Favorites

A non-comprehensive list of some of my favorite music, writing, movies, etc.

Books

Fiction

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
Berserk (Kentaro Miura)
Candide (Voltaire)
Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
Circe (Madeline Miller)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Non-fiction

A Pattern Language (Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa)
Difficult Conversations (Bruce Patton, Douglas Stone, and Sheila Heen)
From Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
Human Learning and Memory (David Lieberman)
The Anthropocene Reviewed (John Green)
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering (Richard Hamming)
When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

Other Writing

Writing that I've found impactful and would not consider to be a "book"

Becoming a Magician (Autotranslucence)
Cities and Ambition (Paul Graham)
Finding the Right People (Nix)
How Powerlifting Saved My Life (Alyssa Keiko)
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (Slate Star Codex)
MIT 2022 Special Ceremony Speech (Kealoha Wong)
Life is Not Short (DKB Show)
Politics and the English Language (George Orwell)
Relationships are Challenging + a Lot of Work (Visakanv)
Replacing Guilt (Nate Soares)
Staring Into the Abyss as a Core Life Skill (Ben Kuhn)
This is Water (David Foster Wallace)

Music

Classical

My favorite composition from each of the following composers

Albinoni: Adagio
Bach: Sarabande, Cello Suite No. 6
Barber: Violin Concerto, Mvt II
Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
Beethoven: Heiliger Dankgesang
Brahms: Symphony No. 4, Mvt II
Chopin: Fantasie in F
Debussy: String Quartet
Dvorak: Piano Quartet No. 2
Elgar: Serenade for Strings, Mvt 2
Fauré: Apres un Reve
Franck: Violin Sonata
Glass: Pruit Igoe and Prophecies
Gluck: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis
Khachaturian: Adagio from Spartacus
Liszt: Piano Sonata
Mahler: What Love Tells Me
Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time, Mvt V
Mozart: Symphony No. 40, Mvt I
Mozetich: Postcards from the Sky, Mvt I
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel orchestration)
Pärt: Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten
Rachmaninov: Cello Sonata
Ravel: String Quartet
Saint-Saëns: Le Cygne
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht
Schubert: Death and the Maiden, Mvt II
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5, Mvt III
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2, Mvt IV
Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra
Suk: Serenade for Strings
Tchaikovsky: Hymn of the Cherubim
Vivaldi: Double Cello Concerto
Wagner: Tannhäuser Overture
Webern: Langsamer Satz

My non-classical tastes are fairly vanilla, so I will not bother you with them :)

Movies

Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
East of Eden (1955)
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Gattaca (1997)
Interstellar (2014)
Kimi no Na wa (2016)
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Three Idiots (2009)

Shows

Alice in Borderland (2020-2022)
Attack on Titan (2013-)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
Bojack Horseman (2014-2020)
Death Note (2006-2007)
Death Parade (2015)
Looking for Alaska (2019)
Mob Psycho 100 (2016-2022)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
Steins;Gate (2011)