Library

Some of my favorites. For a list of books I consumed, see the bookshelf.

Lightness

• A Table Is As Good As Nine Lives (short film, 2022)
• Andor (2022-)
• Avatar: The Last Airbender (cartoon, 2005-2008)
• The Bear (tv, 2022-)
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010, 1h 30m)
• The Diary of Tortov Roddle (Aru tabibito no nikki)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film, 1hr 52m, 2007)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (film, 2022)
• Exit Through the Gift Shop (film, 1h 27m, 2010)
• Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts, by Stephen Nachmanovitch
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel (graphic novel, 232 pgs, 2007)
• Heavyweight (podcast)
• How To with John Wilson (tv)
• In B Flat
• Intouchables (film, 120 min, 2011)
• Magic Ship, by Mountain Man (album, 2018)
• NYT’s Metropolitan Diary
• Others (short film, 2019)
• Over the Garden Wall (cartoon, 10 episodes, 2014)
• Parasite (film, 2019)
• Searching for Sugar Man (film, 1h 26m, 2012)
• Slow Horses (2022-)
• Succession (tv, 2018-present)
• Tampopo (film, 1985)
• Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Darkness

• 13th, by Ava DuVernay (2016, 1h 40m)
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
• The Big Short (film, 2015)
• Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine (2014)
• Citizenfour
• Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)
• Day X from the New York Times
• Do Not Resist (2017, 1h 12m)
• Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief
• HOPELESSNESS, by ANOHNI (2016)
• Hypernormalisation, by Adam Curtis (2016, 2h 47m) - also: Bitter Lake
• Inside Job (2010, 1h 48m)
• The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
• Q: Into the Storm (2021, six episodes)
• The Anti-Banality Union
• The Social Dilemma (2020, 1h 35m, skip the dramatizations!)
• “The Thriving World, The Wilting World, & You,” by Anand Giridharadas (2015, 30m)
• Watchmen (both the graphic noval and the HBO series)
• Winners Take All, by Anand Giridharadas (2018)

Knowledge

• The Art of the Steal (2009)
• The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin
• Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016, 1h 38m)
• Stratechery (the weekly newsletter is free; I don’t always agree, but the coverage is enlightening)
• Technology is Stupid, by by Marek Tuszynski, Tactical Tech (2020)
• Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, by Kay Larson

Meaning

• “Anima,” by Thom Yorke and Paul Thomas Anderson
• Arrival (film, 2016)
• Broken Earth trilogy, by N.K. Jemesin
• Confronting Silence: Selected Writings, by Toru Takemitsu
• The Icons Club (podcast)
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont (1999-present)
• Moonlight, (film, 2016)
• Paprika (2006)
• Princess Mononoke (film, 1997)
• The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman (comics, 1989-1996)
• Uncommon Prayer, by Kimberly Johnson

Futures

• Basic Call to Consciousness (excerpts)
• The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin
• Dune, by Frank Herbert (also, the 2021 movie)
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
• Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler (1993)
• Radical Graffiti (mastodon)
• Interstellar (film, 2014)
• “unthinkable thoughts: call out culture in the age of covid-19,” by adrienne maree brown (blog post)