Here you can find fairly comprehensive reading lists organized according to approximate subject. You are encouraged to browse this list and, if you find something you'd also be interested in reading, reach out to me to try to coordinate so we can discuss. Access the Page
I have some friends and acquantances who also run websites and blogs. I've collected some of the more active ones here, along with other regular publications I'm interested in.
"Caught in the Line", Boardman Robinson, illustration for Moby Dick
View past entries: Link
These tend to change more rapidly than I can update, but this gives an interesting cross section of my interest at a given moment:
Movie - March 2024
I watched Red Sorghum a while ago, but was distracted somehow - this movie reminds me to rewatch it. Really masterful cinematography throughout the entire film - the enclosed, labrynthine fortress walls of the palace make the film so eerie, atmospheric, and grim. The soundtrack is immense. Give it a watch soon.
Movie - March 2024
A really, really lovely movie. I was touched by the incredible sensativity and good humor of this portrayal. I hope that those who encounter it don't see a simple virtuous hermit but the deeply hurt, sensative, and caring individual portrayed here.
Movie - February 2024
When that light turned on and I saw Orson Welles smirking I lost it. What a great movie. I wasn't paying enough attention, and want to watch it again. Taking recommendations for more OW movies.
Movie - February 2024
Pretty cute; sort of quintessential of something. I loved the strange fisheye lenses in the first third. The dialogue writing was pretty bad - tacky.
Movie - February 2024
It really does kind of insist upon itself. Second or so time I've seen it. I didn't think very much of it and don't particularly care to.
Movie - January 2024
Citizen Kino!!!!!
FIction - January 2024
A really excellently constructed book, the kind that raises standards for everything else. What I was most struck by was Eliot's ability to write conversations where both characters speak past one another, misunderstanding everything that the other says and coming away with completely different impressions.
I always write a New Year’s Resolutions list, especially if I don’t plan on accomplishing any of them in an organized manner. I don’t really believe in any of the nonsense about “self-improvement”, “life-hacking”, etc., but I cherish the opportunity to probe my friends about the contents of their hearts and minds, and to figure out what I want to share of my own. The really vulnerable moments of self-reflection I save for private diaries.
Here is my resolution list for the year of 2024:
Movie - December 2023
A really cute and fun movie. A pretty transparently queer movie - a theme no critic seems to have appreciated? I wish it was an hour longer, honestly, and executed with more care. Jeffery Tambour plays a repressed FBI-man. Ripe with libidinal themes.
Movie - December 2023
Cute bit of original Christmas kitsch. I liked watching it with my family.
Movie - December 2023
Stupid movie. We were laughing throughout most of it. It felt like a comemrcial, had a pretty uninspiring plot, and was entangled in very bizzare political ideas which lead the heroes to form some kind of triumphant libertarian flotilla at the climax of the movie. Godzilla had swag but most of the city-destroying special effects were just fine.
Movie - December 2023
A movie that became more interesting to me after I had the opportunity to watch it a second time. About the Meji restoration, inheritance of a movie studio, the experience of wartime. The only weakness, for me, was Mahito's relative two-dimensionality. I thought at first that the fantasy imagination seemed to bite off a little more than it could chew, and that the emotional moments were a little cheap; but rewatching it I think I grasped the dreamlike movement of the movie, and the subtlety of some of the gestures, and I really loved it.
Movie - December 2023
A classic Western from William Wyler. A pretty fun movie, with excellent cinemetography. Burl Ives is excellent in it. Would recommend.
Movie - November 2023
Juzo Itami's second best picture, after Tampopo. This is a movie dear to me - my second rewatch, and I had the delight of being accompanied by my friends Owen and Meir this time around. A good comedy with an interesting depiction of the struggles of women in the workplace.
Event - November 2023
Natalie Troyer had a recent gallery exhibition at the student union at the University of Illinois. I quite liked some of the paintings, especially the strange perspective effect of using mobile phone photographs as references. Depicting familial scenes in this way I thought heightened the peculiar and nostalgic feelings of being on summer vacation with some distant relatives. Here are four of my favorites from the gallery: Link.
Nonfiction - November 2023
A strange but ultimately invigorating essay, basically a semi-literary experiment investigating the "Universal Army" and the "Psychoanalytic Placement Bureaus", two novel institutions Jameson describes in hope of reintroducing a thread of Utopian thinking back to the Left. I wrote a short review and summary: Read it here
Movie - November 2023
IGG Nabwana directs from the impoverished neighborhoods of Kampala, Uganda, and the film has been preserved and propogated by the "American Genre Film Archive". This is a good movie from a small team of people with not much money. The distillation of American cultural tropes is very funny, the everyone obviously has a lot of fun - and the sudden exposure of extreme poverty is more striking than any exploitation genre film out of America. Less than seventy minutes long.
Movie - November 2023
Edward Yang's phenomenal movie of a wealthy Taipei family. I have watched this three times now. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I would recommend it to everyone who gives me the time of day.
Fiction - September 2023
Tove Jansson is most known for the Moomin comics, but her short fiction book is really excellent. I was especially interested in the way the "timeless" aspects of this childhood story, and of island living, were mixed up with obviously modern contrivances - petroleum cans and pills for vertigo. I would recommend it even to those a little frightened of reading.
Nonfiction - April 2023
Lewontin's book is philosphy of biology grounded in a long career's worth of practical experience in the scientific field. I wrote this brief essay to summarize some of the most interesting points. I recommend the book to anyone studying the technical aspects of any natural science. Read it here.
Fiction - March 2023
Reread, five years after I first read it for a high school class. Really phenomenal and a lot better than what I remembered, and got out of it at the time. If you have a favorite live performance recording, please share it with me!.
Fiction - March 2023
Translated by Canaan Morse for the NYRB. A really great novella, strange and slippery. You feel cheesed by the ending, and want to comb over it again for fine details.
Fiction - March 2023
A great two hours of reading. This was my introduction to the author and I was surprised so many of the jokes of 200 years ago are still fresh. The war and ghost stories are a little less compelling; but they do impress the originality and possibility of the new tabloid format. My favorite story is Herr Unzelmann's.
Nonfiction - March 2023
Peculiar piece of literary criticism. The style of exposition is very roundabout, and it repeats itself. The research is high-grade, and much of the commentary on the political and literary scenes was very interesting to me. Unfortunately Rogin never really makes a compelling reason why finding the "geneological" origins of one of Melville's ideas, characters, and situations helps illustrate something novel about them, so the book is fundamentally a little weak. Did not finish.
Nonfiction - February 2023
A very interesting book. The first part is like a compass which sets everything in Moby Dick in order, making it tangible and even more powerful. I would highly recommend reading these first three chapters to anyone who wants to read the novel. The other parts are stranger. For one, James doesn't understand homosexuality, and I think his analysis of these elements is so dissapointing and stupid. Next, the avowed anti-communism is very peculiar. It becomes a little clearer when you learn that he wrote the book while imprisoned and up for deportation, and had a copy sent to every U.S. senator as a desperate plea to remain in the country. The stories about the communists in Ellis Island feel like an inside joke, but I wonder if the stance compromises the analysis.
Fiction - February 2023
More mournful and solemn rereading it. This quote kept stickign with me, Ahab, when he is wavering between madness and forlorn resignation: "they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay." Check it out yourself sometime.
Nonfiction - January 2023
A great text which I would give to anyone new to communist ideas and organizing, who wants to begin changing the way they thing and act in accordance with these values. Thank you very much Marly!