I wanted a place to talk about stuff that I like. If we have similar interests, you might enjoy something here.

P.S. you can’t use any of this for guessing my log-ins.

Books

It’s quite hard for me to really make a good list encompassing all genres. So far, I’ve listed books in my main nerd fiction genres.

I find myself profoundly affected by recency bias when trying to think about other specific books to mention. For example, I recently read and loved Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell.

It also feels slightly pointless to mention canonical books or the classics. The reading lists at my university are widely accessible.

Sci-fi and Fantasy

A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin. Plus the various spin-offs. Unbelievably good.

Inheritance Cycle, Christopher Paolini.

Metro series, Dmitry Glukhovsky. The games are good too.

Neuromancer, William Gibson.

The Princess Bride, William Goldman.

Temeraire series, Naomi Novik.

The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury.

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury.

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells.

The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells.

Illidan, William King.

Utopia and Dystopia

One of my favourite courses at university was the Politics of the Future course taught by Prof Duncan Bell. I found a later version of the course guide which has many great recommendations and puts them in context.

I appreciate the line between these and some of other books I’ve named is pretty thin.

Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy and News from Nowhere, William Morris.

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell.

Films

I still don’t have Letterboxd and I don’t want to start now. I have an unlimited cinema subscription and see a lot of movies.

All-Time

Pulp Fiction (1994). Children of Men (2006). Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Dune (2021) and Dune 2 (2023). The Nolan highlights like Oppenheimer (2023) and Dunkirk (2017). Taxi Driver (1976) and therefore also Joker (2019). The Batman (2022). Les Miserables (2012).

Honourable Mentions

Fight Club (1999). The Matrix (1999). The John Wick series. The Truman Show (1998). Moneyball (2011). Inglourious Basterds (2009). Dead Man’s Shoes (2004).

I grew up in the MCU glory days, the highlights including Infinity War and Endgame, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Civil War, and No Way Home.

The Recency Bias Honours List

So-named for the recent films that stick out to me.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). The Holdovers (2023). Poor Things (2023). The Substance (2024). The Iron Claw (2024).

Other

I used to want to flex my professional and intellectual brilliance on here, but that predictably looked super fake. I think these things are digestible and widely applicable enough in life to read for interest anyway.

Victims of Groupthink, Irving Janis. The same group of people bottled the Bay of Pigs and triumphed in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Steve Jobs interview on Xerox. Interesting lens to use today with the platform decay of everything.

Superforecasting, Philip Tetlock.

I rarely engage in this Diary of a CEO stuff but these were actually quite interesting: How To Be Successful and What I Wish Someone Had Told Me, Sam Altman.