Maybe a simple question but I have a List<object> that I use to return just a handful of properties from my full User class, like first name, last name, phone number.

But my question is why does this work....

public List<object> GetObject(IQueryable query)
{
   // ...
   List<object> smallObj = query.Select(u => GetSmallUser(u)).ToList(); 
   // ...
}

private object GetSmallUser(User user)
{
   return new{
      FirstName = user.FirstName,
      LastName = user.LastName,
      Phone = user.PhoneNumber
   }
}

And this doesn't work...

public List<object> GetObject(IQueryable query)
{
   // ...
   List<object> smallObj = query.Select(u => new
   {
      FirstName = u.FirstName,
      LastName = u.LastName,
      Phone = u.PhoneNumber
   }).ToList(); 
   // ...
}

The later is saying that it convert List of anonymous type to a list of object. Shouldn't those be returning the same thing?