Episode · How I Write · 2023-10-18
Books mentioned on Riva Tez: Becoming A Free Thinker
Riva Tez is one of the freest writers I know. It’s as if the boundaries of conventional thinking don’t apply to her.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a philosophical novel that presents the author's objectivist philosophy through a dystopian narrative about society's most productive individuals going on strike against collectivism.
Discussed“I think we've had this conversation previously, which is that I've probably read Atlas Frye, like every two years, but like 15 years. Right. And I look back and I wish that I'd understood it better as a teenager”
Where to get it
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Vasari's Lives of the Artists
Discussed“It's currently studying Vasari's lives as an artist, like an account of like 16th century Italian artists. And one of the ones she's studying is Masaccio”
Where to get it
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Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller's autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer offers a raw, unfiltered look at the bohemian lifestyle of an American writer struggling in Paris during the Great Depression.
Discussed“I read The Tropic of Cancer the other day. You read Tropic of Cancer, it's like, it goes from extreme explicitness, it's like a train of thought of like a man.”
Where to get it
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The Odyssey
The Odyssey by Homer is an ancient Greek epic poem that follows the arduous ten-year journey of Odysseus returning home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
Recommended“Like, I'd rather read the Odyssey a hundred times than watch Netflix. Like, I am not looking for passive entertainment.”
Where to get it
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The Protestant ethic and the "spirit" of capitalism and other writings
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a seminal sociological study by Max Weber that investigates how ascetic Protestant religious values, particularly Calvinist beliefs regarding hard work and worldly success, inadvertently fostered the rise of modern Western capitalism.
Discussed“I took, uh, they invited me to a class, and the entire semester was on the, like, 300 pages of Max Weber, like basically all about The, the Protestant work ethic and I was like, this is interesting. I never realized you could go so deep in something.”
Where to get it
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Codex sinaiticus
Discussed“And the oldest New Testament, there's lots of fragments of the New Testament, but the oldest claiming New Testament, like entire copy, um, Codex, the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered in the late 19th century by a biblical researcher called Constantine Tischendorf”
Where to get it
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American Psycho
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is a satirical psychological horror novel that explores the depraved and hyper-materialist life of a wealthy New York City investment banker named Patrick Bateman.
Discussed“Like Bret Easton Ellis, like when they wrote American Psycho, it was also like an edgy book, right, like it glorifies violence, all this kind of stuff, but it's fiction.”
Where to get it
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The immortalist
The Immortalist is a philosophical and speculative book by Alan Harrington that investigates the human desire to conquer death and imagines what society might look like in the absence of mortality.
Recommended“There's a great book actually called Alan by Alan Harrington called The Immortalists. You just talks about what society would look like if you'd, if you'd like, got rid of mortality”
Where to get it
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the two culture and the scientific revolution
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P.
Discussed“I want to say 1945, but that year strikes me that might be off because that was right after the war. But there's a guy named C. P. Snow who wrote a book called The Two Cultures.”
Where to get it
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The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century, detailing a diverse group of pilgrims traveling to Canterbury.
Discussed“William Morris did the Canterbury Tales. Like, have you seen these books? Oh, it's just so beautiful.”
Where to get it
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The Aeneid
The Aeneid is a foundational classical Latin epic poem written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, telling the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled to Italy and became the ancestor of the Romans.
Recommended“And if you read Euripides, Or like poetry, if you read the Odyssey, right, which I'm sure you have, or the Aeneid. In that, which is in my, on my mind, like the next, like the next level of foundational books after like the Bible”
Where to get it
