I’m a big believer in re-reading books and re-watching films. I think the Schopenhauer quote that “one can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books” is true. I want to open-source how I do this in my own life. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. On the film side, I watch the following ten: 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 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. If folks find this sort of humanities nerdery interesting I’ll start posting more notes about it. I have one particular shelf in my house that’s just “the pocket,” “the essentials.” The idea is to visit and revisit it often.