learn-methods-and-tipps

This one is actually my favorite. They put a LOT of full courses on youtube! They also have some courses on Coursera.

Arts & Literature

Introduction to Classic Music

Cervantes Don Quixote -- Youtube

Dante in Translation -- YouTube

The American Novels Since 1945 -- YouTube

Modern Poetry -- YouTube

Milton -- YouTube

Introduction to Theory of Literature -- YouTube

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner -- YouTube

History & Social Studies

African American History: From Emancipation To Present (2010) -- YouTube

Introduction to Ancient Greek History -- Youtube

Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 -- YouTube

Roman Architecture -- YouTube

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature -- YouTube

Death -- YouTube

Capitalism: Sucess, Crisis and Reform -- YouTube

Introduction to Political Philosophy -- Youtube

Foundations of Modern Social Theory -- Youtube

Global Financial Crisis

Power & Manipulation

48 Laws of Power by Robert Green

The Prince by Machiavelli

Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis by Eric Berne

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Power: Why Some People Have It - And Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton

Charisma & Social Skills

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson

How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships by Leil Lowndes

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane

Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People by Vanessa Van Edwards

Never Eat Alone, And the Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi

The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over by Jack Schafer

Persuasion

The Art of Seduction by Robert Green

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams

Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change by Robert Cialdini

Win Your Case: How to Present, Persuade, and Prevail, Every Place, Every Time by Gerry Spence

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler

Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior by Nick Kolenda

You Can Read Anyone: Never Be Fooled, Lied to, or Taken Advantage of Again by David Lieberman

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change by Kerry Patterson

Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Green

Philosophy and Mindset

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Mastery by Robert Green

The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb

The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia

Public Speaking, Rhetoric, and Debating

Rhetoric by Aristotle

How to Argue & Win Every Time by Gerry Spence

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie

The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds by Carmine Gallo

Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion by George Thompson, PhD

Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs

p.s. a lot of these can be found on z-library.

Essential Grammar Textbook for Korean as a second language by Chul Young Lee

All Korean Lessons Playlist by Miss Vicky

Korean Slang Dictionary blog post 

Numbers in Korean

Remember Korean Numbers quiz

Korean Language, Korean Living Blog

Study Korean with 악돌 성생님 Blog

Summer School in Korea reddit post

HanJa News

Korean Grammar Differently Blog

The Floating Lantern Blog on learning Hanja

Eng/Kor Dictionary PDF

Naver Junior Children’s Stories

Podbbang Korean Podcasts

Easy To Learn Korean words and phrases

UnYoung learns Korean blog

Hi! I have a very short attention span, and I have never really been able to make it through a course or textbook without giving up straight away, so I have never really been able to learn languages in the traditional way. I also very easily get bored with learners material, so I mostly stick to native material to consume my target language. Here is how I do it at the beginner level! 

I usually start off with an app to learn the basics of the alphabet,  vocabulary and grammar. Most of the times, I use Duolingo. I rarely get past the first few units before I jump into native material. Still, this is a good jumping off point.

When I start with native material, I usually use YouTube videos (with subtitles in the target language), and focus on spoken language, because spoken language is less overwhelming, and involves less complex language and grammar. At this point, I find that books are far too dense and complex for me to handle. Others might enjoy the challenge. My current favourites for this are LingoPie (for French, Spanish, German, Italian and Russian) and Viki (for Korean, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese).

I learn the most important words and phrases as I go. I do NOT look up every word, unless I can understand at least 70% of the language. For this, I will try and write the words and phrases down, and memorise them. I might use a flashcard app too (Anki is my fave, but Quizlet and Memrise are good too). For languages like Japanese and Chinese that have lots of characters to memorise, I will use an app (wanikani and chineasy are my faves). I always make sure that I know how to pronounce and understand each word or phrase.

I will start texting native speakers in my target language on apps like Tandem and HelloTalk. I look up words as I go, and will ocasionally try speaking.

I start shadowing (i.e. repeat after native speakers, imitating the intonation and pronunciation). I use Easy Languages for this.

After a while, I start reading. I’ll usually start with wikihow articles, or fluentu articles in my target language. I’ll write down new words, test myself on them until I get them correct, and then put them into anki to review.

After a while, I’ll formally study some grammar. I’ll usually use a textbook for this. However, I don’t necessarily do it in a traditional way. I go through the entire textbook and make a cheat sheet which condenses all the information in it to a few pages. I’ll review it regularly, and do LOTS of writing practice. For irregular verbs, I’ll just use flashcards, and write them down repeatedly.

Then, I’ll get a speaking buddy (I usually find one on discord) and speak with them a few times a week.

After a while of doing all of this, I start reading fanfiction (usually translations of my faves). It’s difficult, but I try to read intensively (i.e. look up every word).

At this point, I start journaling, and posting on the website journaly.

I’ll listen to podcasts like innovative languages, coffee break languages and language transfer. These are usually good for learning about grammar.

I start intensively reading serious content once I feel like I’m at a confident B1 level. I would suggest using proper newspapers (like le monde for French or BBC for English) and try studying one article daily. After a while, you can start reading a YA book (try something you’ve never read before in any language). Study it chapter by chapter fairly intensively, and then reread it again and again until you understand the story. After you’re finished with a chapter, put the new vocabulary into an app and review fairly regularly.

At the B1 level, listen using two sources: intermediate podcasts and native material. Intermediate podcasts are usually labelled as such, and are IN the target language, but about various topics, like culture or history (innovative languages have some, for french there is inner french, piece of french, news in slow french and RFI:Savoirs, for Spanish there is dreaming Spanish and news in slow spanish, and for Korean there is Iyagi). For native material, continue watching youtube videos about topics that interest you, and consider watching both the news and films/TV shows.

At this point you should be able to construct gramatically correct (mostly - if you still have problems then go through a grammar course, or work through a textbook) and fairly complex texts. I would suggest now learning some essay phrases and writing an essay. You’ll be terrible at first, BELIEVE me, but the more you practice the better you get. You could also start trying to write fanfiction (tip: use full phrases you have found in other books or fanfiction).

Continue doing what you are doing (reading intensively and widely, speaking with your buddy, listening, writing essays and short stories) and I think that after a while you will be able to say you are conversational in another language.

Spanish Study Plan (Links!!)

15 mins on each task = 45 mins

Flashcards/sentences

Reading a book (Olly Richards/random)

Audio (Karo podcast/Easy Spanish)

Bonus = Collins Grammar + Vocab book and Assimil Spanish

Russian Study Plan (Links!!)

Stage 1

Assimil Russian lesson (30 mins)

Audio - Easy Russian, film, etc (15 mins)

Stage 2

Flashcards/phrases

Olly Richards Russian Short Stories

Audio - Easy Russian, film, etc

Stage 3

Penguin Russian Course book

Classic literature

Audio - films

Korean Study Plan (Links!!)

Daily = textbook study (30 mins) + Viki kdrama audio (30 mins)

Order of textbooks:

Korean Made Simple

TTMIK Levels 1-9

My First 500 Korean Words

Real-Life Conversations (Beginner)

Real-Life Conversations (Intermediate)

My Daily Routine in Korean

Short Stories in Korean (Intermediate)

Not everyone learning a second or third, or even fourth, language is doing it purely out of a desire to connect to a language or culture. Sometimes, you’re doing it because you have to for some reason or another.

Maybe you’re being relocated for work to a country where you don’t speak the language. Now it’s either learn Turkish to at least a survivable degree or be stuck using translator apps for the remainder of your stay.

You got a job as a cashier and it turns out a lot of the customers passing through only speak Spanish and you’re tired of the awkward mishaps that happen when you’re cashing said customers out.

You’re a first year student in high school and the only languages offered at your school are languages you have no interest in, but it’s a graduation requirement. Now you’re stuck picking the one you can tolerate the most for a school year so you can pass the class and get it over with.

Regardless of the reason, you’re stuck learning it for the foreseeable future and it’s not necessarily because you wanted to. We’ve all been there at some point, myself included. When something is more of an obligation, it’s pretty difficult to maintain any level of passion or interest for it, especially outside of class. I feel like that’s especially true for languages you had no interest in learning before suddenly being in a situation where you had to. The best advice honestly is to try and make the language more interesting to you personally that way, at least to some level, it’s less of a chore to study.

So for the language learners tied to a language due to obligation, these were my tips and tricks I did in addition to using the textbook and class. I’m not saying these are things that will make you fall head over heels for your TLO (Target Language of Obligation), but hopefully these are tips that will make your TLO a little more fun.

(TLDR at the end.)

Find content creators in your TLO that talk about things you like

I’m not talking about educational channels dedicated to teaching the language you’re learning like the Pod101 channels or Superholly. I mean entertainment.

You a fan of Danny Gonzalez or Jarvis Johnson reacting to terrible movies? Find an equivalent of them in your TLO. You like makeup tutorials or storytime videos? Look up ‘GRWM in Korean’, ‘メイクのチュートリアル’  or ‘storytime em português’. Or maybe you enjoy a good book review, or a review trashing 50 Shades of Gray for the tenth time in a row. ‘Reseña de 50 shades of gray’. Your language doesn’t need to be perfect, even the most basic vocabulary will get the point across and lead you to plenty of videos to choose from.

Vlogs, art, anime, song covers, Animal Crossing streams/speed builds etc. etc. It doesn’t matter. Use the amount of vocab you already know (or quickly searched on google) and make the youtube search bar your new best friend.

The same can be applied to other social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram. If you like anime, find those anime news accounts on twitter but in French. If you enjoy content that discuss all things concerning the LGBTQ+ community, look up the equivalent terms in your TLO and start your search for those content creators.

This is a more interesting way to pick up on new vocabulary whether spoken or written, in a video and its comment section or on an Instagram caption.

Watch a show you’ve already seen, dubbed or subtitled in your TLO

If you’re a fan of anime or a user of Disney+, you are especially in luck. Shows like Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia or The Owl House have been dubbed and subtitled all over in various languages due to their popularity. You can find entire episodes of the Moomin anime in Spanish on youtube.

You already know what’s going on because you’ve seen it in your native tongue, so you can pick and choose the least niche vocabulary and write it down on your notepad. Not to mention, this it is something you already like you might pay a bit more attention to it.

Additional tip: find a show in your TLO on Netflix subtitled in your language. Like murder mysteries? Rom-coms? Comedies? Netflix has a plethora of foreign films to watch that caters to various genres that could be in a language you’re learning. Try watching a foreign show with a plot that garners your interest.

Listen to Music in your TLO

We all have genres of music we enjoy listening to and there are usually singers of those genres in other countries. Rap, hip hop, pop, folk music specific to a country, you will find it somewhere. Just go to youtube search something like like ‘hip hop spanish’ and just click on one of those automatic playlist things youtube will suggest to you.

By doing that, I’ve found artists I personally enjoy listening to this day like IZA, Seu Jorge, Kaho Nakamura, Chila Lynn and Maluma.

Use Buzzfeed. I wish I was joking

Buzzfeed is certainly not the titan of the internet it used to be. And to quote Cody Ko, a lot of the times (especially nowadays) they tend to “Buzzfeed us some terrible content”. But the simple language and formatting of Buzzfeed articles and quizzes, make it a surprisingly effective way to learn new vocabulary.

Just by doing a ‘Which member of Anavitória are you ’(Quem é você no duo Anavitória?) quiz on Buzzfeed Brazil I was able to learn the Portuguese equivalents of red (vermelho), black (preto), yellow (amarelo), & white (branco) and Brazilian celebrities, among other vocab. A lot of the time videos on the youtube channels are either subtitled in the language or there are videos unique to those channels in the language.

This way, especially if you’re not a fan of Buzzfeed, you can laugh about the cringe in a different language while getting something out of it. Buzzfeed gets views and interactions, you get education and a good laugh. It’s mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

Try learning a little bit about a country that speaks your TLO or some Colloquialisms

Regardless of how anti-social some of us, myself included, can be I think deep down we all care about other people even if we don’t know them. We like seeing others succeed, we hate seeing others struggling, and to some extent we all recognize there is a shit ton of people living in the world that we don’t know. 

We don’t know anything about them and we don’t know their language or anything about the culture they grew up in. A culture that shapes how they interact with and view the world and how they may view people who come from your country. I feel like we all experience levels of sonder like that, especially if you’re someone who watches a lot of vlog content which really puts into perspective how you are seeing a small window into someone else’s life even if for a few minutes.

So try personalizing your TLO to some degree by learning about a country or culture that speaks it. 

Holidays, cultural quirks, historical figures, or idioms. You get some of that if you’re taking a language class, but try taking it outside your textbook.

Interested in art and learning Spanish? Try learning about artists from Equatorial Guinea and why they made a particular piece.

Interested in the aesthetic of weddings? Learn about wedding traditions in countries that speak your TLO.

Learning Turkish? Look up interesting factoids about certain words and phrases and their translations. For instance, the words for ‘Good Morning’ (günaydın) and ‘Good Night’ (tünaydın) respectively and literally translate to “the day is bright” and “the night is bright”.

In Brazilian Portuguese, there’s a phrase “ficar de conchinha”/”dormir de conchinha that means to cuddle that translates to “stay/sleep like little shells” which is really adorable. Another way to say Halloween is Dia das Bruxas which translates to ‘day of the witches’ and Dia dos Namorados which translates to ‘day of the lovers’.

One thing that also really developed my interest in Latin America when I was learning Spanish was looking at vlogs and seeing people walking around in their cities and noticing the differences in architecture. I also enjoy watching no commentary videos of people walking in different cities and feeling like I’m in that country myself seeing the sights and sceneries. (Ex ‘walking in Venice Italy, no commentary’.)

Look up Memes & the Meme Culture of your TLO

Everyone loves a good laugh so try to get some appreciation out of your TLO by learning about some of the memes or jokes. And not all jokes or memes are appreciated unless you know a specific language and culture that goes along with it.

For instance, when my at-the-time girlfriend told me about a little show called La Rosa de Guadalupe. Which she prefaced that, at least in Mexico the show’s origin country, it was a huge meme of a show because it was in a novela-like format with bad acting to go along with serious topics. One episode she told me about specifically was an episode about a girl with a cellphone addiction that escalated to a point where her mom threw her phone out the window, and then the girl jumped out the window for the phone. But through the power of a white rose and La Virgen de Guadalupe, her problems were solved.

It sounded so ridiculous, I had to see it for myself. So she sent me a video by a youtuber, Missasinphonia, who made commentary/reaction videos in Spanish about the show. 

It’s hard to be disinterested in a language if you’re getting a laugh out of it. And even if you don’t understand most of what’s being said, the visuals alone can lead to a laugh due to body language and tone giving you an idea of what’s going on. This especially becomes true as you learn more vocab that makes the videos or captions of a meme easier to understand.

Tldr:

Find content creators in your TLO that talk about things you enjoy

Watch things you’ve already seen in your TLO (dubbed, subbed, or both)

Listen to Music in your TLO

Use Buzzfeed, I wish I was joking

Try learning a little bit about a country that speaks your TLO or Colloquialisms

Look up the Meme Culture of your TLO

And that’s it. I hope this helps someone out. I’ve always seen posts or videos about how to enhance your language learning experience for languages you’re already interested in, but never anything about a language you’re NOT interested in. So I wanted to do something with that.

Like I said, this is by no means, tips to make you 100% fall in love with your TLO. I did with Spanish, but that’s not going to be the case for everyone else and the moment you no longer have to learn/use your TLO, you’re going to forget it quite quickly.

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

800 free Computer Science classes you could take online right with video lectures!

Link: GitHub - Developer-Y/cs-video-courses: List of Computer Science courses with video lectures

I found this link in a tweet and found the site very helpful! Take full advantage comp sci learners!!!

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Making websites easier to digest:

Dark Reader - Changes any webpage to dark mode.

Mercury Reader - Simplifies the layout of any webpage to eliminate distractions and irritating formatting.

Podcastle AI - Turns any article into a podcast. This is a lifesaver for being able to process what I’m reading, to be honest.

Spelling/grammar:

LanguageTool - Spelling and grammar check for those of us who regularly type in more than one language.

Grammarly - Spelling and grammar check for those of us who only type in English. Can be used with LanguageTool installed, which is what I do.

Google Dictionary - Define any word on the webpage with a double-click.

Google Translate - Translate an entire webpage or even just a short segment.

Misc:

AdGuard Adblocker - After trying quite a few adblocker options, this is the one I find the best.

The Great Suspender - Automatically suspend inactive tabs to help with performance. <- as an edit, I don’t believe this is available anymore

Honey - Try coupon codes automatically to save money on online purchases.

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

07.12.21 | it’s monday!! I was wondering why I’m so active today I checked everything off of my list. just did my hour of studying so as a reward I’m going to watch last episode of the series I’ve been obsessing since yesterday, bio hackers!! (highly recommend it please watch ✨)

How I got a 4.0 first year in college | academiix

Watch the video version on Youtube. 

A Guide to Planning Systems

It’s important to have a system of getting things done, whether it’s tackling tasks as the day progresses or having a carefully planned schedule for every single hour of the week. How can you create an effective personal planning system that suits your needs and preferences?

Mentioned in this post:

Attention Management: How to Take Control and Live Intentionally

Energy Management: A Human-Based Organization Method

Flexible Time-Blocking: A More Breathable Way to Get Things Done

The ABCDE Method: Accomplish Tasks More Efficiently

My other posts