Inspirations

LITERATURE1

  • Beauty, Sir Roger Scruton
  • Cohabitating Earth, ed. by Joe Gray and Eileen Crist
  • Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes, Diogenes
  • Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life, Ecological Ethics, and Art and Enchantment, Patrick Curry
  • Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  • Grendel, John Gardner
  • Heraclitus’ Fragments
  • Hunger by Knut Hamsun
  • How Much Land Does a Man Need?, Leo Tolstoy
  • In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki
  • Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
  • Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
  • Narcissus and Goldmund, Herman Hesse
  • Natural History: A Selection, Pliny the Elder
  • Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, Capitalism and the Death Drive, and Saving Beauty, Byung-Chul Han
  • On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry
  • Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
  • The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
  • The Call of the Wild, Jack London
  • The Complete Fairy Tales, George MacDonald
  • The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, Clark Ashton Smith
  • The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski
  • The Door in the Wall, H.G. Wells
  • The Gormenghast Trilogy and Boy in Darkness, Mervyn Peake
  • The Illiad of Homer
  • The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
  • The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd
  • The Man Who Planted Trees, Jean Giono
  • The Other Side, Alfred Kubin
  • The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems, S.T. Coleridge
  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy
  • The Silmarillion, Children of Hurin, Unfinished Tales, The Book of Lost Tales Part 1, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Leaf by Niggle, Mythopoeia, and On Fairy-Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Tree (John Fowles extended essay)
  • The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison
  • Time and the Gods (omnibus), The King of Elfland’s Daughter, In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Tales, Fifty-One Tales, Wonder Tales, and Nowadays, Lord Dunsany
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
  1. This list isn’t exhaustive, as it doesn’t feature important individual short stories and essays, only longer works. More substantially, the list comprises only those texts that have been the most impactful to me, though this is not to say that there aren’t many other works that I’ve found useful and to which I often return. I am considering formulating a more extensive theoretical reading list for nonfiction beyond my ‘favourite’ texts. This list would be dedicated to the topics of ecology, wonder, aesthetics and modernity. For more books, see my reviews at The Other Side. ↩︎

MUSIC

  • The Architecture of Melancholy (Peter Bjärgö)
  • As the End Draws Near (Arcana)
  • Unclean (Sophia)
  • DIM Compendium II
  • Goëtia (Peter Gundry)
  • Hidden Orchestra
  • Kodama or Spiritual Instinct (Alcest)
  • Night is the New Day (Katatonia)
  • Nightfall in Middle-Earth (Blind Guardian)
  • Princess Mononoke Soundtrack
  • Runaljod – Gap Var Ginnunga (Wardruna)
  • She Reaches out to She Reaches out to She (Chelsea Wolfe)
  • Symphony of Enchanted Lands II – The Dark Secret (Rhapsody of Fire)
  • The Longing Soundtrack
  • The Tolkien Ensemble
  • World of Warcraft classic soundtrack

ART

  • AA78 and Blind Man with a Cane by Zdzisław Beksiński
  • At Tarn Aeluin by Ted Nasmith
  • Cernunnos by John Howe
  • Diogenes by Léon Gérôme
  • Frankenstein frontispiece by Theodore Von Holst
  • Gormenghast and The Grey Havens by Alan Lee
  • Huldra forsvant by Theodor Kittelsen
  • Insomnio by Remedios Varo
  • Landscape and Sky by Sydney H. Sime
  • Overthinker by Nicolae Scarlat
  • Paradiso, Canto 34 by Gustav Dore
  • The Monarch of the Glen by Edwin Landseer
  • Two Trees and a House by John Kenn Mortensen

FILM/TV

  • 1917
  • Apocalypto
  • Dogs (Series) (2018)
  • Every Star (Yawen Zheng)
  • Kingdom of Heaven
  • Macbeth (2015)
  • Melancholia
  • Pan’s Labyrinth
  • Penny Dreadful (series)
  • Princess Mononoke
  • Spirited Away
  • The Eagleman Stag
  • The Elephant Man
  • The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
  • The Last Samurai
  • The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  • The Man Who Planted Trees
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • The Road
  • The Seventh Seal
  • The Witch
  • Vikings (series)

GAMES

  • Arrog
  • Creaks
  • Firewatch
  • Gorogoa
  • Journey
  • Limbo
  • Monument Valley
  • Mundaun
  • Shelter
  • The Lion’s Song
  • The Longing
  • The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature
  • World of Warcraft

QUOTES

“I believe that the wildest flights of the fancies of any of us have their homes with Mother Earth.”
– Lord Dunsany

“Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
– J.R.R. Tolkien

“[T]his was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned.”
– John Ruskin

“The experience of presence requires exposure, vulnerability. Without a wound, I ultimately hear only the echo of myself. A wound is an opening, an ear for the other.”
– Byung-Chul Han

“[T]he ontology of enchantment is a relational, perspectival and participatory one.”
– Patrick Curry

“There is […] a close affinity between the attitude of wonder itself — non-exploitative, non-utilitarian — and attitudes that seek to affirm and respect other-being.”
– R.W. Hepburn

“The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”
– Susanna Clarke

“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
– Sir Roger Scruton

“Forcing themselves on our perception, those low and facile signs clog up the landscape, which itself is more difficult, discreet, silent, and often dying because unseen by any saving perception.”
– Michel Serres

“What brings you here?”
– A question asked by a Night Elf (in the world of Azeroth)

“Wild groves, sacred grounds fade to vastness
Mother Moon, cast your spell on these fields, let the boughs paint ghostly shades on the trail
to a different world.”
– The Raven Child, sung by Hansi Kürsch

Azeroth

Bushcraft

Creation

Dogs

Ecology

Fantasy

Green

Highlands

Imagination

Joy

Kaldorei

Lord Dunsany

Myth

Nature

Old

Passion

Questing

Reading

Sarturus

Tolkien

Unbounded

Veneration

Wonder

XANTURI

Yore

Zones (Azerothian biomes)