+- Logan -- 195d -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[...]+
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| I’m a big believer in re-reading books and re-watching films.                                                        |
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| I think the Schopenhauer quote that “one can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books” is true.       |
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| I want to open-source how I do this in my own life.                                                                  |
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| Most people engage with great works of literature, art, film, philosophy etc once, when they’re in high school or    |
| college, and then never again. This is a shame.                                                                      |
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| What you can glean from and resonate with in King Lear, for example, as a working father versus as a                 |
| childless16-year-old is significantly different and orders of magnitude more profound.                               |
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| Great art is not meant to be engaged with once when we’re really young and then never again. That’s leaving a lot of |
| epiphany, a lot of beauty, and a lot of wisdom on the table.                                                         |
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| One thing I started doing several years ago was creating a mandatory minimum curriculum each year. Meaning           |
| books/films that no matter what else I read or watch in a given year, I make sure I get to them.                     |
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| I’ll get more specific on the book front in a separate post, but suffice to say my bare minimum is two Shakespeare   |
| tragedies and a selection of poetry I’ll unpack later. I also find it grounding to read at least one of the Gospels  |
| every year.                                                                                                          |
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| That’s table stakes for a year. It’s not too heavy of a lift (intentionally, as I am a working father of two young   |
| children, after all, with scarce free time). But it’s always rewarding. Over the last few years I’ve started         |
| expanding it a little bit.                                                                                           |
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| On the film side, I watch the following ten:                                                                         |
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| 1. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles                                                                                       |
| 2. Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock                                                                                        |
| 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Kubrick                                                                                   |
| 4. Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu                                                                                        |
| 5. Rules of the Game - Jean Renoir                                                                                   |
| 6. The Godfather - Coppola                                                                                           |
| 7. 8 1/2 - Fellini                                                                                                   |
| 8. Sunrise - F.W. Murnau                                                                                             |
| 9. The Searchers - John Ford                                                                                         |
| 10. Seven Samurai - Kurosawa                                                                                         |
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| In a good year I certainly watch more than this. And there are certainly other films I also try to prioritize        |
| re-watching, but this is just baseline.                                                                              |
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| If folks find this sort of humanities nerdery interesting I’ll start posting more notes about it.                    |
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| I have one particular shelf in my house that’s just “the pocket,” “the essentials.” The idea is to visit and revisit |
| it often.                                                                                                            |
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