Table of Contents

1. Biography: About myself and this webpage.
2. To-Read Lists: What I'm interested in reading.
3. Featured Writing: Amateur prose and poetry.
4. Artwork of the Month: Pictures I like.
5. Rolodex: Other webpages I like.
6. Read/Watched Log: Chronological entries of books I've read and movies I've watched.
7. Music Collection: My CD collection.
8. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
1. Introductory Plant Biology - Stern
2. Evolution - Zimmer
3. Guide to Flowering Plant Families - Zomlefer
4. Botany in a Day - Elpel
5. Plant Systematics - Campbell
6. On the Origin of Species - Darwin
7. Annals of the Former World - McPhee

History and Politics
1. Nature's Metropolis - Cronon
2. People of the Ecotone - Morrisey
3. Late Victorian Holocausts - Davis
4. Ecological Imperialism - Crosby
5. Every Farm a Factory - Fitzgerald
6. Hammer and Hoe - Kelley
7. Fanshen - Hinton
8. Rice in the Time of Sugar - Perez
9. Empire of Cotton - Beckert
10. Carbon Technocracy - Seow
11. Red Revolution, Green Revolution - Schmaltzer
12. Capitalism in the Web of Life - Moore
13. Sweetness and Power - Sidney Mintz

Theory, Criticism, and Philospohy
1. Capital - Marx
2. Science of Logic - Hegel
3. Hegel's Concept of Life - Ng
4. Letters and Writings of Zhang Xuecheng - Yu
5. Emptiness and Omnipresence - Ziporyn

Literature and Film
1. Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thiongo
2. The Idiot - Elif Bautman
3. Petersberg - Andrei Bely
4. Native Son - Richard Wright
5. Paradiso - Jose Lezama Lima
6. Collected Poetry - Derek Walcott
7. The Passion According to G.H. - Clarice Lispector
8. The English Understand Wool - Helen DeWitt
9. Stoner - John Williams
10. The Red and the Black - Stendhal
11. The Carnival Trilogy - Wilson Harris
12. Gargantua and Pantagruel - Rabelais
13. Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
14. Crab Ship Cannery - Takiji Kobayashi
15. Three Streets - Yoko Tawada

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.

1. Two Poems
2. An American Utopia - Frederick Jameson
3. The Triple Helix - Richard Lewontin

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:

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

For 2024's entries

Read/Watched Log, 2025

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.

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

Appendix

My button:

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

Additional Object #2:
New Years Resolutions 2025

Additional Object #1:
Mantou Recipe