My Favorite Movies, TV Shows, Books, Podcasts, Music, Video games

created: 2018-12-15; modified: 2021-09-17

This is a list of my favorite movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, music, and video games

Movies

Apollo 11 (2019), Before Sunrise (1995) + Before Sunset (2004) + Before Midnight (2013), Apocalypse Now (1979), Climax (2018), The Square (2017), Hardcore Henry (2016), Manifesto (2016), The Neon Demon (2016), Macbeth (2015), Ex Machina (2014), Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1971), Духless 2 (2015), Kis Uykusu (Winter Sleep) (2014), Across the Universe (2007), Hercules (2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Departed (2006), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Mr. Nobody (2009), Equilibrium (2002), Annie Hall (1977), Pi (1997), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Project X (2012), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Духless (2011), Gladiator (2000), Pulp Fiction (1994), To Rome with Love (2012), Crank (2006), Crank: High Voltage (2009)

TV shows

True Detective S02 (2015), Generation Kill (2008), Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Skins (2007-2013), American Dad (2005-), Scrubs (2001-2010), Daria (1997 – 2001), My So-Called Life (1994-1995)

Books

Two underappreciated points about books:

you can drop them
you can read them multiple times

Some books I read 3-5 times and I come away surprised at how much I notice with every reading. 80%+ of books I start I do not finish. I note the number of times I read a particular book below.

Autobiographies / Memoirs:

Freeman Dyson’s From Eros to Gaia (this book actually affected a few of my major life decisions) 2x
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried 3x
Steve Friedman’s Lost on The Treasure Island 4x
Vladimir Bukovsky’s To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (И возвращается ветер) 3x
Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered (Как закалялась сталь) 1x
James Watson’s The Double Helix 1x

Self-help

David Goggins' Can’t Hurt Me 5x+
- watch this video: Joe Rogan - Jesse Itzler Tells Hilarious David Goggins Stories
Scott Adams' How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big 4x
Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life 1x
- ok, I guess we need to have a discussion here. Everything you’ve heard about this book is wrong — you’re not entitled to an opinion about it, unless you’ve actually read it; at least read Scott Alexander’s review of it; JP might have a controversial persona attached to him, but the book is very light on politics and very heavy on timeless advice and great patterns of thought

Fiction:

Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero 2x
Milan Kundera’s The Joke 1x
Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы) & Demons (Бесы) 1x
Theodore Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire: The Financier, The Titan, The Stoic 1x
Abbe Prevost’s Manon Lescaut 2x

Non-fiction:

Andrew Groen’s Empires of Eve 2x
William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience 1x
Robert Caro’s The Power Broker <1x
Michael Soussan’s Backstabbing for Beginners 1x
Занимательная Греция Михаила Гаспарова 2x
Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy 1x
John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood 1x
James Gleick’s The Information 1x
Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things 1x
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind 1x
Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying 1x

Podcasts

Miscellaneous podcast episodes:

Rationally Speaking 212 - Ed Boyden
Lex Fridman - Jim Keller
Rationally Speaking 216 - Diana Fleischman
Tim Ferriss - Eric Weinstein
Exponent 149 — Zillow
Waking Up Podcast #91 - Robert Sapolsky
80,000 Hours - Spencer Greenberg
2018-08-28 80,000 Hours #42: David Roodman
Indie Hackers - Austen Allred

Music

A few of my most favorite songs ever:

English

Aimee Mann
Atmosphere
Avril Lavigne
The Beatles
The Cardigans
Eminem
Florence + The Machine
Garbage
Gossip
Highly Suspect
Ida Maria
Jack Wood
Justin Bieber
La Roux
Lana Del Rey
Lera Lynn
Lil Peep
Maleidoscope
Marina and The Diamonds
Meg Myers
MS MR
The Neighbourhood
Paramore
Parcels
PJ Harvey
Tessa Violet
Two Door Cinema Club
The Pretty Reckless
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Russian

CENTR
Noize MC
Oxxxymiron
Андрей Макаревич
Владимир Высоцкий
Звери
Земфира

Video games

Battlefield 2
Battlefield 3
Mount and Blade: Warband
Starcraft 2
Europa Universalis 4
Civilization 5

Appendix

Anirudh Kannan writes about How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:

You mention that How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is “probably the most important book [you’ve] ever read.”

I’ve had a similar experience with that book; I downloaded the audiobook in March 2020 and went from suicidal 19 y/o to profoundly optimistic (etc.) at 20. Hard to overstate the impact it’s had on me.