Learner’s Landing

📚 Books

I love just about every genre of book, and especially when a book is two or three at once. (Hello, nature writing illness memoir!)Secret: I haven’t given a book 5 stars in over two years and so am on the hunt for a 5 Star Read!
Last 5 star read: The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett.

Currently Reading—

My New, Long-Term Reading Project (2/40)
New-to-Me Topic Nonfiction
Read Sick Writers (12/23)
The Novels of Natsume Soseki (8/12)
The Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin (16/24)

Favorites—

Lists of Interest—

A large, black, e-ink Android tablet hangs in an arm-mounted clamp, with a remote-controlled page turner clipped to the right edge. The screen displays the first two pages of Chapter 4 of Arsène Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes on a beige background.

How I Read: A large, e-ink Android tablet in an arm-mounted clamp with a remote-controlled page turner.

🎬 Films

I love classic Hollywood film, particularly from the 40s, thanks to TCM on my TV growing up. Women’s pictures, hand-drawn animation, wuxia, and, newly, silent films are all niches I’m exploring.Currently championing The Uninvited (1944), a Rebecca-inspired ghost story, and Random Harvest (1942), a liberatory romantic drama.

My 50 Favorite Films (auto-ranked by popularity)
My Best New Watches 2025
Films with disability that I’d share with my disabled friends
Disability on Kanopy Streaming

Film Titles: The Philadelphia Story, Late Spring, Cluny Brown, All That Heaven Allows, Only Angels Have Wings, A Touch of Zen, In the Mood for Love, The Age of Innocence, Solaris, In a Lonely Place, Brief Encounter, Notorious, The Uninvited.

My personal Criterion Collection. A few of these were gifts and are beloved possessions.You can see some of my favorite genres: bittersweet romantic dramas, classic wuxia, thoughtful science fiction, and Cary Grant.

👾 Games

I love Nintendo games, games with puzzles, JRPGs, visual novels, and anything that involves learning or managing an inventory.My Worst-Kept Secret: I’ve been playing a free-to-play otome game called Love & Deepspace every day for years. I’ll do anything for a bit of joy in this world. (My favorite characters Sylus and Zayne pictured below.)I started playing otome games as part of a project in my twenties to try out as many kinds of non-combat, non-destructive games as I could find. Those, I think, are simply over-represented in the medium (or were, before the rise of cozy games!). I fell in love with otome games and reignited my childhood love of detective games.

Two images side-by-side of pairs of Love & Deepspace characters under full moons. On the left, my player character and Sylus in vampire-vibes historical clothing under a red moon. On the right, my character with Zayne in winter coats under purple twilight.

✒️ Poems

A handful of poems I’m especially enjoying lately. Whichever is listed last I’m working on memorizing, a hobby I recommend! I didn’t love poetry until I memorized my first poem for a college assignment. (Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare)

“It is spring again” by Halina Poświatowska
Echo by Raymond Antrobus
A Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
On World-Making by Nomi Stone
Can You Imagine? by Mary Oliver

🌐 Websites

Reading & Learning—

Standard Ebooks, free, commercial-quality, public domain ebooks.
Five Books, expert book recommendations on hundreds of topics.
Versed, literature lectures & community run by a former Harvard professor. 25 USD / month includes all previous courses.
10 Principles of Disability Justice, from the creators, in multiple languages and plain language.
Dysautonomia Intl.’s Vimeo, hundreds of medical lectures on POTS and related conditions.

Volunteering—

Zooniverse, help scientific researchers from home.
Distributed Proofreaders, help proofread books for Project Gutenberg.
VoteFwd, help underrepresented groups vote by writing letters (USA).

A dark grey shirt with the words “Read and Vote” printed four times in bold letters. An “I Voted” sticker and ACLU pin are attached. The pin reads, “Vote like your rights depends on it.”