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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brave New World is a dystopian novel from 1932 about dystopian shit and it has a lot to say about the dystopia we’re currently living in.
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Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn by Brian Merchant (editor) and Claire L. Evans (editor)
A collection of science-fiction short stories that’ll make you go “huh, interesting…” and might encourage you to think about how technology affects your life currently and how it might affect it in the not so distant future.
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Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
A cool guy devil and a flamboyantly effeminate angel living on Earth try to stop the end times from happening because they’ve come to enjoy all of Earth’s pleasures (mosly driving fast cars and reading, respectively). Also, there’s the anti-christ, a descendant of a prophet who’s predicted everything, some dude, etc. There’s a lot going on here.
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The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
An incompetent wizard is tasked with protecting a visitor visiting from a faraway land. A fantasy novel for people who don’t like fantasy novels.
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Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis
Aliens on Earth in the early/mid 2000s and everything that follows from that. Sequel to Axiom’s End, continues Cora’s story and adds some new fresh characters (alien and otherwise) into the mix.
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Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
Set in 2007, the novel is about a U.S. government coverup of contact with extraterrestrial life. You follow the story of Cora, daughter of an exiled whistleblower, who finds herself in the middle of the whole ‘alien’ situation.
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Mork Borg by Free League Publishing
MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world.
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Wicked Ones by Bandit Camp
WICKED ONES is a Forged in the Dark tabletop RPG about a group of fantasy monsters building a dungeon, launching raids on the surface to gather a hoard, and pursuing your nefarious master plan.
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The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering by Francis Sanzaro
A collection of thoughts on the practice of bouldering, bringing it into conversation with arts and sports as varied as architecture, dance, skateboarding, painting, parkour, martial arts and gymnastics.
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Living Beyond Borders: Growing up Mexican in America by Margarita Longoria
An anthology of short stories, comics, and poems from Mexican American authors.
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Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters (Thinking Art) by Dominic Lopes, Bence Nanay, and Nick Riggle
We all enjoy (and love to comment on) our experiences with media, cuisine, design, games and more. Clearly, aesthetic pursuits are an integral part of the human experience, this book tries to tell us why from three different points of view.
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Performance Rock Climbing by Dale Goddard and Udo Neumann
Reference guide for experienced climbers who want to further hone their skills. Has newspaper comic-style characters as well as photos to show off the various techniques. Expresses a lot of information succinctly, it doesn’t waste your time.
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9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes by Dave Macleod
A bunch of mistakes climbers (apparently) make and how to avoid them. Not as concrete and consise as I would like but if you’re willing to filter out the fluff, there’s some interesting information here.
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Self Coached Climber by Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter
A climber’s guide to movement, training and performance.
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Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen
Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. C. Thi Nguyen’s Games: Agency as Art dives deep into these ideas and expands on them.
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On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck by Nick Riggle
A philosophical exploration of what it means to be awesome and not suck, and a plea for more awesomeness in our personal, social, and public lives.
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Monster of the Week by Micheal Sands
Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for 3-5 people. Hunt high school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of Supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully. It seems OK, nothing extraordinary or unique other than the conceit.
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Heart: The City Beneath by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor
Heart: The City Beneath is a tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process. It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world. Weird but in a good way.
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The Mindbody Prescription by John E. Sarno, M.D.
As someone who’s been suffering with chronic pain issues for years now, I’m always on the lookout for anything I can do to help myself feel less pain. Underneath all the quackery contained in this book there seems to be a grain of truth (for me, at least). It helped helped me reduce my chronic pain symptoms considerably in just a short amount of time. If you (or someone you know) suffers from chronic pain, I would highly recommend this book.
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Think by Simon Blackburn
Think is a book about the big questions in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, goodness, justice. It is for anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them. Think sets out to explain what they are and why they are important. If you’re like me, and you knew barely anything about philosophy before reading this, you’re in for a wild ride.
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Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs— it’s more relavent than ever.
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The Pig that Wants to be Eaten by Julian Baggini
The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten offers one hundred philosophical thought-experiments. To get the most out of it, you might want to pull it out and discuss a thought-experiment with some friends because the book doesn’t do much more than present the thought-experiments one after the other.
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Media Literacy by W. James Potter
Media Literacy teaches you how to navigate through the overwhelming flood of information found in today’s media-saturated world. Drawing from thousands of media research studies, author W. James Potter explores key components to understanding the fascinating world of mass media. Potter presents examples and facts to help you understand how the media operate, how they attract attention, and how they influence you and the public.
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
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Nine Lives by William Dalrymple
British guy goes to India and meets with nine different people, each one on a different religious path and with an interesting story to share. William Dalrymple acknowledges his white colonialist britishness and seems to mostly stay out of the way and let the people he meets tell their stories.
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Night by Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel’s Night is a retelling of what happened to him during World War 2. In a Nazi death camp, he witnesses the death of his family, the death of his innocence and the death of his God. Night shows you evil at its peak and convinces you that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.
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Meditations: A New Translation by Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hays)
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121–180) succeeded his adoptive father as emperor of Rome in a.d. 161—and in his Meditations he provides insights, wisdom, and practical guidance on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity to interacting with others. It’s surprising how much of his advice has aged well but given his position of supreme power and the changing times (eg. slavery is bad), some of his meditations have not aged so well.
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The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book where author/youtuber John Green reviews a random assortment of things and concepts that you wouldn’t expect to see reviewed. This conceit gives him a lot of room to write about anything he feels like. John Green is an expert at what he does, but I don’t find what he does to be very compelling.
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Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language discusses how we express ourselves on the internet, how we got here and where we’re going from the perspective of a linguist.
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The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
The Odyssey is a classic and there’s more stories that have been inspired by it than I can count. After reading it, you’ll be able to see it echoed everywhere you look.
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Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology is a retelling of a few stories from Norse mythology (which we don’t know very much about). I’m a fan of Neil Gaiman’s work generally but I found this to be quite boring.
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The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths is more of an encyclopedia about everything related to the Greek myths rather than a pure retelling of the myths themselves. It’s not meant to entertain, it’s meant to inform. Although, if learning everything there is to know about Greek myths sounds entertaining to you then this is the book for you.
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The Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan
Everything you need to know about mixing cocktails.
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On Writing by Stephen King
Stephen King tells you about his life and his advice on how you can become better at writing. This amounts to him basically saying “Just write a lot bro” but despite this, this was quite a fun read. And… He’s not wrong.
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Infrastructure by Brian Hayes
Infrastructure is a guide to all the major “ecosystems” of our modern industrial world. In exploring railroad tracks, antenna towers, highway overpasses, power lines, coal mines, nuclear power plants, grain elevators, oil refineries, steel mills, and more, Brian Hayes reveals how our familiar and often-overlooked industrial environment can be as dazzling as nature.
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Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
Understanding Power is the book that convinced me that I needed to start reading again. It’s just a bunch of transcripts taken from Noam Chomsky Q/A sessions, but man, I’m glad that I was convinced to sit down and read through it. Noam Chomsky has eidetic memory (more commonly known as photographic memory) and so you can ask him about anything and he’ll be able to perfectly recall everything he’s read and written about the subject.
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Sandcastles by Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Levy
Sandcastles is the french comic book that the recent M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Old was based on. A bunch of different people arrive for a relaxing day at the beach and find themselves aging extremely rapidly, babies become teens and older folk die. Hijinks ensue. I don’t get it.
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Remina by Junji Ito
Junji Ito is cool. Uzumaki is great. A lot of his other work is just OK. I think Remina is also just OK.