Biography: About myself and this webpage.
To-Read Lists: What I'm interested in reading.
Featured Writing: Amateur prose and poetry.
Artwork of the Month: Pictures I like.
Rolodex: Other webpages I like.
Read/Watched Log: Chronological entries of books I've read and movies I've watched.
Music Collection: My CD collection.
Birdwatching Lifelist: Every bird I've ever seen.
Appendix: Miscellaneous objects and links.

Biography

My name is Aaron. I am currently a student of Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I'm interested in lots of topics in the natural sciences, especially as they relate to my ecological context here in the Midwest of the United States. I'm also interested in history, political economy, critical theory, and philosophy. I originally developed this simple webpage to host resources for a hopeful summer reading group, which has come and gone. I continue to maintain the site because I enjoy documenting these interests and my thoughts, and find it convenient and fun to share the page with new and old friends. My other interests are varied and include:

Grappling sports and weight training: I did judo a few years back and am currently training in BJJ. I love grappling sports and am persuing weightlifting ancillary to that interest. I think it is very beautiful, enormously fun, and endlessly interesting.
Language learning: Although I'm a pseud and a flake, I've had the good fortune to take some classes in standard Arabic and in Russian. I'm currently familiarizing myself with the basics of Chinese. I would love to become fluent in Spanish sometime.
Literature and film: I try to read and watch widely.
Birdwatching: I'm currently enrolled in an ornithology class, have recently begun participing in the UIUC bird strike survey, and have begun birdwatching recreationally.

If you don't yet have my contact information, you can find it below. Please feel free to contact me about anything you encounter on this site that you'd like to dicsuss.

adivsin "at" protonmail "dot" com

To-Read Lists

Biology, Evolution, Ecology, and other Natural Sciences

Introductory Plant Biology - Stern
Evolution - Zimmer
Guide to Flowering Plant Families - Zomlefer
Botany in a Day - Elpel
Plant Systematics - Campbell
On the Origin of Species - Darwin
Annals of the Former World - McPhee

History and Politics

Nature's Metropolis - Cronon
People of the Ecotone - Morrisey
Late Victorian Holocausts - Davis
Ecological Imperialism - Crosby
Every Farm a Factory - Fitzgerald
Hammer and Hoe - Kelley
Fanshen - Hinton
Rice in the Time of Sugar - Perez
Empire of Cotton - Beckert
Carbon Technocracy - Seow
Red Revolution, Green Revolution - Schmaltzer
Capitalism in the Web of Life - Moore
Sweetness and Power - Sidney Mintz

Theory, Criticism, and Philospohy

Capital - Marx
Science of Logic - Hegel
Hegel's Concept of Life - Ng
Letters and Writings of Zhang Xuecheng - Yu

Literature and Film

Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thiongo
The Idiot - Elif Bautman
Petersberg - Andrei Bely
Native Son - Richard Wright
Paradiso - Jose Lezama Lima
Collected Poetry - Derek Walcott
The Passion According to G.H. - Clarice Lispector
The English Understand Wool - Helen DeWitt
Stoner - John Williams
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
The Carnival Trilogy - Wilson Harris
Gargantua and Pantagruel - Rabelais
Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
Crab Ship Cannery - Takiji Kobayashi
Three Streets - Yoko Tawada
Water Margin - Shi Nai'an

Featured Writing

I hope to write more in response to what I read, and to think more systematically; I hope you find these exercises interesting or useful.

Artwork of the Month

Febrary: John Everett Millais, "Isabella"

See previous entries.

Rolodex

A number of my friends have webpages of their own, which may be of interest to you. I will also store other interesting websites here:

Olivia's neocities page: a friend studying the history of capitalism and the japanese railroad network.
Alex's neocities page: a friend who hosts some interesting artwork and poetry.
Advith's neocities page: a friend with an interesting blog.
Iris' neocities page: a friend studying Chinese history and Tiantai buddhism.
Richard's essays: an incarcerated penpal writing about capitalism, colonialism, and waste management.
James' essays: a friend studying 19th century German philosophy.
The Phenmoneal World newsletter: some great writing on various topics in modern political economy.

For 2024's entries

Read/Watched Log, 2025

5-Jan-2025: Film: All For The Winner (1990)
A spectacular comedy with great slapstick. Instantaneous recommendation from the very first scene. (100 minutes)
9-Jan-2025: Fiction: Journey to the West, vol. 1 (2012) Wu Cheng'en
translator Anthony Yu. What a fantastic story. I love the comedic bits between Eight Rules and Sun Wukong. I'm looking forward to finishing this, although I don't anticipate being able to do so soon. I'm also interested in reading Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase. (379 pages)
12-Jan-2025: Film: Sound of Metal (2020)
A pretty good film. At times it accomplishes some really interesting effects with the sound design - I think of scenes where it is ambiguous whether it is simply a silent environment, or we are "hearing" Stone's deaf perspective. And the sonic congruence between the final party scene, when the experience of total social alienation overwhelms him, matching the total dissonance of the roaring distorted metal songs, is really striking. Underwritten and formulaic in many of its early beats. Lukewarm recommendation. (80 minutes)
14-Jan-2025: Fiction: The Idiot (2017) Elif Batuman
A really superb novel. Truly a feat that something so boring could be so quick-witted, so funny, and so intense and crushing. A definite recommendation. (423 pages)
14-Jan-2025: Comic: Dykes To Watch Out For (1986) Alison Bechdel
Spectacular. (77 pages)
29-Jan-2025: Fiction: Klara and the Sun (2021), Kazuio Ishiguro
An enjoyable novel, which was kindly gifted to me. I really admire a work of science fiction more interested in exploring a novel and unique subjectivity than poorly posed social-political questions. Really bruising in its final passages. Recommend. (303 pages).
27-Feb-2025: Nonfiction: Emptiness and Omnipresence (2016), Brook Ziporyn
My mind is like a sieve lately, so I feel like I got very little out of this. When I'm more powerful again I'll try the lotus sutra and the mohochikuan. Recommend. (336 pages)
13-Mar-2025: Nonfiction: Age of Revolution (1962) Eric Hobsbawm
A fantastic book. The wide breadth of topics is really stunning, and it leaves a lot of interesting topics I feel compelled to follow up on in greater reserach. Particularly interesting subjects to me were the political details of the French Revolution; the ambiguous relationship between scientific advancement and social, economic, political developments at the time; the process of deindustrialization in colonial India; and the history of the Greek revolution. A strong recommendation. (366 pages)
27-Mar-2025: Fiction: The Adventures of Augie March (1953) Saul Bellow
It took me a long time to like this book - I first tried reading it in my junior year of high school. At the end I really was wooed by the kind of idiotic, charming psuedishness of the character. I was also a little dissapointed in its self-seriousness and self-importance. Sometimes very well written but other times way too taken by syntactical excesses, or by pastiche. Would recommend, to some. (536 pages).

Music Collection

These are all albums I have on CD. I started a little collection from some old, scratched up discs my mom gave to me and have been adding to it slowly. Hopefully, I'll add a little radio station or music player here soon.

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else - 1958

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - The Big Beat - 1960

Clifford Brown - Memorial Album - 1956

Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir - Ritual - 1994

Ray Brown Trio - Black Orpheus - 1992

Chakra - Chakra - 1980

Chakra - Satekoso - 1981

Chakra - Nanyo De Yoisho - 1983

Ornette Coleman - Something Else! -

Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come -

Ornette Coleman - Tomorrow is the Question! -

Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century -

Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz -

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme - 1965

Copland - Symphony No. 3, Danzon cubano, El Salon Mexicano - 1986

Miles Davis - Miles Ahead - 1957

Dvorak - Prague Festival Orchestra, Hungarian State Orchestra - 1988

Glenn Gould - The Glenn Gould Edition: The Well-Tempered Clavier II - 1994

Joe Henderson - Mirror Mirror - 1980

Mishio Ogawa - Mishio Ogawa - 1984

Oscar Peterson - plays Count Basie - 1956

Los Hermanos Rosario - Los Duenos del Swing - 1995

Schonberg - Pierrot Lunaire Op. 21, Op. 29 - 1991

Nina Simone - The Blues - 1991

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish - 1991

Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot - 1994

Visiting Discs: I checked these albums out from the library and listened to them at home.

Amy Winehouse - Frank - 2003

Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing

Birding

I started going birding this winter, being newly enrolled in an Ornithology course and making some friends interested in the hobby. Here is my life list, organized by order and family. Within this list you can find a list of prospective birds I would love to try and find this year. My eBird is here

Accipitriformes

Bald Eagle
Cooper's Hawk
Northern Harrier
Red-Tailed Hawk
Turkey Vulture
Anseriformes (waterfowl)
American Black Duck
Blue-Winged Teal
Bufflehead
Canada Goose
Greater White-Fronted Goose
Green-Winged Teal
Lesser Scaup
Mallard
Northern Pintail
Northern Shoveler
Ring-Necked Duck
Wood Duck
Charadriiformes (shorebirds)
Killdeer
Wilson's Snipe
Woodcock
Columbiformes (pigeons and doves)
Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
Coraciiformes (kingfishers)
Belted Kingfisher
Gruiformes (rails)
American Coot
Passeriformes (perching birds) (internally alphabetized by family)
Brown Creeper
American Crow
Blue Jay
American Goldfinch
House Finch
Tree Swallow
Brown-Headed Cowbird
Common Grackle
Eastern Meadowlark
Red-Winged Blackbird
Black-Capped Chickadee / Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
American Tree Sparrow
Dark-Eyed Junco
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-Throated Sparrow
House Sparrow
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Red-Breasted Nuthatch
White-Breasted Nuthatch
European Starling
Carolina Wren
American Robin
Eastern Bluebird
Northern Cardinal
Eastern Phoebe
Pelicaniformes (large waterbirds)
Great Blue Heron
Piciformes (woodpeckers)
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
Podicepediformes (grebes)
Pied-Billed Grebe
Strigiformes (owls)
Barred Owl
Northern Saw-Whet Owl

Appendix

My button:

My memento: a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune...

Additional Object #1: Mantou Recipe

Additional Object #2: New Years Resolutions 2025

Additional Object #3: Page Counter

Table of Contents