last updated 25 October 2025
The following is a list of recommended books, movies, music, games, etc. Each year has things I found that year. Links in entries go to my reviews. For each entry I give a brief description and sometimes a possibly incomplete list of people I would recommend it to. The emphasis here is on what is useful to a MSL/VMH person, whether an artist/intellectual ("movement") or missionary ("religion").
Table of contents:
Old
2024
2025
I started making a log of my reading at the very end of 2023. So I have better records for 2024 and following. This section has older things that I remember.
Testament (dir. Lynne Littman): a mother faces the end of the world; for people who want to face death and difficult life
Wit (dir. Mike Nichols): a single woman fights cancer and faces death; for people who want to face death and difficult life
Musical Offering by J. S. Bach (his B Minor Mass, which I forget if I heard before 2024 or not, also fits): music that is basically the opposite of pop (or "an opposite of pop" since something heavily dissonant might also be); recommended as a counterpart to poppy music
Stereolab; Timewind by Klaus Schulze: music of endurance (poppy-energetic, spaced-out-facing-weirdness respectively)
Cocteau Twins; Loveless by My Bloody Valentine: entry into alternate realities of dreams and beauty
Isa by Rayla Noel: Christian music with an Eastern sensibility, sense of mystery
Angband: industrial roguelike for serious professionals; for gamers, those who want to learn that kind of thing
Lincity: Simcity-like game giving the option to create a sustainable city as a win condition; for gamers, those who want to practice sustainability (I played the older version, i.e. not Lincity-NG)
Civilization (I played Freeciv, Linux clone): a game of building civilizations and going through civilizational history; for gamers, those who want to internalize that image/narrative
Looking around my writing should give ideas for things to read that I liked in the past. For instance, The Cross and Patience both have reading lists, and references to books and authors can be found in Waiting for Margot and Formulalessness (and elsewhere).
Books that didn't make into those, as far as I know:
The Wind is Howling by Ayako Miura: recovering (from tuberculosis and nihilism)
Agnes Grey by Emily Brontë: being alone in a household of people whose morals differ from yours significantly
Hack - roguelike of chance-based adventure; for gamers, people looking to play through different patterns of life, recommended for those familiar with Angband