The shelf here is a little crooked and mostly secondhand, which is on purpose. This is where I write up the board games and books that actually stuck around long enough to earn an opinion, plus whatever oddball stuff gets picked up along the way. Everything gets played or read start to finish before it gets a rating, no exceptions.

Will you stay a while and see what's new, or do you already know what you're after? Either way, Dean Hollis's been keeping this log a while now, and it's not slowing down.

Board Games

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  Unmatched: Cobble & Fog Scratched an Itch I Didn't Know I Still Had · ★★★★☆ · Aug 14, 2026
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  Summoner Wars Weaned Me Off Magic Without Me Noticing · ★★★★☆ · Jun 29, 2026
• 
  Kemet: Blood and Sand and the Power Trays That Sold Me on a Rebuy · ★★★★☆ · Jun 12, 2026
• 
  Cyclades: Release the Kraken, Then Watch Your Table Turn on Whoever's Winning · ★★★★☆ · May 13, 2026
• 
  Frosthaven and the Outpost That Ate My Tuesday Nights · ★★★★★ · Dec 27, 2025
• 
  Cloudspire Is a MOBA That Doesn't Need a Screen, for Better and Worse · ★★★★☆ · Dec 19, 2025
• 
  Too Many Bones Has the Best Dice I Own and the Worst Box to Store Them In · ★★★★★ · Nov 20, 2025
• 
  Moon Colony Bloodbath Looks Like a 50s B-Movie Poster and Plays Like a Slow-Motion Car Crash · ★★★★☆ · Oct 31, 2025
• 
  Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, or How I Finally Got the Base Box Off the Shelf · ★★★★★ · Oct 24, 2025
• 
  Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs Fits in a Coat Pocket, Basically · ★★★★☆ · Oct 13, 2025

Books

• 
  Rereading 1984 for Book Club and Getting Mad All Over Again · ★★★★★ · Aug 15, 2026
• 
  Diaspora Is the Chewiest Hard Sci-Fi I've Finished This Year · ★★★★☆ · Jul 25, 2026
• 
  Superintelligence Made Me Feel Smarter and Worse at the Same Time · ★★★☆☆ · Jun 19, 2026
• 
  A Wizard of Earthsea Fits an Entire Coming-of-Age Epic Into 180 Pages · ★★★★☆ · Apr 18, 2026
• 
  Candide Made Fun of Optimism Two Hundred Years Before I Needed to Hear It · ★★★★☆ · Apr 9, 2026
• 
  A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans Is the Weirdest Thing on My Shelf Right Now · ★★★★☆ · Feb 22, 2026
• 
  A Wrinkle in Time, About Thirty Years Later Than I Should Have Read It · ★★★★☆ · Feb 1, 2026
• 
  At Home in the Universe Made Complexity Theory Click For Me, Repetitive Prose and All · ★★★★☆ · Jan 22, 2026
• 
  A Game of Thrones, Finally Read After Years of Only Watching the Show · ★★★★★ · Nov 12, 2025
• 
  Annihilation Is a Horror Story With No Monsters and It Got Under My Skin Anyway · ★★★★☆ · Oct 22, 2025

Odds & Ends

• Cooperative Board Games Built Around Shared Tactical Decisions · Sep 8, 2026
• Science Fiction Books That Deserve to Become Movies · Sep 2, 2026
• What Magic Boosters Taught Me About My Own Bad Math · Jul 28, 2026
• The Loop I Drive Every Saturday and Almost Never Talk About · Jun 26, 2026
• I Taught a Coworker Gloomhaven Over Lunch and It Took Three Weeks · Jun 21, 2026
• Half My Cyclades Minis Are Still Unpainted and I've Stopped Feeling Bad About It · Jun 11, 2026
• The Estate Sale That Almost Got Away From Me · Jun 9, 2026
• I Almost Traded Kemet Away After One Bad Play · Jun 3, 2026
• My Wife Is Better at Gloomhaven Than I Am and I've Made Peace With It · May 20, 2026
• The Smell of a New Box Never Gets Old · May 14, 2026
• I Will Not Play a Game Solo and I've Stopped Apologizing For It · Mar 31, 2026
• Fourteen Years of Stacking Pallets Ruined My Game Shelf · Mar 22, 2026