Warning: No neuroscience or ecology or economics, just me posting something I want to save for personal interest. I try to keep this blog relatively on-topic, but hey, it’s the holidays.
I may be a scientist, but my personal interests tend to the philosophy-history-literature axis of things. The problem is, there is always so much to read! Right now I’m on a classic in Polish literature (something I only recently discovered exists).
Here is a list of books that Joseph Brodsky thinks you should read before you can have a basic conversation with him. As an example, here is a personalized reading list:
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots
Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt,The Origins of Totalitarianism
Andrey Platonov, The Foundation Pit [PERSONAL NOTE: I hated this book.]
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
E.M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Alternatively, here is a collection of syllabi from 10 famous authors. Possibly the best syllabi:
