Reading List
Last updated 2026 March 11
This is an actively maintained library of reading materials that I personally recommend to my friends and peers, either because they were profound and transformative, or good introductory texts to an array of subject matters. Sometimes, I list only a writer name.
The page serves as a bookmark for my friends in case they ever want to recall a recommendation I’ve made.
Each listing redirects to a Wikipedia page for the book, or the most all-encompassing resource after that.
FICTION
- Ulysses, James Joyce
- The Gadfly, Ethel Voynich
- James Baldwin
- 2666, Roberto Bolaño
- Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
- Oresteia, Aeschylus
- Antigone, Jean Anouilh
POETRY
- Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Paradise Lost, John Milton
- Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
- When I Say Love, Meredith Martinez
FILM
- The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova) (1969), dir. Sergei Parajanov
ESSAY/SPEECH
- The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity (vid.), James Baldwin
CHINA
- How China Works: An Introduction to China’s State-led Economic Development, Xiaohuan Lan
- Party Life: Chinese Governance and the World Beyond Liberalism, Eric Li
SOCIOLOGY
- Ruling Oneself Out, Ivan Ermakoff