last updated 7 January 2026
The following is a list of recommended books, movies, music, games, etc. Each year has things I found that year (mainly formed my opinion of it that year). Links in entries go to my reviews. For each entry I give a brief description and sometimes a possibly incomplete list of people I would recommend it to. The emphasis here is on what is useful to a MSL/VMH person, whether an artist/intellectual ("movement") or missionary ("religion").
Update 7 January 2026: I'm not sure when my mind will be open to me doing any more reviews. I'll keep trying to do brief descriptions, but there are some cases where I might just list titles and authors.
Table of contents:
Old
2024
2025
2026
I started making a log of my reading at the very end of 2023. So I have better records for 2024 and following. This section has older things that I remember.
Testament (dir. Lynne Littman): a mother faces the end of the world; for people who want to face death and difficult life
Wit (dir. Mike Nichols): a single woman fights cancer and faces death; for people who want to face death and difficult life
Musical Offering by J. S. Bach (his B Minor Mass, which I forget if I heard before 2024 or not, also fits): music that is basically the opposite of pop (or "an opposite of pop" since something heavily dissonant might also be, or maybe something dry or ceremonial from a non-Western culture); recommended as a counterpart to poppy music
Stereolab; Timewind by Klaus Schulze: music of endurance (poppy-energetic, spaced-out-facing-weirdness respectively)
Cocteau Twins; Loveless by My Bloody Valentine: entry into alternate realities of dreams and beauty
Isa by Rayla Noel: Christian music with an Eastern sensibility, sense of mystery
Angband: industrial roguelike for serious professionals; for those who want to learn that kind of thing
Lincity: Simcity-like game giving the option to create a sustainable city as a win condition; for those who want to practice sustainability (I played the older version, i.e. not Lincity-NG)
Civilization (I played Freeciv, Linux clone): a game of building civilizations and going through civilizational history; for those who want to internalize that image/narrative
Looking around my writing should give ideas for things to read that I liked in the past. For instance, The Cross and Patience both have reading lists, and references to books and authors can be found in Waiting for Margot and Formulalessness (and elsewhere).
Books that didn't make into those, as far as I know:
The Wind is Howling by Ayako Miura: recovering (from tuberculosis and nihilism)
Agnes Grey by Emily Brontë: being alone in a household of people whose morals differ from yours significantly
Club Zero, dir. by Jessica Hausner: a teacher at a boarding school leads her students to not eat anything, a black comedy; useful for showing how small-scale religions can work, how cults can form
Prey for Rock and Roll, dir. by Alex Steyermark: an all-female rock band experiences hard times; a picture of people suffering
Christian Perfection and American Methodism (I read 1956 ed.) by John L. Peters: how do religious groups change doctrines over time and how do those doctrines change religious groups?, plus introduction to doctrine of Christian perfection
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber: how religious doctrine turns into secular (economic and social) change, introduction (albeit negative and likely biased) to Reformed culture
The Cultural Nature of Human Development by Barbara Rogoff: middle class Western cultural practices around child care, education, and I think other things contrasted with more traditional cultures; useful problematization of middle class Western culture (highlights it to make it a problem to consider), and shows an alternative to that culture
A Life of Alexander Campbell by Douglas A. Foster: biography of major reformer in the Restoration movement which was a response to Christian disunity and the Reformed; useful if you want to see what one particular Christian reformer was like, and as introduction to Restoration movement
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (I only read Book 1, about half of the book): a crazy, misguided person tries to live out an outdated altruistic role and one man sort of believes in him and helps him out; strangely powerful book presenting a side of altruism that is horrifying, beautiful, and relatable.
The Need for Roots by Simone Weil: about the lack of "rootedness" (ability to draw spiritual nourishment from social surroundings) and (if I recall correctly) ways to get it back; shows a way for spiritual values to interface with society, maybe help motivate a particular program of changing the secular world, or a sort of "integralist"- or "neo-Calvinist"-like program of integrating the spiritual and secular
Engage! by Stan Sewitch: about a successful company that fosters a culture of "engagement", so that employees love their jobs and work hard; promotes "rootedness" in a corporate setting? in conversation with Weil could be interesting, "engagement" could be a bit cult-like? in conversation with Club Zero could be interesting
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson: generations of people are stuck on a starship going to colonize a distant planet, maintaining sustainability, faced with the challenges of that planet; useful as a polemic against space colonization and as an introduction to sustainability, physical and social
Standing on the Edge of a Thorn, dir. Robert Lemelson: a documentary about a mentally ill older man who marries a young woman, poverty drives her into the sex trade; useful to see what poverty physically looks like, what people whose lives are hard and who experience dark things look like when having a polite conversation (as is the case when interviewed)
Lourdes, dir. Jessica Hausner: a young woman is healed (or not?) at Lourdes; useful as a discussion of faith and hope, depiction of religion, a taste of Hausner's typical ambiguity and call for discernment, both building up religion and cutting it down
Little Joe, dir. Jessica Hausner: a scientist and mother develops a genetically engineered plant that makes people happy (or is it really happiness?); useful as a discussion of happiness, of how the culture of happiness can be an evil thing, another Hausner ambiguity movie
Hack - roguelike of chance-based adventure; for people looking to play through different patterns of life, recommended for those familiar with Angband
Jesus Christ in Modern Thought by John Macquarrie: a history of Christology, which is largely about how can God be/become a human; relevant to MSL's Legitimacy
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad: a young man does something dishonorable, haunted by it, he drifts to a foreign land where he is a hero; useful in showing that dynamic in altruistic culture, also an introduction to 19th century Indonesian culture (not sure how reliable) and European colonialism
No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green by Melody Green (and David Hazard): Keith was a very talented, uncompromising, in some ways high-integrity, intense more or less charismatic (in the Pentecostal sense), evangelical Christian musical artist, who happened to die in a plane crash at age 28, his life as told by his widow; useful to see that kind of life. (But, see also Feet of Clay: Confessions of the Cult Sisters a podcast where Keith comes off as, basically, a cult leader with the group of young people he took under his wing.)
Called Unto Holiness, by Timothy L. Smith: a history of the Nazarenes, how they formed out of the holiness (Christian perfection) movement coming largely out of the Methodist Church; could be useful to see how religious movements institutionalize into churches, also for those interested in Christian perfection doctrine and culture, provides the next step in time after Christian Perfection and American Methodism (Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement I guess could be seen as filling in developments in Christian perfection culture after the period of this book)
Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin: a biography of Bruce Springsteen, a left populist all-American singer with a sense of mission; useful as a kind of counterpoint to Keith Green, maybe, both of them altruistic, arguably visionary musicians. (See also Springsteen's CD Live in New York City to hear him turn a concert into a secular religious event.)
Fundamentally, by Nussaibah Younis: A young academic goes off to do altruistic work in a foreign land for a UN organization; useful to get a picture of what the culture of secular altruism may look like
The Missionary Kids, by Holly Berkley Fletcher: a history of missionary kids and evangelicalism; useful to see what it's like being a missionary kid (someone roped into their missionary parents' altruism largely without their consent), also to motivate thought about the nexus of narcissism, evangelicalism, exvangelicalism, and missions
Virtue Capitalists, by Hannah Forsyth: an academic history book (relatively a lot of space given to data rather than fleshing out argument; similar to Christian Perfection and American Methodism and Called Unto Holiness) about the genesis of the professional class in the 19th century in the investment of virtue to produce economic gain, then the relative downfall of that class in the 20th and 21st century as virtue itself was questioned (for instance, as something racist) and a separate management class took a lot of decision-making away from professionals; useful as a discussion of the articulation of virtue with social forces outside of virtue, also to problematize the professional class
(Multiple, even many, episodes listened to, but not all unless otherwise noted.)
Occult podcasts: The Occult Unveiled (host: Ashley Ryan) and Ultraculture (host: Jason Louv)
Goth podcast: Cemetery Confessions (host: Dani Ashes)
Political podcasts: Interesting Times with Ross Douthat, The Green Wave
Eastern Orthodox podcast: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (host: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick) (all episodes listened to)
Autistic Christianity podcast: (first listened I think in 2024?) Christianity on the Spectrum