Table of Contents
- Biography: About myself and this webpage.
- To-Read Lists: What I'm interested in reading.
- Featured Writing: Amateur prose and poetry.
- Artwork of the Month: Pictures I like.
- Rolodex: Other webpages I like.
- Read/Watched Log: Chronological entries of books I've read and movies I've watched.
- Birdwatching Lifelist: Every bird I've ever seen.
- Appendix: Changelog, current status, miscellaneous objects and links.
Biography
My name is Aaron. I am a recent graduate of the Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I still live in Champaign, Illinois. I have a number of interests, which include but are not limited to:
- Topics in the natural sciences
- Birdwatching
- Language learning
- Literature and art
I hope you enjoy browsing this website. Please feel free to message me about anything you see here :) 
email: adivsin "at" protonmail "dot" com
Photo credit: Ashley H.
Reading Lists
Currently Reading
The Venture of Islam vol 1, Hodgson. Appropriate to historians in the 1970s, he cites nothing and makes plenty of poorly elaborted general claims about civilizational evolution that don't actually matter very much. Still seems foundational enough, and well written enough, to keep reading.
Stream Ecology, Allan et al. Re-reading this textbook from an old class in hopes that it can inform some aspects of natural area management at work.
Tools of the Trade, Sally. Working through some of these very elementary exercises in mathematical-logical thinking is very refreshing.
Levels of Organic Life and the Human, Plessner. Just started this.
In my youth, I felt I started too many books without finishing them. It took an embarassingly long time to realize I just needed to reflect, think, write, or talk about what I was reading to make the task worthwhile. I won't finish many of these.
To-Read Lists
- Biology, Evolution, Ecology, and other Natural Sciences
- Wetland Ecology - Keddy
- Songbird Behavior and Conservation in the Anthropocene - Proppe et al
- Evolution - Zimmer
- On the Origin of Species - Darwin
- Annals of the Former World - McPhee
- Life Fantastic - Gould
- Tools of the Trade - Sally
- History and Politics
- The River, the Plain, and the State - Zhang
- Nature's Metropolis - Cronon
- Ecological Imperialism - Crosby
- Fanshen - Hinton
- Rice in the Time of Sugar - Perez
- Carbon Technocracy - Seow
- Capitalism in the Web of Life - Moore
- Sweetness and Power - Sidney Mintz
- Theory, Criticism, and Philospohy
- Capital - Marx
- Science of Logic - Hegel
- Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight - Zhiyi
- Literature and Film
- Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thiongo
- Petersberg - Andrei Bely
- Native Son - Richard Wright
- Paradiso - Jose Lezama Lima
- Collected Poetry - Derek Walcott
- The English Understand Wool - Helen DeWitt
- The Red and the Black - Stendhal
- The Carnival Trilogy - Wilson Harris
- Gargantua and Pantagruel - Rabelais
- Poems - Elizabeth Bishop
- Crab Ship Cannery - Takiji Kobayashi
- Water Margin - Shi Nai'an
These lists are meant to be suggestive of the topics, authors, and problems I find interesting. They aren't comprehensive, or organized as a plan or a syllabus.
Writing
- Four Original Poems
- The Venture of Islam, vol. 1 - some notes on Marshal Hodgson's description of the Ummayad-Abbasid transition, which I found perplexing.
- The Universal Army - Frederic Jameson. My review.
- The Triple Helix - Richard Lewontin. My review.
The review of Jameson's The Universal Army is currently undergoing re-review and is not available.