Originally on Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 @ 6:26 pm
NOTE: I’ve been collecting three of these so far on my facebook, but I decided to copy them over to my blog because I wanted to create/post more things on here.
I want to collect all the book/movie/tv/media etc recommendations that strangers have given me a long time ago and until the end of March ’17 and take 3-4 months consuming solely those in 2017.
They can only be from strangers I run into in real life. No friends of friends, colleagues, or artists I adore. They have to be people I wouldn’t normally run into in my workplace, classes, or locations I volunteer at. They can be attendees to events I help out at, but they can’t be people I work with. Great if they become future collaborators and/or friends, but once they become so, only the recommendations they gave me on our first meeting count.
Any future ones from them can’t be included in my quota.
I got this idea from doing the AAWW POP UP at Open Doors Citywide Arts Festival this past weekend. This nice older man named Joe told me to watch Eat a Bowl of Tea by Wayne Wang because it was beautiful. And to read Chang Rae Lee’s The Surrounded because it would resonate with me and break my heart, and the author was the real deal.
I think I’ll do one month out of every season. Or one month per third of the year. Just to spread it out.
I won’t give up the shows I love to watch on the regular. And I will read stuff for work or if I have to review something. But I want to make sure that the vast majority of what I consume is stuff that people tell me to read/watch/experience.
In hindsight, I wish I kept an ongoing list of what people tell me to read. It would be cool to see what they believe I would enjoy just on our initial meeting. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find a new favorite.
I’ll be making a running list of recommendations on here, once I have a new suggestion, I’ll update this.