5 books that changed who I am 

"it fucks with u, I love it so much" basically the description of literature

Zlavoj Zizek says that if you have reasons to love someone, you don't. I feel like this is very much like what Montaigne says

Godot seems so interesting as you described it and it actually reminded me of a Greek poem , it’s called Ithaka by the poet cavafis and again it basically says that the destination, the milestone you’re trying to reach does not matter , what matters is the way you got there , all the experiences you acquired by trying to reach this milestone (you should read it , it draws inspiration from the odessy as well)

I remember studying Godot at A-Level was really the moment my whole opinion and approach toward literature and philosophy changed forever

Godoy reminds me of a saying that changed me. Life is not waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain

* runs to add them to her Goodreads tbr *

My life was changed by the work of Camus, especially "The Stranger". Also "The Cather in the Rye" and "Clockwork Orange" books read at the right time and had an important influence on the formation of my personality

WOW your ideas about waiting for godot have changed the way I view things. when you explained about waiting for something else rather than enjoying current time I really felt it, so I'm going to make a grand attempt to think a little differently, thank you!

1) Have breakfast, doubt my existence. 2) Melt my brain from all the book recommendations. 3) watch the gorgeous Emma throw in perfect French.. holy shit, I'm still scraping the fondue of what's left of my brain from the floor. I'm buying Montaigne today.

These types of videos are my favourite! I've only really gotten into reading in the past 6 months (largely influenced by your book recommendations!) and I'm just loving it

This is the only RU-vid video about books that satisfied me. Thank you for your upload! I really wanted to read all of them immediately.

Also a video on philosophy is very very needed

This was such a refreshing video, due to your books and the way you talk about them. I just bought 4 of your recommendations!

I absolutely adore your passion for the books you love. Thank you!

Roxana is in my TBR for this summer and the way you talk about it makes me SO EXCITED!!!!!!!

u dont know how much i enjoyed this video, thank u so much for making it

I saw Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen do waiting for Godot on Broadway and I’ll never forget it

I appreciate how deep you go into the books that I’ve never attempted to read

This video was randomly recommended to me by RU-vid today and it was *exactly* what I needed. I'm in the middle of questioning so many aspects of my life and all this recs hit hard.

I loved how you described Waiting For Godot. I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t really have the words to describe it (which is kind of the point of absurdism, that it makes you feel things you can’t always describe). But you summed it up so brilliantly.

de sade!!! that one lived in my head for MONTHS after i read it. totally agree about the narratives on power dynamics. definitely not something i’d recommend to anyone lol, but it’s so special.

I literally have just spent the week studying Waiting for Godot at university... and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone talk about it on (not) booktube... life is strange, one might even say absurd 🤭

your skin is GLOWING

Lockdown feels like Waiting for Godot, we've been waiting and waiting in the same place all these months.

The best video I have ever watched in my entire life. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.

"Which Russian is it?" is one of the funniest things I've ever heard, because there's so many classic Russian writers that could apply to.

Amazing video! I've only read two of these books (Beckett, Sade) and have yet to read the others! Always love your recommendations! :)

"You never really enjoy your life because you're always looking out at that next hurdle." Okay, I didn't click on a video to be personally attacked but here we are lol

adding all of these to my reading list

The only thing I can say every time I watch your videos is... Σ'αγαπώ!!! (meaning I love you in Greek). Appreciation from a Greek woman with two sons (one of them facing some dyslexia issues).

So glad i found you. Your book choice is intriguing. And i fully agree on what you said about friends being most important. Not only when you are young but ar any stage of your life. You got a new follower now.

oml, where has this channel been all my life?

i loved this!! the wild duck by henrik ibsen and the trial by franz kafka absolutely changed my life!! the wild duck reveled a bunch of truth bombs about how people cope with and survive in ~ society ~. it kept haunting me (in the best way possible, ghosts

Emma, this is my first video I watched of yours, thank you for your insight -- glad I found you.

Five books that changed your life? Uff, I'd be hard-pressed to narrow my list down to five, but here goes nothin’: 1) The 1969 World Book Encyclopedia. It’s not a single book, but whatevs. My parents had this set when I was a wee little boy, and I used to spend hours and hours going through it, bouncing from volume to volume (much like surfing the Web today), going wherever my curiosity took me, in effect developing the very capacity for curiosity itself. Bless ‘em, when I was 10 (i.e., the year 1987), my parents got a new set of World Book encyclopedias for me. They weren’t educated people, so I don’t think there’s anything else they did that was more important in furthering my intellectual development. 2) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It’s a clichéd choice for a precociously smart teenage boy, but I was, in fact, a clichéd and precociously smart teenage boy, so there ya go! 3) King Lear by William Shakespeare. It might be more accurate to just say “Shakespeare” since it was the course on “Shakespeare after 1600” my second semester at uni that cemented my intentions of majoring in English, rather than music or philosophy (never mind comp lit!). I single out King Lear because, as an undergrad, I wrote my senior thesis on it and, as a grad student, I ended my doctoral dissertation with a discussion of Peter Brook’s 1962 RSC production of it, so it would be an understatement to say that it’s kinda important to me. The bleakness of it, which I was probably in denial over when I first encountered it, probably crystallizes my personal worldview with respect to the tragic sense of life. 4) A Dollhouse by Henrik Ibsen. It totally blew me away the first time I ever read it and helped cement my interest in modern and contemporary drama and theater, which I love and even teach part-time. I’ve seen several Ibsen plays in outstanding productions, but not this one. Jessica Chastain, whom I jokingly refer to as my third wife, was supposed to do a production in London last year directed by Jaime Lloyd. COVID-19 killed those plans, but she’s said that she’s still committed to doing the play at some point in the future. If the production does actually happen, I’m hopping on a plane! 5) Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. I’ve read it only once, but it’s stayed with me, haunting me. It’s very short but very tough because it asks hard questions about the limits of human reconciliation and it cuts to the core of what love is and does so in the most heart-breaking way. In short, it’s a novel that’s made me a better human being. I’ve recommended it to so many people and even given it as a gift at least a couple of times. It’s extraordinary, and everyone should read it.

Girl, I found you now and let me just say this: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? WHY HASN'T YT RECOMMENDED YOU TO ME EARLIER?!

Wow I saw this video at the best time because I was kind of losing hope for humanity and you showed me there are good people especially readers like you that are trying to make people realise things. Also there’s so much hidden truth in books but not many people believe this because they say it’s just fiction (fiction my a** haha). Anyways I’m in love with your energy and your channel please continue to make these type of videos because you truly are inspirational.

24:51 just melted my brain tho

So refreshing to hear an honourable mention of Samuel Beckett…….I love Beckett!

A final project in my advanced acting course for my Theatre degree was a scene from "Waiting for Godot." So much fun. Hope you get to see a production of it soon!

the way that I also got taught Waiting for Godot and it changed my life as well..... so much so that I also recently bought that exact same complete works of Samuel Beckett book hAhah !

Wow, you express your thoughts and opinions so well. Everything you had to say was so interesting, especially your take on Waiting for Godot. Gonna go scout out some de Montaigne now! Also, just subscribed :)

Just subscribed, really love this

Hi Emma! If you want to read something with the same message as Godot I strongly recommend The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (Italian author). This book changed y perspective on life the same way Godot changed yours. Since you like philosophical novels I have two other recommendations. Firstly, Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse: extremely fascinating reflection on the dichotomy between rationality and feeling, god and passion, art and morality. In case you know what it is, I think you could say it's a discussion on the dichotomy between Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian. Beautiful read, still one of my favourite books. The next one you might have read, but it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson. Amazing analysis of good and evil, humanity versus monstrosity, what our actions signify about us and how. (Ps: I'm nearly done with my Philosophy degree at uni. I'm desperate for a video on Philosophy by you, lol).

Such a great video.. i never heard of any of these but roxana, the essays and the discourse are very interesting 👀

This is so interesting, I love your content! 🤍

This is the first video I've seen by you and I'm totaly hooked and you made me spend like 150 gpb on classics :'D

Watching your videos is like breathing fresh air

so simple, but a phrase i have absolutely loved for the same reason you like godot is “After years of waiting, nothing came.”

Your discussion of Waiting For Godot was honestly phenomenal. And, can I just say, when I get a dog, I'm calling him Godot.

I’m going to have to read Waiting for Godot now...going to have to buy it too...I have brought far too many books in lockdown 😳😂

Love this video, so interesting! I've honestly never thought about some of the books mentioned in the way you've discussed here, it's so fascinating to see how other people can take such different insights from the same works!

Love "Not I" by Beckett!

rewatching this video with both a cup of tea and a glass of COLD water... proud of myself not going to lie

Not to put pressure on you but I genuinely buy everything you recommend and I've never been disappointed 😂 If you love it, there's a 100% chance I will too 👏

Yay to the Defoe love!!! I am OBSESSED with Moll Flanders, which a lot of people around me don’t understand. Like, they can get why Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice might have a big impact on you but Moll Flanders? Really? And it’s like, yes! I didn’t write a dissertation on it, but I wrote a novel for my undergrad senior project and that novel was in many ways a love letter to Moll Flanders. So, I kind of did? Lol

I AM SO GLAD DESCARTES IS ON THE LIST

Your videos never fail to cheer up my day!🥰 and the dress is GORGEOUS! (As are you) where did you get it from??

I think I read “waiting for Godo” as waiting to “go do.”

Find you a friend who will put on your armor and scare off your enemies

BTW, I love Beckett, and I've seen several plays of his in production but, strangely, never Godot. I read Beckett as an undergrad, but he didn't click until very early on in grad school, my first month, when some students put on a production of Endgame and I realized that, ah ha!, he's meant to be funny!

Great list! I must confess the only one I haven't read is...Roxana!

24:51 that hits different

If you're interested in philosophy, and you haven't read Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, I highly recommend them for beginners.

I have just finished 120... I just... 😏 But now I've just spent £40 thanks for the recs. Already read; Les liaisons dangereousus, Justine, philosophy in the boudoir after finding your channel, looking forward to shaking my soul some more! Also just purchased Sade's letters from prison Xxx

on marriage: ever since I had a seminar on law giving in antiquity and medieval societies and we read, obviously, Platon for it and upon doing some further research into the matter I read in some text about Platons concept of the law that it was (either in Greek antiquity all together or just in Platons thinking i don't remember exactly) recommended to divorce a marriage after a set amount of years if it remained childless cause then clearly it didn't serve it's purpose at all. Also unmarried men above a certain age should pay a fine if they didn't marry so that they wouldn't think a life without family was easier then with a family. And what can I say. Changed my view on marriage and family forever. Not cause I agree with these concepts but because it shows the roots of what we romanticize as a choice when really it's is so deeply drenched in power relations and institutions.

Yes, your dress is beautiful 😻

Loved this video. I am extremely interested in many of your philosophy picks for this video, and those pinguin great ideas (or something, what was the name?) books seem very interested. I have never really read philosophers work on its own, what would you recommend if I just want to start reading philosophy that is still relevant for today? De Montaigne seems interesting! You showed the entire collection and I am not sure if I am ready for that yet haha.

I immediately went looking for the play after reading Beckett. There is a production (2009) with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, surprisingly there is no DVD or digital copy available for sell :(

Where did you get your dress at? I’m in love with it!

You are the epitome of what children of academics must look like. Im making a joke but its also true.

Your reading of Marriage, A History might be followed by the best witty novel about a dysfunctional marriage I know: *The Man Who Loved Children* by Christina Stead. Try and get the edition with the intro by Randall Jarrell, a great piece of writing in itself.

Beautiful ☺️

So amusing that you fell asleep in Hamlet and you love Godot! 😂 Same theme of characters always deliberating and waiting.

You are my favourite person.

the queer subtext is giving me so much life

Out of the topic but yeah I now read The Odyssey because of Emma. So so worth to read it you guys.

I remember loving Waiting for Godot as well. And Theater of the Absurd in general. Fun fact: Godot was first performed in Paris and the audience did not care for it much. Years later, in the 60s, it was performed in some jail in San Francisco, USA pretty much because it does not include female characters... And at first the inmates were booing it... And then they stayed and watched and loved it. When asked at the end what Godot meant to them, most were saying things like "freedom" and "acceptance in society". It took a whole different meaning for a whole different audience.

Why can't i be surrounded by people with your type of brain....why.

for me there's overlap but my favourite books aren't always the ones that shaped me the most - is it the same for you, i wonder? i've yet to read de Montaigne, de Sade, and Defoe, but thank goodness i have one "de" in the bag with Descartes - then again four "de"s in a row might sound like Beethoven's 5th symphony so maybe all or nothing is a better state to be in...

still not a book channel?

I love your shirt! Where is it from?

The sheer coincidence of it all , I just finished reading Waiting for Godot 😂

In your opinion, who is the best translator of Michel de Montaigne?

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - It's incredible and really impacted me like Godot did for you! - Just do NOT read the preface before reading the book!

Where is the dress from?🥺🥺

EMMA YOU STILL HAVE THE MUG I BOUGHT YOU also beautiful dress also also I love this

I love this video. We're getting deep and I love it

Im curious, do you (or commenters whove read it) think Id enjoy Waiting for Godot, even if I already live in the moment? Or is it mostly enjoyable for people who'll like get their mind blown type thing? ^^

Hi! In France we don't say "de Montaigne" or "de Sade", we say Montaigne, and Sade :)

Often it is said with irony "You live in a story!" or "you're just dreaming". But I don't think that's denigrating. I think it's a fact about our realities. The post-modernists we’re right about how the world we inhabit is for a great deal seen through our interpretation of it; yet there’s still limitations, and good isn’t relative, neither is bad. You have to operate within a certain framework, or structure: this structure is in part biological, psychological, social. It has deep roots, in our shared stories and values. I do not understand marriage; it’s a complex institution, and to reduce it to a mono-causal explanation which reduces all men to oppressors and all women to victims is not the right story. Evil and oppression, as well as being a victim or perpetrator of that, are primarily forces within one’s own soul and heart. Like I started by saying, you live in a story. And the best possible story that will give you the meaning you need to make your life bearable is that you have a struggle inside your own heart between these forces; and although they do manifest themselves in society and nature, there’s no other more powerful place to work on the betterment of the world than in one’s own soul.

Do you like Catherine Breillat movies? Would recommend if you don’t know them.

I thought I was pretty well versed in 18th century pornographic novels, but now I think I have more reading to do. Haha

Where did you get the dressssssssss

I read the title as “5 AM (as in time) books that changed who i 5 AM”

I'm gonna need to know where this dress is from please

Oh if could get an interview with that man, and finally ask him the big question. “Godot, once and for all tell us please tell us, how did this all begin, all of this “ not arriving “ !?

Emma: don’t put off things! Me: adding this books on my tbr until the “right time” well that’s so awkward random 🧍🏻‍♀️

Which one is your favorite penguin or oxford world classics ?

I feel like if I actually comment it's going to be an hr long paragraph on these topics so I will refrain. I love and appreciate.