Reading List

Works that Changed my Life:

• Dracula — Bram Stoker
• The Begum’s Milions — Jules Verne
• Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse
• The Alchemist — Paulo Coehlo
• The Obstacle is The Way — Ryan Holiday
• Tarzan of the Apes — Edgar Rice Burroughs
• “Howl” — Allen Ginsberg
• Find a Way — Diana Nyad
• Letters from a Stoic — Seneca
• A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
• Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe
• Waiting for Lefty — Clifford Odets
• Empty Roads and Broken Bottles: In Search of the Great Perhaps — Charlotte Eriksson

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More art that has inspired me…

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Fiction/Classics: 

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame — Victor Hugo
• The Kings of Mulberry Street — Donna Jo Napoli
• Ready Player One — Ernest Cline
• Ender’s Game — Orson Scott Card
• The Name of the Wind — Patrick Rothfuss
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Adam Douglas
• The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
• Matilda — Roald Dahl
• Down and Out in Paris and London — George Orwell
• The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest
• After Alice — Gregory Maguire
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea — Jules Verne
• The Martian — Andy Weir
• The King in Yellow — Robert Chambers
• Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy — J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Scarlet Pimpernel — Baroness Orczy
• Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
• Til We Have Faces — C.S. Lewis
• The Horse and His Boy — C.S. Lewis
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• East of Eden — John Steinbeck
• Pickman’s Model — H.P. Lovecraft 

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Short Stories:

• “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” — Gabriel García Márquez
• “Vampire in the Lemon Grove” — Karen Russell
• “Hills Like White Elephants” — Ernest Hemmingway

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Nonfiction Books:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
• Living with a SEAL — Jesse Itzler
• The Cool School: Writings from America’s Hip Underground — Glenn O’Brien
• Unbeatable Mind — Mark Devine
• Discipline Equals Freedom — Jocko Willink
• Tools of Titans — Tim Ferriss
• Becoming Odyssa — Jennifer Pharr Davis
• Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
• The Discourse of Epictetus — Arrian 

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Books about Running:

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami
• Eat and Run — Scott Jurek
• Ultramarathon Man — Dean Karnazes
• Finding Ultra — Rich Roll

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Books about Writing:

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life — Anne Lamott
• Zen in the Art of Writing — Ray Bradbury
• On Writing — Stephen King

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Poetry:

• “Howl” and other Poems — Allen Ginsberg
• Horoscopes for the Dead — Billy Collins
• “The Colored Soldiers” –– Paul Lawrence Dunbar
• “A Noiseless, Patient Spide” — Walt Whitman
• “Song of Myself” — Walt Whiman
• “The Orange Bottle” — Joshua Mehigan
• “Filicudi” — Eliza Griswold

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Spoken Word Poetry:

• “Angry Black Woman” — Porsha O.
• “Period Poem” — Dominique Christina
• “Dinosaurs in the Hood” — Danez Smith
• “My Name is Hiwot” — Hiwot Adilow

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Plays: 

• Oediupus Rex — Sophocles
• Long Day’s Journey into Night — Eugene O’Neill
• The Glass Menagerie — Tennessee Williams
• Julius Ceasar — William Shakespeare
• Henry IV Part 1 — William Shakespeare
• The Importance of Being Earnest — Oscar Wilde
• Death of a Salesman — Arthur Miller

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Screenplays:

• Little Miss Sunshine — Rick Kerb

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Radio Dramas:

• Marcus Mundy’s Change of Life — Alexandra Caddell
• Hearing Sense —
• Danger — 
• Pickman’s Model — H.P. Lovecraft

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Essays:

• “Why I Write” — George Orwell
• “Politics and the English Language” — George Orwell
• “On Shooting an Elephant” — George Orwell
• “On Stories” — C.S. Lewis

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Speeches:

• Barack Obama’s Farewell Address 
• “The Man in the Arena” — Theodore Roosevelt

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Albums/Songs:

• At Night, Alone. — Mike Posner
• Seven — Rainbow Kitten Surprise
• The Creek Drank the Cradle — Iron & Wine
• My Favourite Faded Fantasy — Damien Rice
• 9 — Damien Rice
• Moulin Rouge — from Baz Luhrmann’s Film
• “Hold On” — Quetschklampfa
• “Upwards over the Mountain” — Iron & Wine
• “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” — Iron & Wine 
• “Night Air” — Jamie Woon
• “Hold Your Head Up High” — Darlingside

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Movies:

• Rocky (1976)
• Good Will Hunting (1997)
• Fight Club (1999)
• Stranger than Fiction (2006)
• Whiplash (2014)

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Photos:

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Paintings:

 

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