Read everyday.
Spend time with nature.
Ask questions.
Never stop learning.
Don't pay attention to what others think of you.
Do what interests you the most.
Study hard.
Teach others what you know.
Make mistakes and learn.
It's okay to not know things.
Richard Feynman, curated list of advice.
I thought I was writing what I wanted to read.
That's what I would think when I didn't know how to phrase something or end a story.
I'll just remind myself: I'm writing what I want to read.
Tao Lin, on learning to write.
Movies to remember
Paris, Texas
Wings of Desire
In the Mood for Love
Lost in Translation
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Total Love (Mashehu Totali)
reading
the artist's way, julia cameron
nurtured by love, suzuki
the art of clear thinking, rudolf flesch
2024
lecture: Ten O'Clock, Whistler
lecture: discourses on art, reynolds
2023
gammell's essays
poem: beauty, cyprian norwid
letter to artists, pope john paul II
lecture: on colouring, opie
training of the memory in art, lecoq
essay: art and revolution, ingbretson
dennis miller bunker, gammell
twilight of painting, gammell
the boston painters, gammell
2022
Velasquez, R. A. M. Stevenson
The Classic Point of View, Six Lectures on Painting, Kenyon Cox
Life in the Studio, Nancy Hale
the painting of modern life, t.j. clark
shop talk of degas, r.h. ives gammell
the old man and the sea, ernest hemingway
the dharma bums, jack kerouac
the sun also rises, ernest hemingway
howl and other poems, allen ginsberg
letters to a young poet, rainer maria rilke☆
a moveable feast, ernest hemingway☆
the little book of cosmology, lyman page
2021
beowulf, tr. burton raffel (reread)☆
the plague, albert camus
leave society, tao lin
hiroshima notes, kenzaburo oe
Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose
territory of light, yuko tsushima
My Struggle, Book 5, Karl Ove Knausgaard
the elephant vanishes, haruki murakami
book of laughter and forgetting, milan kundera
The Mathematician's Lament, Paul Lockhart
7 1/2 lessons about the brain, lisa feldman barrett
permutation city, greg egan
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, Nick Bostrom
Simulation, Consciousness, Existence, Hans Moravec
Ur-Fascism, Umberto Eco
2020
norwegian wood (reread)
ikigai, ken mogi
madness of crowds, douglas murray☆
Mutual Aid, Peter Kropotkin☆
blindness, saramago☆
Lying, Sam Harris
Free Will, Sam Harris
my struggle, book 4, karl ove knausgaard
the true believer, eric hoffer
seize the day, saul bellow
the sense of an ending, julian barnes
ms ice sandwich, mieko kawakami
a well-kept life, hoshi shinichi
dubliners, james joyce
hardboiled & hard luck, banana yoshimoto
my struggle, book 3, karl ove knausgaard
The Nightmare That Is a Reality, Arthur Koestler
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Eugene Wigner
Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre
Ecclesiastes
2019
brief encounters, dick cavett
terra incognita, spring in fialta and the doorbell, vladimir nabokov
the emissary, yoko tawada
convenience store woman, sayaka murata
My Struggle Book 2, karl ove knausgaard
what is the what, david eggers
moshi moshi, shimokitazawa, banana yoshimoto
my struggle, book 1, karl ove knausgaard☆
what purpose did i serve in your life, marie calloway☆
pinball, 1973, haruki murakami
hear the wind sing, haruki murakami
kitchen, banana yoshimoto☆
middlesex, jeffrey eugenides☆
2018
the book of tokyo, various, translated
shoplifting from american apparel, tao lin
the grapes of wrath, john steinbeck
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, haruki murakami, tr. alfred birnbaum
the optimist's daughter, eudora welty
foundation, isaac asimov
everything is illuminated, jonathan safran foer
a brief history of time, stephen hawking☆
the known world, edward p. jones☆
the metamorphosis, franz kafka
the stranger, albert camus
the human stain, philip roth
richard yates, tao lin
2017
blood meridian, cormac mcarthy
bed, tao lin
breakfast at tiffany's, truman capote
housekeeping, marilynne robinson
the woman warrior, maxine hong kingston
the bluest eye, toni morrison
the beauty of history, viivi luik
swing time, zadie smith☆
lost in the funhouse, john barth☆
after art, david joselit
franny and zooey, j.d. salinger
on the road, jack kerouac
lolita, vladimir nabokov
wise blood, flannery o’connor
black boy, richard wright☆
earlier, memorable
the crying of lot 49, thomas pynchon
the virgin suicides, jeffrey eugenides
norwegian wood, haruki murakami
the marriage plot, jeffrey eugenides☆
the lord of the rings trilogy, jrr tolkein☆
the hobbit, jrr tolkein☆
the silmarillion, jrr tolkein☆
the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books, douglas adams☆
le morte d'arthur, thomas malory
the fountainhead, ayn rand
on the shelf
the bible
war and peace, tolstoy
on the aesthetic education of man, friedrich schiller
Breath, James Nestor
A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, heying & weinstein
My Struggle, Book 6, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Art in Theory 1900-2000, Charles Harrison, Paul Wood (35%) - The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance. - da Vinci
leaves of grass, walt whitman
on the origin of species, darwin
gravity's rainbow, thomas pynchon
anna karenina (finished part 2)
the fourth turning, strauss & howe
ボッコちゃん, 星新一
the kalevala, elias lönnrot tr. keith bosley
the art of computer programming vol 1, donald knuth
神様、川上弘美
the antilibrary:
zero, charles seife
sapiens, yuval
Live Not By Lies, 1974 essay by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
chimera, john barth
exodus
russian, dostoevsky, tolstoy
james baldwin
eric's important books
endless frontier vannevar bush
Childhood's End, arthur c. clarke
solaris, Stanisław Lem
shakespeare, othello, etc, arkangel audio, orson welles, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/index.html
ovid, tiresias
george orwell, aldous huxley
walden
fencing, aldo nadi
The Black Swan, taleb
the kalevala
shattered sword: midway
ancient war history
atlas shrugged
objectivism, yaron brook, leonard peikoff
love and math, frenkel
short stories in japanese
scifi: foundation, hyperion, dune, greg egan
zero to one
selfish gene
permanent record snowden
Alexis de Tocqueville
italo calvino
paradise lost
books on chess
feynman lectures, dirac lectures
the road to reality, roger penrose
books on war, difficult situations (re: the plague)
morning star, knausgaard
The Rings of Saturn, sebald
joan didion
dialogue, galileo (audiobook, keating)
Less Than One: Selected Essays. 1986. By Joseph Brodsky
outlive, attia
virtue of selfishness, rand
gk chesterton
Black Rednecks and White Liberals, sowell
homily: solemnity of the ascension of our lord, paul vi
treatise on painting, da vinci
meditations, marcus aurelius
mathematician's apology, hardy
Narcissus and Goldmund, Hesse