Great list! I hated Demon Copperhead (perhaps more so because I finished it), and about 30 pages of Ducks Newburyport were enough for me, but otherwise so many really good books that I have also read. The JCO book you mention is a very good one indeed. So many of hers to choose from.
I’ve read 5 books from your list. Several are on my TBR. Had a tough time with Cloud Atlas but really looking forward to reading Demon Copperhead, Empire of Pain among a few others. 😊💙
Great list. Was out thrifting and found a copy of White Teeth. Not a normal pick up for me, but brought it home and am looking forward to the read. Thanks!!
Nice list! I read some and have others in my library that I need to get on with. I would add to my list some of my favourites of this century: Atonement, Shuggie Bain, The Vegetarian, Love and Summer, and Small things like these.
Thanks, Selina! Merry Christmas! Hope there are lots of books under the tree.🎄📚 I’ve been given the new Murakami novel, Ottolenghi’s new cook book and a book of stories by Isak Dinesen. 😊
@EricKarlAnderson Merry Christmas to you too Eric 🎄⭐❤️ What a great selection of books you received. I was given Private Rites by Julia Armfield and Butter by Asako Yuzuki. Have a wonderful day.
oh wow! I loved how quickly you got into the video, great list! Some that would make my list would have to be anything by sally rooney, the hunger games, killers of the flower moon, and kafta on the shore. Those are just some off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more :) have a great holiday season and happy new year!
I loved Solenoid, Ducks, and Demon Copperhead and really didn’t want D C to end - maybe because I love David Copperfield so much and was grateful to Barbara Kingsolver. I will re-read it at some point. I just bought Night / JCO and will read it soon. I want to read all of George Saunders next year . This year I read a lot of J. Robert Lennon novels, too.
Ducks, Newburyport and Strange & Norrell were among my best reading experiences of the last 20 years. And I've read and enjoyed another 10 of the books (Lincoln in the Bardo I didn't get, but I've loved some of Saunders' other work). The two books that come to my mind to add are The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch, and The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber.
I am pleased to see that I have read 13 of these and have another 4 on the shelf! It’s a great list and Ducks, Lincoln in the Bardo and How to be Both would certainly be on my list. Three that immediately come to mind that I would add are Milkman, Austerlitz by Sebald, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Some great choices. I enjoyed the Kingsolver but a good editor should have shaved off a hundred pages to make it even better. My Friends is the one I will come back to very soon. Must check out the Joyce Carol Oates, as I enjoyed Blonde, which was very long but justified every page.
That is a great list. I have read many of them and there are a few I don’t know. E.g the parcel. So begins a new list for me for 2025. Thanks Eric and best wishes. 😊
great list...i have ducks in the queue from when you first reviewed it but the length always stops the start. Will have to close my eyes and just get started :)
So you are the other person that completed Ducks, Newburyport! Great list, a lot of wonderful books. Check out The Last Samurai and The Overstory if you haven't.
Thanks, Eric!🌷I’ve only read four of the books you mention. Totally agree on White Teeth and My Friends. I love Elizabeth Strout, but I actually prefer Lucy by the Sea to Olive Kitteridge. As to Susanna Clarke, I read JS&Mr Norrell earlier this month, enjoyed it, but not as much as Piranesi. I have Americanah and Ducks, Newburyport still unread on my shelves. I think I would consider The Overstory, Tom Lake and North Woods for such a list. Oh, and also Ruth Ozeki, perhaps The Book of Form and Emptiness.
I read all of these except The Parcel, The Years, Empire Of Pain, Minor Detail and Solenoid. I'll probably have to read them because I agree with you on so many of the books you chose. Some that would have to be in my list: The Time Of Our Singing by Richard Powers, Barkskins by Annie Proulx, The Women by TC Boyle, Deacon King Kong by James McBride and maybe Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro or LaRose by Louise Erdrich, just to name some that come to mind. Out of all of these, Ducks Newburyport is my favourite novel of the 21st century so far.
I like your comment at the end that on a different day your list might be different. This always strikes me as a fun yet almost excruciating exercise. I’ve read most of the books on your list and found many of them to be extraordinary reading experiences (particularly Lincoln in the Bardo and Ducks). I’d opt for a different Zadie Smith (On Beauty) and a different Kingsolver (Flight Behavior) and definitely This Is Happiness by Niall Williams and Still Life by Sarah Winman and almost certainly A Little Life and a Maggie O’Farrell and then I’d have to think and think again and change my mind a few times and then a few times more. Thanks for the thought exercise!
Thanks! Yes, so many more books I could swap or add on. Those are great additions as well (though I've not read This is Happiness - now on my TBR list)
Ducks, Newburyport! REALLY! One of the hardest books I’ve ever read. And the fact that…. That Joyce carol oates book deserved a Pulitzer Prize. It was so timely, so well written, and the family story is great.
While I have read several on your list, I highly recommend Thee There by Tommy Orange which is, I strongly believe, one of the greatest debut novels I've read. If you have read There There, I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Hello Eric🙋♀️ An interesting selection of 📚 books... “ White Teeth” by Zadie Smith, was the first novel 📖 to pop into my head, when you mentioned books of the 21st Century. It is the only novel, on the list, that I have read...I would have added: “Brick Lane” by Monica Ali, “ The Island” by Victoria Hislop, and “The Essex Serpent” by Sarah Perry...📚 Looking forward to watching your interesting videos📹 in the New Year.
I’ve read Moby Dick and regard it as THE great American novel. I’d like to reread it--and your other Classics books along with you and your fellow readers. The great classic I want to read this year is Les Miserable - of course by Victor Hugo. Also The Brothers Karamazov is a classic I began but did not finish and which I’d like to read this year. Other great LONGER novels or books I’ve enjoyed include Ulysses, Anna Karenina, The Odyssey, The Idiot, the Bible, almost all the Shakespeare plays, Paradise Lost, We the Living, all the works of J. D. Salinger and others. I am a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to attend graduate school at SUNY at Stony Brook. Thank you so very much for all you do.
What a fun, though difficult, exercise! My list is below. I’ve restricted it to fiction and one book per author. I am treating 2000 as the first year of the century. Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin John Banville - The Sea Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending Peter Carey - The True History of the Kelly Gang Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss Michelle De Kretzer - The Hamilton Case Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections Anna Funder - All That I Am Damon Galgut - The Promise Helen Garner - The Spare Room Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These John Le Carre - The Constant Gardiner Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun Audrey Magee - The Colony Hillary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies Yann Martel - Life of Pi Ian McEwan - Lessons Andrew McGahan - The White Earth Frank Moorhouse - Dark Palace Paul Murray - The Bee Sting Philip Roth - The Plot Against America Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat Charlotte Wood - Stone Yard Devotional [edited with revisions as I think of more] I think the only overlap is The Sense of Ending, but that's mainly because I haven't read most of Eric's list. Of those I have: Wolf Hall (excellent, but the sequel is even better), Oryx & Crake (good, but not as good as The Blind Assassin), How to be Both (meh), and Lincoln in the Bardo (awful).
@techidna-h9t That's by design; I've made a conscious effort to read more Ozlit (20 & 21C) in recent years. Moorhouse's Edith Trilogy was one of the great reading experiences of my year.
Good list. Interesting to compare to the NYT's recent list to yours. Thanks for adding Susanna Clarke whose absence from the time's list was baffling, at best. But what? No Ferrante?! Jk. Now I need to get cracking on "My Friends."
From your list I’ve only read 8. I’ll have to go back through book journals and think about what I’d put on the list. Off the top of my head Deluge by Stephen Markley Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Would be on the list but that’s as much as my brain can come up with at present.
At the start of this century most of my reading was non-fiction; two that stand out amongst them are Caro's multi-volume biography of LBJ and the very long presentation of the overwhelming evidence against Oswald in the JFK assassination case, which a former prosecutor wrote. Both are not free from criticism and controversy as is the other I'd have to include: Slow Thinking and Fast Thinking. In fiction there has always been Philip Roth, though it was a few years until I found the Plot Against America and Human Stain. And it took far too long to find Ishiguro's work.
Some great books on your list. Im slowly being influenced to read Solenoid... Eta: I remain shocked that Love Songs wasn't even longlisted for the Womens Prize.
Great list, thanks Eric! Happy to see I've read almost half of these. I do have a suggestion "A Place for Us" by Fatima Farheen Mirza if you haven't read it. I also have a question on Joyce Carol Oates - thank you ever so much for bringing her to my attention. I've recently read and loved We Were the Mulvaneys, and Blonde a few years back. Would you suggest "Night Sleep Death the Stars" next, or one of her others prior to it?
I've not read "A Place for Us" but it's now on my TBR. Thanks! I'm so glad you enjoyed those two books by Oates. "Night Sleep Death the Stars" would be a great additional one - or "The Gravedigger's Daughter" or "My Heart Laid Bare".
@@EricKarlAnderson Thanx so much for your thoughtful reply Eric! I've since watched a couple of your interviews with Joyce Carol Oates. She is truly a gem and I loved spending christmas eve afternoon with the two of you. She obviously holds you in high regard also. I want to read lots more of her books, but it is just a luverly crissy present to hear from you and I now know the first three I'll get to first. Have a wonderful Christmas to you and yours Eric xx P.S. I also look forward to those of your "25" that I haven't read yet
There is a video from George Saunders explaining the start on the Dua Lipa book club website. Helped a lot for me as it pretty much explains the context of the first few pages as a lot of people have trouble with it.
Was this a new year's schedule! Hope it didnt post too early, regardless great list of 25! Yes! White Teeth, I still recall so much about it. Oryx and Crake has been on my TBR way too long - must get to it. Admittedly, I DNF'd JS&MN 3x but I'm in the minority 😅
Your videos are amazing! But I think better thumbnails could help you get even more views. I’d love to help with that-let me know if you’re interested!
Great list! I hated Demon Copperhead (perhaps more so because I finished it), and about 30 pages of Ducks Newburyport were enough for me, but otherwise so many really good books that I have also read. The JCO book you mention is a very good one indeed. So many of hers to choose from.
Great list! Would add Say Nothing and Never Let Me Go
I’ve read 5 books from your list. Several are on my TBR. Had a tough time with Cloud Atlas but really looking forward to reading Demon Copperhead, Empire of Pain among a few others. 😊💙
The Sense of an Ending is also on my list. I think it's a book you appreciate more as you get older and your memories get fuzzier.
Yes, White Teeth! I read it as a university student - I'm a few years younger than Zadie Smith - and it totally blew my mind.
Great list. Was out thrifting and found a copy of White Teeth. Not a normal pick up for me, but brought it home and am looking forward to the read. Thanks!!
Great list. Better than some lists put out by the news publishers.
Nice list! I read some and have others in my library that I need to get on with. I would add to my list some of my favourites of this century: Atonement, Shuggie Bain, The Vegetarian, Love and Summer, and Small things like these.
What a list!! Wonderful. I've read 12 of these books and want to read all the others. Thank you for this treat ❤️🎄
Thanks, Selina! Merry Christmas! Hope there are lots of books under the tree.🎄📚 I’ve been given the new Murakami novel, Ottolenghi’s new cook book and a book of stories by Isak Dinesen. 😊
@EricKarlAnderson Merry Christmas to you too Eric 🎄⭐❤️ What a great selection of books you received. I was given Private Rites by Julia Armfield and Butter by Asako Yuzuki. Have a wonderful day.
oh wow! I loved how quickly you got into the video, great list! Some that would make my list would have to be anything by sally rooney, the hunger games, killers of the flower moon, and kafta on the shore. Those are just some off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more :) have a great holiday season and happy new year!
Loving your content more and more!
Thank you! 😊📚
Great Job Eric! I loved your list. My only complaint is I’m adding 12 more books to my TBR!🙃😂
Great list indeed. I would add The Luminaries The Shadow of the Wind ☺️
Several here I love and several you've made me want to pick up all the more!
I’m reading Solenoid now on your recommendation, Eric.. Thank you!
Great to hear that!
I loved Solenoid, Ducks, and Demon Copperhead and really didn’t want D C to end - maybe because I love David Copperfield so much and was grateful to Barbara Kingsolver. I will re-read it at some point.
I just bought Night / JCO and will read it soon. I want to read all of George Saunders next year . This year I read a lot of J. Robert Lennon novels, too.
Hope you enjoy Night Sleep Death the Stars!
Excellent Eric! Thank you
Ducks, Newburyport and Strange & Norrell were among my best reading experiences of the last 20 years. And I've read and enjoyed another 10 of the books (Lincoln in the Bardo I didn't get, but I've loved some of Saunders' other work). The two books that come to my mind to add are The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch, and The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber.
Dec. 25, 1:46am
"Never Let Me Go" is an all time treasure. I very rarely recommend it to anyone though since I found it so powerfully tragic.
Lincoln in the Bardo is one of my all time favorites.
💚
I am pleased to see that I have read 13 of these and have another 4 on the shelf! It’s a great list and Ducks, Lincoln in the Bardo and How to be Both would certainly be on my list. Three that immediately come to mind that I would add are Milkman, Austerlitz by Sebald, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Some great choices. I enjoyed the Kingsolver but a good editor should have shaved off a hundred pages to make it even better. My Friends is the one I will come back to very soon. Must check out the Joyce Carol Oates, as I enjoyed Blonde, which was very long but justified every page.
That is a great list. I have read many of them and there are a few I don’t know. E.g the parcel. So begins a new list for me for 2025. Thanks Eric and best wishes. 😊
great list...i have ducks in the queue from when you first reviewed it but the length always stops the start. Will have to close my eyes and just get started :)
So you are the other person that completed Ducks, Newburyport! Great list, a lot of wonderful books. Check out The Last Samurai and The Overstory if you haven't.
Thanks, Eric!🌷I’ve only read four of the books you mention. Totally agree on White Teeth and My Friends. I love Elizabeth Strout, but I actually prefer Lucy by the Sea to Olive Kitteridge. As to Susanna Clarke, I read JS&Mr Norrell earlier this month, enjoyed it, but not as much as Piranesi. I have Americanah and Ducks, Newburyport still unread on my shelves. I think I would consider The Overstory, Tom Lake and North Woods for such a list. Oh, and also Ruth Ozeki, perhaps The Book of Form and Emptiness.
Oryx and Crake was great!
I read all of these except The Parcel, The Years, Empire Of Pain, Minor Detail and Solenoid. I'll probably have to read them because I agree with you on so many of the books you chose. Some that would have to be in my list: The Time Of Our Singing by Richard Powers, Barkskins by Annie Proulx, The Women by TC Boyle, Deacon King Kong by James McBride and maybe Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro or LaRose by Louise Erdrich, just to name some that come to mind.
Out of all of these, Ducks Newburyport is my favourite novel of the 21st century so far.
I like your comment at the end that on a different day your list might be different. This always strikes me as a fun yet almost excruciating exercise. I’ve read most of the books on your list and found many of them to be extraordinary reading experiences (particularly Lincoln in the Bardo and Ducks). I’d opt for a different Zadie Smith (On Beauty) and a different Kingsolver (Flight Behavior) and definitely This Is Happiness by Niall Williams and Still Life by Sarah Winman and almost certainly A Little Life and a Maggie O’Farrell and then I’d have to think and think again and change my mind a few times and then a few times more. Thanks for the thought exercise!
Thanks! Yes, so many more books I could swap or add on. Those are great additions as well (though I've not read This is Happiness - now on my TBR list)
@ It’s very worthy!
great list Eric (except for a couple i disagree with haha), had to add a few to my TBR :-)
Ducks, Newburyport! REALLY! One of the hardest books I’ve ever read. And the fact that….
That Joyce carol oates book deserved a Pulitzer Prize. It was so timely, so well written, and the family story is great.
While I have read several on your list, I highly recommend Thee There by Tommy Orange which is, I strongly believe, one of the greatest debut novels I've read. If you have read There There, I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Hello Eric🙋♀️ An interesting selection of 📚 books... “ White Teeth” by Zadie Smith, was the first novel 📖 to pop into my head, when you mentioned books of the 21st Century. It is the only novel, on the list, that I have read...I would have added: “Brick Lane” by Monica Ali, “ The Island” by Victoria Hislop, and “The Essex Serpent” by Sarah Perry...📚 Looking forward to watching your interesting videos📹 in the New Year.
Yes! Brick Lane is excellent as is Monica Ali's more recent novel "Love Marriage"
Love Olive Kitteradge!
I’ve read Moby Dick and regard it as THE great American novel. I’d like to reread it--and your other Classics books along with you and your fellow readers. The great classic I want to read this year is Les Miserable - of course by Victor Hugo. Also The Brothers Karamazov is a classic I began but did not finish and which I’d like to read this year. Other great LONGER novels or books I’ve enjoyed include Ulysses, Anna Karenina, The Odyssey, The Idiot, the Bible, almost all the Shakespeare plays, Paradise Lost, We the Living, all the works of J. D. Salinger and others. I am a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to attend graduate school at SUNY at Stony Brook. Thank you so very much for all you do.
…. Les Miserables - of course .
What a fun, though difficult, exercise! My list is below. I’ve restricted it to fiction and one book per author. I am treating 2000 as the first year of the century.
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
John Banville - The Sea
Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
Peter Carey - The True History of the Kelly Gang
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Michelle De Kretzer - The Hamilton Case
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
Anna Funder - All That I Am
Damon Galgut - The Promise
Helen Garner - The Spare Room
Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These
John Le Carre - The Constant Gardiner
Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
Audrey Magee - The Colony
Hillary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies
Yann Martel - Life of Pi
Ian McEwan - Lessons
Andrew McGahan - The White Earth
Frank Moorhouse - Dark Palace
Paul Murray - The Bee Sting
Philip Roth - The Plot Against America
Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk
Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat
Charlotte Wood - Stone Yard Devotional
[edited with revisions as I think of more]
I think the only overlap is The Sense of Ending, but that's mainly because I haven't read most of Eric's list. Of those I have: Wolf Hall (excellent, but the sequel is even better), Oryx & Crake (good, but not as good as The Blind Assassin), How to be Both (meh), and Lincoln in the Bardo (awful).
Great to see the Aussies featuring on your list. The Spare Room is one of the most powerful pieces I have ever read.
@techidna-h9t That's by design; I've made a conscious effort to read more Ozlit (20 & 21C) in recent years. Moorhouse's Edith Trilogy was one of the great reading experiences of my year.
That’s great! Thanks so much for your list. I’ve read and loved many of those too. 📚
I’ve only read The Bee Sting and Klara and the Sun, and I think I would put them on my list too😊
Good list. Interesting to compare to the NYT's recent list to yours. Thanks for adding Susanna Clarke whose absence from the time's list was baffling, at best. But what? No Ferrante?! Jk. Now I need to get cracking on "My Friends."
I'm still puzzled by Ferrante being the no 1 on the NY Times list.
From your list I’ve only read 8. I’ll have to go back through book journals and think about what I’d put on the list. Off the top of my head
Deluge by Stephen Markley
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Would be on the list but that’s as much as my brain can come up with at present.
📚👍
Haven’t we just finished the 24th year of the 21st century?
2000 = the first year of the century, so 2024 = 25th year 😅
At the start of this century most of my reading was non-fiction; two that stand out amongst them are Caro's multi-volume biography of LBJ and the very long presentation of the overwhelming evidence against Oswald in the JFK assassination case, which a former prosecutor wrote. Both are not free from criticism and controversy as is the other I'd have to include: Slow Thinking and Fast Thinking. In fiction there has always been Philip Roth, though it was a few years until I found the Plot Against America and Human Stain. And it took far too long to find Ishiguro's work.
Some great books on your list. Im slowly being influenced to read Solenoid...
Eta: I remain shocked that Love Songs wasn't even longlisted for the Womens Prize.
It really was a shocking omission from the WP that year.
Great list, thanks Eric! Happy to see I've read almost half of these. I do have a suggestion "A Place for Us" by Fatima Farheen Mirza if you haven't read it. I also have a question on Joyce Carol Oates - thank you ever so much for bringing her to my attention. I've recently read and loved We Were the Mulvaneys, and Blonde a few years back. Would you suggest "Night Sleep Death the Stars" next, or one of her others prior to it?
I've not read "A Place for Us" but it's now on my TBR. Thanks! I'm so glad you enjoyed those two books by Oates. "Night Sleep Death the Stars" would be a great additional one - or "The Gravedigger's Daughter" or "My Heart Laid Bare".
@@EricKarlAnderson Thanx so much for your thoughtful reply Eric! I've since watched a couple of your interviews with Joyce Carol Oates. She is truly a gem and I loved spending christmas eve afternoon with the two of you. She obviously holds you in high regard also. I want to read lots more of her books, but it is just a luverly crissy present to hear from you and I now know the first three I'll get to first. Have a wonderful Christmas to you and yours Eric xx
P.S. I also look forward to those of your "25" that I haven't read yet
I'm an avid reader but I hated "Lincoln in the Bardo." Otherwise, good list :) I think the "Outline" trilogy" is fantastic.
I am having a brilliantly hard time getting into the format of Lincoln In The Bardo, Eric. Any tips?
There is a video from George Saunders explaining the start on the Dua Lipa book club website. Helped a lot for me as it pretty much explains the context of the first few pages as a lot of people have trouble with it.
Was this a new year's schedule! Hope it didnt post too early, regardless great list of 25!
Yes! White Teeth, I still recall so much about it.
Oryx and Crake has been on my TBR way too long - must get to it.
Admittedly, I DNF'd JS&MN 3x but I'm in the minority 😅
Oh w.e.b. is one that should have gone on my tbr but wasn't there just added it
No, I meant this video to go up today (though I know we’ve still got a week of the year left). Hope you enjoy Atwood and Jeffers’ novels. 😊📚
@@EricKarlAnderson me worrying for you for no reason 😂 I may be turning into my mother 🙈
Thanks for adding to my TBR with these ✨️
Your videos are amazing! But I think better thumbnails could help you get even more views. I’d love to help with that-let me know if you’re interested!