Amos Yee's Top 23 Favorite Things (People, Books, Movies etc.) (As of 2024)
Your favorite things reveal much of who you are as a person. I always ask people what their favorite books or movies or people are, as a way to get to know them.
You like Kurt Vonnegut and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? It might show you have a fun-loving personality with a cold view of humanity. Are you a person of grand ideas who wants a grand life, with favorite movies like The Matrix, Inception and The Holy Mountain. Or do you have more of a simpler, humbler personality and prefer smaller-scale, more intimate movies like Before Sunrise, Annie Hall and Lost in Translation? You have one person whose favorite things are Gandhi, the anime Ping Pong the Animation and the movie Seven Samurai, and another person whose favorite things are Adam Sandler, The Twilight Movie Series and Jerry Springer: It kind of attests your judgement of someone a little doesn't it?
You shouldn't be too judgemental, there is probably a wise, intelligent Adam Sandler fan out there (though I haven't met one). A person's favorite things doesn't reveal absolutely everything about them, you should obviously actually talk to the person to more accurately judge them, but a favorites list does reveal enough about someone to be notable. It reveals what inspires them, what shapes their thoughts and opinions on the world, what causes them to be a more truthful, loving person, or a fucking asshole.
And so now, I present to you a piece of my soul, my top 23 favorite things from across all the different mediums I've consumed: books, movies, video games, whatever. I actually take consuming content very seriously. While people are spending 3 months finishing a semester in college, I'm spending 3 months playing video games all day and infinitely better education (I'm actually dead serious).
Why am I listing 23 things? Because my 24th favorite thing feels a tier lower than my top 23. Take this list as the S-tier of my favorites list (and really the top 4 on this list is in the SS-tier). I might post the A and B tiers of my favorites list in the future.
Obviously this list is ranked from most favorite to less favorite. For the fans who feel bad that I've been sent to Prison a million times and want to do me a favor. The greatest favor you can do for me is to meditate (see how to do it here), but the 2nd best thing you can do is to check out some of the things on this favorites list.
Let's go!
My Top 23 Favorite Things
- Tara Brach (Meditation Teacher & Author. Favorite mostly because of the book True Refuge)
- Gandhi (Read Gandhi by Eknath Easwaran + The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi by R K Prabhu)
- March Comes In like a Lion (Anime)
- Haruki Murakami (Author)
- Tao Te Ching (Central Taoist Scripture)
- Persona 5 (Video Game)
- Lost in Translation (Movie)
- Hunter x Hunter (Anime)
- Dhammapada (Introduction and Translation by Eknath Easwaran. This is a Buddhist Scripture)
- Charlotte's Web (Book)
- Persona 4 Golden (Video Game)
- Doing Tai Chi
- Watching Competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee
- Book of Matthew (The Jesus Story from the bible)
- Laura Hillenbrand (Author. Favorite because of the books Seabiscuit and Unbroken)
- The Owl & Moon Cafe (Fiction Book)
- Hayao Miyazaki (Movie Director)
- On Writing Well (Book)
- Harry Potter (Books + Movies)
- Celeste (Video Game)
- The Art of Learning (Book)
- The Te of Piglet (Bok)
- Journey (Video Game)