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 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)