. There is only one book I read twice which was to kill a mockingbird only reread it because I forgot what I read back in the 1980's and when the author died and her other book came out in 2015 or so I reread that book. There are two books I have on my 50/50 list to reread Gone with the Wind and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Those I read in high school and remember liking them but now that I'm turning 50 I am not sure I will love them.
This was an interesting video to watch Eric. You already had a massive reading done by 20! I have added The Waves, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and A Handful of Dust to my TBR. And I shall start Joyce Carol Oates with Mysteries of Winterthurn. Thank you for walking us back through your teenage reading days, and wish you a Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!!! Great video. There are so many books I loved when I read them, but years later I struggle to recall much more than the most basic outline of the plot. I think the ones that should be on the 'favourite of all time' list are the ones that you revisit for the joy of it, and the ones that have left an enduring and vivid recollection, even if only in snippets.
Happy 40th Birthday Dear Eric! I had this same kind of list when I was my 20 yr. old pretentious self...I think we all do it for our human need to fit in and feel smart? Your ability to review and laugh at yourself so openly is becoming, ...I see you as genuine and fluid...like a river. In my eyes it's perfectly okay to change your mind...about anything :) I share many of your favorites (the waves especially) and now have many new one's to add to my insurance list of reading to come! Enjoy the moments....60 will be here before you can blink! xo
Thank you! I think you're right that we want to make these lists to position where we stand in amongst the reading community but also to process our thoughts and feelings about what we've read.
Hope you had a lovely day Eric, I had great fun watching all your birthday tags. I’ve only read 28 on this list and I’m over twice your current age so am awed at the reading you got done so young. Looks like you have quite a bit of rereading to do by the way 😉! There are many books I look back on that from time that I barely remember and wonder how I feel about them now, some rereading of my own is in order.,
I joined librarything back in 2011, Eric, and catalogued my books (now 13,000 and counting) and it helped bring the community of readers back closer to me and I find that the enthusiasm and sincerity of your channel has a similar invigorating impact on my attitude to literary fiction. Back in 2011 I did a list of my own 100 favourite novels and many from that list will survive even my last 11 years of reading but you have prompted an update. One of my biggest decisions was always which book by a particular author to include - which Austen? which Dickens? which Hardy? which Greene? which Zola? which Maugham?
Happy Birthday, Eric. I enjoy your reviews and looking over an old list of favourites is always curious. No. I doubt that much of what I found interesting at the age of 20 would still be on my favourites now at the age of 75. However, that doesn’t mean that the exercise has no value. I loved certain reads as a young man, but after almost a lifetime of living and experiencing, there are other things that grab my attention now. Thank you for sharing. I will continue to follow you and will share some things with you.
This is so amazing that you documented that! Being over 40 myself (btw happy birthday!!) I wish I could remember all the great books I've read....I can remember a handful of them that I truly loved, but this was a fun video, I love the hindsight perspective!
Happy birthday, Eric! I love the concept of this video, and also that you had the foresight to write a top 100 books list at age 20! ❤️ Hope it has been an amazing birthday x
I came across this video just now.. but enjoyed it just as i would had when you first posted it. I think classic books have a way of speaking to us.. i have read so many books over the time as my younger self. Ive realized the understanding of a story might have not that time made as much as sense as it does now. I think as we grow learn n with experience so many things makes sense or is relateable. I would say you definately should tell your youngerself hey that one passion i still have and now you have your followers encouraged to read thsm too.😊 Happy Belated Birthday 🎉🎉
Happy belated birthday! This was a really interesting video, and it really made me want to make a list of my favourites so I can look back on those in a few decades and compare.
I'm sorry I'm late Eric, but I hope you had a wonderful birthday! May all your dreams and wishes come true!! (I also love your 100 favourite books). They still can stand the test of time.
delighted that two delillo novels made it on to your list, "Underworld" was on my birthday video to you today and I didn't even know you were a fan! Also "American Pastoral" made it on to my all time top ten books for the Booktube tag of the same. Skin Lane "Squeal" - I love this book! BTW, happy 40th Birthday!
Perfect timing for me to watch this video! I am twenty and just in the past three years began reading for pleasure again so I’m definitely going to make a list of my favorite books
Happy Birthday! Really enjoyable video! I hadn't even heard of most of these books when I was 20! May the next 20 years bring you 100 new favourite books :)
Happy Happy Birthday Eric! Thank you for this wonderful channel and tons of great recommendations. Fantastic video as always. Regarding your Dostoyevsky question - that’s the scene from ‘Crime and Punishment’, the widow of Marmeladov after his death took her kids to the street and in the desperate attempt forced them to dance and sing in public. Now let me go back to the video and listen to your opinions on those books.
Thanks Kamil! I knew you'd be able to help me with your recent rereading project! Sorry I didn't get into more in-depth commentary in this video but with a list of 100 it'd have made it hours long! :)
I really enjoyed this video Eric so thanks for doing it. I'm sure I hadn't read 100 books by the time I was 20 and even now think it is a good reading year when I read more than 24 books. Nevertheless, I made a list like this when I was 30 and there is an amazing amount in common with your list - Garcia Marquez (100 years is still my all time favourite but I should reread), Dostoyevsky, Toni Morrison. I also had Riddley Walker, Midnight's Children, Waterland, and some Milan Kundera on my top 20 that might still deserve a place there. Now in my 50s there are some great books that I want to add in somehow - Austerlitz, How to be Both, Lincoln in the Bardo, Remembering Babylon and Under the Skin come to mind immediately and I totally agree about The Unconsoled. It has been fun thinking about this - and each time I start a new book there is always the chance that it might end up as another for this list!
A very belated happy 40th!! How lovely to have this list to look back on. I'd love to know what I'd have said aged 20. I want to look up more about the titles you whizzed through at the end! Pretentious 20s or not, you've still read an amazing amount of books that would intimidate me - silly to get intimidated I know.
Thanks so much! And no reason to feel intimidated. Several books on the list I barely remember so it makes me question sometimes how much we absorb of what we read, but I guess we pick and choose moments that feel the most impactful.
This was such a delightful and nostalgic video and I so surprised to know that JCO only became your favourite author after you were 20. There are some books here that I would leave to my younger self too but I really need to re-read The Waves because I was too immature for it at that time and I didn't understand a thing! A big birthday kiss from Portugal, Eric!
Happy Birthday! I think I had a list like that once, but I´ve lost it. I have a list of favorite authors, and the ones that are added to the list usually stay there for good. Garcia Marques is amongst them (I especially love his short stories, have you read them as well?) and Neil Gaiman is the newest addition
Happy birthday! This was a fun video, it made me want to read more classics again. I've always thought I would love The Brothers Karamazov, but I've never read it because of it's intimidating size. Stefan Zweig is a great writer, I love his short stories. If I had to pick a few favorite classics and modern books I think I would pick the following classics: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo), A Country Doctor's Notebook (Mikhail Bulgakov), Summer Lightning (P.G. Wodehouse), and the following modern books: Brodeck's Report (Philippe Claudel), The People in the Trees (Hanya Yanagihara), The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Louis de Bernieres). But if you asked me again tomorrow the answer would probably change. In 20 years I would imagine it would change quite a lot. Now I have to go check out some of your newer favorites, there were many I have never heard of. Hope you have a wonderful birthday.
Thank you! Zweig's biographies and nonfiction work is equally fascinating in how he engages with the literary community and history. I've not read any of those classics so they are ones I need to get to as well. :)
Thanks and yeah that novel was an oddity but I guess he was always interested in how his ideas about behaviour might be applied in a practical way and this was his theory about how an ideal community might work (but with very dodgy ideas about child care - eek!)
happy milestone birthday eric! i'd say even allowing for youthful "pretension" if you want to call it that that's a list of mostly very good works.... i haven't read but based on earlier testimony by shawn the book maniac now have mrs. caliban on my pile and with your added endoresement hope to get to it soon... i had to laugh when you lifted up winterthurn because it was there that i parted ways with oates for some time...i had read and loved "them" and read everything i could find by her until "bellefleur" and after that stopped reading her as i wanted realism, realism, realism at that time...have long since returned to reading and enjoying oates and now will consider returning to her "gothic saga"...maybe next summer..
Thank you. Oh that's great! Oddly, when I first read 'them' I didn't connect with it as much as many of her other books (even though it's one of her most lauded novels). I'll be so interested to hear what you think if you revisit some of her more imaginative gothic fiction.
i'll keep you posted and that's very interesting that you didn't connect with "them"...i immediately pictured the different voices of j c oates representing different aspects of her personality...
Man...you read all of these before you were 20??!?!?! That blows my mind. I was wasting time reading complete garbage, lol. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is DEFINITELY one of my favorites of all time. I would like to reread it as it has been ages. Happy birthday!!!
Yay! I read Breath by Tim Winton when I was 70 and was inspired to take up surfing - great to see it getting an airing. Also Woolf's The Waves - just heaven to let it wash over you. I'm going to be 80 soon and was thinking which book I would choose to take to prison/care home and it would have to be Proust - megapretentious maybe, but I am on my third visit to his wonderful jewel-box world and am sitting on the back-step in the sun, laughing out loud. Hope the sun is shining where you are!
Happy Birthday Eric, and i must say that this is a fun experiment and I should do it for my future self because I am currently 21 and think my favorite novel of all time is war and peace by Tolstoy. Here is to many more years, enjoy your day!
Thank you! I hope you're making lists of your favourite books now that you can look back on in many years to come to see how your tastes might have changed.
Very Happy Birthday wishes to you. What a fascinating thing to do, rethinking your favorite book list from half your life ago. I've avoided rereading many books I loved from my 20's because of being embarrassed at how naive or emotionally immature I'd find myself back then. Did you find in doing this experiment that you were remembering which books you had an emotional connection to, as opposed to establishing your college classic reading intellectual base? I found in my college years deciding not to be an English major because I loved reading books I self discovered as opposed to forcing myself to read what I considered then to be dusty old classics that wouldn't touch my deepest being and confusion as much as being intellectual masterbatory exercises. God talk about being pretentious. Anyway I loved books and feel writers had a gigantic influence on shaping who I am and how curious I find the world and people. Now in my 60's I'm discovering the dry classics I'd avoided are speaking to my older self in profound ways. And I've taken several books and writers you've discussed here from your 20 year old reading list that I want to read now, like Woolf's "The Waves", and Saramago's "Blindness". Speaking of Camus' "The Stranger" have you read "The Brave Genius" about him and scientist Jacques Monod during the Resistance? It made me revisit and "get" "The Stranger". Again, Happy Birthday, and keep up the great work of sharing great books and writers both new and established.
Thank you! Yes exactly, that's why I wanted to go through the list to see which ones I recalled having a real connection to and how there were others I did read but which left me cold or which I might not have understood but I still felt the need to list as a favourite for pretentious reasons. No doubt they did shape me in subtle ways I'll never understand and if I went back to reread them now I'd probably get so much more from them. I haven't read that book about Camus. Sounds really interesting!
Happy birthday!! :D This was such a fantastic look at your 'favourite' books. I think lists like these are such a fantastic way of looking at how reading changes over time. It's always so tough to really narrow down books which mean the most to us. After all, a lot of what makes a book a favourite is how much it sticks with us. Also, I think we're all guilty of favouring pretentious books at some stage. :P
I just recently found your TH-cam channel. I love your videos so much! You have the kindest, most gentle personality! I wish we could be friends in real life. 🤗 I know this is an older video but I've been binge watching your older videos. Anyway, I hope life is amazing for you and that you're having an awesome day!! 🤗
@@EricKarlAnderson I am having a great day and I'm currently reading "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared." I'm on chapter 5 right now and so far, it's been quite the adventure! 😊
When you got to catcher in the rye, I anticipated what you were going to say. I read the book when I was 40. I was born the year it came out and so many people recommended the book. However I just didn’t connect to it. I tried understand from a person perspective from that year/time, still it was hard to connect. I’m about to turn 60, will re-read it to see if something of my life experiences would make the book different for me. I’m not sure if being female makes it a difference but I will see. I’m doing a short novel tour, and will make a list for myself. Which by the way I’m reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s “The Book Shop” I love it. Thank you for doing your TH-cam channel. 📚
It's interesting to hear you felt that way. I think there are certain books which just aren't for us no matter when or how we read them and that's fine. It's probably better to focus on the books you do really connect with. And I'm so glad you're loving and connecting with Fitzgerald's novel! 📚
Hello Eric! I'm new to your channel and I just want to let you know, your videos are awesome! I really enjoy many of the books you talk about too! And this is late, very late....but...happy belated birthday!
happy birthday mate! Conrad actually gets better when you get older, because as young adult all these dramas seems quite artificial and produced and eventually your empathy grows to the point you can identify with these artificial, produced dramas and enjoy :) Burmese Days is probably the only book I have thrown out of the window :)
Happy Birthday Eric. I turned 40 last July. We all start questioning ourselves and our tastes and our personal histories in our 40's and start looking back. I've been doing it a lot lately. Heard of most of these authors although I may not have heard of all of the titles not read many of the classics that are in the 20's list, I keep putting it off. I have a list on the wall of the top 100 books chosen by Periene Press readers/subscribers.
It's the Peirene Readers' list of 100 translated books that everyone should read. These are the first Twenty. The Book of Chameleons by Jose' Eduardo Agualusa, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, The House Of Spirits by Isabel Allende, The Man Who Walked Through Walks by Marcel Ayme', Cousin Bette by Honore' de Balzac, They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy, Concrete by Thomas Bernhard, Moment Of Freedom by Jens Bjorneboe, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, The Last Honour Of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll, The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, by Italo Calvino, The Outsider, by Albert Camus, Axel, by Bo Carpelan, Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas, Brodeck's Report, by Philippe Claudel, Wonder by Hugo Claus, No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai,
21-40. The Foundling Boy, by Michel Delon, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Dobin, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Lady Of The Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, The Lover, by Marguerite Duras, The Crime Of Father Amaro, by Jose' Maria Eca de Queiros, The Name Of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, God Dies By The Nile by Nawal El Saadawi, Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada, The Days Of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante, The Temptation Of Saint Anthony, by Gustave Flaubert, Effi Briest, by Theodor Fontane, Homo Faber, by Max Frisch, That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana, by Carlo Emilio Gadda, One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Jose' de la Concordia Garcia Marquez, Kalpa Imperial, by Angelica Gorodischer, Someone To Run With, by David Grossman, The Death Of A Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson, Hunger, by Knut Hamsun, The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer.
41-60. The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat, The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse, The Iliayd by Homer, Too Loud A Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal, The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson, The Palace Of Dreams, by Ismail Kadare, The Garden Of the Departed Cats, by Bilge Karasu, Strange Weather In Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami, Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, Fatelessness, by Imre Kertesz, Yalo, by Elias Khoury, A Death In The Family, by Karl Ove Knausgard, Memories Of the Future, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Immortality, by Milan Kundera, The Dwarf, by Par Lagerkvist, The Saga Of Gosta Berling, by Selma Lagerlof, The Fish Can Sing, by Halldor Laxness, Near To The Wild Heart, by Clarice Lispector, What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?, by Antonio Lobo Antunes, Samarkand, by Amin Maalouf.
61-80. Embers, by Sandor Marai, New Finnish Grammar, by Diego Marani, A Heart So White, by Javier Marias, Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima, The Discovery Of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch, Cities Of Salt, by Abdelrahman Munif, Kafka On The Shore, by Haruki Murakami, The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil, Fire In The Blood, by Irene Nemirovsky, Talking to Ourselves, by Andres Neuman, The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh, A Tale Of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz, Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, Dictionary Of The Khazars, by Milorad Pavic, Here's to you, Jesusa! by Elena Poniatowska, Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais, The Patience Stone, by Atiq Rahimi, All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo, The Unmade Bed, by Francoise Sagan.
I think the dancing children scene is in Crime + Punishment. I listened to Moby Dick and i was surprised to find that I was really enjoying it and getting swept up in the story. I do hope you give it a try! I think there is just something about it that takes me back in time, to my youth. To when stories were grander and (perhaps due to my limited reading experience as youngster) the writing was truly magnificent. I definitely want a copy of the book so I can read it with my eyeballs! Tho money is much too tight to spend it on anything other than the necessities - no matter how much I plead, "Reading is like breathing! You are no longer alive when you stop doing it!"
Fascinating list, and interesting reappraisals! I don’t agree about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, though: I find it to be compulsory reading. Everyone swooning about Paulo Coelho’s The alchemist should gear up to a short novel that really plumb the depths of human existence.
Which Virginia Woolf novel would you recommend for a first time Woolf reader? The most "normal one" . I loved A Room of Ones Own and a biography of her and her letters but I tried Orlando, I think, and couldnt get into it.
Many happy returns to start with and thanks for the selection of books. You call yourself pretentious in some of your choices but I would say naive. The Russian phase is a must when you're young. I agree with your choice of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment but I would add The Idiot (I know the list is not mine to add anything to), Lolita is one of the all-time greats and was surprised at your doubt. As you have some Jean Genet on your list then you must read Edmund White's biography of Genet, which is in itself a work of art. Not only do we get to learn a lot about Genet but also about the whole French prison system which made Genet's only film Un Chant d'Amour much more understandable (technically speaking) for me.
Thanks! I think doubt I expressed is just me feeling I put it on the list because I felt I needed to rather than how I really connected or didn't connect with a book. I'm sure if I reread books like Lolita and those by Dostoyevsky now I'd get so much more out of them. And I've meant to read White's biography of Genet for years but I guess the size of it has kept making me put it off. :)
Happy birthday, good sir. 40 was a big one for me - had a big party in the wine room at the FireRock. And you should use this video as a goad to do the Booktube Top Tens Tag and add your selections to the data. I could probably count on one hand the number of these I had read by age 20.
My religious twenty-something self thought The Brothers Karamazov was the greatest novel of all time. My atheist fifty-something self re-read it and found it to be little more than religious propaganda. By contrast, Crime and Punishment stood the test of time. I noticed you had several Annie Dillard works but not The Living. That's my favorite of hers, read in my thirties, and I still think of the characters sometimes.
How coincidental...I'm re-reading Heart of Darkness right now. I loved Brothers Karamazov so much. I remember every summer I would read what I called My Summer Project...BK, Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations (still love all of these)and some more. Love/Cholera is my favorite Garcia Marquez. Such a great list and so many memories. Thanks for sharing this.
Oh and on you new books, I read Tin Man and loved it so much that I immediately re-read it and got more out of it. Happy 40 and I can't wait to see what you think in 20 years!
Interesting! I just finished For The Time Being by Dillard and also agree that it doesn’t feel like an exact knockout in comparison to her other works. Is Peter Cameron here the same author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You? Just finished that one as well and found it a mixed bag, but I’m still interested in Cameron’s work since. An impressive list to your 20yr old self! Happy birthday too! : ) 🎂
Eric Karl Anderson it is! I thought it was okay, but I thought it was subliminally creating a discussion about adolescence in a post 9/11 era, but that’s me probably reading too much into it!
Interesting video. Even more interesting is that you typed them all on paper. I can understand... I am a huge list maker. Happy Birthday Eric!! I hope your birthday is as special as you are!! You look great in a suit. :D
Happy birthday! I hope the day was utterly splendid for you. I still thank you every day for getting me reading again. Oh and ps the 40s are the most fantastic years..
Happy belated birthday!! I loved the idea of this video....I agree with what you said how our attitudes towards books changes, I loved the Twilight saga but as I got older I saw the problems with it :)
Thank you! It is interesting how those changes happen and we can almost have a division in our mind between how we objectively think of a book and our emotional attatchment to it as something that meant a lot at one time in our lives.
Happy birthday, Eric! Loved your reaction when Dostojevski showed up on your list. Crime and Punishment is such a masterpiece. We agree on Melville. Moby-Dick's scene with Ishmael and Queequeg sharing the bed was probably the best part of the novel. Didn't end up liking the novel that much, although oddly it's one that has stayed with me in my thoughts. Absolutely loved Bartleby the Scrivener! I was so surprised to see a Henry James novel on your list and furthermore to hear that you still like the novel - your negative feelings about his writing style had given the impression you totally dislike his works. I still need to get to Mrs. Caliban! Been meaning to pick up ever since I heard Bigalbooks talk about it and you also recommended it when I left a comment on the video. Just can't get my hands to it here in Finland. In fact, I should just order it from bookdepository, right now. A big YAY for The Unconsoled!
Thank you! I know with a lot of these books that if I were to read them now I'd discover so much more that I missed when I first read them. I admire aspects of James' writing but I just find them so hard going! :) Oh, let me know what you think of Mrs Caliban when you get a copy and you get time to read it. I'd love to reread The Unconsoled.
I turn twenty in a couple of months and I've come back to this video. It stuck in my mind since I first watched it. I think I'm going to do this! It'll be really interesting to see how my tastes change in ten/twenty/thirty years. Thankfully going to uni killed off my pretentious phase very early on as I realised how much I disliked those around me who acted like they had never read a book for fun in their entire lives. Then I realised I was one of those people! But who knows, maybe future me will call bullshit...
That's great! It's a really fun exercise and way of having a conversation with yourself about what books matter the most to you. I was probably being quite harsh on my younger self and felt honestly passionate about many of these books. Just be sure to keep your list safe somewhere so you can find it again in 10 or 20 years! :)
I've literally just bought The Waves and To the Lighthouse this week. Never read before so is good to hear this. I totally get what you mean about pretentiousness. I'm really enjoying "Girl, Woman, Other" at the moment but I don't think it's an amazing creative achievement interms of style of writing etc. It's quite clunky and crude characterisation in places but I'm just enjoying it so I'm impressed that the (sometimes stuffy) Booker judges went for it. Good to hear someone having the courage to say that about the Great Gatsby. I was totally underwhelmed by it. (personally I wouldn't bother rereading it. Your memory serves you well 😂)
I still love "The Edible Woman," though it isn't one of her best novels, but it's the lightest of her works. I also really liked "Blindness" by Saramago.
Happy birthday, Eric! This was a super entertaining video and I've come away with some exciting recommendations from your 20 year old self as well as your 40 year old self, so I think there's merit in both of you! Haha. Also, this is perhaps a very unpopular opinion but I love pretentious books, so I support your 20 year old hahaha. I've always wanted to do a list like that but because my classics knowledge is not very prolifict (I'm trying to change that), I always feel like I don't have "good enough books" that would fit that category. It's dumb that I second-guess myself and my favourite books and how I feel about them, but maybe I'm myself being pretentious? Haha. Thanks for the video and hope you had a great b-day!
Thank you! I wasn't meaning so much to claim that these books are pretentious in themselves, but the fact I read them and didn't enjoy them as much as I expected but still felt the need to claim them as a favourite is pretentious. But it's a privledge of readers that they can have the opinion some "classic" books are overrated. The wonderful thing about rereading though is discovering things you missed on the first go and I'm sure with a lot of these I missed many ideas and themes that my younger self didn't understand. :)
You had 100 favourite books by the age of 20. Whaaat. I had barely read 100 books at 20
“Me being young and pretentious...” I love how real you are.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DEAR ERIC
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUUU
MAY GOD BLESS YOU
MAY GOD BLESS YOU
MAY GOD BLESS YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUU.
Thank you!
Happy Birthday! 🎂 Pretentious or not, I love that your 20 year old self was organized enough to actually rank 100 titles. 😎
I’m not sure I had read 100 books of any kind at age 20!
Thanks! :)
Happy Birthday! This was a wonderful video! I haven't dared to go back and look at my reading journals from teenage years and twenties. On one hand I'm afraid I would be embarrassed about my tastes. On the other hand I read so many more classics and modern classics then than I do now.
Now that I've finally gathered my courage and made a (my first ever?) comment, I think it's high time I introduced myself and gave thanks. I'm a 40+ year old librarian from Finland who has read your blog and watched your videos for several years. You have introduced me to so many wonderful books over the years. Thank you so much! And as always, you have enlarged my TBR. A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell sounds great, and I've never read it.
Thank you! It's wonderful to meet you and I'm so glad I've been able to give you some book suggestions. I remember enjoying that Orwell novel immensely so I hope you do as well.
Oh and I think it's still worth going back to see how your tastes have changed and things you might have forgotten.
Happy Birthday. That's really cool you found that list. I can't remember my 20's lol! Added a lot to my long list of books to try. Would love to see if you reread your 20's books if you still really like them. I have no time to reread. There is only one book I read twice which was to kill a mockingbird only reread it because I forgot what I read back in the 1980's and when the author died and her other book came out in 2015 or so I reread that book. There are two books I have on my 50/50 list to reread Gone with the Wind and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Those I read in high school and remember liking them but now that I'm turning 50 I am not sure I will love them.
This was an interesting video to watch Eric. You already had a massive reading done by 20! I have added The Waves, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and A Handful of Dust to my TBR. And I shall start Joyce Carol Oates with Mysteries of Winterthurn. Thank you for walking us back through your teenage reading days, and wish you a Happy Birthday!
Thanks so much! Please let me know what you think about any of these when you get a chance to read them.
Happy Birthday!!! Great video. There are so many books I loved when I read them, but years later I struggle to recall much more than the most basic outline of the plot. I think the ones that should be on the 'favourite of all time' list are the ones that you revisit for the joy of it, and the ones that have left an enduring and vivid recollection, even if only in snippets.
Thank you! That's part of the reason why I keep a blog so I can go back to it when I can't remember what I liked (or disliked) about a book. :)
Happy Birthday. I loved the video. Thanks!!!
Happy 40th Birthday Dear Eric! I had this same kind of list when I was my 20 yr. old pretentious self...I think we all do it for our human need to fit in and feel smart? Your ability to review and laugh at yourself so openly is becoming, ...I see you as genuine and fluid...like a river. In my eyes it's perfectly okay to change your mind...about anything :) I share many of your favorites (the waves especially) and now have many new one's to add to my insurance list of reading to come! Enjoy the moments....60 will be here before you can blink! xo
Thank you! I think you're right that we want to make these lists to position where we stand in amongst the reading community but also to process our thoughts and feelings about what we've read.
Hope you had a lovely day Eric, I had great fun watching all your birthday tags. I’ve only read 28 on this list and I’m over twice your current age so am awed at the reading you got done so young. Looks like you have quite a bit of rereading to do by the way 😉! There are many books I look back on that from time that I barely remember and wonder how I feel about them now, some rereading of my own is in order.,
I joined librarything back in 2011, Eric, and catalogued my books (now 13,000 and counting) and it helped bring the community of readers back closer to me and I find that the enthusiasm and sincerity of your channel has a similar invigorating impact on my attitude to literary fiction. Back in 2011 I did a list of my own 100 favourite novels and many from that list will survive even my last 11 years of reading but you have prompted an update. One of my biggest decisions was always which book by a particular author to include - which Austen? which Dickens? which Hardy? which Greene? which Zola? which Maugham?
Happy happy birthday Eric. Hope you had a great day! I’m amazed at the range of books you read by age 20.
Thank you!
Eric, your videos are so refreshing. Thank you again for your right-on-target reviews!
Thank you! 📚
Happy Birthday, Eric. I enjoy your reviews and looking over an old list of favourites is always curious. No. I doubt that much of what I found interesting at the age of 20 would still be on my favourites now at the age of 75. However, that doesn’t mean that the exercise has no value. I loved certain reads as a young man, but after almost a lifetime of living and experiencing, there are other things that grab my attention now. Thank you for sharing. I will continue to follow you and will share some things with you.
Love your videos! You influence my reading list constantly. Thank you - you beautiful man.
Happy birthday Eric, hope you have a wonderful year! Thanks for your insightful discussions about the books you read.
This is so amazing that you documented that! Being over 40 myself (btw happy birthday!!) I wish I could remember all the great books I've read....I can remember a handful of them that I truly loved, but this was a fun video, I love the hindsight perspective!
Thanks!
Goodmorning Eric! Happy Birthday!!! 40, what a beautiful age! Thank you for sharing this moment with us
Thanks!
Happy Birthday Eric! I love your channel so much and am glad to have discovered booktube - and you - in the last few months.
Thank you!
Happy birthday, Eric! I love the concept of this video, and also that you had the foresight to write a top 100 books list at age 20! ❤️ Hope it has been an amazing birthday x
Thank you! I had a great time and thanks again for your video! :)
I came across this video just now.. but enjoyed it just as i would had when you first posted it. I think classic books have a way of speaking to us.. i have read so many books over the time as my younger self. Ive realized the understanding of a story might have not that time made as much as sense as it does now. I think as we grow learn n with experience so many things makes sense or is relateable. I would say you definately should tell your youngerself hey that one passion i still have and now you have your followers encouraged to read thsm too.😊 Happy Belated Birthday 🎉🎉
Thank you! 📚
Happy birthday! What a fascinating video!
Thanks Steve!
Happy belated birthday! This was a really interesting video, and it really made me want to make a list of my favourites so I can look back on those in a few decades and compare.
Thank you! I think it's a great thing to do.
Happy birthday!! This is a great video and it made me want to compile a list of my favorite books.
I'm sorry I'm late Eric, but I hope you had a wonderful birthday! May all your dreams and wishes come true!! (I also love your 100 favourite books). They still can stand the test of time.
Thank you!
delighted that two delillo novels made it on to your list, "Underworld" was on my birthday video to you today and I didn't even know you were a fan! Also "American Pastoral" made it on to my all time top ten books for the Booktube tag of the same. Skin Lane "Squeal" - I love this book!
BTW, happy 40th Birthday!
Perfect timing for me to watch this video! I am twenty and just in the past three years began reading for pleasure again so I’m definitely going to make a list of my favorite books
Happy Birthday! Really enjoyable video! I hadn't even heard of most of these books when I was 20! May the next 20 years bring you 100 new favourite books :)
Happy birthday, Eric! Cheers to many, many more years and bookish content :) I have loved watching all your birthday tags! :)
Thank you! I'm so chuffed at all those videos - so sweet!
Happy birthday. Isn't it fun to see how you've changed over the years... matured, I'd say and your tastes have become more refined.
Thank you and thank you for the wonderful video! :)
Happy Birthday ....may you have many happy returns. Please go out and have a wonderful time and celebrate !! Lee K.
Happy Happy Birthday Eric! Thank you for this wonderful channel and tons of great recommendations. Fantastic video as always. Regarding your Dostoyevsky question - that’s the scene from ‘Crime and Punishment’, the widow of Marmeladov after his death took her kids to the street and in the desperate attempt forced them to dance and sing in public. Now let me go back to the video and listen to your opinions on those books.
Thanks Kamil! I knew you'd be able to help me with your recent rereading project!
Sorry I didn't get into more in-depth commentary in this video but with a list of 100 it'd have made it hours long! :)
I really enjoyed this video Eric so thanks for doing it. I'm sure I hadn't read 100 books by the time I was 20 and even now think it is a good reading year when I read more than 24 books. Nevertheless, I made a list like this when I was 30 and there is an amazing amount in common with your list - Garcia Marquez (100 years is still my all time favourite but I should reread), Dostoyevsky, Toni Morrison. I also had Riddley Walker, Midnight's Children, Waterland, and some Milan Kundera on my top 20 that might still deserve a place there. Now in my 50s there are some great books that I want to add in somehow - Austerlitz, How to be Both, Lincoln in the Bardo, Remembering Babylon and Under the Skin come to mind immediately and I totally agree about The Unconsoled. It has been fun thinking about this - and each time I start a new book there is always the chance that it might end up as another for this list!
A very belated happy 40th!! How lovely to have this list to look back on. I'd love to know what I'd have said aged 20. I want to look up more about the titles you whizzed through at the end!
Pretentious 20s or not, you've still read an amazing amount of books that would intimidate me - silly to get intimidated I know.
Thanks so much! And no reason to feel intimidated. Several books on the list I barely remember so it makes me question sometimes how much we absorb of what we read, but I guess we pick and choose moments that feel the most impactful.
This was such a delightful and nostalgic video and I so surprised to know that JCO only became your favourite author after you were 20. There are some books here that I would leave to my younger self too but I really need to re-read The Waves because I was too immature for it at that time and I didn't understand a thing!
A big birthday kiss from Portugal, Eric!
No Steinbeck, Bradbury, Jane Austen, Brontë sisters? Did you not like them?
Happy Birthday! I think I had a list like that once, but I´ve lost it. I have a list of favorite authors, and the ones that are added to the list usually stay there for good. Garcia Marques is amongst them (I especially love his short stories, have you read them as well?) and Neil Gaiman is the newest addition
Happy belated birthday!
Thank you for so many wonderful recommendations!
Thank you!
Great video!!! Happy Birthday, Eric!!!🎂
Thank you!
Eric Karl Anderson you’re welcome!💫
Happy birthday! This was a fun video, it made me want to read more classics again. I've always thought I would love The Brothers Karamazov, but I've never read it because of it's intimidating size. Stefan Zweig is a great writer, I love his short stories. If I had to pick a few favorite classics and modern books I think I would pick the following classics: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo), A Country Doctor's Notebook (Mikhail Bulgakov), Summer Lightning (P.G. Wodehouse), and the following modern books: Brodeck's Report (Philippe Claudel), The People in the Trees (Hanya Yanagihara), The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Louis de Bernieres). But if you asked me again tomorrow the answer would probably change. In 20 years I would imagine it would change quite a lot. Now I have to go check out some of your newer favorites, there were many I have never heard of. Hope you have a wonderful birthday.
Thank you! Zweig's biographies and nonfiction work is equally fascinating in how he engages with the literary community and history. I've not read any of those classics so they are ones I need to get to as well. :)
The scene you are talking about where the woman is making her children dance on the streets is from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Happy birthday! Great idea for a video, I enjoyed it a lot. Wow, did not know BF Skinner wrote a novel! You were an amazingly well read 20-year-old.
Thanks and yeah that novel was an oddity but I guess he was always interested in how his ideas about behaviour might be applied in a practical way and this was his theory about how an ideal community might work (but with very dodgy ideas about child care - eek!)
happy milestone birthday eric! i'd say even allowing for youthful "pretension" if you want to call it that that's a list of mostly very good works....
i haven't read but based on earlier testimony by shawn the book maniac now have mrs. caliban on my pile and with your added endoresement hope to get to it soon...
i had to laugh when you lifted up winterthurn because it was there that i parted ways with oates for some time...i had read and loved "them" and read everything i could find by her until "bellefleur" and after that stopped reading her as i wanted realism, realism, realism at that time...have long since returned to reading and enjoying oates and now will consider returning to her "gothic saga"...maybe next summer..
Thank you. Oh that's great! Oddly, when I first read 'them' I didn't connect with it as much as many of her other books (even though it's one of her most lauded novels). I'll be so interested to hear what you think if you revisit some of her more imaginative gothic fiction.
i'll keep you posted and that's very interesting that you didn't connect with "them"...i immediately pictured the different voices of j c oates representing different aspects of her personality...
Man...you read all of these before you were 20??!?!?! That blows my mind. I was wasting time reading complete garbage, lol. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is DEFINITELY one of my favorites of all time. I would like to reread it as it has been ages.
Happy birthday!!!
Yay! I read Breath by Tim Winton when I was 70 and was inspired to take up surfing - great to see it getting an airing. Also Woolf's The Waves - just heaven to let it wash over you. I'm going to be 80 soon and was thinking which book I would choose to take to prison/care home and it would have to be Proust - megapretentious maybe, but I am on my third visit to his wonderful jewel-box world and am sitting on the back-step in the sun, laughing out loud.
Hope the sun is shining where you are!
I have never read a book by Joyce Carol Oates. Would you recommend the one you mentioned in your video or another one? Happy birthday! :)
Happy Birthday Eric, and i must say that this is a fun experiment and I should do it for my future self because I am currently 21 and think my favorite novel of all time is war and peace by Tolstoy. Here is to many more years, enjoy your day!
Thank you! I hope you're making lists of your favourite books now that you can look back on in many years to come to see how your tastes might have changed.
Very Happy Birthday wishes to you. What a fascinating thing to do, rethinking your favorite book list from half your life ago. I've avoided rereading many books I loved from my 20's because of being embarrassed at how naive or emotionally immature I'd find myself back then. Did you find in doing this experiment that you were remembering which books you had an emotional connection to, as opposed to establishing your college classic reading intellectual base? I found in my college years deciding not to be an English major because I loved reading books I self discovered as opposed to forcing myself to read what I considered then to be dusty old classics that wouldn't touch my deepest being and confusion as much as being intellectual masterbatory exercises. God talk about being pretentious. Anyway I loved books and feel writers had a gigantic influence on shaping who I am and how curious I find the world and people. Now in my 60's I'm discovering the dry classics I'd avoided are speaking to my older self in profound ways. And I've taken several books and writers you've discussed here from your 20 year old reading list that I want to read now, like Woolf's "The Waves", and Saramago's "Blindness". Speaking of Camus' "The Stranger" have you read "The Brave Genius" about him and scientist Jacques Monod during the Resistance? It made me revisit and "get" "The Stranger". Again, Happy Birthday, and keep up the great work of sharing great books and writers both new and established.
Thank you! Yes exactly, that's why I wanted to go through the list to see which ones I recalled having a real connection to and how there were others I did read but which left me cold or which I might not have understood but I still felt the need to list as a favourite for pretentious reasons. No doubt they did shape me in subtle ways I'll never understand and if I went back to reread them now I'd probably get so much more from them.
I haven't read that book about Camus. Sounds really interesting!
Happy birthday!! :D This was such a fantastic look at your 'favourite' books. I think lists like these are such a fantastic way of looking at how reading changes over time. It's always so tough to really narrow down books which mean the most to us. After all, a lot of what makes a book a favourite is how much it sticks with us. Also, I think we're all guilty of favouring pretentious books at some stage. :P
Happy Birthday! What an interesting vlog, thanks for sharing! 😊
I just recently found your TH-cam channel. I love your videos so much! You have the kindest, most gentle personality! I wish we could be friends in real life. 🤗 I know this is an older video but I've been binge watching your older videos. Anyway, I hope life is amazing for you and that you're having an awesome day!! 🤗
Thank you so much! 😊 that’s very kind of you to say. Hope you’re also having a good day and reading something good!
@@EricKarlAnderson I am having a great day and I'm currently reading "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared." I'm on chapter 5 right now and so far, it's been quite the adventure! 😊
@@Shadowfax85 Oh, I've always meant to read that. Glad you're enjoying it!
When you got to catcher in the rye, I anticipated what you were going to say. I read the book when I was 40. I was born the year it came out and so many people recommended the book. However I just didn’t connect to it. I tried understand from a person perspective from that year/time, still it was hard to connect. I’m about to turn 60, will re-read it to see if something of my life experiences would make the book different for me. I’m not sure if being female makes it a difference but I will see. I’m doing a short novel tour, and will make a list for myself. Which by the way I’m reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s “The Book Shop” I love it. Thank you for doing your TH-cam channel. 📚
It's interesting to hear you felt that way. I think there are certain books which just aren't for us no matter when or how we read them and that's fine. It's probably better to focus on the books you do really connect with. And I'm so glad you're loving and connecting with Fitzgerald's novel! 📚
Happy Birthday Eric! I hope you have a great day. Thank you for bringing insght to this question that is often asked by booktube, etc.
Thank you!
Hello Eric! I'm new to your channel and I just want to let you know, your videos are awesome! I really enjoy many of the books you talk about too! And this is late, very late....but...happy belated birthday!
Thanks so much!
Happy birthday, have a great year!!! 🎂 🎁 🎈
happy birthday mate! Conrad actually gets better when you get older, because as young adult all these dramas seems quite artificial and produced and eventually your empathy grows to the point you can identify with these artificial, produced dramas and enjoy :) Burmese Days is probably the only book I have thrown out of the window :)
Winesburg Ohio had a profound effect on me in high school. I just reread it again and loved it all over!
Happy Birthday Eric. I turned 40 last July. We all start questioning ourselves and our tastes and our personal histories in our 40's and start looking back. I've been doing it a lot lately. Heard of most of these authors although I may not have heard of all of the titles not read many of the classics that are in the 20's list, I keep putting it off. I have a list on the wall of the top 100 books chosen by Periene Press readers/subscribers.
Thank you! And coming from Periene readers that must be a great list!
It's the Peirene Readers' list of 100 translated books that everyone should read. These are the first Twenty. The Book of Chameleons by Jose' Eduardo Agualusa, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, The House Of Spirits by Isabel Allende, The Man Who Walked Through Walks by Marcel Ayme', Cousin Bette by Honore' de Balzac, They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy, Concrete by Thomas Bernhard, Moment Of Freedom by Jens Bjorneboe, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, The Last Honour Of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll, The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges, The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, by Italo Calvino, The Outsider, by Albert Camus, Axel, by Bo Carpelan, Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, Soldiers of Salamis, by Javier Cercas, Brodeck's Report, by Philippe Claudel, Wonder by Hugo Claus, No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai,
21-40. The Foundling Boy, by Michel Delon, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Dobin, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Lady Of The Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, The Lover, by Marguerite Duras, The Crime Of Father Amaro, by Jose' Maria Eca de Queiros, The Name Of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, God Dies By The Nile by Nawal El Saadawi, Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada, The Days Of Abandonment, by Elena Ferrante, The Temptation Of Saint Anthony, by Gustave Flaubert, Effi Briest, by Theodor Fontane, Homo Faber, by Max Frisch, That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana, by Carlo Emilio Gadda, One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Jose' de la Concordia Garcia Marquez, Kalpa Imperial, by Angelica Gorodischer, Someone To Run With, by David Grossman, The Death Of A Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson, Hunger, by Knut Hamsun, The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer.
41-60. The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat, The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse, The Iliayd by Homer, Too Loud A Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal, The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson, The Palace Of Dreams, by Ismail Kadare, The Garden Of the Departed Cats, by Bilge Karasu, Strange Weather In Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami, Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, Fatelessness, by Imre Kertesz, Yalo, by Elias Khoury, A Death In The Family, by Karl Ove Knausgard, Memories Of the Future, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Immortality, by Milan Kundera, The Dwarf, by Par Lagerkvist, The Saga Of Gosta Berling, by Selma Lagerlof, The Fish Can Sing, by Halldor Laxness, Near To The Wild Heart, by Clarice Lispector, What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?, by Antonio Lobo Antunes, Samarkand, by Amin Maalouf.
61-80. Embers, by Sandor Marai, New Finnish Grammar, by Diego Marani, A Heart So White, by Javier Marias, Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima, The Discovery Of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch, Cities Of Salt, by Abdelrahman Munif, Kafka On The Shore, by Haruki Murakami, The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil, Fire In The Blood, by Irene Nemirovsky, Talking to Ourselves, by Andres Neuman, The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh, A Tale Of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz, Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, Dictionary Of The Khazars, by Milorad Pavic, Here's to you, Jesusa! by Elena Poniatowska, Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais, The Patience Stone, by Atiq Rahimi, All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo, The Unmade Bed, by Francoise Sagan.
I think the dancing children scene is in Crime + Punishment.
I listened to Moby Dick and i was surprised to find that I was really enjoying it and getting swept up in the story.
I do hope you give it a try!
I think there is just something about it that takes me back in time, to my youth. To when stories were grander and (perhaps due to my limited reading experience as youngster) the writing was truly magnificent.
I definitely want a copy of the book so I can read it with my eyeballs!
Tho money is much too tight to spend it on anything other than the necessities - no matter how much I plead,
"Reading is like breathing!
You are no longer alive when you stop doing it!"
Happy birthday Eric!!!! You're videos are helpful a lot 😍💕!!!
Thanks!
Congrats!!! all the best xxx
Fascinating list, and interesting reappraisals! I don’t agree about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, though: I find it to be compulsory reading. Everyone swooning about Paulo Coelho’s The alchemist should gear up to a short novel that really plumb the depths of human existence.
Wow I really like this format
Which Virginia Woolf novel would you recommend for a first time Woolf reader? The most "normal one" . I loved A Room of Ones Own and a biography of her and her letters but I tried Orlando, I think, and couldnt get into it.
Try Jacob’s Room! Hope you enjoy more of her work.
For 'Brothers Karamazov' which translation did you follow?
Happy Birthday! 🍾🎉😀I hope you have a wonderful day!
Many happy returns to start with and thanks for the selection of books. You call yourself pretentious in some of your choices but I would say naive. The Russian phase is a must when you're young. I agree with your choice of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment but I would add The Idiot (I know the list is not mine to add anything to), Lolita is one of the all-time greats and was surprised at your doubt. As you have some Jean Genet on your list then you must read Edmund White's biography of Genet, which is in itself a work of art. Not only do we get to learn a lot about Genet but also about the whole French prison system which made Genet's only film Un Chant d'Amour much more understandable (technically speaking) for me.
Thanks! I think doubt I expressed is just me feeling I put it on the list because I felt I needed to rather than how I really connected or didn't connect with a book. I'm sure if I reread books like Lolita and those by Dostoyevsky now I'd get so much more out of them. And I've meant to read White's biography of Genet for years but I guess the size of it has kept making me put it off. :)
You basically read hundreds of novels already at 20 year? What a reader you were!
Happy birthday, good sir. 40 was a big one for me - had a big party in the wine room at the FireRock. And you should use this video as a goad to do the Booktube Top Tens Tag and add your selections to the data. I could probably count on one hand the number of these I had read by age 20.
Thank you! I hope I get time to do that.
My religious twenty-something self thought The Brothers Karamazov was the greatest novel of all time. My atheist fifty-something self re-read it and found it to be little more than religious propaganda. By contrast, Crime and Punishment stood the test of time. I noticed you had several Annie Dillard works but not The Living. That's my favorite of hers, read in my thirties, and I still think of the characters sometimes.
Awesome video. Reflecting is so underrated.
How coincidental...I'm re-reading Heart of Darkness right now. I loved Brothers Karamazov so much. I remember every summer I would read what I called My Summer Project...BK, Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations (still love all of these)and some more. Love/Cholera is my favorite Garcia Marquez. Such a great list and so many memories. Thanks for sharing this.
Oh and on you new books, I read Tin Man and loved it so much that I immediately re-read it and got more out of it. Happy 40 and I can't wait to see what you think in 20 years!
What book is "BK" and who wrote it? Who wrote "Tin Man" and what is it about?
Happy 40th Birthday Eric hope you have a fabulous day 🎂🎉 Great video, it’s always interesting to see how our tastes change as we get older 🤗
Interesting! I just finished For The Time Being by Dillard and also agree that it doesn’t feel like an exact knockout in comparison to her other works. Is Peter Cameron here the same author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You? Just finished that one as well and found it a mixed bag, but I’m still interested in Cameron’s work since. An impressive list to your 20yr old self! Happy birthday too! : ) 🎂
Thanks! Glad you agree about the Dillard book. Yes, that is the same Peter Cameron - I never got to reading that book. It's a YA right?
Eric Karl Anderson it is! I thought it was okay, but I thought it was subliminally creating a discussion about adolescence in a post 9/11 era, but that’s me probably reading too much into it!
That was an enjoyable video; thanks. I've read 20 of the books on your list.
Have you read The Kite Runner by Hosseini?
Happy Birthday Adorable Eric!
Happy blessed birthday dear Eric, many,many more ❤️
Interesting video. Even more interesting is that you typed them all on paper. I can understand... I am a huge list maker. Happy Birthday Eric!! I hope your birthday is as special as you are!! You look great in a suit. :D
Thanks so much, Robin!
Happy birthday! I hope the day was utterly splendid for you.
I still thank you every day for getting me reading again.
Oh and ps the 40s are the most fantastic years..
Thanks so much! And I'm anticipating many good things ahead! Hope you're well. :)
Happy belated birthday!! I loved the idea of this video....I agree with what you said how our attitudes towards books changes, I loved the Twilight saga but as I got older I saw the problems with it :)
Thank you! It is interesting how those changes happen and we can almost have a division in our mind between how we objectively think of a book and our emotional attatchment to it as something that meant a lot at one time in our lives.
I enjoyed this! Happy birthday!!!!!
Happy Birthday Eric! 🎂
Happy Birthday Eric!
Happy birthday, Eric! I hope it's a month-long celebration.
Thanks! I've been promised a weekend trip to Berlin in October so it might actually be a 2 month long celebration. :)
Happy 40th n the upcoming decade Eric. God Bless You! Indian Fan of urs. 😚😍
Happy birthday, Eric!
Loved your reaction when Dostojevski showed up on your list. Crime and Punishment is such a masterpiece.
We agree on Melville. Moby-Dick's scene with Ishmael and Queequeg sharing the bed was probably the best part of the novel. Didn't end up liking the novel that much, although oddly it's one that has stayed with me in my thoughts. Absolutely loved Bartleby the Scrivener!
I was so surprised to see a Henry James novel on your list and furthermore to hear that you still like the novel - your negative feelings about his writing style had given the impression you totally dislike his works.
I still need to get to Mrs. Caliban! Been meaning to pick up ever since I heard Bigalbooks talk about it and you also recommended it when I left a comment on the video. Just can't get my hands to it here in Finland. In fact, I should just order it from bookdepository, right now.
A big YAY for The Unconsoled!
Thank you! I know with a lot of these books that if I were to read them now I'd discover so much more that I missed when I first read them.
I admire aspects of James' writing but I just find them so hard going! :)
Oh, let me know what you think of Mrs Caliban when you get a copy and you get time to read it.
I'd love to reread The Unconsoled.
Wish I had made a list like this when I was younger. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 🎁🎈🎊🎂🎉
Happy Birthday!🎂🎉
Happy Birthday Eric!!!!
im 23 and i think i should make a list of my top 100 to look at when im 43! thanks for the inspiration
I turn twenty in a couple of months and I've come back to this video. It stuck in my mind since I first watched it. I think I'm going to do this! It'll be really interesting to see how my tastes change in ten/twenty/thirty years. Thankfully going to uni killed off my pretentious phase very early on as I realised how much I disliked those around me who acted like they had never read a book for fun in their entire lives. Then I realised I was one of those people! But who knows, maybe future me will call bullshit...
That's great! It's a really fun exercise and way of having a conversation with yourself about what books matter the most to you. I was probably being quite harsh on my younger self and felt honestly passionate about many of these books. Just be sure to keep your list safe somewhere so you can find it again in 10 or 20 years! :)
Happy Birthday!!!!!!!
I've literally just bought The Waves and To the Lighthouse this week. Never read before so is good to hear this.
I totally get what you mean about pretentiousness. I'm really enjoying "Girl, Woman, Other" at the moment but I don't think it's an amazing creative achievement interms of style of writing etc. It's quite clunky and crude characterisation in places but I'm just enjoying it so I'm impressed that the (sometimes stuffy) Booker judges went for it.
Good to hear someone having the courage to say that about the Great Gatsby. I was totally underwhelmed by it. (personally I wouldn't bother rereading it. Your memory serves you well 😂)
I hope you enjoy Woolf! She’s definitely an acquired taste but give her writing time. And I’m glad you feel the same about Gatsby.
Happy Birthday love your channel
Happy Birthday Eric!🌻🎂🥂🎉
I still love "The Edible Woman," though it isn't one of her best novels, but it's the lightest of her works. I also really liked "Blindness" by Saramago.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY dear Eric 🎉🎊🎈😀 have a wonderful day 🤗
Thank you!
Really loved this video! I had to break it into two viewings to savour it 😊
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.
Happy birthday, Eric! This was a super entertaining video and I've come away with some exciting recommendations from your 20 year old self as well as your 40 year old self, so I think there's merit in both of you! Haha. Also, this is perhaps a very unpopular opinion but I love pretentious books, so I support your 20 year old hahaha. I've always wanted to do a list like that but because my classics knowledge is not very prolifict (I'm trying to change that), I always feel like I don't have "good enough books" that would fit that category. It's dumb that I second-guess myself and my favourite books and how I feel about them, but maybe I'm myself being pretentious? Haha. Thanks for the video and hope you had a great b-day!
Thank you! I wasn't meaning so much to claim that these books are pretentious in themselves, but the fact I read them and didn't enjoy them as much as I expected but still felt the need to claim them as a favourite is pretentious. But it's a privledge of readers that they can have the opinion some "classic" books are overrated. The wonderful thing about rereading though is discovering things you missed on the first go and I'm sure with a lot of these I missed many ideas and themes that my younger self didn't understand. :)