When people talk about preparing for college, the conversation often revolves around which school are you going to, what’s your major, are you living on campus, and what career do you want? Those questions certainly matter, but after spending years in higher education, I’ve become convinced that they’re not the questions that determine whether someone has a fulfilling college experience.

College isn’t just an academic experience. It’s the first time many people are responsible for managing every aspect of their own lives simultaneously. You’re learning how to organize your schedule, navigate new friendships, manage your time, balance competing priorities, and create routines that allow you to succeed academically without completely burning yourself out. Looking back, those are the lessons that have made the most profound impact on my life.

And if I could sit down with someone who was starting college tomorrow, this is the advice I’d give them.

1. Build systems instead of relying on motivation.

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about college was believing that successful students were simply more disciplined than everyone else. I assumed they woke up motivated every morning, loved studying, and somehow possessed a level of self control the rest of us lacked. The reality is that the students who consistently succeed usually aren’t relying on motivation at all, they’ve simply built systems that make it easier to stay organized.

That might mean keeping one calendar for every class, deadline, appointment, and commitment instead of trying to remember everything mentally. It might mean planning your week before it begins or creating dedicated study blocks that become part of your routine rather than something you negotiate with yourself every day. I’ve found that the less mental energy I spend trying to remember what I need to do next, the more energy I have available to actually learn.

This is one of the reasons I appreciate Windows’ approach to the college experience. Having Microsoft 365 Premium [2] included through the Microsoft College Offer gives students access to tools they already know and will continue to use in school and their careers, like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Those tools can help students organize assignments, manage deadlines, take notes, build presentations, and collaborate on projects from the very beginning of the semester. College becomes much less overwhelming when your systems are working for you instead of against you.

2. Your environment matters more than you think.

I used to believe I could study anywhere.

Some people do their best work in complete silence. Others need the ambient noise of a coffee shop. Some people love studying in the library, while others focus better at home with music playing softly in the background. Part of college is figuring out what kind of environment allows you to think clearly.

During one semester, I became convinced I couldn’t study unless I was sitting in the exact same corner of the library every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. I realized that this environment had become part of the habit and the reason why I was able to create a consistent and effective study routine that helped me succeed especially during exam weeks.

The same is true for the tools you use every day. Your laptop becomes your classroom, notebook, planner, writing desk, and creative workspace all at once. Choosing technology that supports the way you actually work, not just the way you imagine you’ll work, can make an enormous difference over the course of four years. It becomes the place where you draft essays at midnight, join group projects, organize your calendar, annotate lecture slides, apply for internships, and call your parents when you’ve had a terrible week.

3. Don’t optimize your schedule so much that you forget to have a life.

College culture has become achievement oriented. Somewhere along the way, many students started believing that every hour needed to be optimized. If you aren’t studying, you should be networking. If you aren’t networking, you should be working. If you aren’t working, you should be preparing for whatever comes next.

The problem with that mindset is that there will always be another assignment, application, exam, or another opportunity to improve your resume. If you wait until everything is finished before allowing yourself to enjoy your life, you’ll be waiting forever.

Some of the most meaningful parts of college happen outside the classroom. They happen during late night conversations with friends, spontaneous coffee runs, campus walks, student organizations, and all the small moments that eventually become the memories you carry with you forever.

4. Rest is not the opposite of productivity.

College convinces you that every free hour is an opportunity to get ahead. You start measuring your days by how much you’ve accomplished rather than how well you’ve lived them. There is always something else you could be doing and the problem is that your brain was never designed to operate that way indefinitely.

For years I treated rest like something I had to earn. Once I finished the assignment, then I could relax. Once finals were over, then I could take a break. The problem is that college doesn’t work that way. There is always another deadline waiting around the corner.

Eventually I realized that rest isn’t what happens after productivity. It’s what makes productivity possible.

For me, that looks different depending on the season. Sometimes it’s reading a novel that has nothing to do with class. Sometimes it’s going for a walk without listening to a podcast. Lately, one of my favorite ways to end the day has been cozy gaming. Spending an hour immersed in a world that asks nothing of you except to enjoy yourself feels incredibly restorative. College has a way of convincing you that every free minute should be productive. I’ve found the opposite to be true. The more I intentionally protect my downtime, the more focused I am when it’s actually time to work.

I like that the Microsoft College Offer acknowledges this balance. College isn’t only about getting work done. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate [3] included, students have a way to unwind, recharge, and connect with friends outside of schoolwork. And because the offer also includes a customizable XBOX Wireless Controller [4], that part of college can feel a little more personal too.

It’s a subtle but important reminder that a healthy college experience isn’t built on constant work, it’s built on balance.

5. Ask questions earlier than you think you need to.

Whether it’s office hours, tutoring, classmates, advisors, or professors, asking for help is one of the fastest ways to make college feel less overwhelming. Most people wait until they’re already struggling before reaching out, when in reality those conversations are often most valuable before you feel completely lost.

One of the biggest surprises I experienced in college was realizing that professors genuinely want students to engage with the material. Office hours aren’t just for emergencies—they’re an opportunity to ask thoughtful questions, gain clarity, and build relationships with the people teaching you. The same goes for tutors, classmates, and advisors. Asking for help isn’t an admission that you aren’t capable; it’s one of the most effective ways to become more capable. College rewards curiosity just as much as it rewards intelligence, and some of the most valuable opportunities begin with the simple willingness to ask a question.

6. Your major is important, but it doesn’t define your future.

It can feel like every decision you make in college determines the rest of your life. In reality, very few careers follow a perfectly linear path anymore.

The classes you take matter. The skills you build matter. But so do the relationships you develop, the interests you discover, and the opportunities you say yes to that weren’t part of your original plan. Some of the most successful people I know are working in fields they never imagined when they first started college, and many of them would tell you that the experiences outside their major ended up shaping them just as much as the coursework itself.

Give yourself permission to change your mind. Explore electives that have nothing to do with your degree. Attend guest lectures simply because the topic sounds interesting. Read books outside your discipline. College is one of the few times in your life when exploration is not only encouraged, it’s expected. Don’t rush to become one version of yourself before you’ve had the chance to discover who you might become.

7. Build a routine you can actually sustain.

The best routine isn’t the one you follow for three days. It’s the one you can follow for an entire semester.

That means sleeping enough. Eating real meals. Scheduling your assignments before they’re urgent. Creating dedicated spaces for studying. Making time to move your body. Protecting your attention. Finding hobbies that remind you there’s more to life than coursework.

I’ve learned that consistency almost always beats intensity. You don’t need a perfect morning routine or a color-coded planner worthy of social media. You need habits that are realistic enough to survive busy weeks, difficult semesters, and the inevitable moments when life becomes unpredictable. The routines that will serve you best aren’t the ones that look the most impressive, they’re the ones that make your life feel more manageable day after day.

College is demanding enough. Your routine should make your life easier, not harder.

8. Remember that you’re building a life, not just earning a degree.

When I look back on college, I don’t remember every assignment I completed or every exam I took. I remember the routines I built, the people I met, the books I discovered, the professors who challenged the way I thought, and the version of myself that slowly emerged over time.

A degree is important, but it’s only one part of what you’re building. College is one of the few seasons of life where you’re given the time and space to discover how you learn best, what genuinely interests you, and the kind of life you want to create after graduation. Don’t rush through those years so quickly that you forget to experience them while you’re living them.

If you’re getting ready to start college this fall, I’d encourage you to think beyond your class schedule. Think about the systems, habits, and environment that will support you over the next four years. That’s ultimately why partnering with Windows felt like such a natural fit for me. The Microsoft College Offer is not just about purchasing any new PC, it’s about finding a Windows 11 PC that fits how you study, create, connect, and play, with added value that supports different parts of college life, Microsoft 365 Premium can help students stay organized, manage deadlines, and get more done across classes, projects, and job prep, while XBOX Game Pass Ultimate gives students a way to unwind and connect with friends outside of schoolwork.

Whether you’re heading off to college for the first time or returning to school after time away, I hope you give yourself permission to learn more than what’s written on the syllabus. Some of the most important things you’ll gain from college won’t show up on your transcript, but they’ll shape the person you become long after graduation.

If you’re planning to purchase a new eligible Windows PC before the semester begins, the Microsoft College Offer is available for a limited time and is worth checking out before it ends.

[1] Offer ends June 30, 2026. Eligibility requirements apply, and students will need to verify their academic status using their college.edu email address.

Redemption requires a Microsoft account and following the provided steps after purchase of a qualifying PC.

[2] For new subscribers only. Valid payment method required; subscriptions autorenew. See terms and conditions for details.

[3] For new subscribers only. Valid payment method required; subscriptions autorenew. See terms and conditions for details.

[4] Upgrades available; additional fees apply.

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there was a period of my life when i sold my soul to the corporate finance world, and even though those years were some of the most empty and directionless of my entire adulthood, there was one piece of advice a manager gave me that has stayed with me much longer than the job ever did. she told me that the most powerful thing a person can have is a point of view. essentially, knowing what you think and being able to stand in it while still being open enough to listen to someone else. and lately, as the world has gotten more online, more reactionary, more mentally diluted, i’ve started to notice how easily my own opinions arrive pre shaped, like they’ve been assembled somewhere else before they even reach me. i’ve seen how quickly my convictions fall apart the moment someone pushes back, and how often i confuse the feeling of recognizing an idea with the actual work of understanding it. it’s a strange and uncomfortable realization. like the sense that my interior life is thinning out and that parts of my thinking are beginning to feel outsourced. i’m no longer the origin point of my own mind in the way i used to be. are you feeling this, too?

and it isn’t that i’ve gotten less intelligent. it’s that i’ve stopped using the part of my brain that actually belongs to me.

thinking used to feel exciting and exploratory: following a question into the dark, wrestling with contradictions, building a point of view from the inside out. now it feels like repetition. a subtle imitation of whatever language or ideology was closest to you that week. you didn’t choose this. it happened the way erosion happens in this earth: slowly, invisibly, one small surrender at a time.

thankfully the mind is reversible. the numbness, the fog, the static. none of it is permanent. you can call your thinking back to you if you’re willing to do the uncomfortable work of actually engaging with ideas instead of floating on the surface of them. and you can rebuild the parts of your brain that used to feel sharp, curious, alive.

this essay is not about becoming more productive or more optimized or more impressive. it’s about learning how to think again. deliberately, privately, honestly. it’s about reclaiming the ability to understand something before you decide how to feel about it and forming a real point of view in a world where most people are too distracted or too intimidated to have one.

i’m going to give you actionable things that have helped me: practices, habits, mental drills and things that actually resurrect my brain: exposure to friction, argument, slowness, depth, solitude, and deliberate reasoning. things that make your mind work again in the muscular, cognitive, undeniable sense.

the first sign that your mind is waking back up is the moment you stop rushing toward certainty. most people don’t know how fast they leap to conclusions because the leap feels automatic. you hear something and you want to know immediately if it is correct, incorrect, acceptable, dangerous, flattering, threatening, or aligned with whatever worldview you have picked up along the way. this urgency comes from fear. fear of being wrong or being slow or looking uninformed. fear that, if you sit with the idea too long, your uncertainty will be visible.

but the truth is simple. thinking cannot happen inside urgency. a mind that feels rushed can only imitate. a mind that feels spacious can actually reason.

if you want to think again, you have to restore the skill of pausing long enough to let confusion do its job. this is where all original thought begins.

how to practice this in your daily life…

1. take thirty seconds before forming an opinion
thirty seconds of mental stillness before deciding what you think. you will be shocked at how often your real thoughts appear in that tiny gap.

2. rewrite something you read in your own words
not paraphrasing. actually describing the argument as if you were explaining it to someone who has never heard of it. if you can’t do this, you have not understood the idea yet. and if you have not understood it, you can’t form a legitimate opinion about it. (and not to go off on a mini tangent….) but this is the exact reason i’m reading the bible right now, not because i’m trying to prove a point or convert myself or perform some aesthetic version of catholicism, but because i want to be able to think clearly about religion and god and morality in a way that isn’t borrowed from the internet or from childhood or from whatever the dominant cultural mood happens to be. i want to know what i actually believe, and to do that i have to understand the text itself, not the discourse around it. i want to be able to have intelligent, grounded conversations about faith and philosophy and ethics (with myself first, and then with other people) and you can’t do that if your opinions are stitched together from half remembered snippets and other people’s interpretations. you need your own language for what you think. you need your own understanding of the ideas you’re engaging with. you need to meet the text directly, without the buffer of other people’s certainty.

3. name what confuses you instead of pretending you understand
write it down. say it out loud. it’s okay to say i don’t understand this part. your brain cannot solve what you refuse to acknowledge.

4. resist the urge to “love” or “hate” something immediately
early emotional reactions are often echoes of something you have seen before. let the feeling exist without choosing a side. neutrality is not weakness, it’s a way to incubate your thoughts.

5. notice where you are mimicking
someone’s voice, tone, and certainty. whenever you catch yourself repeating something you didn’t think through, pause. ask youself, “what do i actually think if i strip away influence?” this is a difficult question and it’s why it works.

6. stay with the question until it becomes interesting
almost every idea becomes interesting if you spend time with it. most people simply never stay long enough to reach that stage.

debate as discipline

there are parts of your brain that only wake up when it has to defend itself in the simple act of being asked, “why?” and most people never get asked that anymore. they share thoughts inside environments where everyone agrees or everyone performs agreement. it feels safe, but it softens you. nothing in your mind has to hold its own weight because nothing ever pushes back.

if you want your brain back, you need friction. you need to put your ideas into environments where they don’t get automatic approval. not because debate is glamorous, but because it forces your thoughts to grow a spine.

debate trains the part of you that has been asleep. suddenly you have to explain yourself. you have to choose your words with care. you have to separate your feelings from your reasoning. you have to notice where your arguments wobble or collapse. it gives you access to the architecture of your own mind.

you do not need a podium or a judge or a tournament to get these benefits. you just need situations where you cannot hide behind vague language or borrowed talking points. you need places where someone can ask, “walk me through your reasoning,” and you don’t shrink.

you will feel exposed at first. that is normal. it means you are thinking in real time instead of performing a pre scripted stance. it means your brain is working again.

how to bring debate back into your life…

1. ask a friend to argue with you on purpose
pick a topic and swap sides. not to win, but to stretch your reasoning. few things sharpen your mind like having to argue the opposite of your instinct. i’m so grateful to have a brother who i debate everyday (all in good spirits, of course). my brother and i have very different view points on many topics pertaining to religion, philosophy, politics, and everything in between. regardless, we still have healthy debate and conversations about it.

2. practice explaining your stance without using any buzzwords
buzzwords hide cognitive gaps. removing them forces clarity.

3. when you express an opinion, add “tell me where the holes are”
this turns your conversations into thinking labs instead of ego displays.

4. take a stance and then deconstruct it
why do you believe this. what evidence supports it. what would weaken it. debate is not only with others. sometimes you are your own opposition.

5. join something that demands structure
model un, a book discussion group, a philosophy meet up, a local debate club, any space where ideas must withstand pressure is good for your mind. that’s one of my main priorities for 2026. i want to put myself in environments where thinking is required, where i can practice arguing cleanly, listening closely, and forming opinions that can hold their shape in conversation, whether that’s a debate group, a philosophy circle, or any small group of people who genuinely care about ideas and want to talk about them in a real way.

debate is not about being combative. it is about being awake and it is one of the only activities that forces you to reveal whether or not your ideas are real.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers, and it is where everything becomes practical: forming a real point of view, reaeding in a way that reshapes your thinking, how to rebuild long attention, how to write yourself into clarity, and so much more. thank you for being here and supporting my work.

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one of the greatest literary experiences a reader can have is devouring a project book that changes your life.

these are the novels that are big and take up extra space on your shelf while you mentally prepare yourself to start them and extra space in your tote bag while you actually consume them.

and even though there are a handful of those huge classics that are not worth the effort, there are several that absolutely are and will potentially change your life if you take the time to read them. these are the kind of books that feel less like something you read and more like something you live inside for a while.

if you’ve been itching to start one, i have five recommendations for you...

the brothers karamazov

if there’s one book on this list that genuinely has the power to rearrange your inner life, it’s this one.

on the surface it’s about a deeply dysfunctional russian family and the murder of their father. the patriarch, fyodor karamazov, is crude, selfish, impulsive, and morally chaotic, and the lives of his sons orbit around the damage he leaves in his wake. when he is murdered, the question of who is responsible begins to unfold, but the novel quickly becomes something far larger than a simple crime story.

because the murder is really just the framework dostoevsky uses to explore much deeper questions about morality, faith, doubt, freedom, guilt, suffering, and what it actually means to be a human being.

each of the brothers represents a different way of moving through the world. dmitri is passionate, impulsive, ruled by emotion and desire. ivan is intellectual, skeptical, tormented by philosophical doubt and moral reasoning. alyosha is gentle, compassionate, deeply spiritual, someone who believes in love and forgiveness even in the face of human cruelty.

watching these three perspectives collide becomes a philosophical drama. the novel isn’t just interested in what happens to the characters, it’s interested in the ideas they represent and the questions they wrestle with.

again and again the book asks enormous moral questions that most people carry throughout their lives. if god does not exist, does that mean everything is permitted? how should we understand suffering, especially the suffering of innocent people? are human beings truly free, or are we driven by darker impulses we barely understand?

dostoevsky doesn’t approach these questions like a philosopher writing a neat argument. instead, he lets them emerge through the lives and struggles of the characters themselves. the ideas feel alive because they’re tied to real emotional stakes. love, jealousy, guilt, shame, longing for redemption.

there are moments in the novel that people remember for the rest of their lives.

ivan’s story of the grand inquisitor, for example, is one of the most famous passages in literature. in it, he imagines christ returning to earth during the spanish inquisition, only to be arrested by the church itself. the inquisitor argues that human beings don’t actually want freedom, they want security, certainty, and authority to tell them what to believe.

it’s a haunting story on religion, power, and the terrifying burden of human freedom.

but the novel isn’t only philosophical. it’s also deeply emotional and painfully human. the characters struggle with love, shame, resentment, guilt, and the longing to be forgiven for the worst things they’ve done.

dostoevsky is fascinated by the idea that human beings are rarely purely good or purely evil. instead, people contain contradictions. generosity alongside cruelty, compassion alongside selfishness, moments of grace alongside moments of terrible weakness.

what makes the novel so powerful is the way it insists on the reality of moral responsibility. even when people are shaped by suffering or circumstance, they are still accountable for the choices they make.

and yet, at the same time, the book is filled with an extraordinary sense of compassion. alyosha, in particular, represents the possibility that love, humility, and forgiveness might still exist even within a broken and chaotic world.

by the time you reach the end of the novel, it feels less like you’ve finished a story and more like you’ve spent time wrestling with the deepest questions about human life itself.

questions about justice, suffering, forgiveness.
about whether human beings are capable of redemption.

it’s one of those rare books that doesn’t simply entertain or even just move you emotionally.

it challenges and unsettles you.

and it forces you to think seriously about what kind of person you want to be and what it actually means to live a moral life in a complicated world.

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anna karenina

tolstoy somehow manages to write a novel that feels like it contains the entire emotional landscape of human life.

on the surface, the story is simple. it begins with anna, a beautiful and intelligent woman trapped in a respectable but emotionally empty marriage, who falls passionately in love with another man. what follows is one of the most famous tragic love stories ever written, as anna slowly becomes consumed by a relationship that brings both ecstatic happiness and unbearable emotional turmoil.

but what makes the novel extraordinary is that anna’s story is only one part of it.

running alongside her life is the journey of levin, a landowner who is trying to figure out how to live meaningfully in a confusing world. while anna’s story is dramatic and destructive, levin’s is more introspective. he struggles with questions about work, family, love, faith, and the purpose of human life itself. he wrestles with doubt, with insecurity, with the strange feeling that even when life seems outwardly successful something essential might still be missing.

the novel moves between these two lives: anna’s descent into emotional chaos and levin’s slow, searching attempt to build a life that feels morally and spiritually grounded.

and what makes the book feel so incredible is the way tolstoy understands people. he seems to notice the smallest shifts in human emotion, the tiny moments where a relationship changes direction, the thoughts people have but rarely say out loud.

he captures the strange contradictions that exist inside nearly every human life. the way someone can be deeply loved and yet feel profoundly lonely. the way happiness can exist right alongside dissatisfaction. the way people often sabotage the very things they long for most.

again and again the novel reveals how much of human life is shaped by subtle inner forces. jealousy, insecurity, pride, longing, fear of judgment. tolstoy doesn’t present these emotions as exaggerated; instead, he shows how they operate beneath everyday life, slowly influencing the choices people make and the paths their lives take.

one of the most remarkable things about the novel is that none of the characters feel distant or symbolic. they feel startlingly real. their flaws are recognizable, their moments of happiness fragile, their mistakes painfully human.

as the story unfolds, you begin to realize that tolstoy isn’t just telling a tragic love story or a portrait of russian society. he’s trying to understand something much larger: what it means to live a good life.

through levin especially, the novel becomes a meditation on questions that almost everyone eventually faces. what makes life meaningful? how should we balance ambition, love, work, and morality? how do people find peace in a world that is often confusing and unstable?

by the end of the novel, there’s no neat answer to these questions. instead, there’s a sense that meaning isn’t found in these grand moments but in the smaller, often overlooked parts of life. family, honest work, kindness toward others, the willingness to live with humility and compassion.

and that’s why anna karenina feels so life changing.

by the time you finish it, you don’t just feel like you’ve read a story about anna and levin. it feels like you’ve been watching real human lives unfold with all their beauty, tragedy, and complexity.

and it leaves you thinking, long after you close the book, about how to actually live well.

east of eden

this is one of those rare novels that manages to feel both epic and deeply intimate at the same time. it stretches across generations, following two families living in california’s salinas valley, but somehow the story never loses its emotional closeness. the landscape, the passage of time, the slow unfolding of different lives. all of it gives the novel this mythical quality, and yet the emotional core of the book always remains deeply human and personal.

at the heart of the novel is one of the oldest questions in literature: are we destined to repeat the sins of the people who came before us, or do we actually have the freedom to choose who we become?

again and again, the characters seem to inherit patterns from the generations before them. rivalries repeat themselves between brothers. loneliness and resentment pass from parents to children. people find themselves shaped by wounds they didn’t choose and histories they didn’t create. steinbeck is deeply interested in how easily human beings fall into these inherited roles, how often we unconsciously reenact the same struggles that existed long before we were born.

and for much of the novel, there’s a haunting sense that these patterns might be inevitable. that people are trapped within the moral and emotional inheritance of their families.

but then the novel introduces one of its most important ideas, a single word that slowly transforms the entire meaning of the story: timshel.

steinbeck draws this idea from the biblical story of cain and abel. in the novel, a character studying the original hebrew text discovers that a key word in the passage has often been mistranslated. instead of meaning “thou shalt” or “thou must,” the word timshel means something much more than that.

it means “thou mayest.”

thou mayest overcome sin.
thou mayest choose a different path.
thou mayest become something other than what history expects of you.

this idea changes everything. suddenly the novel is no longer simply a story about inheritance or fate. it becomes a story about the terrifying freedom that comes with being human.

steinbeck begins to show how every character is standing at a moral crossroads, constantly faced with the possibility of choosing generosity instead of cruelty, forgiveness instead of resentment, love instead of bitterness. the characters are never perfectly good or perfectly evil; they exist in that deeply human space where people are capable of both tremendous kindness and tremendous harm.

what makes the novel so powerful is the compassion with which steinbeck approaches all of this. he doesn’t write about human weakness with judgment. instead, he seems endlessly fascinated by people. their flaws, longings, mistakes, their attempts to become better than they were yesterday.

by the time you reach the end of the novel, the idea of timshel begins to feel less like a literary theme and more like a philosophy for living. the book suggests that while we may inherit wounds, failures, and patterns from the past, none of those things completely determine who we are.

there is always the possibility of choosing something different.

and the idea that human beings are not permanently defined by their worst impulses, that redemption and transformation are always still possible, is what makes east of eden feel so deeply life changing.

by the time you close the book, it doesn’t just feel like you’ve finished a long novel. it feels like you’ve spent time thinking about what it actually means to be a human being, and about the strange, beautiful freedom we have to decide what kind of person we will become.

the count of monte cristo

this is a novel that is actually impossible to put down.

the story begins with a young sailor, edmond dantes, whose life is almost impossibly promising. he’s young, talented, deeply loved, and on the verge of becoming the captain of his own ship. he’s about to marry the woman he loves. everything in his life is just beginning to unfold.

and then, almost overnight, it’s all taken from him.

out of jealousy, ambition, and cowardice, the people around him conspire to falsely accuse him of treason. he’s arrested and thrown into a brutal prison where he disappears from the world for years, completely forgotten.

the early part of the novel is devastating because you watch someone who is essentially innocent slowly lose everything. his freedom, his youth, his identity, even his sense of hope.

but then something happens.

in prison, dantes meets an elderly scholar who becomes his teacher. through him he learns languages, science, philosophy, strategy. he essentially rebuilds himself intellectually and spiritually while the world believes he’s dead.

and when he finally escapes, he emerges not as the naive young man he once was, but as something entirely different.

he becomes the count of monte cristo.

what follows is one of the most intricate revenge plots ever written. dantes spends years patiently weaving together a series of elaborate schemes designed to destroy the people who betrayed him. he infiltrates their lives, studies their weaknesses, and slowly sets the stage for their downfall.

and on the surface, this part of the novel is just pure narrative pleasure. it’s dramatic, clever, suspenseful, and almost unbelievably satisfying to watch unfold.

but what makes the book so extraordinary is that it doesn’t stop there.

as dantes moves through his revenge, the novel begins asking more difficult questions. what happens to someone who dedicates their entire life to vengeance? what does it do to their soul?

because the deeper you go into the story, the clearer it becomes that revenge is not as clean or satisfying as it first appears. innocent people begin to get hurt along the way. the consequences of his schemes ripple outward in ways he didn’t fully anticipate.

and slowly, dantes begins to realize that the justice he imagined might not actually be justice at all.

the novel starts to explore the difference between justice and vengeance, between punishment and mercy, between power and forgiveness.

it asks whether a person who has suffered so deeply has the right to play the role of fate in other people’s lives.

by the end, the story that began as a revenge fantasy becomes something far more reflective and humane.

it becomes a meditation on suffering, forgiveness, patience, and the strange ways life unfolds beyond our control.

which is why the novel ends with one of the most beautiful lines in literature:

wait and hope.

and somehow, after a thousand pages of betrayal, imprisonment, revenge, and redemption, those two words feel like the entire point of the story.

middlemarch

george eliot once described it as “a study of provincial life,” which sounds modest, but the novel ends up becoming one of the most insightful stories of human psychology ever written.

it follows several characters whose ambitions, ideals, marriages, and careers slowly collide with reality. there are no grand wars or revolutions here, just the slow unfolding of ordinary lives, which somehow makes the novel feel even more real.

what eliot understands with incredible precision is the way people imagine their futures when they are young. the hopes they carry, the identities they build for themselves, the belief that life will unfold in a certain meaningful direction. and then, slowly, reality intervenes. marriages become more complicated than expected. ambitions falter. compromises appear where once there were ideals.

what eliot captures better than almost anyone is the subtle tragedy of ordinary life. the way people’s dreams shrink, shift, or evolve over time. but she also shows how meaning can still exist within those softer lives.

there’s a deep moral intelligence in the novel. eliot is endlessly curious about why people behave the way they do: how pride, self-deception, generosity, love, and insecurity shape the choices we make.

and what makes the book so powerful is that it never treats its characters harshly. even when they fail, even when they disappoint themselves, eliot approaches them with an extraordinary amount of empathy.

the novel ultimately suggests something very beautiful: that a good life doesn’t always look historically significant. sometimes the most meaningful lives are the quiet ones. the people who try, imperfectly, to be kind, to do some small good, to care for others.

and the book ends with one of the most moving ideas in literature: that the progress of the world often depends on the countless lives that history never records.

that even small acts of goodness ripple outward in ways we may never see.

and once you’ve read it, it becomes very difficult to think about your own life in quite the same way again.

if there’s one thing all of these books have in common, it’s this:

they’re long, yes. but they’re not just long for the sake of being long.

they’re the kind of novels that stay with you for years because they help you understand people, morality, love, and life itself just a little bit more clearly.

and that’s the kind of book that’s always worth the time.

i’ve been severely under the weather this week with the worst flu so pardon my absence. now that i can somewhat function again, we’re back to regular scheduling.

on a different and more positive note, here’s a little snippet of the giveaway goodies i sent our winner! if you’re not already a paid subscriber, sign up below to enter into our next giveaway. it’ll be valentine’s themed and very exciting <3

and now let’s get into today’s letter… your sunday science lesson of sorts.

attention is a physical process.

the circuits that are used repeatedly in our brains become easier to activate, and over time our brain starts to prefer the pathways it travels most often, the same way a footpath becomes clearer the more people walk it. when you spend long stretches of time in digital spaces built around rapid novelty, constant switching, and immediate replacement, your brain learns that this is the normal operating rhythm. not because you lack willpower or depth or discipline, but because biological systems adapt to the conditions they are placed in.

sustained attention relies heavily on prefrontal networks that coordinate focus, working memory, and decision making. these systems work best when they are allowed to remain engaged with one object long enough to stabilize. constant interruption prevents that stabilization. information enters briefly and exits before it can be consolidated into long term memory. this is why you can scroll for an hour and recall almost nothing afterward. the experience never stayed in place long enough to be encoded.

over time, this shapes how thinking feels from the inside. reading a book requires holding context across pages. writing requires keeping a sentence in mind while planning the next one. complex reasoning requires resisting the impulse to abandon a thought halfway through. when the brain has been trained on environments that reward immediate switching, these activities begin to feel exhausting and abnormally challenging, not because they are unnatural, but because the supporting networks have been underused.

luckily, none of this is irreversible. neural pathways strengthen in the direction of practice. environments that reward sustained engagement gradually rebuild the capacity for it. when you spend time in spaces that ask you to follow a paragraph to its conclusion, solve a problem step by step, or return to an idea over days instead of seconds, the brain begins to reestablish continuity, memory improves, comprehension deepens. inner speech becomes less fragmented. thinking feels less like chasing and more like staying.

once you start paying attention to this, you see it everywhere. the way reading feels harder than it used to. the way you reach for your phone in every pause. the way half your day can be filled with information that never quite becomes knowledge. the internet is not entirely the enemy. i like having access to more writing, art, lectures, conversations, and ideas than any person in history could have dreamed of. the issue is not the existence of these things, it’s the shape they take and the pace they ask of you.

so instead of treating my phone like an enemy, i started treating it like a space that can be arranged. some rooms are built for distraction. some rooms are built for shopping. but a few rooms are built for staying, reading, solving, collecting, returning. once i realized that difference, the question stopped being how to use my phone less, and started being which environments i want my mind to live in when i pick it up without thinking.

the list below is simply the answer i arrived at for myself. not because these apps are perfect, or because they fix anything overnight, but because they make it easier to remain with a thought long enough to finish it.

before we get into apps, i want to share some book recommendations that sit somewhere between theory, cultural criticism, memoir, and art writing. these books look at the internet, images, algorithms, fractured realities, and the shape of attention, but from stranger angles and sharper vantage points. if you want to go deeper than apps and habits and into the ideas underneath all of this, these are some good ones.

medium hot: images in the age of heat by hito steyerl

this is a book that starts from the image and ends up somewhere much larger, asking what it means to live in a world where pictures no longer just represent reality but actively shape it, circulate faster than events themselves, and increasingly come from machines rather than people. steyerl moves between art, technology, politics, and climate, writing in a way that feels closer to walking through an exhibition than reading a traditional essay collection. she is interested in how images are produced, who controls their circulation, what they do to attention, and how they train what we think is normal, desirable, or true. the book does not separate aesthetics from power or technology from economics, and by the time you finish it, you start to see every screen around you as part of a larger system rather than a neutral window. it’s the kind of text that has already developed a cult following among people who live at the intersection of art theory, media criticism, and internet culture, because it doesn’t just describe the visual world we inhabit, it makes it suddenly visible again.

doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world by naomi klein

this book starts with the fact that naomi klein is constantly mistaken for naomi wolf, and then uses that confusion as a doorway into a much larger question about what happens when reality itself splits into parallel versions that no longer recognize each other. it moves between memoir, political reporting, and cultural analysis, but it never feels like a thesis statement, it feels like someone walking through a hall of mirrors and describing what it does to your sense of direction. it’s about conspiracy worlds, online radicalization, the collapse of shared facts, and the strange intimacy of watching someone with your name become the inverse of everything you believe. the result is less a book about internet culture and more a book about what it feels like to live in a time where identity, truth, and perception are no longer stable agreements.

filterworld: how algorithms flattened culture by kyle chayka

this is one of those books that puts language to a feeling you already have but haven’t quite named. that creeping sense that every coffee shop looks the same, every playlist sounds the same, every vacation photo feels familiar before you’ve even been there. chayka traces how recommendation systems shape taste, not by truly personalizing it, but by nudging everyone toward the same safe middle ground. the book moves through music, fashion, food, travel, art, and media, showing how platforms reward sameness because sameness is predictable and predictable is profitable. it’s not a panic book, it’s a slow mapping of how invisible systems guide what you think you chose freely, and by the end you start noticing how much of your “preference” was trained rather than discovered.

aesthetica by allie rowbottom

t follows a former influencer who built her identity around being seen, desired, and aesthetically perfected, and who now plans a procedure to reverse years of cosmetic surgery. the story moves between her rise in early instagram culture and her present moment of reckoning, showing how a self constructed for constant visibility starts to hollow out from the inside. it is not satire and it is not moralizing. it is intimate, uncomfortable, and precise about the way attention becomes currency, beauty becomes obligation, and the self becomes a project that never finishes. it’s one of those books that feels like it understands the psychic cost of living online without ever needing to lecture you about it.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers.

below, i share the apps i actually keep on my phone when i want my mind to feel clear instead of scattered. the anti brain rot spaces. the reading rooms. the places i go when i want to think in full sentences again. along with them, i’ve included the educational resources i trust, the ones that feel less like content and more like real study.

if you’ve been feeling the same low level attention fatigue i have, this section is meant to be practical. not a challenge. not a reset. just a list of environments that make staying with a thought a little easier.

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

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one of my reading goals in 2026 is to read more nonfiction (one of my first true loves). over the past several months, i’ve gathered quite a hefty list of books that sparked my interest, and i wanted to share them with you if you’re also looking to integrate more nonfiction into your life.

when it comes to nonfiction, i primarily use audiobook formatting. however, if it’s a book that feels especially juicy or important, or in need of scribes and annotations, i’ll buy the hard copy so i can do some damage. with audiobooks, i’m someone who must multitask; otherwise, i will fall asleep. usually, i’ll listen while walking outdoors or working out. sometimes i’ll clean the house or listen while i’m getting ready. commutes are great for audiobooks as well.

find methods that work best for you when it comes to reading books that are on the denser side.

the last piece of advice i’ll leave you with is to pair your nonfiction book with a more engaging read. for example, i’m reading all of jane austen’s books in 2026, and having that balance and juxtaposition between the two gives my brain a break and something to look forward to. a cozier escape to settle into in between.

with that said, i hope this list gives you some inspiration, and potentially a story that can change or positively impact your life in some way.

today’s letter is free thanks to nette.

let me tell you why i love them…

i love lemon scents, especially in winter and at the start of a new year. they feel clarifying without being cold, bright without being loud. lemon cuts through the heaviness and makes everything feel a little lighter and brighter.

lemon puff is exactly that kind of lemon. it opens fresh and citrusy, then settles into something soft and comforting. there’s torched meringue and jasmine sambac giving it warmth, with tonka bean and sandalwood underneath so it feels grounded instead of sharp. it’s a citrus gourmand, but refined. It’s cozy enough for cold weather, clean enough to wear all year round.

what i appreciate about nette is how they approach fragrance through both poetry and science. lemon puff is formulated to support relaxation and happiness, so it’s not just something you smell, it’s something you feel good wearing. it was created by legendary perfumer jean-christophe herault (known for creed aventus) using high quality, traceable ingredients, many of them upcycled, and it’s certified clean at sephora.

the travel spray makes it especially easy to reach for. it lives in your bag, gets reapplied without thinking, and also happens to make a really good gift if you’re looking for something thoughtful but unfussy.

you can shop lemon puff on nette’s site or on sephora.com, and if you enjoy fragrance writing and character driven world building, nette’s founder also publishes a substack called friendly universe that’s worth subscribing to.

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal, you’ll get early access to my youtube videos and a weekly media consumption roundup filled with articles, video essays, podcasts, and other references to make you smarter. i’d love to have you there)

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

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shall we get into some book recommendations?

(also note that i try to separate philosophy from nonfiction in lists like these—though there are a few philosophical nonfiction books sprinkled throughout this list)

nonfiction books

essays in love by alain de botton
follows a romantic relationship from first attraction through intimacy, conflict, and emotional distance. uses short philosophical reflections alongside the narrative to explain why people behave the way they do in love, how expectations form, and why relationships often fail despite good intentions. focuses on attachment, miscommunication, insecurity, and idealization in modern relationships.

the healing of america by t.r. reid
follows the author as he visits countries like france, japan, the uk, and germany to see how their healthcare systems function day to day. compares different models for covering everyone while keeping costs lower than in the u.s., and explains how the american system became expensive, fragmented, and inefficient.

the price we pay by marty makary
examines how pricing, billing, and consolidation work inside american medicine. covers surprise bills, unnecessary procedures, opaque charges, and aggressive collections, while pointing to doctors and systems trying to make care more transparent and patient centered.

between the world and me by ta-nehisi coates
written as a letter to the author’s son about living in a black body in the united states. addresses history, violence, fear, education, and how racism shapes physical safety and identity from childhood onward.

holy feast and holy fast by caroline walker bynum
studies medieval holy women and how food, fasting, hunger, and bodily discipline functioned as religious expression and personal agency. shows how women used the body spiritually when excluded from formal church power.

medieval bodies: life, death, and art in the middle ages by jack hartnell
uses art, medical texts, and manuscripts to explain how people in the middle ages understood anatomy, illness, childbirth, surgery, disability, and death. focuses on how the body was experienced in everyday and religious life.

pseudo-dionysius: the complete works
collects early christian mystical writings on god, angels, spiritual ascent, and the limits of human understanding. these texts strongly shaped medieval theology and later mystics and philosophers.

an anthology of sacred texts by and about women by serinity young
brings together religious writings by women or centered on women across multiple traditions, including hindu, buddhist, christian, jewish, taoist, and indigenous sources. highlights how gender shaped spiritual authority and religious expression.

the god delusion by richard dawkins
lays out a direct argument against belief in god, critiquing scripture, religious logic, and the social role of organized religion. presents science as a sufficient framework for morality and meaning without faith.

trick mirror by jia tolentino
collects essays on the internet, identity, feminism, scams, self optimization, and social performance. analyzes how modern systems distort self-perception and make it difficult to see reality clearly.

rich girl nation by katie gatti tassin
a practical, conversational guide to personal finance focused on budgeting, saving, investing, and avoiding lifestyle creep. tassin breaks down money management in straightforward language aimed at women who want financial independence without complicated financial jargon. it’s about building stability, understanding your spending habits, and creating long term security.

doppelganger by naomi klein
uses repeated confusion with naomi wolf as a way to explore conspiracy thinking, political extremism, online identity, and fractured reality. blends memoir with analysis of how belief systems form and spread.

the shock doctrine by naomi klein
klein argues that crises like wars, disasters, and economic collapses are used to push policies that benefit corporations and elites. documents global examples of privatization and deregulation during periods of shock.

the argonauts by maggie nelson
nelson combines memoir and philosophy to examine gender, queerness, pregnancy, partnership, and language. weaves personal experience with theoretical texts to explore identity as fluid and relational.

the right to sex by amia srinivasan
presents essays on consent, desire, power, pornography, and sexual politics. focuses on tensions and contradictions in how societies think about sex rather than offering fixed answers.

the blue zones: lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest by dan buettner
investigates regions where people commonly live past 100 and identifies shared habits around food, movement, community, purpose, and stress. emphasizes environment and daily patterns over extreme interventions. this felt like required reading for me coming from a strong sda upbringing on my moms side.

outlive by peter attia
attia explains the science of longevity by focusing on preventing the big four killers: heart disease, cancer, metabolic dysfunction, and neurodegenerative disease. he covers exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress, and medical screening in practical terms. the book’s main message is that long term health requires proactive habits decades before issues show up.

the omnivore’s dilemma by michael pollan
this book follows four meals from origin to plate to show how food choices connect to agriculture, economics, ecology, and ethics. he explores industrial farming, organic practices, small scale sustainable systems, and even foraging. it’s an investigation of where food comes from and what it means to eat responsibly.

the comfort crisis by michael easter
easter argues that modern life is too comfortable and that physical challenge, boredom, solitude, and exposure to nature are essential for mental and emotional well being. he draws on anthropology, psychology, fitness research, and personal experience to show how discomfort builds resilience, focus, and meaning.

deep work by cal newport
newport explains why intense, distraction free concentration is becoming rare and valuable, and how it leads to better thinking, creativity, and productivity. he offers practical strategies for reducing digital distraction, organizing your time, and training your brain to sustain focus. it’s about rebuilding the ability to think deeply in a scattered world.

in defense of food by michael pollan
pollan critiques nutrition science and the food industry’s obsession with nutrients, labels, and health claims. he argues that the simplest and healthiest diet is based on real, whole foods rather than processed products. the famous summary “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” comes from this book, but the full argument is about reclaiming common sense in eating.

why we sleep by matthew walker
this book walks through how sleep functions biologically and neurologically, then shows how lack of sleep affects memory, mood, immune health, and long term disease risk. the focus is on evidence from sleep research and practical implications for everyday life.

salt, fat, acid, heat by samin nosrat
samin breaks cooking down into four core elements and explains how each one changes flavor and texture. the goal is to teach decision making in the kitchen rather than strict recipe following.

the peanuts papers by andrew blauner, editor
collects essays from writers and artists examining peanuts as a cultural and emotional work. contributors analyze themes like anxiety, failure, childhood, and repetition, and explain why the strip resonated across generations.

schulz and peanuts: a biography by david michaelis
traces charles schulz’s life alongside the development of peanuts, showing how his personal relationships, mental health, and work habits shaped the strip. much of the biography connects real events to recurring characters and storylines.

the book of tea by kakuzō okakura
uses tea culture as a way to explain japanese aesthetics, social rituals, and ideas about simplicity. the text also compares eastern and western values through everyday practices rather than theory.

an introduction to zen buddhism by d. t. suzuki
provides a foundational overview of zen buddhism, covering its history, core ideas, and approach to meditation. the emphasis is on understanding concepts rather than giving step by step practice instructions.

the scent of time by byung-chul han
examines how modern productivity culture and constant acceleration have changed the experience of time. the argument centers on fragmentation, burnout, and the loss of sustained attention.

biological rhythms by the mit press essential knowledge series
explains circadian rhythms and other biological cycles that regulate sleep, hormones, metabolism, and behavior. attention is given to how modern schedules disrupt these systems and what that means for health.

medium hot: images in the age of heat by multiple contributors
looks at how images circulate in a period shaped by climate crisis, digital overload, and constant urgency. essays focus on media saturation, emotional response, and visual culture under pressure.

essence and alchemy by mandy aftel
focuses on natural perfumery, including raw materials, extraction methods, and historical uses of scent. much of the book explains how fragrance was made and understood before industrial perfumery.

tell me if there’s anything in this list that sparks your interest. are you a nonfiction reader, too?

okay, that’s all for today.

i love you.

bye.

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i have always lived at the edges of myself. an unintentional wiring of my brain chemistry that can’t comprehend moderation. i don’t know how to exist at a comfortable temperature. i’m either obsessed or detached, overachieving or disappearing, building something monumental or burning everything to the ground just to feel something again.

i’ve spent most of my life watching people who seem at peace with the world and i’m wondering what that feels like. there are the overachievers, the ones who chase success like it’s oxygen, turning ambition into masochism and measuring their worth by how exhausted they are. then there are the ones who find comfort in repetition, they marry the right person, raise three children, and take pride in the simplicity of the pseudo american dream we were once promised. and then there is everyone else. the majority of people who say they want a better life but can’t tell you what “better” even means. they drift. they wait. they scroll. they want purpose, but not badly enough to go searching for it.

if you’re a dreamer, or someone who’s multi passionate, you’re stacked up against the odds because the bigger your imagination, the easier it is to become paralyzed by it. you start believing that the version of yourself who could be a novelist, an attorney, a professor, a physician, a mother, all at once, and choosing one path would mean killing the others. so you do nothing. you sit in the in between and convince yourself you’re thinking things through, but really you’re just watching your own life harden around you while you wait for certainty that will never come.

i’ve started to think that the hardest part of wanting a big life is not ambition itself, but the disorientation that follows it. there’s no map for people like us. we know how to long, yearn, desire. but we don’t know how to choose. and the longer we linger in that wanting, the easier it becomes to confuse indecision with depth and this restlessness with potential.

the idea of balance has always felt suspicious to me. how do you balance it all? what does that even mean? why are you asking me? it sounds like something invented by people who have already given up on the intensity of their desires. i’ve been told to find it my whole life, to ground myself, to stop oscillating, to pick one thing and do it well, but i can’t be brilliant at anything out of fear of falling short of my perfectionism. and i don’t think balance was ever meant for anyone. it feels like a polite word for resignation. what people really mean when they say find balance is stop wanting so much.

clarice lispector is an author who wrote for people who linger in that wanting. she understood the strange violence of existential desire and the hunger to feel life and live it in a way that borders on unbearable. her characters don’t seek pleasure, they seek contact with what’s real in this world. they want to touch life without mediation, even if it burns.

when i read the passion according to g.h., she cracked something open inside of my mind. her narrator crushes a cockroach and then disintegrates alongside it in a slow and sacred unraveling. she loses her sense of identity, her name, her history, everything that made her coherent. it’s horrifying, but it’s also forces the reader into an awakening. she realizes that the self she’s spent her life performing is nothing but scaffolding. what we call balance or control or stability is just a trick we play to avoid feeling the truth and that we are vast, chaotic, and full of contradictions.

clarice wrote about that contradiction the way saints wrote about god. she believed that consciousness was both a gift and a wound. to be awake is to suffer the awareness of everything you are and everything you’ll never be.

i crave her writing because i live inside of that tension. the part of me that wants meaning and the part that knows it might not exist. i want to do something extraordinary with my life but can’t shake the suspicion that all of it is arbitrary. clarice didn’t tell me to pick a side. she didn’t promise resolution. she just revealed that it was the only honest thing there was.

i while i keep saying i don’t know what i want, i don’t think that’s entirely true. i do know. i just also want more in the way that clarity always opens another door instead of closing one. i want the life i have, and i want the lives that shimmer just beyond it. maybe that’s what makes wanting so complicated. it never ends, it just changes shape.

when i feel myself spinning, chasing a bigger life, craving something i can’t define, i try to remember that maybe the wanting itself is the point of living and that the only honest way to live is to stay in motion, even when you don’t know what you’re moving toward.

and sometimes i wonder what she’d think of the world we live in now, where every thought has to be shared, every feeling turned into content.

clarice would have hated the internet. it’s the purest manifestation of what she feared most. the loss of interior life. the constant noise, the endless scroll, the illusion of connection that keeps you from ever being truly alone. she believed that solitude was the price of consciousness and that in order to know yourself, you have to be willing to face the quiet. she once said that she wrote to find out who she was. i think most of us scroll for the same reason. we just never find out.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. we’ll go deeper into clarice lispector, and what her work teaches us about the kind of confusion that can potentially save you. if you’ve ever felt torn between wanting a bigger life and not knowing what that means, this part is for you. i’m writing about what clarice understood long before the rest of us and i’ll also share my full guide to reading clarice: every book, in order, and what each one reveals about her search for meaning.

thank you for being here, for supporting my work.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

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(i have a short and sweet letter for you today. tomorrow morning i’ll be sharing this week’s media consumption and i’ve gathered a lot of great resources to share with you)

sometimes i think my nervous system was built for a different world. a place with fewer interruptions, slower mornings, and more time to think before the next demand arrives.

noise wears me down in ways that feel invisible to everyone else. it isn’t just the traffic or the conversations that bleed into each other or the music leaking from someone’s headphones, it’s the endless current of things to notice and respond to. a hundred tiny interruptions that fray the thread of attention until it’s nothing but static.

sometimes in the afternoon, my overstimulation builds like a tide. tension behind the eyes, heaviness in the chest, a restlessness that’s difficult to pinpoint. i become unfocused, uneasy, suddenly exhausted. my senses feel crowded as if the world has been shouting in a whisper all day. stillness becomes a necessity in order for my body catch up to my mind.

and yet despite all of this, i happen to be an introvert who loves the juxtaposition of living in new york city. everything seems to be consistently moving toward something. it should be overwhelming, and sometimes it is, but when i stop fighting it, i feel at peace. the city pulses like a heartbeat that is steady and alive. and i’ve learned that calm doesn’t always mean silence. sometimes it’s knowing how to listen differently and what makes the biggest difference are the small and deliberate tools that help me stay intact. when i care for my senses, the world softens and the noise becomes a background, not a burden.

learning to live in synchrony with the city has meant paying closer attention to what i need. and though i can’t change how sensitive i am, i can create conditions that help me stay steady.

and if you’re like me: introverted, anxious, and/or easily overstimulated, i want to share things that have helped me move through the world with more ease. they’re small, but together they form a safety net of reminders that it’s possible to stay calm even when everything around you keeps moving.

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal, you’ll get early access to my youtube videos and a weekly media consumption roundup filled with articles, video essays, podcasts, and other references to make you smarter. i’d love to have you there)

truly, your support means the world to me and it’s what gives me the capacity to write to you.

nyrb books

philosophy books

classic literature

gothic literature

(follow ig, tiktok, youtube, pinterest and spotify for more)

essentials for introverts

loop earplugs
this is the first thing that changed everything for me. loop earplugs made it possible to exist in overstimulating moments without absorbing every sound. they don’t silence the world, they soften it.

loop engage lowers the volume just enough to make life feel inhabitable again. conversations still come through clear, but the harshness fades. the clatter of carts in grocery stores, the hiss of espresso machines at coffee shops, and the constant murmur that once left my mind buzzing becomes gentler and more breathable.

i wear them everywhere now: on errands, walks, and even during phone calls when my nervous system feels raw. they help create a boundary thin enough to stay present, but strong enough to stay calm.

if you want to try them, i use loop engage and you can get 20% off with my code LOOPX-CAITLYN.

emotional support books
i always carry one in my bag, sometimes three. a book that listens when you need to disappear into another voice. one that steadies your breath, one that reminds you of meaning, and one that lets you hide inside beauty. these are portable companions. sometimes i’ll carry a magazine with me if i have enough space in my bag. print magazine forever, especially when you’re too anxious to commit to a novel.

hatch alarm clock
mornings don’t have to be violent. and before hatch, they were. hatch gives you a sunrise that spills gently across your room, soft light instead of a jarring buzz. you wake slowly and peacefully instead of hysteria. you can pick different noises to wake up to or music. you can also adjust the lighting brightness and color to cater to what you need in the morning. i prefer forest sounds with gentle white light.

calm magnesium
for nights when your mind won’t shut off. magnesium is nervous system care in a cup. and while i don’t view magnesium as a wellness tactic, i do believe in the science of magnesium and the positive physiological benefits it has on the body when your nervous system needs an assistant. it gives you a quieting of the internal static and can help with sleep, overstimulation, and that post socializing crash when you feel hollowed out but restless.

ginger chews, sour candy, dark chocolate
small, sensory lifelines. even when i’m not feeling overstimulated or anxious, i enjoy these little treats, especially during the mid-afternoon drag of the day. when you feel untethered, a strong flavor (especially sour candy) can pull you back into your body. sour candy wakes up your senses; ginger soothes; dark chocolate feels grounding.

fidget tools
for when the energy has nowhere to go. this is a simple, tactile object: some are smooth, some textured, and some clicky. they give your hands something to do when your mind is racing.

journal
the pages of a journal don’t interrupt. they don’t fill silence with advice or try to fix what you’re feeling. it just waits. journaling becomes a place to release everything you’ve carried: noise, conversations, and the small misunderstandings you replay in your mind. it’s where you translate the static into sentences and where vague exhaustion becomes language. sometimes all you write is a list, or a single word, or nothing coherent at all. but the act writing pen to paper is grounding.

noise cancelling headphones
silence is not absence. it’s space. when the world presses in too closely, choosing what you hear can make everything feel calm again. maybe you fill the space with songs that slows your breath, or a voice that steadies you, or maybe you choose nothing at all. headphones become a small boundary between you and the noise.

soft lamp light
light changes everything. overhead bulbs glare like interrogation; they flatten the room, heighten the tension. soft light, though, invites rest. lamps in corners, candles flickering, a warm bulb casting gold over a stack of books. they signal the day’s slowing. light like this tells your body it’s safe to unwind, that evening is not another task but a threshold into calm.

a signature scent
fragrance has a way of stitching time together. a scent you return to daily becomes a quiet ritual, a private anchor. one inhale and you’re back inside yourself, no matter how scattered the day has been. it doesn’t have to be aromatherapy or notes of lavender or bergamot (though those are lovely, too). find a scent that feels like home.

weighted blanket or heavy quilt
pressure calms the body’s alarms and reminds your nervous system that you are held and safe. it slows the racing thoughts, softens the edges of the day. beneath a heavy quilt, your breath deepens without effort. the world fades into quiet and stillness feels possible again.

slow rituals
a cup of tea steeping in silence. reading by lamplight until the words blur into dreams. a walk after rain, when the air smells like clean earth and the streets are almost empty. these are not tasks but invitations because introverts need rhythms more than schedules. small pauses woven through the day that return the mind to its center.

boundaries
the most essential form of care. you’re allowed to leave early or not show up at all, you can decline what depletes you, you can step back without apology. sometimes this is easier said than done. boundaries are how you remain whole in a world that will always ask for more. they are the line between being present and being consumed.

being an introvert is about learning how to stay open without being undone. the goal is figuring out how to live a life that moves at the pace your body can bear. when you begin to care for your senses, the world softens. it becomes less like something you must endure, and more like something you can belong to.

okay, that’s all for today.

i love you.

bye.

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i resisted notion for so long. daunted by the learning curve and admittedly reluctant by my ego because i didn’t want to fall for what everyone else was already obsessed with. when my endless to do list grew into an untamable beast, i gave in and opened notion in search of something to fix all of my problems and suddenly, it was like someone had cracked open my brain and handed me the architecture i had been searching for. i don’t think i realized how restless my mind was until i started dropping things into place. the lists, the folders, the outlines (a virgo’s dream), it was like taking a deep breath after holding it too long. i felt my shoulders unclench. i felt my brain sigh with relief.

full disclosure: i don’t use notion in the pinterest perfect, aesthetic dashboard way that goes viral on tiktok. i don’t care about widgets or color coding. i don’t have the patience for overly designed templates. i use the bare bones: lists and folders, words and structure. no nonsense. but the simplicity is what makes it magic for me. it’s a skeleton strong enough to hold my entire life. i find the templates to be distracting from the task(s) at hand. similar to how buying dozens of glossy prep books and crash courses can’t prepare you for whatever standardized exam you’re taking unless you put in the dirty work of studying.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. in it, i’m sharing the deeper layers of my notion system. the exact way i organize my content, creativity, personal rituals, and life admin into something that feels both grounding and expansive. a reminder that structure can be soft, that organization can be a form of care.

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as the eldest daughter, my attention was never entirely my own. i learned early that validation was a currency and that approval had to be earned. perhaps this is generational trauma as well. grades, behavior, being the one who carried more than her share. so much of my childhood was shaped by the pursuit of calculating how to make myself worthy in the eyes of others, especially my family.

a restless reaching for recognition.

but growing older has meant loosening that grip. i still feel ambitious and hungry, but the hunger has changed shape. instead of chasing validation, i’ve leaned into curiosity with subjects that belong to me alone and questions that don’t have to prove anything to anyone. philosophy, literature, science, theology. not because they win me praise, but because they stretch me, complicate me, and ask me to pay attention in ways that feel deliberate.

with this said, i’ve found that many of us are craving real intellectual stimulation. ironically, there is no scarcity of information anymore. it seeps into every corner of our days: headlines flashing before you even have the chance to think, thirty second videos that evaporate before they land, a podcast left unfinished somewhere between folding laundry and going to the grocery store. we are drowning in data but longing for meaning. the difficulty isn’t finding knowledge. it’s giving it weight, shape, context, and a place to rest inside a life that already demands so much. most of us are craving this curated list of sorts and it feels impossible to find in the sea of noise both on and off the screen.

the first essay i wrote on this topic was about entry points. free, accessible tools that anyone can fold into their life to feel sharper, more engaged, more curious. this essay is about the next step: how to build an intellectual life. information is everywhere, but wisdom requires curation.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i’m sharing more on what it really means to build an intellectual life, plus a list of books and specific resources that have helped me slow down, think more deeply, and find meaning when the world feels too fast.

thank you for reading, for supporting my work, and for protecting a space where slow, deliberate attention is still valued.

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there are objects in my life that anchor the hours of my day. they’re small, unassuming things that ask for nothing, but quietly reframe the shape how my day progresses. they are not the kind of purchases that spark envy or find their way onto a vision board. instead, they live in the periphery. steady, functional and constant, making the air around me feel more bearable and more my own.

some are indulgences disguised as necessities, others necessities softened into small luxuries. a few are purely functional, a few purely for comfort. but all of them share the same truth: if they vanished tomorrow, their absence would noticed.

so here they are. a few of the things i’ve bought, collected, or stumbled into, each carrying more weight in my days than their price tags ever could. they are not extraordinary in the way we usually mean the word, but each one has altered some rhythm of my life, solved a problem i didn’t have the language for, or simply made the living of an ordinary morning feel finer.

hatch alarm
this is not an alarm clock. it is a hostage negotiator between my body and the morning. it doesn’t jolt me into the day, it convinces me, both slowly and patiently, with the light of a fake sunrise and forest sounds that feel like they’ve been softened at the edges. it lets me believe i woke up by choice.

candle warmer
fire without the danger. the scent of vanilla, cedar, or whatever mood i’ve purchased in wax form, released slowly into the air until my apartment feels like it’s been breathing all day.

record player
the only machine in my home that refuses to rush. the lifting of the needle, the flipping of the record, the surrender to an entire album. music that cannot be skipped through feels different.

nespresso machine
this is my truce with mornings. i do not promise to be cheerful, but i do promise to make a perfect cup of coffee. it’s a tiny luxury, a button press ritual that says: you are alive, and that’s enough for now.

rode microphone
it sits on my desk in its little case like a secret weapon. it’s the kind of microphone that makes you want to speak carefully, like your words are worth keeping.

sonicare electric toothbrush
two minutes of small, vibrating certainty. it buzzes like it’s got a plan for my teeth’s future.

laptop lap desk
this one is for my spine, for my laptop’s fan, for my afternoons when i work from the couch and need to pretend i’m not. it’s a stage for my keyboard and a shield for my thighs, and i’d miss it in about three hours if it were gone.

amazon kindle paperwhite
this is the closest i’ve come to carrying a library in my pocket. it asks nothing flashy of you: no notifications, no tabs, no noise, just the steady invitation of a page. its waterproof shell means it can live beside the bath, the pool, even a sudden rainstorm. and its screen is matte and glare free. i know people have a lot of thoughts about kindles so let me share mine. the kindle doesn’t replace books, it extends them. it makes reading feel possible anywhere: in line at the pharmacy, on a plane, under a blanket when the lamp is too bright. and every time i pick it up, i’m reminded that attention can be portable. i support kindles. i support audiobooks. i support dnf’ing books.

protein in the morning
the reason my brain works past 10am. it turns my mornings from slow moving into steady. the kind of habit you don’t brag about, but build a life on.

jade tension melting massager

cool jade pressed against the contours of your face until it slowly warms. as a frequent migraine victim, this is something that alleviates (some) of the pain.

goshi shower towel
the shower equivalent of a wake up call. exfoliating and leaves my skin with a tingle that feels like all the dead weight of the week has been rinsed down the drain.

marshall headphones
a little heavy, in the way a good coat is heavy. they turn music into a place you can live inside for hours. bass that thumps without bullying, sound that’s warm without being fuzzy.

cellphone stand
it does nothing fancy. it just holds my phone at the right angle so i can follow a recipe without baptizing the screen in oil, or watch a video without craning my neck.

dyson vacuum
the joy i feel from this machine is probably exposing my age. it is the closest i will ever come to piloting a very polite jet engine across my floor. it sucks up the week’s evidence, wiping the slate clean, and makes my home feel monica clean.

dental sterilizing pod
it sits on the counter like a tiny spaceship to clean my toothbrush head and retainer.

glass tupperware
it stacks neatly, seals tightly, and looks better in the fridge than plastic ever could. leftovers feel less like an afterthought.

nyåkers swedish ginger thins
a cookie so thin it feels almost impossible. i first discovered these at the swedish church in nyc. (go during christmas time you will not regret it they have the best christmas market) these cookies snap, never crumble, releasing a warmth of ginger, cloves, and cinnamon that tastes like december no matter the month. eat them with tea, with coffee, with a slice of sharp cheese if you want to feel properly scandinavian.

zoshirosju rice cooker
fluffy, perfect rice every time, without drama. it does one thing beautifully and makes it feel like a gift.

edmond fallot mustard
i first discovered this mustard at zabars on the upper west side and it changed my life and every meal i’ve eaten since. it’s sharp enough to wake you up, silky enough to feel intentional. it turns a tired sandwich into something french and decadent. it makes you want to slow down, slice bread properly, maybe even open a bottle of wine at lunch. there’s a reason people bring jars of this home from paris like souvenirs and it’s proof that the smallest upgrades can rewrite an entire meal.

(i need to make a part two to this list with things that are a little more niche)

the art of more with less

what i’ve learned, through years of trying to keep up with other people’s versions of productivity and success, is that you are in charge of choosing to make your days small on purpose. the point isn’t austerity. it’s richness without excess, saturation without the noise. i want to provide another list for you. things that cost little or nothing, but have tilted my entire life toward beauty.

there are things you can buy that make life softer, easier, more beautiful. but there are also things you can’t find in a store. things that cost nothing but attention. small shifts that reframe the whole day. i’ve been collecting these the way some people collect trinkets, not because i need them, but because they remind me that the good life isn’t always a matter of acquisition.

the rest of this essay is for paid subscribers. i’m sharing the full list of objects and rituals that have rearranged my days.

if you’ve been wanting to curate your own life on the level of mornings and evenings, of textures and scents, of the details that make a day feel more like your own, i hope this list helps in some way.

thank you for reading.

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the for you page is a mirror that reflects nothing warm. it is a perfect listener with no mouth. it gives me everything except the thing i am looking for.

everyone i know is lonely. everyone i don’t know, too.

but our loneliness is dressed differently now. it no longer sits in empty rooms or at the edge of a crowded party. it lives here, in the infinite scroll, where we can be almost understood, almost touched, almost known. it is a loneliness that never has to break, because we continue to feed it.

there are days i wish the algorithm would make a mistake. give me something ugly, something irrelevant, something it thinks i would hate. maybe then i would feel the pleasure of refusing it. maybe then i could know where it ends and where i begin.

being known by an algorithm is like being loved by someone who only knows your habits. they can make your coffee, but they will never ask why you drink it. they will never ask you how your day was or why you sleep on the right side of the bed, not the left.

i dream of taking my loneliness out of its cage and letting it run wild until it collapses. i imagine it gulping the air of a field, spilling itself into the dirt and forgetting my name. but instead i feed it the same way i always have. with the soundless applause of strangers who have mistaken me for someone else.

we are starved for connection, but we ration the real thing. instead we live in a simulation of intimacy: people we will never meet nodding along to our pain, strangers performing joy in a way that makes us believe we could borrow it, opinions sharpened not for truth but for applause. and then, when the applause ends, we return to the feed for validation and a pseudo sense of community knowing it will never be able to replace the real thing.

but the feed cannot hold you. it can only mimic the shape of a hand.

if you want to be known, you have to free yourself from the screen. take your hunger elsewhere. into a room where music is being made for no audience. a flicker of ecstasy. into a book that does not care if you finish it. a quiet escape. into a painting that is speaking a language you do not speak. you understand. into the eyes of someone who looks back. and suddenly you’re home.

the loneliest place in the world is your for you page. and the only way out is to make something it could never predict.

the anatomy of algorithmic loneliness

loneliness used to have a shape. a long table set for more people to arrive. the quiet walk home after a night where you laughed but felt yourself from the outside. the absence of a letter and the silence after the phone rings once it stops.

now loneliness is vapor. it drifts through the constant presence of others, faceless but endlessly available. we don’t wait for the letter anymore, we refresh the feed. someone, somewhere, is speaking. someone is moving their mouth toward a microphone, tilting their face toward the light. someone is telling me exactly how to think about the thing i haven’t thought of. a kidnapping of the mind.

the loneliness in this is harder to point to because it’s layered with the simulation of company. the feed is never blank, so we convince ourselves we aren’t alone. there’s always another face, another voice, another stranger building a sentence just for me. but they aren’t building it for me.

i play along. i accept the comfort of recognition even when it leaves me emptier. there is safety in knowing that nothing i see will ask anything from me. i will not have to explain myself. i will not have to endure the long and uncertain work of being truly known.

safety is the cage.

real connection is messy. it misreads you. it interrupts you. it tells you the wrong story and then asks you to listen again. it is the friction of two separate lives trying to align. the chaos of an argument and the duality of humans. the intimacy of disagreement.

the masochism of the scroll

i know what the feed is doing to me, and i return anyway. there’s a sweetness in the ache it leaves behind. i scroll the way you press your tongue against a loose tooth. to feel the pain, and measure it. to prove it’s still there.

the feed makes my loneliness easy to carry. it turns it into something ornamental. a pet i can feed without leaving the bed. i stroke it with the touch of my finger and keep it warm in my palm. i let it grow without ever letting it roam.

sometimes i think my loneliness pet enjoys this arrangement. it has no predators here. it doesn’t have to fight for its life in the wild of real conversation where someone might misunderstand it or fail to care. here, it is cultivated and kept alive in perfect, temperature-controlled captivity.

off-screen desire

sometimes i think the greatest seduction of the feed is not that it knows me, but that it never challenges me to know anyone else.

because if you want to be known, you have to risk stepping into the world that can wound you.

what we’re craving isn’t more content, it’s the shock of contact. the heat of another mind meeting ours without the glass between us. a slow recognition that builds when you sit across from someone and watch their expression change and shift in their seat. contact with a human that doesn’t turn our thoughts into tv static or the blurry eyed haze that fogs our vision after hours of staring into the eyes of the computer.

take your hunger there.

take it to a person. not to perform your loneliness for them, but to share it and let it dissolve a little in their presence.

the things that will save us from this chronic, quiet hunger are the things that can never be reduced to an algorithm: the smell of a storm through an open window. the off-key voice of someone singing in the kitchen. the conversation that goes somewhere neither of you expected.

return and release

the feed will still be there tomorrow, watching and listening, ready to give me exactly what i didn’t have the courage to ask for out loud.

it will keep learning the rhythm of my pauses, the angle of my gaze, the way i hover over a face that reminds me of someone i’ve lost. it will keep building the ghost of me it thinks is enough.

but tonight i will let it hum in the dark without me.

i will give my hunger to a different room. one with bad lighting and voices talking over each other. i will place it in the spine of a book that smells faintly of dust. i will hand it to a song that feels a little broken and unfinished.

and when the feed tries to call me back, i will remind myself once again that its hands are made of glass. and glass cannot hold me.

the loneliest place in the world is your for you page. and the only way out is to love something that will never be archived.

this is the style of writing i usually keep in my notebook. more poetic and lyrical, more intimate, closer to the way my thoughts arrive. and tonight i wanted to share it with you.

i hope you enjoyed.

i love you.

bye.

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i really should read more.
and i want to ask why. is it because you actually miss it, or because you’ve convinced yourself you’re falling short of some literary quota?

this is the problem with how most of us were taught to read. reading was rarely about pleasure or curiosity, it was a skill to prove, a performance to be graded. you read to pass a test to extract the main points and highlight the sentences the teacher might put on the exam. we learned to finish books, not to live inside them.

and once you’ve learned to read like that, it’s hard to unlearn and it’s hard to give yourself permission to linger in the middle of a book without hurrying toward the end or reread a paragraph because it made you feel something rather than because you didn’t get it. it’s hard to remember that a book can be a place you live, not just an item you complete.

the truth is, no one really teaches you how to read in the way that matters. not in school, not in most homes, not in the whirlwind of productivity culture where even our leisure becomes something to optimize. reading in the way that matters isn’t about speed or volume. it’s about intimacy with the author, the page, and the person you are when you’re inside that world.

the rest of this piece is for paid subscribers. inside, i’m sharing a complete reading map: the specific philosophy, classics, and poetry books that will meet you where you are, pull you in, and carry you further. a guided path for building a deeper, more sustaining reading life, one that you can return to whenever you feel stuck or disconnected from books.

if you’ve been wanting to read more, or read better, this is for you. it’s a way to slow down, choose intentionally, and fall in love with reading again.

thank you for being here, for supporting my work, and for believing in the value of slow, thoughtful thinking in a world that demands urgency.

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most of us only ever read in the language we were raised in. despite the fact that we live in a world where there are thousands of languages, thousands of ways to name a feeling, to hold a memory, to tell a story, for most englishspeaking readers, our literary world is mostly english. we grow up with it. we’re trained in it. we assume it’s expansive enough to contain everything we might need. but it’s not.

translated literature reminds me how limited my world has been and how much i’ve missed. it reminds me that language isn’t just about words, it’s about rhythm, silence, structure, even grammar. some languages hold entire emotional landscapes that english doesn’t. some cultures place emphasis in places that feel unfamiliar to me and sometimes a sentence arrives out of a translation feeling strange, awkward, or weighty in a way i can’t quite explain. and that can be disorienting, but it can also be beautiful. translation is not about creating perfect clarity. it’s about reaching across distance. it’s about approximation and trust. it’s about getting as close as possible to a feeling that was born in a different mouth.

i think it’s easy to assume that translated literature is inaccessible or overly intellectual, but it’s actually the opposite. it asks us to slow down. it asks us to listen. it reminds us that our way of thinking is not the default. and that kind of perspective shift is deeply important. it makes you a better reader, but it also makes you a better listener, a better observer, maybe even a better person.

i love that feeling of reading a sentence and knowing that, in its original language, it meant something slightly different. i love the tension in that. i love when a book feels like it’s been carried across time and space and somehow still found its way into my hands. and i love when a translator leaves a note in the back, explaining why they chose one word over another, how they tried to hold on to the shape of the original text while still making it sing in a new language. it reminds me that translation is an art form in itself. it’s a collaboration and a bridge.

so i’ve put together a list of some of my favorite works in translation. these are books that come from japan, korea, taiwan, brazil, austria, hungary, portugal, poland. they do not all feel the same. some are quiet, some are violent, some are strange and fragmented. but all of them have stayed with me. they each offered something i couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. and they each taught me how to read a little more slowly, a little more carefully, with a little more humility.

and right now, that bridge feels more important than ever. we live in a moment of deep cultural siloing. politically, socially, even algorithmically. it’s too easy to stay inside the narrow lane of what feels familiar. but translated literature and foreign film ask us to stretch. to listen. to step into rhythms and sensibilities that aren’t our own. they remind us how small our perspective can be and how much we miss when we only consume what was made in our own language, for our own context, with our own assumptions in mind.

there are so many other recommendations i have so maybe i will do a part two to this essay

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal, you’ll get early access to my youtube videos and a weekly media consumption roundup filled with articles, video essays, podcasts, and other references to make you smarter. i’d love to have you there)

my favorite translated literature books

no longer human by osamu dazai
this is the book i turn to when i need to feel cracked open. it's written as a series of notebooks from a man who never really learned how to be a person. he moves through life like he’s mimicking the people around him, putting on charm like a mask, going through the motions while feeling absolutely nothing. he drinks too much, self-destructs quietly, and watches himself spiral with a kind of detachment that feels more chilling than dramatic. there’s no arc of redemption here, no moment where things turn around. the pain is quiet, constant, and completely unfixable. but somehow, reading it makes you feel less alone in your own disconnection. (japan)

kitchen by banana yoshimoto
this book is short, but it lingers. it's about a young woman who loses her last living relative and ends up staying with a classmate and his mother, who is trans. what follows is this soft, subtle story about grief, gender, and the way food holds people together. yoshimoto has a way of making ordinary moments feel weightless and holy. the prose is clean and dreamy, like fog over a city just before sunrise. it’s a book that doesn’t demand anything from you. it just sits quietly with your sadness, offering tea and a place to rest. (japan)

the door by magda szabó
this book completely haunted me. it centers on the relationship between a writer and her fiercely private housekeeper, emerence. at first, it feels like a simple story about two women from different backgrounds learning to understand each other. but it grows into something much stranger and more consuming. their relationship becomes a tangle of love, dependence, betrayal, and worship. szabó writes them with so much restraint that when the emotional weight finally lands, it’s almost unbearable. it’s a novel about trust, power, and the intimacy of knowing someone deeply while never fully understanding them. it asks hard questions and offers no easy answers. (hungary)

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek
this book made me feel physically uncomfortable. it follows a woman living with her mother, tightly wound and deeply repressed. she teaches piano by day and spends her nights lurking in porn shops and fantasizing about being dominated. then one of her students takes an interest in her, and things get brutal, fast. it’s a book about shame, control, submission, and what happens when a person has been so stripped of agency that even pleasure turns violent. jelinek writes in a way that is almost clinical, with no warmth or apology. the result is a story that feels like it’s pressing its hand against your throat. i couldn’t look away. (austria)

the passion according to g.h. by clarice lispector
this book begins with a woman walking into her maid’s room and seeing a cockroach. that moment becomes the catalyst for a complete collapse of her identity. from there, she spirals into a philosophical and spiritual crisis that stretches far beyond the physical world. this book isn’t interested in plot. it’s about the boundaries of self, the experience of matter, and what it means to exist without language. clarice writes like she’s trying to transcribe a mystical experience while it’s still happening. it’s dense, chaotic, and completely singular. i’ve never read anything like it, and i don’t think anything else even comes close. (brazil)

beware of pity by stefan zweig
this is one of those books that slowly tightens its grip until you can’t breathe. it follows a young austrian soldier in the years before the first world war who becomes entangled with a paralyzed woman out of what he believes is compassion. but what begins as pity curdles into obligation, guilt, and something far more complicated. zweig is so good at writing the kind of psychological drama that doesn’t scream. he’s interested in moral gray zones, in people who mean well and still cause harm, in the quiet, internal tragedies that unfold when someone tries to do the right thing for the wrong reason. this book is full of emotional claustrophobia, and it never lets you off the hook. there’s no real villain here, just two people caught in the unbearable tension between what they owe each other and what they want. (austria)

heaven by mieko kawakami
this novel follows two teenagers who are being horrifically bullied and find a kind of fragile, secret friendship in each other. it’s about what it means to suffer, to endure, and to survive something that never should have happened in the first place. kawakami doesn’t offer simple moral lessons. instead, she explores how cruelty shapes the way we see the world, and how it changes what we’re willing to accept. it’s subtle, uncomfortable, and incredibly brave in the questions it asks about power and complicity. (japan)

breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami
this book moves between two sisters living in tokyo and later zooms in on one of them as she considers becoming a single mother through sperm donation. it’s a novel about women’s bodies, reproductive autonomy, class, and aging. kawakami has this gift for writing about the body in a way that feels intimate and cerebral at the same time. it’s not preachy or dramatic, just deeply honest about the ways womanhood exists at the intersection of physical experience and societal pressure. i loved how this book gave space to doubt, ambivalence, and all the quiet questions no one wants to say out loud. (japan)

the housekeeper and the professor by yōko ogawa
this story is about a housekeeper who goes to work for a brilliant math professor with a condition that causes his memory to reset every 80 minutes. over time, a beautiful connection forms between the professor, the housekeeper, and her young son. it’s not dramatic or plot-heavy, but it’s deeply moving. it’s about routine and care and what it means to find dignity in small, repetitive acts. ogawa writes with such gentleness that even math equations feel tender. this is one of those rare books that makes you feel like the world might still have some quiet magic in it. (japan)

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa
this book is a series of fragments from a man who lives almost entirely inside his own head. there’s no storyline, no action, no resolution. instead, it’s a collection of thoughts about dreams, boredom, art, time, and the vague ache of existing. it’s not a book you read straight through. it’s a book you return to when you’re feeling disconnected and want something to sit with you in the silence. pessoa’s writing is mournful and meditative, like someone writing letters to a version of themselves that no longer exists. (portugal)

notes from a crocodile by qiu miaojin
set in 1990s taipei, this novel is about a queer university student trying to make sense of her sexuality, her loneliness, and her desire for connection in a world that doesn’t make space for her. it’s written in the form of notebooks, full of obsession, heartbreak, art, and self-destruction. there’s nothing polished or clean about it. it’s messy and raw in a way that feels deeply true. it captures the ache of wanting to be loved without knowing how to be known. (taiwan)

days of abandonment by elena ferrante
this is ferrante at her most feral. the story begins with a woman whose husband suddenly leaves her, and from there, everything unravels. it’s not a story about rebuilding or bouncing back. it’s about descent. ferrante writes the physicality of heartbreak better than anyone. there’s no gloss here, just blood and anger and confusion. it’s a book about rage, motherhood, abandonment, and the unbearable weight of continuing to exist when everything has fallen apart. (italy)

the vegetarian by han kang
after a disturbing dream, a woman decides to stop eating meat. her quiet refusal sets off a chain reaction of horror, obsession, and violence from the people around her. the book is told in three parts, each from a different point of view, none from the woman herself. the result is a story about control, about the violence of forcing someone to conform, and about the terror of a person who simply chooses to disappear. han kang writes with a stillness that makes the most horrific moments feel almost too quiet to bear. (south korea)

white nights by fyodor dostoevsky
a young man wanders the streets of st. petersburg and meets a woman who seems like she might finally pull him out of his solitude. for four nights, they talk, connect, and imagine what a different life could look like. and then it ends. this is one of dostoevsky’s gentler works. it’s about longing, delusion, and the way we project entire worlds onto the people we’re drawn to. it’s tender and dreamy and deeply sad. (russia)

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk
this one is part murder mystery, part philosophical treatise, part eco-feminist manifesto. it follows an eccentric older woman in rural poland who begins investigating a series of deaths in her village that seem to align with astrological events. she’s dismissed as crazy, of course, but her voice is unforgettable. the book is strange and smart and full of fury. it’s about animals and justice and how dangerous women become when no one listens to them. (poland)

territory of light by yūko tsushima
this book follows a newly separated mother trying to raise her daughter in a new apartment. the story unfolds over twelve chapters, each one capturing a month in their lives. it’s about loneliness, instability, and the quiet terror of having no one to fall back on. tsushima’s writing is clean and unassuming, but it holds so much. this is a story about light and silence, about the parts of motherhood no one prepares you for, and the slow, painful work of becoming someone new. (japan)

the melancholy of resistance by lászló krasznahorkai
a mysterious circus arrives in a crumbling town, and the sense of doom spreads like fog. what follows is less a plot and more a slow, surreal collapse. this book is heavy and apocalyptic. the sentences are long and winding, like someone trying to explain the end of the world without breathing. it’s about entropy, fear, and the terrifying ease with which people surrender to power when things start to fall apart. unsettling and prophetic in all the ways that matter. (hungary)

okay, that’s all i have for you today.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

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i double majored in college and got half of my degree in english literature, and for a long time i was ashamed of it. not because i didn’t love what i studied. i did, i always have. but because i grew up around people who believed it wasn’t enough. in my family, anything in the arts was seen as a luxury at best, a mistake at worst. real success was something you could quantify with a salary and a trajectory. and english didn’t promise any of that.

when people asked what i was studying, i’d try to make it sound like a phase. i’d say “english,” then pivot into something more acceptable. maybe teaching, or editing, or law school eventually. i knew how to make it sound temporary. like i was being realistic. i’d play to the other half of my degree—biology, and talk about medical school (another lofty dream) because the truth was, i didn’t have a plan that made sense to anyone. i knew i loved books. i loved the way they made me feel. the way they made me think. and i felt like that wasn’t enough.

for years, i tried to make that love more practical. i tried to reshape it and justify it. and somewhere in that process, i started to forget why i had chosen literature in the first place. not for the outcomes, but for the experience of it. the difficulty. the intimacy. the interiority. the way it asked you to stay.

it took me a long time to realize that the books that shaped me most weren’t the ones i understood right away. they were the ones that confused me. the ones i had to grow into and sat untouched on my shelf until something in me was ready to return. and it wasn’t because i wasn’t smart enough, it was because those books weren’t built for speed. they weren’t designed to be consumed and meant to be lived with. read slowly. read again.

this next section is for paid subscribers. the rest of this piece is a love letter to difficult books: what they teach us, how they change us, and why they matter more than ever right now. if you’ve ever felt intimidated by the classics or unsure where to begin, this is for you. subscribe to keep reading and get the full list of my canon: fifteen books that break and rebuild you.

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this is an extension of a post i shared a while ago. it was a short, simple list of things to do instead of being on your phone. nothing urgent or groundbreaking. just a quiet invitation to come back to yourself.

it resonated more than i expected. i think that’s because so many of us are exhausted by constant noise. we’re tired of being pulled in a hundred directions, of filling every still moment with distraction. we’re not necessarily looking for discipline or detox, we’re looking for depth and presence. for something that feels like ours again.

this version goes a little deeper. it’s still gentle, but more layered. it’s not about productivity or self optimization or getting your life together. it’s not about becoming someone new. it’s about remembering how to live in your own life. how to be curious again. how to stretch your mind, tend to your body, take care of your space, and reconnect with something slower and more sacred.

we don’t need to quit our phones or escape the world. but we can choose to step away now and then. we can make space for boredom, for stillness, for focus. we can give ourselves the gift of our own attention.

what follows is a list. not a checklist or a challenge. just a collection of small, intentional things you can do when you want to feel more awake. more grounded and more like yourself.

you don’t have to do all of them. or any of them.
but if even one of them makes you feel more alive or more in touch with the present, then that’s enough.

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal, you’ll get early access to my youtube videos and a weekly media consumption roundup filled with articles, video essays, podcasts, and other references to make you smarter. i’d love to have you there)

for your mind
things that stretch your intellect, sharpen your thinking, and make you feel awake in the best way.

read a book that challenges you
choose something a little difficult. a classic novel, a philosophical essay, a book with long sentences and big ideas. read slowly. keep a pencil nearby. you don’t have to understand every word. you just have to keep going.
start with: the ethics of ambiguity by simone de beauvoir, the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa, or the death of ivan ilyich by leo tolstoy.

study a topic you’ve always wanted to understand
make it impractical. make it obscure. maybe you start watching lectures on gothic architecture or learning the basics of quantum theory through youtube explainers. use free tools like coursera or open yale courses. let your mind stretch in a direction that doesn’t need to be useful.

learn chess
chess is meditation in strategy form. it teaches focus, pattern recognition, and patience. start with a free app like lichess or chess.com, which both have excellent beginner tutorials. watch a few short videos by gothamchess on youtube if you want to get into it fast. play against the computer. lose a few times. you’re still winning.

annotate poetry
you don’t need to analyze. just sit with the words. underline the lines that feel like bruises or breath. write little notes in the margins. you’re not performing intelligence. you’re just being present.
start with: sappho, rainer maria rilke, or louise glück.

write a personal essay or a letter you’ll never send
choose a moment in your life and narrate it like you're telling the story for the first time. write a letter to your younger self, or to someone you miss, or someone who hurt you. let it be honest and unfinished. burn it or save it. no rules.

do a page of logic puzzles or sudoku with pen and paper
challenge your mind to move differently. sit at a table, make it quiet, treat it like meditation.

learn the basics of a new language
language learning is one of the best ways to gently rewire your brain. it wakes something up. it teaches you to listen differently. start small. write out simple phrases in a notebook. say them out loud, even if your accent is terrible. duolingo is a good place to begin, especially for structure and streaks. if you’re learning mandarin, try red note or skritter for handwriting and tone practice. tandem and hellotalk are great for speaking with real people and building conversation confidence. if you're someone who needs immersion, switch your phone settings to the new language. watch children's shows in that language with subtitles. label objects in your room with sticky notes. let the language live around you.

make a list of questions you’ve never asked anyone and answer them for yourself
questions like: who do you feel safest around, and why? what part of your personality is performative? when was the last time you felt proud of yourself? be brave in the asking. be honest in the answering.

read something that disagrees with you
pick up a book or essay that challenges your beliefs. not to change your mind immediately, but to sharpen your reasoning. underline what makes you pause.

go to a museum alone and bring a notebook
give yourself at least an hour. don’t try to see everything. just choose one room or one piece to sit with. sketch it, describe it, or write down how it makes you feel. pretend you’re a student again. this is your field trip.

create your own mini syllabus
pick a theme: grief, memory, mythology, time, desire. choose three books, two essays, a film, and a podcast. give yourself a week or a month to move through it. keep notes. write a reflection when it’s done. this is your private university. you’re the professor and the student.

read the original source instead of the summary
go to the text. not the tweet about it. not the blog post. not the thinkpiece. read the actual thing people are quoting.
it’s harder, slower, and always worth it.

for your body
things that ground you in sensation and get you out of your head.

practice real self-care
not the kind that gets marketed to you. not the bubble baths, the expensive skincare routines, the luxury candles, though those can be lovely too. real self care is brushing your teeth even when you're depressed. showing up for your doctor’s appointments. drinking water. texting your friend back. getting enough sleep. it's asking what your body actually needs, not what you’ve been told to buy. real self care is also collective. it’s making soup for someone sick. offering to babysit. checking in on the people you love without waiting for them to ask. it's being kind even when it’s inconvenient.

take a walk with no destination, just a jacket and a thermos
walk like you have nowhere to be. listen to the way your feet hit the ground. carry something warm (or cold) to drink. look up.
you’re not exercising. consider this a way to return to the world.

stretch while listening to jazz or rain sounds
choose music that feels like it could stretch with you. move slowly and hold each pose a little longer than you think you should.
let your body take up space without asking permission.

tidy a drawer or shelf like it’s a meditation
not because it’s messy. but because it’s yours. take everything out, wipe it clean, decide what goes back in.

put on a face mask and read one chapter of a book
give your skin some love, but don’t scroll while you wait. lie down. read something that moves slowly. your body is not a project, it’s a place to live in.

practice slow breathing while lying in the grass or on the floor
inhale for four. hold for four, exhale for four, repeat. put a hand on your chest or your stomach. feel what’s real. let the rest go.

light a candle and just sit with it
watch the flame.let the room be quiet. maybe journal or read a book.

for your home
things that make your space feel more lived-in and loved. rooted in ritual, softness, and imperfection.

cook something with intention and eat it at the table
choose a recipe that feels comforting, even if it’s simple. chop slowly. stir gently. let the kitchen smell warm. set the table, even if it’s just for you. light a candle. pour water into a glass. sit down and eat without a screen. this is nourishment. not just for your body, but for the room you live in. cooking makes a house feel alive.

rearrange a corner of your room
don’t redecorate. just shift things around. move a chair, add a scarf to a surface, place a book where it can be seen. this is not about aesthetics, it’s about new energy. a small shift can change everything.

wipe down a surface you always overlook
dust the baseboards, clean the corners of a mirror, wipe a windowsill. not to impress anyone. just to say, this matters. care is often quiet, invisible, and sacred.

make a seasonal altar
gather what feels like now. a bowl of lemons, a feather from a walk, dried rice, a rock that feels heavy in your hand, incense ash from a morning you needed peace. arrange it on a small plate, a windowsill, a bedside table. let it shift with the seasons. let it remind you that time is moving, and you’re moving with it.

open the windows and play a vinyl or old playlist
air out your space like you’re letting something go. open every window and let the wind move through the room. play something familiar, maybe an old playlist, a record with static, a forgotten song from years ago. let the music fill the corners. this is how you shift the energy of a room. no deep clean required. just breath and sound and memory.

dry orange slices or press flowers in a book
slice the oranges thin, lay them on parchment, let them turn golden in the oven or the sun. press flowers between heavy pages and forget about them for a week. these small rituals of preservation are acts of patience. things that force you to wait, and in waiting, to appreciate.

hang something small and beautiful that reminds you to look up
a wind chime, a dried bouquet, a sun catcher, a paper crane. let it dangle. let it move when the air shifts. give yourself a reason to pause mid thought, mid scroll, mid sentence.

do your laundry slowly. fold it like a ritual
choose a quiet morning. sort your clothes with care. fold each piece slowly and smooth it out like you’re offering comfort. laundry can be sacred if you let it be.

make tea with full attention
choose your tea like you’re choosing how you want to feel. something grounding, something bright, something soft. boil the water and stay close. listen to it hum and rise. watch the steam curl into the air. pour it over the leaves and watch them swirl, then settle, then unfurl. this is the moment. not the drinking, not the caffeine, this.

embrace imperfection
cracked bowls, chipped edges, soft clutter. find beauty in what’s worn, incomplete, and real. let your home feel like a poem, not a showroom.

for your inner child
things that are quiet, nostalgic, and not at all “productive.”

color with pencils or crayons, no goal in mind
open a fresh sheet of paper and let your hand wander. don't worry about staying inside the lines. use whatever colors call out to you, and just let the markings unfold like a secret map of your feelings. you can also opt for a coloring book.

reread a childhood favorite or watch a comfort movie
choose that book or film you once knew by heart. allow the familiar words or scenes to transport you to simpler days. remind yourself that there is magic in nostalgia, and sometimes it’s the light of childhood that heals us.

bake cookies and eat the dough
mix flour, sugar, and a sense of whimsy. relish the tactile pleasure of kneading dough, then steal a taste before it’s even in the oven. this is a little rebellion of sweetness. a moment where you honor spontaneity and taste without guilt.

play a board game or puzzle, especially with someone you love
sit down with a jigsaw, a classic board game, or even a simple card game. allow playful competition or collaboration to spark joy. these shared moments remind you that even in adult life, there is room for laughter and wonder.

write a short story with a magical animal in it
allow your imagination to weave a tale about a creature both familiar and fantastical. let your characters be kind, brave, or even a little mischievous. this isn’t about crafting perfection, it's about rediscovering the wild wonder of your imagination.

for your spirit
things that reconnect you to meaning, mystery, and that quiet sacredness that’s hard to name.

journal about a question you’re afraid to answer
what are you avoiding? what don’t you want to name? write it down. then answer it anyway. no one has to read it but you. there’s courage in writing things you’re not ready to say out loud.

take yourself on a solo date to the library, garden, or church
go somewhere still and beautiful. take a book, bring a notebook, don’t rush. notice everything. we don’t always need conversation to feel connected, sometimes presence is enough.

sit in silence for ten minutes. breathe. observe. that’s it.
no music. no guidance. no goals. just sit and notice what it feels like to be in your body, in this moment. silence can be uncomfortable at first, but then it starts to feel like coming home.

tend to something small and alive
water a plant. sweep your doorstep. feed the birds. light a candle for someone you love. care for something that needs you.

a final note

you don’t need to do all of these. or even most. maybe you just pick one. maybe you just think about picking one, and that’s enough.

if you’ve been feeling distracted or scattered, overstimulated or a little hollow around the edges, try trading your screen for something slower. something quieter. something that brings you back to yourself.

your mind deserves your attention. your body does too. and maybe there’s still a small part of you, curious and gentle and waiting, hoping you’ll come outside and play.

okay, that’s all i have for you today.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

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as someone who speaks about literature frequently on substack, tiktok and the other apps, i have been thinking a lot about how easy it is to let social media shape our reading lives without even realizing it. sometimes the books we add to our lists are not our choices at all. they are reactions to trends, algorithms, and other people's tastes. not in an obvious way, but in the way a title ends up on your tbr just because you’ve seen it enough times. the way a cover starts to look familiar. the way someone else’s excitement makes you feel like maybe you should read it too. and before you know it, your reading list starts to feel less like a reflection of your own curiosity and more like a reaction to whatever is loudest.

reading doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be reactive. it doesn’t have to move at the speed of the feed. there’s a real kind of magic in stepping outside of the algorithm and finding your way back to the books that you are drawn to. the ones you wouldn’t have found unless you were paying closer attention. building a tbr that feels disconnected from trends can feel like remembering how to listen to yourself again.

here are some ways to find your next read. ways that feel slower, more deliberate, and a lot more personal.

notes on finding your next read…

-local bookstore

what’s your favorite bookstore? go there. not with a list, not with a trending title in mind, but with nothing but time and a willingness to be surprised. wander the aisles. pick up books you’ve never heard of. read the first lines. linger. this is one of the last sacred spaces where you can still discover things slowly, with your hands and eyes instead of a screen. and don’t be afraid to talk to the booksellers. they’re curators. ask them what they’ve been reading lately and tell them what you love, what you can’t stand, what kind of mood you’re in. and if their rec doesn’t hit? ask someone else. every bookstore has its cast of characters, each with their own niche obsessions and literary fixations. there’s always someone who lives for experimental fiction, someone who cries over family sagas, someone who reads nothing but obscure poetry in translation. finding your person, the bookseller who gets your taste, is like unlocking a secret door. once you do, every trip becomes a miniature pilgrimage and a conversation and a new chapter.

-your favorite authors favorite authors

this is one of the richest and most overlooked paths to finding books that will gut you in the most beautiful way. think about your top five favorite authors and ask: who did they love? who shaped their voice, their worldview, their obsessions? many writers speak openly about their literary influences in interviews, essays, and letters. sometimes it's a passing mention—other times, it's an entire annotated reading list. dig for those. google “[author’s name] favorite books.” look for old paris review interviews. scan their personal essays for the names they drop. you’ll start to notice patterns. recurrences. little literary bloodlines. you might learn that clarice lispector swore by dostoevsky. that ocean vuong reads rilke religiously. that zadie smith is obsessed with nabokov. it becomes a kind of spiritual lineage and a trail of breadcrumbs through the literary forest. the books you find this way often feel intimate, like private inheritances. like you’re being handed something sacred passed down quietly from writer to writer to you.

-your favorite literary publications: the paris review, lit hub, the new york review of books, etc.

there is a gold mine tucked away in the digital archives of these literary publications. not just in the latest features, but in the old interviews, staff reading lists, and forgotten essays from decades past. scroll through the paris review’s art of fiction series and you’ll find writers casually mentioning the obscure russian novel that changed their lives. dig into lit hub’s quieter corners and stumble on personal essays that name drop out of print books you’ve never heard of. the best part is that none of it is designed to go viral. it isn’t about aesthetics or book hauls. it’s about literature as a lifelong conversation. these are places where serious readers talk about the books that shaped them, not the ones trending for five minutes. spend time in those ecosystems and you’ll begin to build a reading life that feels both private and expansive, like you’re joining a secret club that doesn’t care about followers, just sentences that changed someone’s life.

(this post is free, but if you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal, you’ll get early access to my youtube videos and a weekly media consumption roundup filled with articles, video essays, podcasts, and other references to make you smarter. i’d love to have you there.)

-staff picks at your favorite bookstore

this is a cousin to the first tip, but it deserves its own spotlight. the staff picks shelf is one of the most overlooked treasures in any bookstore, not because it’s hidden, but because we’re often too busy chasing what's new or buzzy. these are not algorithmically generated suggestions. they’re not based on sales data or marketing trends. they’re chosen by real people who read deeply and care a lot. often, they’re the books that changed someone’s life a little… enough to make them write a handwritten note and stick it on the shelf for strangers. some picks will be personal obsessions. others will be wildcards. many will be older titles you’ve never heard of, or genres you thought you didn’t like, but are now seeing through someone else’s eyes. what you’re reading, when you read from the staff picks shelf, is not just a book, it’s someone’s favorite book. and that kind of quiet, human endorsement is always worth listening to.

-goodreads

goodreads can feel like a mess if you treat it like another form of social media, full of numbers, stars, and opinions you didn’t ask for. but used with intention, it becomes a surprisingly powerful tool for literary discovery. look up a book you loved, not just to reread the blurb or reviews, but to scroll down and find what else readers who really loved that book are reading. don’t just stop at the big names, go into the obscure lists, the niche tags, the overlooked read alikes. search “books for when you feel lost” or “quiet novels with emotional damage” or “gothic coming-of-age stories.” follow the hyperlinks like rabbit holes. some of the best finds come from following vibe, not genre. treat it like a digital maze, and trust your instincts on what to click next.

-your library

your local library is one of the last places that still believes in slow time. go there with no plan. let yourself browse the way you did as a kid, by color, by title, by a weird cover that grabs your attention. pull down anything that makes your heart pause. let your hands decide. most libraries have pockets of hidden curation, shelves for translated fiction, overlooked authors, or staff favorites that aren’t advertised like they would be in a store. and don’t underestimate librarians. they are some of the most insightful, passionate readers alive. strike up a conversation, and they’ll likely recommend a book you’ve never heard of that ends up altering the way you think. the library is also a place where risk costs nothing. if a book doesn’t resonate, return it. the entire space invites experimentation, discovery, and slowness. it's not just a place to find books, it’s a place to find yourself as a reader again.

-publisher backlists

every time we obsess over new releases, we forget that publishers have decades, sometimes centuries, of brilliant books sitting quietly in their backlists. this is especially true for small presses and literary imprints, which often publish the most singular, daring, emotionally rich work you’ll ever read. books that didn’t go viral but still whisper to the right reader. start by identifying the imprints you trust: nyrb classics, fitzcarraldo, archipelago, graywolf, new directions, europa editions, dorothy, a publishing project. go to their websites and just scroll. forget about publication year. read the synopses. look at the covers. you'll start to notice themes and voices that draw you in. the magic of the backlist is that you’re not chasing hype, you’re excavating. and what you find will often feel like it was waiting for you, not the other way around.

-translated literature

if your reading life starts to feel predictable, one of the best ways to shake it up is by reaching for translated work. stepping into another language can completely reset your sense of what a story can be. there’s something deeply refreshing about seeing the world through a different cultural lens, especially when it comes to rhythm, structure, or even emotional tone. some of the most unforgettable books i've ever read weren’t written in english, they carried a kind of strangeness that made them feel more alive. publishers like archipelago, europa editions, new directions, and fitzcarraldo are great places to start. read across borders. it’s one of the easiest ways to feel wonder again.

-friends who get it

not all friends are created equal when it comes to book recommendations. some will send you whatever’s trending. others will suggest what they love, without thinking about whether it fits you. but then there are the rare ones… the friends who just get you. the ones who know the exact kind of emotional unraveling you’re drawn to. these are the people to trust. ask them what they’ve been reading lately and what they finished and immediately needed to talk about. these conversations can lead to the kind of book discoveries that feel like fate, because when a recommendation comes from someone who knows your interior world, it’s not just a suggestion, it’s a gift. a little mirror and breadcrumb toward something you didn’t even know you needed.

-reading prize shortlists

literary prizes aren’t just about winners, they’re about the entire ecosystem of books deemed exceptional that year. the shortlist is often where the real magic happens. these are books that might not have taken the top prize but were still powerful enough to make it to the final round. start by digging through old shortlists for prizes like the booker, the national book award, the international booker, the pulitzer, the dublin literary award, the strega, the giller, or the women’s prize for fiction. don’t stop at the past year, go back a decade. what you’ll find is a trail of deeply thoughtful, often genre defying books that were loved by serious readers and judges, even if they didn’t get the final spotlight. it’s also a great way to diversify your reading, these lists often spotlight international voices, experimental formats, and authors you’ve never heard of. and there’s something thrilling about reading a book that was almost crowned the best. sometimes those are the ones that end up mattering more.

-following a theme instead of a title

sometimes the best way to choose your next book isn’t by title or author, but by feeling. what’s been echoing through your life lately? loneliness? desire? longing for escape? instead of searching for a specific recommendation, start with a theme. maybe you’re looking for books about solitude, or artists, or books about mothers and daughters, about reinvention, about grief, or obsession. google it, search it on goodreads or tumblr or ask the bookseller at your favorite store. this kind of intuitive reading path often leads to the most personal discoveries. because you’re not looking for a popular book, you’re looking for a book that understands you right now. one that can meet you where you are. reading this way feels less like consuming and more like communing. like you’re entering into a private conversation with someone who’s felt what you’re feeling, and found a way to say it beautifully.

at the end of the day, the books you find slowly by wandering, listening, and following invisible threads, are often the ones that stay with you the longest. they settle deeper and feel less like something you consumed and more like something you stumbled across at exactly the right moment. they weave themselves into the fabric of your life in a way no algorithm ever could. these are the books you return to without realizing it. the ones whose sentences echo in your mind years later, long after you have forgotten when or why you first picked them up. they become part of you, quietly and permanently, the way only something truly chosen ever can.

okay, that’s all for today.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

(follow ig, tiktok, youtube, pinterest and spotify for more)

philosophy is one of those things people say they want to read—and then never do. not because they aren’t curious, but because no one ever teaches you how. you pick up a book and within two pages, you’re drowning in unfamiliar language, abstract concepts, and footnotes that lead you deeper into the abyss.

the truth is that philosophy isn’t hard because it’s inaccessible. it’s hard because it’s asking you to do something most forms of reading don’t—it’s asking you to slow down. to sit in uncertainty. to question your most basic assumptions about life, death, time, freedom, selfhood, god. it’s not designed to be understood in a single sitting. it’s designed to be lived with. to reread. to return to. to be changed by.

so if you want to start reading philosophy—or if you already do and just want to go deeper—here’s a guide to help you read with more clarity, confidence, and intention.

1. start with the introduction. always. never skip the introduction. in most other genres, it’s optional. in philosophy, it’s essential. a good intro gives you the historical context, the philosophical stakes, the central questions, and the intellectual lineage the author is working within. you’ll learn what the philosopher is responding to, why the argument matters, and what terms mean before you get lost in the weeds. annotate the intro. underline definitions. circle major themes. it’s your roadmap. if it’s a translated edition, pay attention to the translator’s note too—it often clarifies nuances of language that are easy to miss.

2. use the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. philosophy has its own vocabulary, and you are not supposed to already know what “substance dualism” means. or why aristotle cared so much about “being qua being.” this is a completely different language, and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (SEP) is your best translator. every entry is written and reviewed by professional philosophers. it gives you trusted, academic-level overviews of key terms, thinkers, and schools of thought. even grad students use it.

3. read with a question in mind. philosophy isn’t about memorizing arguments—it’s about asking better questions. every book you pick up was written to answer a question. so bring one of your own.

   before reading, ask yourself:

   what is this philosopher trying to solve?

   what problem are you hoping to understand better?

   if you’re reading camus, maybe it’s: how do we live without meaning? if you’re reading beauvoir: can we be free and still love others? if you’re reading kierkegaard: is despair a weakness—or a form of truth?

   read with a purpose. let the book provoke you. argue back.

4. slow down. slower than you think. this is not a novel. you are not meant to fly through it. some of the best reading sessions will only take you through a page or two—and that’s enough. if one paragraph stops you in your tracks, stay with it. philosophy is not about finishing. it’s about metabolizing. let the ideas sink in. allow confusion. be suspicious of speed.

5. annotate like you’re arguing with a ghost. annotation should be active—not decorative. don’t just highlight a sentence and write “wow.” treat the book like a conversation. leave actual thoughts behind:

   i don’t agree with this at all

   is this a contradiction?

   why does he assume this is self-evident?

   mark key concepts, counterarguments, surprising turns. write questions to revisit later. trace how your thinking shifts.

   your copy of the book should look like you lived inside it.

symbols help, too (the margin is your workshop)

• * = core argument

• ! = striking idea

• ? = confusion or curiosity

• → = connection to another thinker

• [ ] = counterpoint or critique

6. keep a commonplace book. every philosopher kept one. montaigne, pascal, even marcus aurelius. it’s your space to collect quotes, fragments, ideas, and feelings that haunt you. it’s not about being neat—it’s about making a record of the thoughts that stick. copy down things you don’t fully understand yet. jot down questions. use it as a map of your intellectual growth.

7. reread everything. you will not understand it all at once and that’s the point. the first time, you’re just trying to survive. the second time, you start to hear the rhythm. the third time, something clicks. philosophy rewards obsession. go back to the same sentence in a different mood, or a different season of life, and watch it undo you in a new way. that’s when you know it’s real.

8. read with your body. not just your brain read aloud. walk while listening to an audiobook version. record yourself trying to explain the argument in your own words. let it move through you like music. if you’re an audio learner, use tools like voice dream reader or speechify to turn dense PDFs into immersive experiences. if you’re a verbal thinker, talk out loud. let it live in your mouth. philosophy isn’t just intellectual. it’s physical. emotional. existential. read with your whole self.

9. don’t wait to be “qualified” to read philosophy. you don’t need a phd. you don’t need to be in a seminar. you don’t need to write like a scholar. what you do need is: sincerity. curiosity. and the willingness to read something three times, still not understand it, and keep going anyway. you belong in this conversation. and the more you participate—by reading, writing, arguing, and reflecting—the more fluent you’ll become.

10. fall in love with not knowing. the goal isn’t to master philosophy. it’s to be transformed by it. you’ll never have all the answers. but you’ll ask better questions. you’ll learn to sit with ambiguity. you’ll become more patient, more precise, more awake. if you finish a chapter more confused than when you started? that’s not failure. that’s contact.

stay in the mystery. argue with ghosts. read slowly. think deeply.

resources i use and love:

• stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

• philosophize this! (foundational and accessible)

• the partially examined life (great for deeper analysis)

• voice dream reader / speechify / natural reader (for listening to philosophy aloud)

• internet encyclopedia of philosophy

lastly, i wont leave you without some philosophy books to help get you started…

also, if you want to support the work i’m doing by becoming a paid subscriber—and be part of a smaller circle where things feel a little softer, a little more personal—you’ll get early access to my youtube videos, a weekly q&a audio podcast, and the cutting room floor: scraps, thoughts, and quiet things i’m not ready to let go of yet. nothing polished. just human. i’d love to have you there.

philosophy books for the aesthetically inclined, spiritually restless, and intellectually feral

1. the myth of sisyphus – albert camus

still the ultimate entry point. camus gives you language for the feeling you already have: that life might be meaningless, but it doesn’t mean you stop living. it’s lucid, fatalistic, and strangely hopeful.

core themes: absurdism, suicide, lucidity, revolt
read this if: you want to romanticize your existential crisis

2. the ethics of ambiguity – simone de beauvoir

ethics meets existentialism. de beauvoir isn’t writing commandments—she’s writing questions. she makes freedom feel like a responsibility and ambiguity feel like a virtue.

core themes: freedom, ambiguity, moral development
read this if: you want to live responsibly without becoming insufferable

3. groundwork for the metaphysics of morals – immanuel kant

dense, yes—but essential. kant gives you the foundation for how modern moral theory functions. it’s not about vibes—it’s about reason, universality, and taking responsibility for your own mind.

core themes: duty, autonomy, categorical imperative
read this if: you want to become ethically unshakeable

4. the sickness unto death – søren kierkegaard

if you’ve ever tried to “find yourself” and ended up in a spiral—this is for you. kierkegaard redefines despair as a form of spiritual misalignment. it’s like reading a theology of the self falling apart in slow motion.

core themes: selfhood, despair, god, the soul’s inwardness
read this if: you’re chronically online and chronically spiritual

5. meditations – marcus aurelius

stoicism that feels like therapy. practical, deeply human, and perfect for people who overthink everything and just want to feel like it’s going to be okay (without being lied to).

core themes: perspective, virtue, emotional regulation
read this if: you want to be calm without being passive

6. meditations on first philosophy – rené descartes

start with this before going into full metaphysical territory. descartes is clean, rigorous, and weirdly relatable—especially if you’ve ever doubted everything down to your own body. an essential foundation for rationalist thought.

core themes: doubt, self, mind-body dualism
read this if: you want to tear reality apart and put it back together

7. nicomachean ethics – aristotle

the original blueprint for a life well-lived. aristotle believed in becoming good through habit—not rules. it’s structured, practical, and surprisingly affirming. a must-read if you want a philosophy of becoming rather than performing.

core themes: virtue, flourishing, the golden mean
read this if: you’re tired of all-or-nothing thinking and want a philosophy of balance

8. on the genealogy of morality – friedrich nietzsche

blistering, bitter, brilliant. this is where you go when you’re ready to question every value you’ve inherited. it’s not about agreeing with him—it’s about realizing how deeply morality is constructed.

core themes: guilt, power, history, resentment
read this if: you want to obliterate your inherited sense of right and wrong

9. being and time (selections) – martin heidegger

approach this like sacred text. don’t read the whole thing. just engage with sections on being-toward-death, authenticity, and care. heidegger will ruin language for you, but also open up how you see time, presence, and being itself.

core themes: existence, mortality, authenticity
read this if: you want to think like time is a haunting, not a clock

10. a breath of life – clarice lispector

not traditional philosophy—but it’s everything you’ve been trying to say about existence, language, and womanhood. this book isn’t written—it descends. it’s metaphysics through the body, God through absence, and consciousness as a fever dream.

core themes: creation, nothingness, eros, divinity, language
read this if: you want philosophy to feel like possession instead of argument

bonus: the brothers karamazov – fyodor dostoevsky

it’s not technically philosophy—but it’s more than most philosophy books. this novel contains arguments about god, morality, suffering, and free will that rival any formal treatise. every character is a theory. every conversation is a reckoning. you don’t read it for plot—you read it for the part of your soul it sets on fire.

core themes: faith, doubt, justice, evil, love
read this if: you want to feel like you’re holding the entire human condition in your hands

if you’re curious to explore more of my favorite philosophy books, you can browse them here.

okay, that’s all for today.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

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there are levels of seduction that exists beyond the body. something less tangible, and perhaps more potent. anais nin understood this idea about how desire does not begin with touch but with language, perception, and the sharp electric pull of a mind that challenges and excites you. in her journals, desire is not just a physical hunger but a hunger of the intellect, an unraveling of thought before an unraveling of the body. to be drawn into someone’s mind, to feel their thoughts press against your own, can be more intoxicating than any physical closeness.

plato’s concept of eros also frames desire as a longing for something higher, something beyond the physical. an insatiable pull toward truth, beauty, and the divine. in the symposium, he presents love as a hierarchy, where physical attraction is only the first rung of a much larger ascent. at its lowest, eros is the desire for another’s body, but true love in its highest form is not about possession, it is about transcendence. love is a bridge between the earthly and the eternal, a force that propels the soul toward wisdom, toward something more enduring than the fleeting pleasures of the flesh.

but this hunger for the eternal and longing for something beyond the physical has deep theological roots as well. augustine, centuries later, reinterprets plato’s eros through a christian lens, arguing that all human desire, whether erotic, intellectual, or emotional, is ultimately a longing for god. to augustine, even the most consuming love for another person is, at its core, a misplaced yearning for the divine. we mistake people for salvation, we hunger for them as if they could complete us, only to find ourselves disappointed when they, too, are fallible. true satisfaction, he argues, cannot be found in the arms of another, nor in the intoxication of the mind’s seduction. it can only be found in god, the only love that does not waver, does not decay.

but what if the mind itself is divine? what if desire is not a distraction from this god, but a means of reaching toward him? the medieval mystics, theresa of avila and john of the cross, spoke of divine love in deeply erotic terms. their souls ravished by god, of spiritual ecstasy that mirrored the heights of human passion. their visions blur the line between the sacred and the sensual or erotic, suggesting that the deepest form of intimacy may not be physical at all, but something beyond, something ineffable.

anais nin didn’t just theorize about the seduction of the mind, she lived in the tension between intellectual and physical intimacy. she was drawn to henry miller’s mind just as much as his body, but june miller’s presence complicates this equation. june was an enigmatic force, someone nin adored, desired, and yet struggled to fully possess. if nin believed intellectual intimacy could replace physical desire, why did she constantly seek both? the real question isn’t whether one can replace the other, but whether the most intoxicating relationships are those that force us to exist in both realms, never fully satisfied in either.

nin’s journals show an obsession with language as foreplay. her writing itself is erotic, not just in content but in form, rhythmic, breathless, laced with pauses and swells. she didn’t just write about desire; she wrote in a way that seduced. this raises an essential question: is intellectual intimacy a replacement for physical desire, or is it just another form of it? perhaps the real seduction is in the delay—a prolonging of touch through thought.

if we choose follow augustine’s theory, the body is a hindrance and an obstacle between the soul and god. but the mystics challenge this division. theresa of avila’s most famous vision is where her body is pierced by an angel’s golden spear, overcome with divine pleasure. it reads as something beyond metaphor. john of the cross writes of being wounded by love. their spirituality isn’t an escape from physicality but an embrace of it through another means.

perhaps this is why the idea of intellectual seduction is so intoxicating: it thrives on restraint. a conversation charged with subtext, a letter laden with implication, a gaze held just a second too long. these moments generate their own kind of tension, a pleasure sharpened by denial. the body, paradoxically, becomes most present in its absence. if physical desire burns quickly, intellectual intimacy smolders.

but is restraint always sustainable? at what point does the hunger demand satisfaction? and if it is never met, does it turn into something else—devotion, frustration, obsession?

there’s an inherent tragedy in the idea of intellectual intimacy replacing physical desire. if seduction is transformation, then an intellectual relationship with no physical realization exists in a permanent state of becoming. unfinished, unresolved. and yet, this liminality is part of what makes it so powerful. the mind never fully possessed is the mind that remains desirable.

plato’s ascent in the symposium suggests that love should move beyond the physical, reaching toward something higher. but there is a cruelty in this kind of transcendence, because it demands the renunciation of what makes us human. we are not just minds; we are bodies. and while the intellect can seduce, can it truly sustain the hunger that lives in the flesh? or does it merely prolong this ache?

sartre would argue that all desire is performative, that even intellectual seduction is an existential act of self-creation. if this is true, then is the pursuit of intellectual intimacy ever truly about the other person, or is it about how we see ourselves in their gaze? do we desire to know, or do we desire to be known?

and what happens when that gaze shifts, when the mind we once found electrifying no longer holds its charge? can an attraction built on thought alone sustain itself indefinitely, or does it eventually collapse under the weight of its own idealism?

if i were to be honest, this is not just an intellectual exercise. there is something personal buried in this argument, something lived. there is a difference between preferring intellectual intimacy and needing it. some of us are wired this way. unable to separate attraction from perception, from conversation, from the way a single phrase can send a shiver down the spine in a way touch never could.

to be known in this way is to be undressed, not in body, but in mind. it’s the kind of intimacy that lingers far longer than touch. and maybe this is the great paradox of intellectual seduction: we long for the mind because it is unknowable. the body can be mapped, claimed, exhausted. the mind is infinite.

if seduction is about transformation, then the question remains: what are we seeking to become? if physical love binds us to the moment, intellectual intimacy is an invitation to exist in a constant state of potential. and perhaps that is its greatest allure. not what it gives us, but what it promises. the thrill of the unfinished. the seduction of the unknown.

books for further reading & exploration:

the journals of anais nin by anais nin – anais nin’s lifelong, deeply introspective diaries exploring love, art, eroticism, and the intricate psychology of desire. her writing blurs the line between intellect and sensuality, essential for understanding her philosophy of seduction. (also henry and june)

the symposium by plato – a foundational philosophical text on love and desire, in which plato portrays eros as a force beginning with physical attraction but ultimately seeking transcendence, truth, and the divine.

confessions by saint augustine – augustine’s intensely personal reflections on desire, sin, and faith, arguing that all human longing, whether for people, pleasure, or knowledge, is ultimately a misplaced yearning for god.

the interior castle by teresa of avila – a mystical text describing the soul’s journey toward divine intimacy, written in sensual, almost erotic language. teresa’s visions blur the sacred and the sensual, making it essential reading for exploring the intersection of spirituality and desire.

dark night of the soul by john of the cross – a poetic meditation on longing and transcendence, describing how the soul’s deepest suffering is also its greatest act of devotion. john uses evocative erotic imagery to articulate divine union.

being and nothingness by jean-paul sartre – sartre’s existentialist masterpiece exploring how all relationships, including love and desire, are performances in which we shape and are shaped by the gaze of the other.

eros the bittersweet by anne carson – a lyrical, philosophical exploration of desire and longing, drawing from greek literature, philosophy, and personal reflection. carson argues eros is defined by absence. the ache of wanting what we can never fully possess.

a lover’s discourse by roland barthes – a fragmented, poetic novel on love and longing, dissecting the language of desire and how we articulate our emotions through culture, literature, and obsession.

the logic of sensation by gilles deleuze – a study of art, perception, and the body’s response to sensation, particularly through the work of painter francis bacon. deleuze provides a compelling framework for understanding the role of the body in intellectual and aesthetic pleasure.

and films for the cinephile:

eyes wide shut (1999) by stanley kubrick – a psychological and erotic exploration of intimacy, jealousy, and the blurred lines between fantasy and reality within marriage.

portrait of a lady on fire (2019) – a sensual, profound meditation on desire, art, and the intensity of intellectual and emotional connection between two women.

in the mood for love (2000) – a poetic and visually hypnotic exploration of emotional intimacy, unfulfilled desire, and the power of restraint.

the handmaiden (2016) – an intricate thriller exploring deception, eroticism, and the intimacy that develops through intellectual and physical seduction.

blue is the warmest color (2013) – a raw, deeply emotional depiction of desire, self-discovery, and the complexities of intellectual and physical intimacy.

call me by your name (2017) – a sensitive portrayal of first love, intellectual discovery, and the ache of longing, wrapped in rich, philosophical contemplation.

before sunrise (1995) – a beautifully articulated dialogue-driven romance, deeply rooted in the intimacy of thought and conversation rather than physical touch.

persona (1966) – a psychological masterpiece exploring identity, intimacy, and the boundary between minds, delving into the profound intimacy of shared consciousness.

her (2013) – a thoughtful meditation on technology, desire, and emotional connection, exploring intellectual intimacy in an increasingly isolated world.

the piano teacher (2001) – a complex, disturbing, and philosophically rich exploration of desire, repression, and the destructive potential of intellectual and physical obsessions.

okay, that’s all for today.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

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one of the best ways to expand your thinking is to read widely and intentionally, but finding articles that genuinely challenge, inform, and enrich your perspective requires more than just scrolling through whatever happens to appear in your social media feed. people often inquire about my approach finding interesting articles and i wanted to take time to share my process with you below (+ i’ll be including some of my favorite publications at the end of this letter)

the internet is an endless library, but without curation, it can also be a wasteland of recycled opinions, shallow think pieces, and clickbait masquerading as intellectual engagement. if you want to cultivate a reading habit that sharpens your intellect, broadens your perspective, and introduces you to ideas you might not have encountered otherwise, you have to be deliberate.

where to start: curation vs. discovery

my approach to finding worthwhile articles is twofold: curation (building a trusted network of sources that regularly deliver high-quality writing) and deliberate searching (actively seeking out pieces based on topics of interest).

curation means identifying publications and platforms that consistently publish thought-provoking, well-researched work. for me, this includes the paris review, the new yorker, the london review of books, longreads, lithub, jstor daily, aeon, psyche, the yale review, the new york review of books, hedgehog review, and nautilus, among others that i’ve listed below. these sources cover literature, philosophy, history, science, and culture with depth and nuance—offering analysis rather than just surface-level commentary.

i subscribe to newsletters from these publications, which helps bring the best articles straight to me without having to hunt them down daily. but i also supplement this with independent thinkers and writers on substack, where some of the most exciting, original essays are being written right now. platforms like substack, medium, and even certain corners of tumblr or reddit can be goldmines for niche, highly specific discussions that wouldn’t find a home in mainstream media.

going deeper: how to research like a scholar

beyond curated reading, i also believe in the value of deliberate searching. seeking out writing on specific topics instead of just passively consuming whatever appears in front of me. if i come across an idea in a book, a conversation, or even a fleeting thought, i go looking for more.

one of my favorite strategies is using academic databases like jstor or project muse, where you can find peer-reviewed journal articles, historical texts, and serious research on virtually any subject. many of these databases have free content or allow you to read a limited number of articles per month without a subscription. google scholar is another useful tool for finding research papers and academic perspectives that offer more depth than traditional media.

if i’m searching for cultural or literary criticism, i browse archives from the new york review of books, the london review of books, and the yale review, or even look at bibliographies from books i love to see what sources those authors were engaging with. for historical perspectives, i check the internet archive, which houses an enormous collection of digitized books, essays, and journals that are no longer in print.

an underutilized trick is searching for “pdf” alongside keywords on google. this often pulls up academic essays, university lecture notes, or unpublished manuscripts that wouldn’t appear in a normal search. for example, if you’re interested in existentialism, searching “existentialism pdf site:.edu” will often bring up free university resources and full-text papers rather than just blog posts or surface-level explainers.

following curiosity: becoming an intentional reader

the key to reading in a way that actually makes you smarter isn’t just about volume, it’s about quality and connection. rather than consuming information passively, follow your curiosity with intention. what’s something you’ve been thinking about lately? a fleeting question, a historical event, a concept that keeps resurfacing in your life?

instead of defaulting to scrolling, take a moment to actively search for writing on the topic. go beyond google’s first page, explore niche literary journals, philosophy essays, obscure blogs, and academic articles. when reading, don’t just absorb—engage. take notes, look up references, connect ideas between different pieces. when an article cites a book, track it down. when a book mentions a philosopher, read their primary texts. the best reading is fractal. it expands outward, leading you into new directions of thought rather than confining you to a single, static perspective.

over time, you’ll develop your own ecosystem of sources. essentially a network of publications, writers, and intellectual rabbit holes that continually push your thinking forward. it’s this kind of deep, layered engagement with ideas that changes the way you see the world, not just reading to consume information, but reading as a way of thinking, questioning, and making sense of existence.

and maybe most importantly: let yourself get lost in it. some of the best things i’ve ever read weren’t things i was looking for. they were things i stumbled upon by clicking one link, then another, following an obscure citation, or reading a footnote that led me somewhere unexpected. the internet is overwhelming, but it’s also full of undiscovered brilliance. the best way to find it? stay curious, stay intentional, and never stop digging.

publications i love and trust

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classical literature has always felt like a lifeline to me—more than just stories, these books have shaped the way i see the world, deepened my understanding of human nature, and made me feel less alone in the vast, endless complexity of existence. if philosophy teaches us how to think, classic literature teaches us how to feel. it pulls us into conversations that span centuries, connects us with minds long gone, and reminds us that every struggle, every longing, every moment of doubt we experience has been felt before.

i’ll never forget when my university advisor insisted i switch my major to english because it was easier, claiming i lacked the capacity or means to thrive in science. (a story for another time) the suggestion wasn’t just condescending—it was a humiliating, quiet condemnation of my ambition and intelligence. in the end, the joke was on him because i ended double majoring in english and stem.

i had been raised to believe that the arts were a consolation prize, a path for those who weren’t sharp enough, disciplined enough, or relentless enough to pursue something as prestigious as science, math, medicine—those were the fields of true intellect. literature and philosophy were mere indulgences for the directionless.

this illusion was shattered the moment i understood what great art and thought demand. the most urgent questions about existence don’t belong to science alone; they live in the pages of novels, in philosophy’s relentless pursuit of truth. to dismiss the humanities is to misunderstand not just intellect, but the very essence of human thought.

with classical literature especially, there’s a reason these books endure. they contain truths that remain relevant no matter how much time passes, offering insight into love, power, morality, ambition, and the tension between fate and free will. they are, at their core, books about being human. whether it’s dostoevsky forcing you to wrestle with guilt and redemption, woolf capturing the fleeting nature of time and memory, or tolstoy making you confront the weight of a life half-lived, these stories refuse to let you remain unchanged.

as we long for spring and head into the final days of winter, i find myself drawn to these books even more. winter always feels like the season of introspection, and classic literature, with its depth and richness, fits the mood perfectly. these are the books that demand your full attention, that ask you to slow down, think deeply, and surrender to something greater than yourself.

below, i’m sharing some of my favorites—books that have changed me, shaped me, and stayed with me long after i turned the last page. if you’ve never read classics before, consider this your invitation. if you already love them, then you know exactly what i mean.

my favorite classic literature books:

• the brothers karamazov – fyodor dostoevsky: a philosophical novel that grapples with faith, free will, and morality through the complex relationships of the karamazov brothers. each brother represents a different ideological struggle—reason vs. faith, passion vs. logic, morality vs. nihilism—culminating in a murder trial that questions the very nature of justice.

• giovanni’s room – james baldwin: a haunting, deeply introspective novel about love, shame, and identity, following an american man in paris who grapples with his attraction to men, particularly the enigmatic giovanni. baldwin’s prose is both lyrical and devastating, capturing the suffocating weight of societal expectations, internalized homophobia, and the tragic impossibility of living freely in a world that demands conformity.

• anna karenina – leo tolstoy: a tragic novel about love, betrayal, and societal constraints, centered on anna’s doomed affair with vronsky and contrasted with levin’s search for meaning. tolstoy weaves a vast, intricate portrait of russian aristocracy, capturing both its glittering opulence and its deep existential struggles.

• frankenstein – mary shelley: often considered the first true science fiction novel, this gothic tale explores the dangers of unchecked ambition and the consequences of playing god. victor frankenstein’s obsession with creating life leads to his own ruin, while the creature, abandoned and misunderstood, raises questions about humanity and responsibility.

• dracula – bram stoker: an epistolary gothic horror novel that defined the modern vampire myth, following count dracula’s attempt to spread his dark influence to england. blending victorian fears of disease, sexuality, and foreign invasion, the novel remains hauntingly atmospheric and deeply psychological.

• the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde – robert louis stevenson: a dark psychological thriller about the duality of human nature, following a scientist who creates a potion to separate his good and evil selves. as mr. hyde grows stronger and more uncontrollable, the novella examines repression, morality, and the hidden darkness in every person.

• the turn of the screw – henry james: a chilling ghost story that plays with ambiguity and psychological horror, centered on a governess who believes her young charges are being haunted. the novel’s brilliance lies in its uncertainty—is she truly seeing ghosts, or is she slowly losing her grip on reality?

• rebecca – daphne du maurier: a gothic suspense novel filled with haunting memories and an ever-present, spectral first wife. the unnamed narrator struggles with jealousy and insecurity as she lives in the shadow of the enigmatic and seemingly perfect rebecca, whose influence lingers even after death.

• the monk – matthew lewis: a shocking and scandalous gothic novel about a supposedly virtuous monk’s descent into temptation, sorcery, and violence. its grotesque imagery and supernatural elements push the boundaries of morality and horror, making it one of the most extreme gothic novels of its time.

• carmilla – sheridan le fanu: a proto-vampire novel filled with eerie gothic atmosphere and rich with queer subtext, centering on a mysterious woman who preys on young girls. predating dracula, it explores themes of obsession, seduction, and the supernatural in an intoxicatingly dreamlike way.

• we have always lived in the castle – shirley jackson: a dark, unsettling novel narrated by merricat blackwood, a deeply unreliable and isolated young woman. the book masterfully builds suspense as secrets about her family’s tragic past unfold, leading to an eerie meditation on isolation, persecution, and psychological instability.

• the haunting of hill house – shirley jackson: a masterpiece of psychological horror, following a group investigating a haunted mansion where reality and delusion blur. at its heart, the novel is a study of loneliness and repression, as the protagonist, eleanor, forms a dangerously intimate connection with the house itself.

• villette – charlotte brontë: a deeply introspective novel about lucy snowe, an intelligent and solitary woman navigating life in a foreign country. less romantic than jane eyre, it is more psychological and melancholic, exploring themes of isolation, longing, and unfulfilled desire.

• the bluest eye – toni morrison: a harrowing and lyrical novel about internalized racism, beauty standards, and the psychological destruction of a young black girl, pecola breedlove, who longs for blue eyes, believing they will make her loved and worthy. morrison’s debut is both haunting and poetic, peeling back the layers of societal cruelty, intergenerational trauma, and the devastating consequences of oppression with prose that is both tender and unflinching.

• brideshead revisited – evelyn waugh: an elegiac novel about memory, love, faith, and the decline of the english aristocracy, told through the lens of charles ryder’s infatuation with the wealthy and troubled flyte family. at its core, it’s a deeply nostalgic and melancholic meditation on beauty, decadence, and the loss of innocence, with a profound undercurrent of longing—both romantic and spiritual. waugh’s prose is lush and reflective, capturing the intoxicating charm of youth and privilege while also exposing its inevitable decay.

• crime and punishment – fyodor dostoevsky: a philosophical and psychological novel about raskolnikov, a destitute student who murders a pawnbroker to test his theory of extraordinary individuals. wracked with guilt, he is drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with the relentless detective porfiry petrovich, leading to an exploration of morality, redemption, and justice.

• the master and margarita – mikhail bulgakov: a satirical, surreal novel set in soviet russia, where the devil and his mischievous entourage wreak havoc in moscow. interwoven with a parallel story about pontius pilate, it critiques authoritarianism, censorship, and the absurdity of power with biting humor and magical realism.

• the trial – franz kafka: an existential nightmare about josef k., a man arrested for an unknown crime, trapped in a faceless bureaucratic machine. as he struggles to understand his trial, the novel paints a harrowing portrait of absurdity, guilt, and the inescapable nature of judgment.

• the odyssey – homer: an epic poem following odysseus’s ten-year journey home after the trojan war, encountering mythical creatures, divine interventions, and personal trials along the way. beyond its adventure, the poem explores themes of perseverance, identity, loyalty, and the human struggle against fate, making it one of the most enduring stories of heroism and homecoming.

• the iliad – homer: a timeless epic poem that recounts the final weeks of the trojan war, focusing on achilles’ rage and the fates of great warriors. filled with divine intervention, brutal combat, and poetic grandeur, it remains one of the foundational works of western literature.

• the divine comedy – dante: a visionary journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, guided first by virgil and then by beatrice. deeply theological and allegorical, it maps the medieval conception of sin, salvation, and the afterlife in strikingly vivid poetry.

• the picture of dorian gray – oscar wilde: a decadent gothic novel about a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth, while his hidden portrait reflects his moral decay. a sharp critique of aestheticism and hedonism, it remains both darkly seductive and philosophically compelling.

• the myth of sisyphus – albert camus: a foundational work of absurdist philosophy, questioning whether life is worth living in a world without inherent meaning. camus proposes that, like sisyphus endlessly rolling his boulder uphill, we must find happiness in the struggle itself.

• to the lighthouse – virginia woolf: a modernist masterpiece that captures the fleeting nature of time, memory, and human consciousness. its experimental structure and lyrical prose create an intimate exploration of family, loss, and the passage of life.

• ulysses – james joyce: one of the most ambitious novels ever written, following a single day in the life of leopold bloom in dublin. through stream-of-consciousness narration and dense literary allusions, joyce transforms the ordinary into the mythic.

• jane eyre – charlotte brontë: a deeply personal and passionate novel about a woman’s fight for independence, self-respect, and love. blending gothic elements with a strong, moral heroine, it remains one of the most beloved novels of all time.

• middlemarch – george eliot: an intricate, multi-layered novel examining marriage, ambition, and social change in a provincial town. considered one of the greatest english novels, it offers deep psychological insight into human nature.

• the house of mirth – edith wharton: a tragic novel about lily bart, a woman who struggles to balance love, financial security, and social expectations. sharp and devastating, it exposes the cruelty of high society.

• a midsummer night’s dream – william shakespeare: a whimsical and mischievous comedy where love, magic, and mistaken identity create chaos and delight. its dreamlike quality makes it one of shakespeare’s most enchanting plays.

• alice’s adventures in wonderland – lewis carroll: a surreal, nonsensical journey through a world governed by its own strange logic. both a playful children’s story and a clever satire on victorian society.

• winnie-the-pooh – a.a. milne: a charming, philosophical children’s book filled with warmth, humor, and profound reflections on friendship and life. pooh’s simple wisdom remains timeless.

• the little prince – antoine de saint-exupéry: a poetic fable about innocence, love, and the mysteries of human nature. deceptively simple, it contains deep existential themes about loneliness and connection.

• the secret garden – frances hodgson burnett: a story of transformation and renewal, as a lonely girl discovers the healing power of nature and friendship. its themes of rebirth and hope make it an enduring classic.

  

okay, that’s all for now. as we get closer to spring i will be sharing a letter dedicated to children’s literature for you to indulge in.

if you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber and you have the capacity to leave a tip, that would be so appreciated.

i love you.

bye.

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