Books

• Gödel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)
• Stories of Your Life and Others (Chiang)
• Exhalation (Chiang)
• Red Mars (Robinson)
• Song of the Lioness series (Pierce): my favorite YA series by my favorite YA author
• Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town (Kirshner)
• The Double Helix (Watson)
• The Name of the Wind (Rothfuss)
• Handmade in Japan (Gestalten)
• The Paper Menagerie (Liu)
• The Corrections (Franzen)
• Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
• East of Eden (Steinbeck)

Board Games

• Terraforming Mars (the simplified Ares Expedition version fixes many issues with the original)
• The Crew
• SET
• Ricochet Robots
• The Search for Planet X
• Root

Video Games

• Braid
• Monument Valley
• Portal
• The Witness
• Her Story
• Case of the Golden Idol
• Chants of Sennaar

TV Shows

Dark: Excellently acted, written, produced, and scored, Dark was the best thing I saw in 2021. Go in blind, keep a sketchpad handy, and watch in the original German with subs - NOT the dub. Pro-tip that I wish I’d discovered before the end: the official Netflix site lets you look up info spoiler-free by telling it the latest episode you’ve seen.

Black Mirror: Anthology series about how technology will bring out the worst of human nature. It’s an anthology, so quality varies: the first three seasons were the best (quality has tanked since Netflix took over), but there are still a few gems in the later seasons.

Best episodes:

• The Entire History of You
• USS Callister
• San Junipero
• Nosedive

Fleabag: Biting, witty, and intimate.

Battlestar Galactica: The reboot, not the original. Mid-aughts classic that I’ve rewatched many times, and love deeply.

Attack on Titan