Forest of knowledge: Spring 2025

books, film, music, and essay recommendations

Liza Rusalskaya

This is Forest of Knowledge, a series for paying subscribers. For those new here, every season I share books, podcasts, music, and movies that I am currently using in my research, or that have particularly impacted my thoughts and reflections through the years. If you like this kind of stuff, don’t forget that under every essay in this newsletter, you can find an Inspiration Station, where I share two or three discoveries from my week.

You can find all previous editions of this Series here.

A recent journey to Mexico stirred something in me—a flame of wonder, curiosity, the hunger to roam, not just landscapes but ways of seeing. It had been dormant for a while, and its eruption within me has felt like a new beginning. This season’s offerings are for fellow travellers—not only those who cross borders, but those who voyage inward, who crave stories that shift mindsets, that loosen the grip of the familiar. These offerings are companions for the seekers: those who long to smell unknown rains, speak in unfamiliar cadences, walk on other grounds, and peer into histories that lie beneath the skin of cities and selves. Each of these works is a portal—sensual, subversive, and soul-stirring—that expands the mind and settles the heart. They have accompanied me through my many journeys, and simply writing about them today made me revisit an inner effervescence I had been craving. I have butterflies in my stomach. I hope it does the same for you.