how to get smart again: weekly syllabus [september week 2]
books, lectures, essays, podcasts, movies, and video essays for the week
weekly recap
I actually managed to finish most of the things I put on my syllabus, which makes me very happy because it means I had the right amount + correctly gauged the amount of free time I had. I love being right! I also thought that doing a theme for each type of media really helped me stay on track and not reach for my phone during every sliver of free time I had. I’m still going through an awful depressive episode that I’m not very convinced it’s going to end (the type of depressive episode where you measure how much better you’re getting by how much you’re freaking out your best friend), so life is not merry and bright but…we move.
Some highlights:
I absolutely loved As I Lay Dying. I read The Sound and the Fury when I was fifteen and absolutely hated it and swore off Faulkner forever. This was a quick read and each chapter is maximum four pages. I do think it’s a great introduction to Faulkner (mind you, I’ve only read one other book by him and this one was more accessible and I liked it more) and modernism in general. I love a good generational saga type book, and this scratched the itch for me.
Fallen Angels by Wong Kar Wai may be my favorite film by him, which is saying a lot because In the Mood for Love is one of my favorites of all time. As always, Wong Kar Wai captures loneliness and existential crises through the most beautiful lens. Like I always say, there’s something so special about watching his films while living in Hong Kong.
Caravaggio essay is being written and posted sometime this month. Every video essay on my last syllabus was incredible, and so is Caravaggio.
I have way more free time on my hands these days, so in my continued attempt to fix my attention span and gradual short form content induced brain-rot (and hopefully distract my brain which always spirals when I have any sort of free-thinking time during a depressive episode), I thought I’d plan a weekly syllabus. Here’s a collection of books, essays, podcasts, movies, video essays, and online lectures I’m interested in looking at this week! I planned this thematically by each category.
Hope you can follow along so I can discuss (or post a wrap up at the end of every week)!
playlist of the week
books
It’s my one fat nonfiction book of the month week. One of my favorite things to read are very long, dense nonfiction books that feel like brain food. I call this specific genre ‘fat nonfic brain food’, and the requirements are that the book has to be 1) over 400 pages, 2) really dense, and 3) has to make you feel like you need to get out a notebook to take notes because you want to retain the information (and you should!). I chose The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari, which is basically the Renaissance Artist Gossip Column. I read some of this during my art history and European history classes and it was beyond entertaining. Vasari not only recorded stories and biographies of his contemporaries, but also recorded a pretty detailed chronology of the Renaissance boom.
The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari
page count: 640
A painter and architect in his own right, Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) achieved immortality for this book on the lives of his fellow Renaissance artists, first published in Florence in 1550. Although he based his work on a long tradition of biographical writing, Vasari infused these literary portraits with a decidedly modern form of critical judgment. The result is a work that remains to this day the cornerstone of art historical scholarship. Spanning the period from the thirteenth century to Vasari's own time, the Lives opens a window on the greatest personalities of the period, including Giotto, Brunelleschi, Mantegna, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian.
essays / articles
Main focus this week (and maybe for every week re: essays or articles) are supplementary readings that will hopefully help me have a deeper understanding of my weekly reads and also just a few miscellaneous articles that piqued my interest while I was browsing.