My 25 Favourite Books at 25

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Big Al's

books

. I recently turned 25 and thought it would be fun to look back on my reading life and create a list of 25 of my favorite

books

when I was 25. It was fun to create this list, but for the most part it was extremely difficult and stressful, I felt like I had to make some truly outrageous decisions while trying to narrow this list down to just 25 books. I wanted to make a list that included books that had been my favorites at different periods of my life, so these are not just 25 of my favorite books as of today, but they will be books on this list that I left off as a child or teenager in high school or college and beyond. so I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible or we'll be here all day, but I hope you enjoy getting to know me better as a reader, here we go with 25 of my favorite books at 25.

To start this list with two series that I loved when I was a younger reader, the first is a series of unfortunate events by Lemony Snicket when I was a kid, everyone around me was obsessed with reading Harry Potter and I was just obsessed with reading Harry Potter. I wasn't interested in the Harry Potter books, which was a very alienating decision for someone who grew up in the generation that I did, but I was really just a weird kid and I like to do my own thing and these books appealed to me a lot more. I'm someone who was much more interested in the bleak and dark side of life and I feel like these books did a good job of exploring them, I've since read them again when I was 20 and they really hold up well, I mean it's a good En There are mysteries and conspiracies in the story, but Lemony Snicket is also very good at writing for children and explaining words and concepts in a fun way, he is hilarious, he writes some great villains and the series is incredible.

I also loved Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy as a younger reader, I was mainly drawn to fantasy, which is strange because it's not a genre I much prefer anymore, but when I was younger I loved books that took me to another world and allowed me to use my imagination and have adventures. and this series did a great job of doing so. I mean, not just like this amazing story is happening, but the ideas in this book are so profound. I mean, this is a book that is based on Paradise Lost. There are so many ideas in this book about Religion and Metaphysics, just the idea of ​​these different alternative worlds existing side by side in different dimensions was so mind-blowing to me as a young reader and changed the way I thought about space. and the weather.

It also had such a strong emotional connection. I remember crying with these characters at the end of the third book, which was very important for me because I was a pretty tough twelve year old, so I loved getting lost in this story and I'm very interested in seeing it. What will Philip Pullman do when he returns to this universe with the Book of Dust? Now we're moving on to my teenage years and some of my favorite books I read while I was in high school, so let's get that out of the way. is Sylvia Plath's bell jar and if you want to know what kind of teenager I was, I chose this book because I wanted something to read while my family went on vacation to the beach in Florida, that's right, I somehow thought this was depressing .

A novel about a suicidal woman would be a good read on Beach and it did. I love when poets write books and Sylvia Plath had so many wonderful poetic images in this book and just that image of the bell jar hanging over your head ready to descend at any moment. This moment has haunted me since I read this novel Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad when I was a teenager, indie rock music was everything and I really liked 90s alternative rock, but this book is more about bands from the 90s. 80 and I learned a lot while reading this book, but I also had a lot of fun reading it.

Each chapter gives you a look at a different band so you can explore Black Flag, Sonic Youth with mustaches, The Replacements, so many seminal indie rock bands and it's just a It's so fun to learn about their music, but you also get to hear those crazy stories. about life on the road. Here's a chapter on Dinosaur Jr. that explores the dysfunction and tension within that band and it's just a masterpiece, so this book is a great time and it's music and nonfiction in its slaughterhouse, five from Kurt Vonnegut in that moment in high school. I probably would have said cat's cradle with my favorite Vonnegut, but I appreciate this one more and more as I get older.

I think it's so brilliant how Vonnegut was able to channel his experiences as a soldier in World War II into such a strange and wonderful novel. I mean, it's brilliant to use time travel as a way to represent PTSD and, apart from all that deep stuff, this novel is just fun, there are aliens, there is time travel, there is Kilgore trout, so So for a Vonnegut fan, this book has everything you need to spot the terrain. by Irvine Welsh Don't ask me why, but as a teenager I loved reading about heroin addicts and this book was by far the best of those drug-related books and not only does it explore this sordid style of addiction in great detail. life, but also entertaining as hell.

I mean, this book is really funny. I love the characters even though they are terrible people and the Scottish dialect is priceless, so this is a great book, a great movie and it always makes me feel better when I come back. to A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess I apparently liked books written in strange and disorienting dialects because I loved this book the first time I read it and then I saw the movie and was so traumatized. I found it very difficult to see the ultraviolence that occurs in the story happening on screen was much more difficult than just reading about it and by the time I came out of the book I had almost grown fond of Alex the narrator, I thought we had some things in common , you know we are. just some teenagers named Alex who really liked Beethoven, but then I saw the movie and if we read the book and it becomes very evident that Alex is not a nice guy, as charming as he can be in his narration, he does things pretty terrible, but it makes for a pretty fascinating experience, and while I enjoy the style in which this book is written and I like trying to figure out the Mads, really what I enjoy most about this book are the philosophical ideas and themes that explores, like crime and punishment. or violence and sex in society or what it's like to be a teenager and what it's like to be part of a group of friends and I had read all the major dystopian novels as a teenager.

I did Brave New World 1984 but I really found A Clockwork Orange to have the scariest vision of the future and in particular Ludovico's technique really scared me. The idea that something you love could be used against you as a way to control or destroy you was a really crazy idea, so I thought. I couldn't get enough of this novel, the new Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I first read this book in French class and even as a cynical teenager I found this story very moving and I loved the ideas here about trying. think like a child and never grow up and be a boring linear thinker, so it's so imaginative and there's a fox here, that's the best.

He keeps dropping all these amazing life lessons about how to form bonds with people and what makes a person. that you love special and how that could change your view of the world, so this is a slim book that I will keep coming back to for the rest of my life when I need a reality check Another Night in Suk City by Nick Flynn this book could Make the list based on the title alone, I mean, does it get any better than that? But it's also a great memoir, it's about a time in Nick Flynn's life when he was working at a homeless shelter in Boston and then his own father showed up as one of the people living in this homeless shelter and they had had a difficult relationship.

Nick Flynn's father was an alcoholic, he wasn't around for most of his childhood and he also has this vision of himself as an artistic genius and it's all about the hardships. A lot of them were trying to reconnect and rebuild this relationship, so I identified with this book on a very personal level, but I also think the writing is excellent, it's not a boring autobiography. Nick Flynn takes a lot of risks in his writing style and achieves some similar powerful Moments, he gives such an honest look at a very complicated relationship and this book gave me a lot to think about regarding homelessness addiction and family .

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was definitely the most ambitious thing I read in high school, but I was too young and brave to be really intimidated by this book. I just started it expecting it to be fun and it was, although it took a lot of work to finish it, but I still read it two years ago. -half the time and it keeps getting better every time I come back to this world and my high school yearbook quote actually came from this book it's a line that goes something like this: They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are a risky, so I maintain that that was a line that resonated with me at the time and still does today, so I won't be one of those annoying lip bros who tells you that you have to read Infinite Jest, but Everything I say It's just that I love this book and I'm so glad I spent time with Patti Smith's Just Kids for the record.

I think Patti Smith is the coolest woman in the world, so I love that she is. publish this beautiful memoir so that you can live vicariously through your life experiences, this particular book is about your friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, but it is also about the time in your life when you left your hometown and moved to the city from New York and tried to make it as an artist, you know she's a poet and a singer and this is a book that I think will appeal to creative people interested in that period and what it's like to be very poor but happy and live a creative life. really beautiful now we move on to the books I read after high school.

These are books I read primarily during my time in college, so let's start with Weathering Heights by Emily Brontë. I remember reading this over summer vacation. and it had been a while since I had read a classic book and at first I found it a little difficult to understand it, but once I did, oh man, I like drama in my novels so much that I couldn't get enough of it. I ruined Heathcliff and Cathy's dynamic and how it spans across generations and just laying down the customs for a drama queen like me in this book was everything and really inspired me to delve deeper into the classics and learn more. of them while I Could Go to the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, it is very difficult to choose just one of her novels and I really think The Waves is probably the best of her books that I have read so far, but I will stick with this one because it appeals to me a lot. to books about dysfunctional families and Virginia Woolf does a great job of exploring the rich and deep inner life of this family while they are on vacation and really this book makes the list because she is the most incredible writer I have ever met. she's so powerful that she makes this bold move in this book where she kills a parenthetical character that I thought was so badass that actually every time I read a Virginia Woolf novel I feel like I've only skimmed the surface and there's a whole world of meaning that I haven't even tapped into yet and for that reason I feel so excited to return to his works throughout my life.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. This book completely swept me away as I read it. He is friendly. of the gold standard of magical realism novels and I have never read a better magical realism novel. I mean, this one really is still the best one for me and you can go through generations after generations of this family's history, but at the same time you're also going through the history of the development of Columbia, so I really loved how mythical and biblical and historical it was. It is this novel. This was the first novel I read by a South American author and I'm gradually realizing over time that many of my favorites.

The authors come from South America and Latin America, so this book was really the beginning of that discovery for me. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. This is the only collection of short stories featured on this list, but I think Flannery O'Connor really mastered the genre like there's nothing better than Flannery O'Connor in her best stories, like It's Hard to Find a Good Man or Good country people, they are very disturbing and I am so into southern gothic literature so I am really drawn to her stories and she is so dark and twisted and explores the idea of ​​grace, but in her series the grace is always so violent and always so impressive and its characters canbe so ignorant, but when these crazy things happen to them, it's actually quite the experience, so these stories are really essential.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was like the first real Russian classic that blew me away. I got completely hooked on Russian writers, especially Dusty Upski. This book is just amazing and first of all it was It's really fun to read, there's a murder and a really messed up family at the heart of this book so it's fun and will keep you turning the pages but there's also a lot of things about the life in this book, like this is some kind of manual like here are the secrets on how to live a good life if you can figure it out and get to that place, so I love this book and I can't wait to revisit it again and again. again throughout my life.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, another Russian novel that is simply incredible and I think it is because of this book that I love it so much. It was like Bulgakov had come up and talked to me and said, do you know what you want to happen in this book? Because I'll do it exactly like. You like it because this book is great, I mean, it's funny and it's a fierce satire on the Soviet regime, but at the same time there are so many wild supernatural elements like it's so over the top and I love that and the characters are great, there's the story of Pontius Pilate included in this book, there is a talking cat, there is a tough woman named Margaret who becomes a witch for love, so so many things happen in this book and everything is amazing and I always come back to read it.

I'm very happy. I really don't think there are better novels than this one. Sometimes it's a great idea by Ken Kesey. I also loved his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but I feel like a lot of people have done that. I've heard of that one, you don't really hear that many people talk about his second novel, which is a shame because I think it's such a moving and beautiful book that's set in this small town in Oregon where the loggers have declared themselves. on strike and There's a family, the stampers, who decide not to join the loggers on their strike and continue working anyway, so a log conflict doesn't sound like a super interesting plot, but I was really surprised how I got sucked in.

In This World I loved reading about the clash between this family and the community and like any book that draws me in, there is of course a very dysfunctional family at the heart of this book, the head of the family is this fiery old man whose El motto is never give an inch and then there's also these two brothers who are like ethical rivals, they're very opposite guys and they have this battle with each other, so yeah, totally amazing book and if you enjoyed Cuckoo's Nest and you haven't. read anything else by Kesey, please consider checking this one out too if on a winter night a traveler by Italo Calvino, I read this book at a time when I was sick, I was dizzy like I couldn't get up but not fall.

It was also summer and I lived in a place with no air conditioning, so I was dizzy and sweltering and I was in a really strange state of mind reading this book, but it completely mesmerized me, so it's kind of the story of this. reader and it's this man who keeps reading these books and starts them and gets so interested in the stories and just as they're building toward a climax, they just cut off at these abrupt, horrible moments and he can't. I can't find the rest of the book and it keeps happening to him, so he's the one trying to solve the mystery of what's going on, but of course this also happens to you as the reader because you're reading the same story as him. read and Calvino is such a good writer that he keeps absorbing you in these stories even though you know you shouldn't get involved because it's just going to stop, but it keeps happening, so this is just a book that's about the love of reading and how a reader, you know how you can't enjoy that it's about storytelling and the joy we find in books and this is just a great book?

I'd love to read it again when I'm in a not-so-strange headspace. I really enjoyed this absalom absalom by William Faulkner I really wanted to also have the sound and the fury on this list but I think at the end of the day this is the best of his novels and it is about a man named Thomas Sutton who comes from nothing and wants to create the southern dynasty and, of course, everything goes wrong for him. I mean, this is Faulkner South and it's so bloody and violent and evil, so this novel is really about a lot of different things: the blood, the amount, and the racism, especially, and it's also written in a stream-of-consciousness style. so dense, it's like through the stories that different people tell about the past and of course people are wrong, people's memories are not correct, so you get different information through different characters at different points from this. story, which is why a second read is essential to piece together the story of what's really happening in this book, but what I love about this one is that it came out the same year as Gone with the Wind, which is more or less a nostalgic look at the south, but this is quite the opposite, it just shows the brutality at the heart of, like the dream of the south, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge is another of my favorite writers and I think it's his best novel, I mean, there is nothing better than it.

This book starts with an opening scene about a man who gets drunk at a fair and sells his wife and son, so I don't think I've ever read a better opening chapter. that and the story gets better from there. I mean, it's about how that decision haunts him throughout his life and I love the tragic falls and the complete character study, so Thomas Hardy is at the peak of his powers in this book and it's a labyrinth incredible. Jorge Luiz Boris time is a river that drags me but I am the river it is the tiger that destroys me but I am the tiger it is a fire that consumes me but I am the fire the world unfortunately is real I unfortunately am Boris yes I don't know You can see in that passage that this man is a genius and it's so evident in every story that you read that he just has this encyclopedic mind and he just writes about the limits of reality, he writes about labyrinths, he writes about dreams, his work is so mind-blowing entropy. that you will never be the same after reading it.

I know I certainly wasn't a short story of seven Marlon James murders, and Marlon James is the modern author I'm most excited about. I love what he has done. and I can't wait to see what he does in the future and I was really impressed with this book, it's just huge and it's set in Jamaica in the 70's at the beginning and it revolves around the attempted murder on the life of Bob Marley and the species of the. de gets into a conspiracy where maybe certain people wanted him dead for political reasons, so it's a fascinating look at Jamaican history, especially if you're a Bob Marley fan, but then it picks up when these Jamaican gangsters leave the island and move to Miami and New York.

York and getting involved in the drug trade is just a huge, sweeping novel, there is some incredible writing here, we have a stream of consciousness, we have some multiple perspectives that definitely resonate with me and as an I Lay Dying type novel, I felt very happy when this book won the Man Booker Prize. I mean, it's a pretty daring novel, it doesn't make you think of a literary award, but it's incredible and I'm a big Marlon James fan. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I love books when the personal intersects with the political and that's what this book is about, it's the story of this guy called Salim, but it's also about the history of India, especially after Indian independence and if you're like me and you don't know much about that story.

For this book you will have to study a lot separately. I mean, this novel is written at breakneck, rusty speed, you just go through all these historical references that you need to keep Wikipedia open just to keep up to date. with this book, but it's really worth the work because this book is a lot of fun to read, especially for fans of simple narration, the narrator is wild, crazy and unreliable and you never really know what the hell is going on, but it is a lot. It's fun to follow, it tells you about his family history before he's even born, it tells you about his childhood, he has these telepathic abilities and this evil twin, this novel was just impossible to put down.

I read it immediately after finishing it and it's just one of The Best Books I've Ever Read It's just a fifth Robertson Davies Fireworks Business and surprisingly this is Camlet's only work on the list so it's a shame but I mean which we have to represent with at least one Canadian book here. this last summer and I really enjoyed it, it's about a man named Dunstan Ramsay and he's just telling the story of his life, how this minor incident happened to him in his childhood that affected him deeply throughout his life. It's also about the idea of ​​not being the hero of your own story and simply considering yourself as reference material in your own life.

A very interesting book, very peculiar, which I think is what Camlet is about. Dunston Ramsey is one of my favorite narrators in literature and this book was just a pleasure to read from start to finish, so those are 25 of my favorite books. At 25, there are still so many more favorite books of mine I could go on and on about, but this video has gone on too long if you've been paying attention. The lighting situation the Sun set a long time ago, so I'm going to end this. Thank you very much for watching if you made it to the end of this video and we'll see you next time.