a m | i | n a d a v | r e c c a

Shvartze Wolf

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Carlebach’s sad, dark story of the Shvartze Wolf (“Black Wolf”) has always captivated me. Listen to it here, if you don’t know it already:

What is this story about, really? When I first heard it, it touched me deeply, but I think I didn’t know what it was about. It’s mostly set in a forest on Shabbat, and it touches the themes of hidden/revealed, of the pain of despair, of the power of redemption at the last moment, and of course offers us a glimpse that the world we perceive isn’t as real as it seems. And the music — ! So much beauty, I loved it, but I don’t think I knew what it was about…

2026

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:50:27 -0800

/Man and his Symbols/ by Carl G. Jung
/Fates and Furies/ by Lauren Groff
/The Flowering Wand/ by Sophie Strand
/Heart the Lover/ by Lily King
/The Power of Myth/ by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
/Sake & Satori/ by Joseph Campbell
/The Spell of the Sensuous/ by David Abram
/The Snow Leopard/ by Peter Matthiessen
/Metamorphoses/ by Ovid (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
/Lincoln in the Bardo/ by George Saunders
/Zen and the Art of Archery/ by Eugen Herrigel
/Vineland/ by Thomas Pynchon
/the mountain knows the mountain/ by Philip Connors
/The Underground Railroad/ by Colson Whitehead
/Fault Lines/ by Emily Itami
/The Horse/ by Willy Vlautin
/The Leopard/ by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
/A Month in Siena/ by Hisham Matar
/A Short Stay in Hell/ by Steven L. Peck
/The Book Thief/ by Markus Zusak
/My Roman History/ by Alizah Holstein
/Sons and Lovers/ by D. H. Lawrence

2025

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 22:50:27 -0800

/Bloodlands/ by Timothy Snyder
/The Complete Stories/ by Clarice Lispector
/Billionaire Wilderness/ by Justin Farrell
/Kokoro/ by Natsume Sōseki
/Meditations/ by Marcus Aurelius
/The Color of Everything/ by Cory Richards
/Rising from the Plains/ by John McPhee
/The Solace of Open Spaces/ by Gretel Ehrlich
/The Red Tenda of Bologna/ by John Berger
/Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West/ by Zak Podmore
/A Tale of Love and Darkness/ by Amos Oz
/Mountains of the Mind/ by Robert MacFarlane
/Sons and Daughters/ by Chaim Grade
/Does this Make Me Funny?/ by Zosia Mamet
/Beautiful World, Where Are You?/ by Sally Rooney
/Jerusalem: The Biography/ by Simon Sebag Montefiore
/The Magic Mountain/ by Thomas Mann
/The Hounding/ by Xenobe Purvis

2024

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 22:50:27 -0800

/Fatelessness/ by Imre Kertész
/Giving Up the Gun/ by Noel Perrin
/To Be a Man/ by Robert Augustus Masters
/High Sierra: A love story/ by Kim Stanley Robinson
/Blood and Thunder/ by Hampton Sides
/The Only Good Indians/ by Stephen Graham Jones
/Desert Solitaire/ by Edward Abbey
/The Darkest White/ by Eric Blehm
/In Search of the Old Ones/ by David Roberts
/The Monkey Wrench Gang/ by Edward Abbey
/Norwegian Wood/ by Haruki Murakami
/Stolen Focus/ by Johann Hari
/The Last Season/ by Eric Blehm
/Magic of the Ordinary/ by Gershon Winkler
/The Idiot/ by Elif Batuman
/Nine Nasty Words/ by John McWhorter
/Creation Lake/ by Rachel Kushner
/Sociopath/ by Patric Gagne
/The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake/ by R. C. Gordon-McCutchan
/Yakuza Moon/ by Shōko Tendō

2022

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:50:27 -0800

/The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity/ by David Graeber and David Wengrow
/The Fugitive/ by Marcel Proust
/The Copernican Revolution/ by Thomas Kuhn
/Harlem Shuffle/ by Colson Whitehead *
/The Book of Blam/ by Aleksandar Tišma
/Deep/ by James Nestor
/Lakota America/ by Pekka Hämäläinen
/Morality/ by R Jonathan Sacks
/Shackleton/ by Ranulph Fiennes
/Rise and Kill First/ by Ronen Bergman
/Selected Stories/ by Lu Hsun
/Blood, Bones & Butter/ by Gabrielle Hamilton
/WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD/ by Benjamín Labatut
/The Patrick Melrose Novels/ by Edward St. Aubyn
/Lost and Found/ by Kathryn Schulz
/The Use of Man/ by Aleksandar Tišma
/Under the Banner of Heaven/ by Jon Krakauer
/Music: a Subversive History/ by Ted Gioia
/The Rise and Fall of American Growth/ by Robert J. Gordon
/The Power Broker/ by Robert Caro
/The Summer Book/ by Tove Jansson *
/This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared/ by Alan Lew
/Merciless Eden/ by Doug Tims
/The Naked Don’t Fear the Water/ by Matthieu Aikins *
/Kapo/ by Aleksandar Tišma
/From Bauhaus to Our House/ by Tom Wolfe

2023

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:50:27 -0800

/The Success and Failure of Picasso/ by John Berger
/The Path to Power/ by Robert Caro
/In Praise of Shadows/ by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
/The Emerald Mile/ by Kevin Fedarko
/Black Elk Speaks/ by John Gneisenau Neihardt
/The Making of the Atomic Bomb/ by Richard Rhodes
/Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change/ by Angela Garbes
/The Secret Knowledge of Water/ by Craig Childs
/The Odyssey/ by Homer (trans. Emily Wilson)
/Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow/ by Gabrielle Zevin
/Culture of Narcissism/ by Christopher Lasch
/Ulysses/ by James Joyce
/The New Bloomsday Reader/ by Harry Blamires
/Necessary Losses/ by Judith Viorst
/Means of Ascent/ by Robert Caro
/Sadly, Porn/ by “Edward Teach, MD”
/The Peregrine/ by J.A. Baker
/The Iliad/ by Homer (trans. Emily Wilson)
/Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow/ by Gabrielle Zevin
/Bonjour Tristesse/ by Françoise Sagan
/The Book of Goose/ by Yiyun Li
/Time Regained/ by Marcel Proust

2021

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:50:12 -0800

/Piranesi/ by Susanna Clarke *
/Sodom and Gomorrah/ by Marcel Proust
/Find a Way/ by Diana Nyad
/Jews Don’t Count/ by David Baddiel
/Detransition Baby/ by Torrey Peters *
/A Sense of the Whole/ by Siamak Vossoughi *
/Interior Chinatown/ by Charles Yu *
/East West Street/ by Philippe Sands
/The Prisoner/ by Marcel Proust
/The Drama of the Gifted Child/ by Alice Miller
/Spring/ by Ali Smith (“seasonal quartet”)
/Summer/ by Ali Smith (“seasonal quartet”)
/Ministry for the Future/ by Kim Stanley Robinson
/Drug Use for Grown-Ups/ by Carl Hart *
/The Warmth of Other Suns/ by Isabel Wilkerson
/Between Two Kingdoms/ by Suleika Jaouad
/The Flintstones. Vol. 1/ by Mark Russell
/Night Thoughts/ by Wallace Shawn
/Cadillac Desert/ by Marc Reisner
/Training for Uphill Athletes/ by House, Johnston, Jornet
/The Structure of Scientific Revolutions/ by Thomas Kuhn
/Breath/ by James Nestor
/Blue In Green/ by Ram V
/Hamnet/ by Maggie O’Farrell *
/The Flintstones, Vol. 2/ by Mark Russell Other stuff that I accidentally deleted, to be filled in as I remember.
/Lessons from the Dying/ by Rodney Smith
/Powder Days/ by Heather Hansman
/Cloud Cuckoo Land/ by Anthony Doerr *

2020

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:49:50 -0800

2020

/Against the Grain/ by James C. Scott
/The Topeka school/ by Ben Lerner *
/Season of the Witch/ by David Talbot *
/Geology Underfoot in Yosemite NP/ by Allen F. Glazner and Greg M. Stock
/Sontag/ by Benjamin Moser
/The Buried Giant/ by Kazuo Ishiguro *
/The Witches Are Coming/ by Lindy West
/A Fortunate Man/ by John Berger
/Zen Mind Beginners Mind/ by Shunryu Suzuki
/Autumn/ by Ali Smith (“seasonal quartet”)
/Winter/ by Ali Smith (“seasonal quartet”)
/The Song of Achilles/ by Madeline Miller *
/Circe/ by Madeline Miller
/Trick Mirror/ by Jia Tolentino
/Such a Fun Age/ by Kiley Reid

2019

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:49:19 -0800

/Sexographies/ by Gabriela Wiener
/Winners Take All/ by Anand Giridharadas
/The Patch/ by John McPhee
/Assembling California/ by John McPhee
/Milkman/ by Anna Burns
/Land of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road/ by Kate Harris
/How to Do Nothing/ by Jenny O’Dell
/Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp/ by Jozef Czapski
/The Three Body Problem/ by Cixin Liu *
/The Dark Forest/ by Cixin Liu
/Death’s End/ by Cixin Liu
/How to be Both/ by Ali Smith *
/The Overstory/ by Richard Powers *
/Dignity/ by Chris Arnade
/Fleishman is in Trouble/ by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
/There There/ by Tommy Orange
/Neoreaction A Basilisk/ by Elizabeth Sandifer and Jack Graham
/The Alphabet vs The Goddess/ by Leonard Shlain
/Empire of the Summer Moon/ by S. C. Gwynne
/Another Way of Telling/ by John Berger and Jean Mohr
/A Californian’s Guide to the Birds Among Us/ by Charles Hood
/Educated: A Memoir/ by Tara Westover *
/Nothing Special/ by Charlotte J. Beck
/Everyday Zen/ by Charlotte J. Beck
/Here Is Where We Meet/ by John Berger

Pre History

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:48:50 -0800

/The Resilient Gardener/ by Carol Deppe
/Inner Skiing/ by Timothy Gallwey
/Hold Everything Dear/ by John Berger
/Earthship: Volume II/ by Michael Reynolds
/Debt/ by David Graeber
/Amusing Ourselves to Death/ by Neil Postman
/The Disappearance of Childhood/ by Neil Postman
/Bike Battles/ by James Lewis Longhurst
/The Story of Modern Skiing/ by John Fry
/California/ by Kevin Starr
/The Way We Never Were/ by Stephanie Coontz
/Words and Rules/ by Steven Pinker
/Underworld/ by Don DeLillo
/Handmaiden’s Tale/ by Margaret Atwood
/The Sellout/ by Paul Beatty
/4 3 2 1/ by Paul Auster
/Ancillary Justice/ by Ann Leckie
/About Looking/ by John Berger
/Less/ by Andrew Sean Greer
/Sidewalk/ by Mitchell Duneier
/A Basque History of the World/ by Mark Kurlansky
/Americanah/ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
/Remains of the Day/ by Kazuo Ishiguro
/A Terrible Country/ by Keith Gessen
/The Betrayal of the Self/ by Arno Gruen
/The Last Stand/ by David Harris
/Le Petit Prince/ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Hindsight

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:12:52 -0800

It’s incredible to notice just how damn obvious everything is in hindsight: financial/economic decisions – I’m thinking of how getting a mortgage when rates were low is now so obvioulsy the right move – what’s “really” going on in a relationship or a complex dynamic, even how to solve a technical problem. Once the situaiton plays itself out, it’s not only inevitable but often seems puzzling that my past self couldn’t navigate the obvious obstacle!

Go Outside

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:55:07 -0800

for friends only

About

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 21:36:19 -0700

I am Nadav Recca.

I live in ~~San Francisco, California~~ Taos, New Mexico and I like to watch sunrises & sunsets.

I also spend time forcing my bike up big hills, forcing my brain to speak new languages, and forcing computers to do complicated things.

That’s about all the forcing I try to do in life. The rest is just riding the earth.

I would love for you to say hi.

Go Outside

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 21:36:19 -0700

We’ve moved! visit ineedacamp.site

eleventhour

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:43:15 -0700

Our clock divides the day into two 12-hour halves.

Twelve was an important number for many ancient civilizations, which gave us our 12 hour days and nights.

I wondered what our clocks would look like if that number was different. What if we had 11 hour clocks? or 24 hour clocks? Or 37 hour clocks? With 11 hours, the differences are subtle but drive the clock into uncanny-valley territory, which is territory I like exploring.