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