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.
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.

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

January: Ono Yuko, "Metamorphose 2"

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).

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