Impossible List

Played on Game Boy Advance.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: As someone who liked the Oracle series additions, this was a solid approach to how I like to engage with Zelda. Boiled down to its essence, this game nails it.

Why play it: A talking cap shrinks Link to the size of the tiny Minish, turning puddles and bookshelves into dungeons. Short, dense and full of charm.

Played on Game Boy Advance.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: My comfort zone for Pokémon games. Straightforward without the extra fluff. Good story, memorable additions, and a solid starter trio.

Why play it: Hoenn's debut brought abilities, natures and double battles, and a team plot over the seas that wakes Kyogre. The generation modern competitive Pokémon grew from.

Played on Mobile.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This was a fun game that I got on the ground floor of its release to play. It sorta consumed my life for a while there and I had to drop it to be a good adult.

Why play it: A free physics brawler for up to 20 players: grab, punch and fling wobbly characters off the arena across game modes that rotate daily. Climb the all-time trophy leaderboard by winning rounds.

Played on Mobile.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: As a RuneScape nerd, this game was a blast! I did time-skip the heck out of it though! Patience with idle games wasn't a skill I had then.

Why play it: RuneScape boiled down to its skill grind: train woodcutting, fishing, combat and twenty-odd other skills from menus while the game keeps playing when you're away. Three expansions stretch it well past the base game.

Played on Game Boy Advance.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Honestly, for how childish it is, this has some of the best puzzles that actually got me to think and get stuck. It's pretty much a point-and-click adventure with some 'keys' that'll have you returning to previously unsolvable puzzles.

Why play it: Hamtaro learns Ham-Chat words and uses them as tools to fix the couples Spat has broken up. Cuter than it looks, and properly puzzly.

Played on Game Boy Advance.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: More of a nostalgia trip for me. The story is decent, and the gameplay was probably my first foray into tile-based dungeon crawls.

Why play it: You wake up as a Pokémon, form a rescue team and dive into randomly built dungeons one turn at a time. A roguelike with a story that hits harder than you'd expect.

Played on Game Boy Color.

Why play it: The action half of the Oracle pair: Link swings the Rod of Seasons to flip Holodrum between spring, summer, autumn and winter, opening paths each season blocks.

Played on Game Boy Color.

Why play it: Capcom's puzzle-first Zelda: Link plays the Harp of Ages to jump between past and present and reshape Labrynna. Link it to Seasons for the true ending.

Played on Game Boy Advance.

Why play it: Camelot's Game Boy Advance RPG, where Psynergy spells double as puzzle tools in dungeons and collectable Djinn reshape your party's classes. Continued in The Lost Age.

Playing now.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Why play it: A darker, older Zelda: Link turns into a wolf in the Twilight Realm with the impish Midna on his back. Big dungeons and one of the series' best companions.

Played on PC.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

My review: This game shaped who I am in a major part. I learned coding through some unconventional means with this game back when I was 7. It introduced me to my habit of problem solving with technology. On top of that, the memories and hours sunk into this game brings it a special place in my heart.

Why play it: RuneScape as it was in 2007, kept alive and steered by player votes. Train skills, quest across Gielinor and take on bosses, in a world that still feels shared.

Still chasing: Get a Max Cape (not yet); Get a TzKal Slayer Helmet (not yet); Get a Bloodhound Pet (not yet).

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

My review: This game was formative to my upbringing. The stories of teenage hijinks, tournaments won, and friends made along the way makes this game more than just a game for me.

Why play it: Nintendo's all-star fighter, where the goal is to knock rivals off the stage rather than drain a health bar. Fast, deep and still played at tournaments more than twenty years on.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This was a defining moment in my childhood, and the exploring of Hyrule feels like a stroll through my favorite park. Felt bigger as a kid, but nothing wrong with a smaller world, things felt intentional.

Why play it: Link grows from forest kid to Hero of Time across a Hyrule built for 3D, with the lock-on targeting nearly every action game since has borrowed.

Played on Xbox 360.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Not a design pattern I see often — I'll call it attraction-based gameplay. You put effort into something to attract discovery to you. That's an underserved gaming niche, not to mention the aesthetic is charming as can be.

Why play it: Rare's garden sim: shape the land and plant the right things, and living piñatas move in, breed and squabble. The sequel adds desert and arctic trips for rare species.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: I'm not much of a racing sim kinda guy, but the story and the cop chases were peak power fantasy. This game dictated my dream sports car.

Why play it: Climb Rockport's Blacklist of fifteen street racers while police chases escalate the more heat you earn. The cop pursuits are the star.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: The battles are fun! Lots of expression in the customization and playstyles. Though I ended up cheesing most battles I could with high stun striking vanisher builds.

Why play it: Build a pocket-sized robo from guns, bombs, pods and legs, then fight in compact 3D arenas. A rookie-Commander story wraps a deep loadout game.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Vast world with small compact islands. I'll admit, I used a little speed hack to get from point A to point B sometimes for the long sailing adventure. Still the story and charm puts this with the greats.

Why play it: A cel-shaded Zelda on a drowned Hyrule: sail the Great Sea between islands, conduct the wind with a baton, and fight with some of the series' best animation.

Played on Xbox Series X|S.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This is a comfort game for me. When I want to just 'take a walk' digitally, this feels like walking around my old neighborhood. Over time some new things are added in, and it's fun to discover things I never saw before. I'm not huge into the modding scene — I appreciate it, but I like having the shared experience.

Why play it: An open world where you can walk toward any mountain and find a story on it. Dragons are back, you are the Dragonborn, and the rest is up to you.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: The genetics and adorableness and the planning! It's such a small but polished gem in an already great game! There's an active hungry community waiting to see something like this take its place.

Why play it: Between the hero and dark stories sits the Chao Garden: raise little creatures whose looks and stats change with the animals and fruit you give them, then race them.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: WOW the Collectible Count was INSANE. Still the level design was peak, and DK Island feels like visiting a summer home you used to see as a kid.

Why play it: Rare's sprawling 3D platformer: five playable Kongs, each with their own moves and colour-coded collectibles, across huge themed worlds.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I can see the effect this had on later games, I never beat it as a kid, in fact, I never even got far. But it's beat and was extremely charming!

Why play it: Mario's leap into 3D wrote the rulebook for moving a character and a camera through open levels, all reached by jumping into the paintings of Peach's castle.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I'm not much of a side-scrolling platform guy, but the constant asking 'What does this combination do?' is really fun!

Why play it: A 2.5D Kirby where any two copy abilities combine into a new one, hunting crystal shards across a storybook-bright world.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Nostalgia Trip on Wheels, all the small things came back to me so the rediscovery which was core to the gameplay was lost on the replay so I didn't get to sit with this game for long.

Why play it: An on-rails safari where the only tool is a camera: photograph wild Pokémon and Professor Oak grades each shot on pose, size and framing.

Played on Nintendo 64.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: A nostalgic whimsical trip, but toon racing games have come a long way since then.

Why play it: Rare's kart racer with an adventure mode on top: an island hub, boss races, and a car, hovercraft or plane to pick on most tracks.

Played on Nintendo GameCube.

Why play it: Mario on holiday on Isle Delfino with FLUDD, a water pack that hovers, rockets and sprays away graffiti goop. Strange, tight, and full of secret levels.

Reading now.

Why read it: Short chapters, cliffhanger endings, a murder in the Louvre and a trail of codes through art history. A pure page-turner: take the history with a grain of salt and enjoy the puzzle hunt.

Needs a re-read.

My review: I've re-watched this series probably 10-15 times and have gone on the NZ tour. I can do a mean Smeagol impression.

Why read it: The foundation of modern fantasy: an ordinary hobbit carries the most dangerous object in the world across Middle-earth. Tolkien built whole languages and millennia of history behind it, and you feel that depth on every page.

Needs a re-read.

My review: One of my favorite books as a kid, and I even went to the Shire in Matamata NZ. I actually had my first beer, 'Sobering Thought', in the Green Dragon Inn!

Why read it: Bilbo Baggins is hired as a burglar by thirteen dwarves and a wizard, and comes home changed. Tolkien's warm, funny adventure is the doorway to Middle-earth and still one of the best children's books ever written.

Out Nov 10, 2026.

My review: Coming out soon, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Why read it: Robert Greene turns from power and human nature to awe. Alongside stories of near-death encounters, great discoveries and shifts in consciousness, he gives exercises and meditations for finding the Sublime in nature, art, science and history.

My review: You're never too old for a fairytale, and this series feels like grandad is reading you a bedtime story. It's comfort.

Why read it: Four children step through a wardrobe into a land of talking animals, endless winter and a lion named Aslan. C.S. Lewis's seven short books are warm, full of wonder and easy to fall back into at any age.

The series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (read); Prince Caspian (read); The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (read); The Silver Chair (not read yet); The Horse and His Boy (read); The Magician's Nephew (read); The Last Battle (not read yet).

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Four siblings step through a wardrobe into Narnia, frozen in the White Witch's endless winter, and meet Aslan, the lion who comes to end it.

Prince Caspian: The Pevensies are pulled back to Narnia centuries later to help young Prince Caspian win back a kingdom that has forgotten its talking beasts.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Edmund, Lucy and their insufferable cousin Eustace sail with King Caspian toward the edge of the world. An island-hopping voyage, and the strangest of the seven.

The Silver Chair: Eustace and Jill Pole head into the wild north with Puddleglum, a gloomy Marsh-wiggle, to find a lost prince. The darkest book, with the funniest companion.

The Horse and His Boy: A runaway boy and a talking warhorse flee through Calormen toward Narnia and stumble on a plot to invade it. A standalone adventure set during the Pevensies' reign.

The Magician's Nephew: The origin story: Digory and Polly wake the witch Jadis in a dead world and watch Aslan sing Narnia into being. It also explains the lamppost.

The Last Battle: Narnia's last days: a false Aslan, a betrayed king and a final stand. The series closes on a door into something larger.

Why read it: Earth is demolished for an alien game show, and the survivors have to fight their way down a dungeon for ratings. Carl and his cat, Princess Donut, carry a LitRPG that's funnier and darker than it has any right to be.

The series: Dungeon Crawler Carl (not read yet); Carl's Doomsday Scenario (not read yet); The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (not read yet); The Gate of the Feral Gods (not read yet); The Butcher's Masquerade (not read yet); The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (not read yet); This Inevitable Ruin (not read yet); A Parade of Horribles (not read yet).

Carl's Doomsday Scenario: Carl and Princess Donut push deeper into the dungeon, and the alien audience, and the dungeon's own AI, start taking a personal interest in them.

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook: Carl's knack for explosives makes him a hero to some viewers and a problem for the people running the show.

The Gate of the Feral Gods: The crawl gets political: gods, factions and sponsors outside the dungeon start fighting over what Carl does inside it.

The Butcher's Masquerade: Carl and Donut are now stars, and the season starts slipping out of the showrunners' control.

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: The stakes go galactic as the powers watching the show fight over the dungeon's future, with Carl caught in the middle.

This Inevitable Ruin: The series' darkest stretch yet: the dungeon throws everything it has at the crawlers, and not everyone makes it through.

A Parade of Horribles: Book eight (2026): the crawl goes on, and the game itself is starting to break around Carl and Donut.

Why read it: A heist crew takes on an immortal god-emperor in a world where ash falls from the sky. Sanderson's magic runs on hard rules you can reason about like a game system, the closest a novel gets to theorycrafting a Skyrim build.

The series: The Final Empire (not read yet); The Well of Ascension (not read yet); The Hero of Ages (not read yet).

The Well of Ascension: Vin and Elend have to hold the city of Luthadel with three armies at its walls, while something new stirs in the mists.

The Hero of Ages: Ash falls, the mists spread, and every mystery from the first two books comes due. One of the most satisfying trilogy endings in fantasy.

Why read it: Winston Smith rewrites history at the Ministry of Truth for a Party that watches everyone, all the time. Orwell's novel gave us Big Brother, doublethink and thoughtcrime.

Why read it: A future where people are grown in hatcheries, kept content with a drug called soma and never left alone with their thoughts. The other great dystopia, where control comes through comfort instead of fear.

Why read it: A fireman whose job is burning books starts secretly reading them. Bradbury's short novel about a society that drifted away from books on its own, long before the censors arrived.

Why read it: Shackleton's 1914 expedition: the ship is crushed by Antarctic ice and 28 men spend nearly two years fighting their way home. Every one of them survives. One of the great true adventure stories, built from the crew's own diaries.

Why read it: Phil Knight's memoir of building Nike, from selling imported running shoes out of his car to a global brand, with near-bankruptcy at every turn. Reads like a novel and is one of the most honest startup stories out there.

My review: This was my book fair guilty pleasure as a kid. Read it with my dad. We both got disappointed in the movie theater.

Why read it: A kid with ADHD and dyslexia learns he's the son of Poseidon, and the Greek gods turn out to be alive and meddling in modern America. Fast, funny and a sneaky crash course in mythology.

The series: The Lightning Thief (read); The Sea of Monsters (not read yet); The Titan's Curse (not read yet); The Battle of the Labyrinth (not read yet); The Last Olympian (not read yet).

The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson finds out his father is Poseidon, then gets blamed for stealing Zeus's lightning bolt. A road trip across America full of monsters hiding in plain sight.

The Sea of Monsters: Camp Half-Blood's protective tree has been poisoned, and the only cure is the Golden Fleece, somewhere in the Sea of Monsters.

The Titan's Curse: Annabeth goes missing, the goddess Artemis is captured, and Percy joins her Hunters on a quest west while the Titan Kronos gathers strength.

The Battle of the Labyrinth: Kronos's army has found a way into camp through Daedalus's Labyrinth, a maze that rewires itself, and Percy has to reach it first.

The Last Olympian: The war comes to Manhattan: Kronos marches on Mount Olympus, and the great prophecy about Percy's sixteenth birthday finally comes due.

Why read it: Book one of the Horus Heresy: the Imperium at its height, seen through Captain Garviel Loken, just before the galaxy's greatest betrayal. The best way into Warhammer 40k lore, no painted minis required.

The series: Horus Rising (not read yet); False Gods (not read yet); Galaxy in Flames (not read yet); The Flight of the Eisenstein (not read yet); Fulgrim (not read yet).

False Gods: Horus is struck down on the moon Davin, and the cure comes from people with their own plans for him. The book where the Warmaster's fall begins.

Galaxy in Flames: The betrayal at Isstvan III: Horus moves openly against the Emperor, and the loyalists inside his own Legion have to choose a side.

The Flight of the Eisenstein: Death Guard captain Nathaniel Garro sees the treachery up close and takes a frigate to warn Terra: a desperate flight across the warp.

Fulgrim: Fulgrim, the Emperor's Children's perfect primarch, chases perfection until an ancient blade starts whispering to him. A tragedy in slow motion.

Why read it: Ships built from the bones of extinct sea dragons, crewed by the condemned, and then a living dragon is sighted. Grimdark naval fantasy with some of the most original worldbuilding of the last decade.

The series: The Bone Ships (not read yet); Call of the Bone Ships (not read yet); The Bone Ship's Wake (not read yet).

Call of the Bone Ships: Lucky Meas and Joron Twiner keep the black ship Tide Child sailing with a hunted crew, as the sea dragons' return pushes the islands toward war.

The Bone Ship's Wake: The trilogy's ending: the war the first two books warned of arrives, and Joron has become a captain the drunk from book one would not recognise.

Why read it: A self-published pirate novel about a hunt for ancient treasure, set around the 1692 earthquake that sank much of Port Royal, the Caribbean's most notorious pirate haven.

Why read it: A broke former student in St. Petersburg kills a pawnbroker to prove he's above ordinary morality, then comes apart under guilt and a patient detective. Dostoevsky's most readable big novel.

Why read it: A bitter, nameless former clerk rants against reason, progress and himself from his St. Petersburg "underground", then tells the humiliating stories behind it. Short, and often called the first existentialist novel.

Why read it: Sinuhe, a physician at the court of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, tells the story of his life across Egypt and the ancient Near East. Mika Waltari's historical novel was an international bestseller after the war.

Why read it: Solzhenitsyn's history of the Soviet labor camp system, built from his own eight years as a prisoner and the testimony of hundreds of others. Smuggled out and published in the West, it got him expelled from the USSR.

Why read it: Thoreau spent two years in a cabin he built himself at Walden Pond and wrote about living simply and on purpose. Part nature writing, part case against trading your life for things you don't need.

Why read it: Five aristocratic Russian families through Napoleon's invasion, from ballrooms to the battlefield at Borodino. Long, and Tolstoy makes nearly every one of its hundreds of characters feel like a real person.

Why read it: A tennis academy, a halfway house and a film so entertaining that anyone who watches it loses the will to do anything else. More than a thousand pages, hundreds of endnotes, and a book about addiction and our appetite for fun.

Why read it: Hesse's last novel follows Joseph Knecht's rise to Magister Ludi, master of a game that plays with all of human knowledge, in a future order of scholars. Hesse won the Nobel Prize three years after it came out.

Why read it: Whitman's one book of poems, which he kept expanding from 1855 until his death. Long, loose lines celebrating ordinary American life, with "Song of Myself" at the center.

Why read it: Edward Frenkel argues math is as beautiful as art, through his own story and the Langlands program, a grand unified theory of mathematics. Part memoir, part invitation; no advanced math needed.

Why read it: While his life is being turned into a movie, Donald Miller realizes it would make a boring one, and sets out to live a better story. A warm memoir about choosing adventure on purpose.

Why read it: Nietzsche's philosophical novel: a prophet comes down from the mountain to teach the Übermensch, eternal recurrence and the death of God. Poetic and strange; read it as literature first and philosophy second.

Why read it: Nietzsche's short, sharp late book, written in about a week: 'how to philosophize with a hammer.' Aphorisms and attacks on Socrates, morality and German culture, and the quickest way into Nietzsche.

Why read it: Camus asks whether life is worth living if it has no meaning, and answers with Sisyphus, condemned to push his boulder forever, whom we must imagine happy. A short, clear way into existentialism.

Why read it: Kierkegaard's first big book, published under pseudonyms: the papers of a pleasure-chasing aesthete set against letters from a judge arguing for a committed, ethical life. He leaves the choice to you.

Why read it: Yukio Mishima's short essay on how bodybuilding and martial arts changed the way he related to words and to his own body. Strange and intense, published two years before his death.

Why read it: Simone Weil's notebooks, gathered after her death into short passages on suffering, attention and God. Best read a few pages at a time.

Why read it: Mark Fisher's 1999 PhD thesis, published in 2018: a dense theory of how fiction like Neuromancer and Crash blurs the line between human and machine. Hard going, from the writer who later wrote Capitalist Realism.

Why read it: A lonely young finance worker gets a brain-computer implant, it starts malfunctioning, and the customer support maze only makes things worse. A short, dark and funny novella from Robert Pantano, the voice behind Pursuit of Wonder.

Why read it: John Eldredge's Christian book on masculinity: that men are made for a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue. Heartfelt and opinionated, and a classic in its genre.

A classic.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This book made me fall in love with philosophy. I've actually wanted to get a huge back piece / shoulder wrap tattoo depicting the tripartite soul. I haven't gone through with it, never was a priority.

Why read it: Plato's dialogue on justice that ends up designing an ideal city and a three-part theory of the soul, with the allegory of the cave along the way. Arguably the most influential book in Western philosophy.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Breaks down an evergreen concept with studies to back it up. It feels genuinely educational compared to a bunch of self help 'slop' I've gone through. However, I'm not a disciplined powerhouse from reading it. It's no magic bullet.

Why read it: Charles Duhigg explains the habit loop of cue, routine and reward through research and stories of people, companies and movements. The clearest account of why habits stick, and how to change one by swapping the routine.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: A solid introduction for how to think about money for those who didn't grow up around it. Writing was easy to follow. It's not all encompassing, and I recommend extending your education after this.

Why read it: Robert Kiyosaki contrasts the money lessons of his two 'dads': assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take it out, and the rich buy assets. The book that got millions thinking about financial literacy for the first time.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I love the format, all the short stories to remember the lesson. Though the lessons I'd rather not have needed court vocabulary to learn. The lessons themselves: best to recognize the game to avoid the people playing it.

Why read it: Robert Greene distills 3,000 years of history into 48 laws of power, each told through stories of courtiers, con artists and kings. Read it less as a manual and more as a field guide to the people playing the game.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's good, though I didn't really walk away feeling like there was more I could do that wasn't already done. It just brought attention to things I already knew.

Why read it: Dale Carnegie's guide to getting along with people: be genuinely interested in others, remember names, let them talk, and never tell someone they're wrong. Ninety years old and still the base layer of every people-skills book since.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: Extremely sharp in its use of language, and the memes of lobsters with the genuine insight of serotonin production leading to physiological changes was fun. I think I got more out of his YouTube videos though.

Why read it: Jordan Peterson's twelve rules, from 'stand up straight with your shoulders back' to 'pet a cat when you encounter one,' blending psychology, mythology and personal story into an argument for taking on responsibility.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I think this book was a trend setter for self help, though the contents I found to be a bit... obvious? Instead of going into it trying to learn something, it's more of a reminder to give focus to what you already inherently know.

Why read it: Stephen Covey's seven habits, from 'be proactive' to 'sharpen the saw,' building from personal independence to working well with others. Its urgent-versus-important matrix alone has organized millions of to-do lists.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It was inspiring for it's time and the systems or mode-of-thinking is still valuable. Though a lot of the book is explaining how to get that done for it's time, and now with AI you'll have to recontextualize the book for a modern audience.

Why read it: Tim Ferriss's playbook for escaping the 9-to-5: cut low-value work, automate income, and take mini-retirements instead of waiting for one big one. It launched the lifestyle-design movement and the idea that your time is the asset.

Why read it: Viktor Frankl's account of surviving Auschwitz and other camps, and the psychology he built from it: we can't always choose our circumstances, but we can choose our response. Short, harrowing and essential.

Why read it: James Clear on building good habits from tiny changes: make them obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying, and make bad ones the opposite. The most practical habit book around, and a natural follow-up to The Power of Habit.

Why read it: David Goggins went from an abused, overweight kid to Navy SEAL and ultramarathoner, and lays out the mental tactics he credits for it, like the "cookie jar" and the 40% rule.

Why read it: Ryan Holiday turns Stoic philosophy into a playbook for treating setbacks as material to work with, with stories from Marcus Aurelius to John D. Rockefeller.

Why read it: Mark Manson argues that a good life comes from choosing what's worth caring about and accepting the struggle that comes with it, instead of chasing constant positivity.

Why read it: C.S. Lewis's wartime radio talks on what nearly all Christians believe, starting from the moral law everyone seems to know. One of the most widely read introductions to Christianity.

Why read it: Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman on the two systems in your head, fast intuition and slow deliberation, and the biases from trusting the wrong one. Some priming studies haven't replicated, but the core is foundational.

Why read it: Morgan Housel's short chapters on how people actually behave with money: luck, risk, compounding and knowing when you have enough. The most readable personal-finance book around, and a calming one.

Why read it: Cialdini's classic on the principles of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity (the new edition adds unity). Learn them once and you'll spot them in every sales page and negotiation.

Why read it: Napoleon Hill's steps to success, which he said came from interviewing rich men like Andrew Carnegie: burning desire, faith, persistence and a "mastermind" group. One of the best-selling self-help books ever, though historians doubt many of his interview claims.

Why read it: Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss on negotiating with tactical empathy: mirroring, labeling emotions and getting the other side to say "that's right." Written for salary talks and car deals as much as hostage standoffs.

Why read it: The Harvard Negotiation Project's method: separate the people from the problem, focus on interests instead of positions and agree on objective criteria. The cooperative counterpart to Never Split the Difference.

Why read it: Cal Newport's case that focused, distraction-free work is both rare and increasingly valuable. Practical rituals for protecting long blocks of concentration, which matters more with every new chat channel and alert.

Why read it: Carol Dweck's research on fixed versus growth mindsets: believing ability is set, or that it can be developed, changes how you handle failure and effort. The idea is famous; the book has the nuance the slogans miss.

Why read it: Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of total absorption where time disappears, and how to build more of it into work and life. The research behind every "get in the zone" tip.

Why read it: Jeff Olson's argument that small daily choices, easy to do and just as easy to skip, compound over the years into success or failure.

Why read it: Taleb's big idea: some things don't just survive shocks, they get stronger from them. A sharp lens for systems work. What in your infrastructure, career or business gains from disorder instead of merely tolerating it?

Why read it: Robert Greene studies masters from Leonardo da Vinci to Darwin and maps the path they shared: a long apprenticeship, then a creative breakthrough.

Why read it: Robert Greene's long field guide to why people act the way they do, from envy and grandiosity to the roles we play, with a historical figure to illustrate each law.

Why read it: Robert Greene catalogs seducer types and the stages of seduction, drawn from figures like Cleopatra and Casanova. Useful for spotting manipulation as well as practicing charm.

Why read it: Eric Jorgenson's collection of Naval Ravikant's tweets and talks on wealth and happiness: specific knowledge, leverage, and playing long-term games with long-term people. Short enough for one sitting.

Why read it: Alex Hormozi's three-book playbook for growing a business: make an offer people feel stupid saying no to, get it in front of strangers, then structure what you sell so each customer is worth more.

The series: $100M Offers (not read yet); $100M Leads (not read yet); $100M Money Models (not read yet).

$100M Offers: Hormozi's case that most businesses don't have a marketing problem, they have an offer problem. His value equation (dream outcome and likelihood of success, over time and effort) is a lens you can put on any product page the same afternoon.

$100M Leads: The sequel to Offers: once you have something worth buying, how strangers find out. The core four (warm outreach, content, cold outreach, paid ads) laid out like an operations manual rather than a pep talk.

$100M Money Models: The third $100M book is about what comes after the first sale: sequencing offers so a new customer pays for their own acquisition. Most useful once you already sell something and want each customer to be worth more.

Why read it: Peter Thiel's Stanford lectures on startups: the companies worth building create something new and end up as monopolies, instead of fighting over an existing market. Short and contrarian.

Why read it: Eric Ries's method for building a company as a series of experiments: ship a minimum viable product, measure what customers actually do and change course fast.

Why read it: Jim Collins's team studied companies that went from average to beating the market for fifteen years and looked for what they had in common: humble leaders, the right people first and one simple focus.

Why read it: Kim and Mauborgne argue for creating a market no one is competing in, instead of fighting rivals over the same customers. The case studies run from Cirque du Soleil to Yellow Tail wine.

Why read it: A business novel: a plant manager has 90 days to save his factory and discovers the Theory of Constraints. The Phoenix Project is modeled on it, so for a DevOps engineer this is the source text on bottlenecks and flow.

Why read it: Former poker pro Annie Duke on deciding under uncertainty: judge decisions by their process, not their outcome, and think in probabilities. A great fit for postmortems, where 'bad outcome' and 'bad call' get confused.

Why read it: Thirteen short chapters on strategy from ancient China: know yourself and your enemy, and win without fighting when you can. Read today by executives as much as generals.

Why read it: Inazo Nitobe wrote this in English to explain the samurai code to Western readers: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, honesty, honor and loyalty. It shaped how the West pictures the samurai.

Why read it: Eighty-one short verses attributed to Laozi on the Tao, the way things naturally flow, and on leading without forcing. One of the most translated books in the world.

Why read it: Hazlitt's one lesson: judge a policy by its effects on everyone and over the long run, not just the immediate, visible ones. A short classic on the seen and the unseen that still frames a lot of economic debate.

Why read it: Friedrich Hayek's warning, written in wartime Britain, that central economic planning leads toward tyranny. A founding text of free-market economics.

Why read it: A booklet the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago put out to explain how banks create money when they make loans. Short, dry and straight from the source.

Why read it: G. Edward Griffin's account of the secret 1910 meeting on Jekyll Island where bankers drafted the plan for the Federal Reserve, and his case that the Fed works as a banking cartel. The meeting really happened; economists reject much of his reading of it, so pair it with Modern Money Mechanics.

Why read it: Taleb's first book in the Incerto: how often we mistake luck for skill, especially in markets. A good antidote to survivorship bias when reading success stories, including plenty of the books on this shelf.

Why read it: Steven Pressfield names the force that stops you from creating, Resistance, and says the cure is to turn pro: show up every day regardless of mood. Short and punchy; read it when a project stalls.

Why read it: Hans Rosling shows the world is in better shape than most people think, then names the 10 instincts that distort our view. Data-driven and warm, and it builds the habit of checking assumptions before reacting to scary headlines.

Why read it: Wilhelm Reich, a former student of Freud, tries to explain why ordinary Germans backed fascism against their own interests, pinning it on sexual repression and the authoritarian family. Banned by the Nazis; decades later the US government burned his books over his unrelated orgone claims.

Why read it: How to talk when stakes are high, opinions differ and emotions run strong. The core idea, keeping a conversation safe enough that people say what they really think, works for code reviews, clients and family alike.

Why read it: Why most small businesses stall: the founder works in the business instead of on it. Gerber's fix is to build it like a franchise prototype with documented systems. Basically runbooks for everything, which a DevOps brain will love.

Why read it: Chris Guillebeau collected the stories of people who started businesses for around $100 and grew them into a living. A practical guide to small, one-person businesses.

Why read it: Allan Dib fits a small business's entire marketing plan onto a nine-square grid: before, during and after someone becomes a customer.

Why read it: ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson's trilogy on selling online: build a sales funnel, become an expert people trust, then fill the funnel with traffic.

The series: DotCom Secrets (not read yet); Expert Secrets (not read yet); Traffic Secrets (not read yet).

Expert Secrets: How to turn what you know into a following that will pay for your advice: tell your origin story, build a movement and pitch without sounding like a salesman.

Traffic Secrets: Where your dream customers already gather online, and how to get them into your funnel, platform by platform.

Why read it: Scott Young, who worked through MIT's four-year computer science curriculum in one year from its free materials, breaks aggressive self-directed learning into nine principles. Ideal for picking up a new language or stack fast.

Why read it: Barbara Oakley, who flunked high-school math before becoming an engineer, explains how learning actually works: focused versus diffuse thinking, chunking and spaced practice. The book behind the 'Learning How to Learn' course.

Why read it: Anders Ericsson, whose research became the '10,000 hours' rule, explains what that rule gets wrong: deliberate practice, not hours, builds expertise. The playbook for getting genuinely good at something.

Why read it: Shane Parrish's four-volume toolbox of thinking models borrowed from physics, biology, systems, math, economics and art. Volume 1 alone (first principles, second-order thinking, inversion) changes how you approach problems.

The series: General Thinking Concepts (not read yet); Physics, Chemistry and Biology (not read yet); Systems and Mathematics (not read yet); Economics and Art (not read yet).

Physics, Chemistry and Biology: Volume 2: models from physics, chemistry and biology, such as inertia, catalysts and natural selection, applied to decisions and organisations.

Systems and Mathematics: Volume 3: systems and maths, from feedback loops and bottlenecks to compounding, sampling and regression to the mean.

Economics and Art: Volume 4: economics (scarcity, trade-offs, supply and demand) alongside art's lessons on audience, framing and storytelling.

Why read it: JL Collins turned letters to his daughter into a plan: avoid debt, spend less than you earn, buy broad low-cost index funds and leave them alone. The simplest investing book that's still complete.

Why read it: Economist John Kay's guide to investing for smart people outside the finance industry: how markets work, what fees cost you and how to manage your own portfolio sensibly.

Why read it: Howard Marks, cofounder of Oaktree, distills decades of investor memos: second-level thinking, risk, market cycles and contrarianism. Warren Buffett called it 'that rarity, a useful book.'

Why read it: Peter Attia's case for preventing chronic disease decades early instead of treating it late: exercise (strength and VO2 max especially), sleep, nutrition and emotional health. A strong push to keep the gym habit.

Why read it: Ivan Illich argues that past a certain point, modern medicine causes as much harm as it cures, from side effects to people losing the ability to cope with pain and death on their own terms. Later reissued as Limits to Medicine.

Why read it: Jonathan Haidt argues that the move from play-based to phone-based childhood in the early 2010s drove a rise in teen anxiety and depression, and proposes four norms to reverse it. Some researchers dispute how strong the evidence is.

Why read it: Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke on how easy access to endless pleasures, from phones to food, throws the brain's reward system out of balance, and how stepping away resets it.

Why read it: Austin Kleon's 10 ways to share your process so the right people find you. A short, illustrated nudge to publish what you learn as you go, which is exactly what a personal site with a /misc corner is for.

Why read it: Matthew Dicks, a 32-time Moth StorySLAM champion, teaches how to find and tell true stories, starting with 'Homework for Life': note one storyworthy moment every day. Makes you better at talks, interviews and dinners.

Why read it: Seth Godin's tiny book on quitting: most worthwhile things have a dip, a long hard slog before mastery, and the real skill is telling a dip from a dead end. Ninety minutes that can save years.

Why read it: Angela Duckworth's research on why passion plus perseverance often predicts success better than talent. Useful for long projects where motivation fades, and for seeing how interests deepen into a calling.

Why read it: Gary Keller's focusing question: what's the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? Simple enough to remember and ask every Monday morning.

Why read it: Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS): vision, people, data, issues, process and traction. A complete operating manual for running a small company once it outgrows the founder's head.

Why read it: Rob Walling, co-founder of MicroConf and TinySeed, on building a software company without venture capital: picking a niche, pricing, marketing and keeping customers.

Why read it: Rob Walling's guide for developers launching a small software product on their own: find the niche first, test demand before coding and market before launch. Some of the tools have aged, the approach hasn't.

Why read it: A collection of Rob Walling's essays on running a small software business, from marketing before you build to why free plans don't work.

Why read it: Psychologist Sherry Walling on the mental side of running a company: stress, isolation, burnout and relationships. Written with her husband, Rob Walling.

Why read it: Ramit Sethi's six-week program: automate your finances, spend extravagantly on what you love and cut mercilessly on what you don't. Practical right down to scripts for negotiating fees.

Why read it: Brian Preston of The Money Guy Show lays out his nine-step Financial Order of Operations, a ranked answer to what you should do with your next dollar.

Why read it: Vivian Tu, a former Wall Street trader known online as Your Rich BFF, covers budgeting, debt, investing and negotiating pay in plain, funny language for people who never learned money at home.

Why read it: Adult attachment theory made practical: anxious, avoidant and secure styles, and what happens when they collide in a relationship. A quick read that explains a lot of past dating confusion in hindsight.

Why read it: Mark Manson's dating book built on honesty: attraction comes from being invested in your own life and open about what you want, and pickup tricks get in the way.

Why read it: David Deida's short, blunt chapters on masculine purpose, relationships and sexuality. Polarizing, and widely read in men's groups.

Why read it: bell hooks argues that love is something you do, made of care, respect, trust and commitment, and that a culture without a clear definition of it keeps confusing love with desire or control.

Why read it: The one book Carl Jung wrote for general readers, finished just before he died: dreams, archetypes and the unconscious, with hundreds of illustrations.

Why read it: Ken Wilber's huge attempt to fit science, philosophy and religion into one map, and the book where he first laid out his four quadrants: the inner and outer sides of individuals and of groups.

Why read it: Olivia Fox Cabane argues charisma is learnable behavior (presence, power and warmth), not an inborn trait. Concrete exercises for coming across better in interviews, pitches and first meetings.

Why read it: Arthur Engel's legendary olympiad training book: invariants, the pigeonhole principle, extremal arguments, induction and more, each with a pile of hard problems. Brutal and rewarding, one chapter at a time.

Why read it: Martin Liebeck's on-ramp from calculating to proving: sets, real numbers, primes, complex numbers and countability, in short chapters with exercises. If puzzles like Sudoku are fun, this is where math starts feeling like that.

Why read it: Daniel Shiffman teaches you to simulate the natural world in code: forces, particles, flocking, cellular automata, evolution and neural networks. Free to read online, with runnable JavaScript examples.

Why read it: A system for executing strategy despite the daily whirlwind: focus on the wildly important, act on lead measures, keep a compelling scoreboard, hold a cadence of accountability. Usable for a small team or your own goals.

Why read it: Brené Brown maps 87 emotions and experiences, with precise language for each. The argument: you can't work through what you can't name. A vocabulary upgrade for relationships and hard conversations.

Why read it: Keila Shaheen, author of the viral Shadow Work Journal, expands on Jung's idea of the shadow: finding and accepting the parts of yourself you hide, with interviews from practitioners and her own story.

Why read it: Four rules drawn from Toltec wisdom: be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, always do your best. A one-evening read that's easy to remember and hard to practice.

Why read it: Dale Carnegie's companion to How to Win Friends: concrete habits for cutting down worry, like living in "day-tight compartments" and facing the worst case head on.

Why read it: Tony Robbins on taking control of your emotions, habits, money and relationships through the decisions you make and the questions you ask yourself.

Why read it: Mel Robbins's one trick: count 5-4-3-2-1 and move before your brain talks you out of it, plus the stories and research she builds around it.

Why read it: Felix Dennis, founder of Maxim magazine, on what getting rich actually takes: ownership, persistence and accepting the costs. Blunt, funny and unusually honest about whether being rich is even worth it.

Why read it: MJ DeMarco's argument against getting rich slowly through a job and decades of saving: build a business system that scales beyond your hours. Abrasive in places, but it reframes products and leverage well.

Why read it: Codie Sanchez makes the case for buying boring, profitable small businesses like laundromats and plumbing companies instead of starting from scratch, and walks through finding, financing and running them.

Why read it: Noah Kagan, an early Facebook employee and the founder of AppSumo, on getting past the fear of starting: find a problem, pre-sell a fix and test the business idea in a weekend.

Why read it: Ryan Daniel Moran's plan for building an e-commerce brand to a million dollars in sales within a year: pick a product, serve one specific customer and expand from there.

Why read it: Daniel Priestley on breaking out of an industrial-age job mindset and building a small business around what you do best.

Why read it: Eckhart Tolle's guide to living in the present instead of in your thinking mind. Spiritual rather than scientific, but the core practice, noticing the voice in your head instead of being it, is close kin to modern mindfulness.

Why read it: Vadim Zeland, a former Russian physicist, claims reality is a field of possible versions and you slide between them by managing intention and letting go of "importance". Esoteric self-help, closer to The Power of Now than to physics.

Why read it: Eckhart Tolle's follow-up to The Power of Now, on how the ego drives our suffering and what changes when you start noticing it. Oprah's book club turned it into a phenomenon.

Why read it: Rhonda Byrne's bestseller on the "law of attraction": think about what you want with enough conviction and the universe delivers it. A cultural phenomenon with no scientific backing.

Why read it: A 1903 essay you can finish in under an hour, arguing that your character and circumstances grow out of your habitual thoughts. Half the modern self-help shelf is a remix of it, so it's worth reading the source.

Why read it: Wallace D. Wattles, author of The Science of Getting Rich, applies New Thought ideas to health: right thinking, eating, breathing and sleep. Read it as a period piece, not as medical advice.

Why read it: Chris Bailey spent a year testing productivity advice on himself (extreme schedules, isolation, meditation) and reports what actually works. Managing time, attention and energy, tested rather than preached.

Why read it: Miles Young updates David Ogilvy's 1983 classic for search, social and data. Useful for anyone selling online: what changed, and which Ogilvy principles (research, clarity, respect for the reader) never did.

Why read it: Logan Ury, who led relationship research at Hinge, brings behavioral science to modern dating: the three dating tendencies, why the 'spark' is overrated, and how to actually decide. Practical and surprisingly kind.

Why read it: Performance coach Todd Herman's method: build a deliberate alter ego for the arenas where you freeze, like sales calls, the gym or a hard conversation. Sounds gimmicky; it's a structured look at why personas like Kobe's 'Black Mamba' work.

Why read it: Tom Wheelwright, Robert Kiyosaki's CPA, argues the US tax code is a set of incentives you can line up with through business and real estate. A natural follow-up to Rich Dad Poor Dad; check specifics with your own CPA.

Why read it: Frank Gallinelli's reference for the numbers behind rental property: cash flow, cap rate, NOI, cash-on-cash return and 33 more measures. The math to run before buying anything with a tenant in it.

Why read it: A short sales fable with one idea: set goals for how many times you hear no, not yes. It turns rejection into a metric and makes outreach feel like a game instead of a verdict.

Why read it: A short parable about a camel boy in the ancient world who becomes the greatest salesman alive by living out ten scrolls of wisdom. You're meant to read each scroll every day for a month.

Why read it: Chad Aleo's guide to remote closing, selling expensive offers over the phone, from landing the job to handling objections. A short, practical sales manual.

Why read it: Thibaut Meurisse's practical guide to how emotions form and how to loosen the grip of negative ones. Short and exercise-driven, and this edition is the hands-on workbook.

Why read it: Daniel Goleman's bestseller that made EQ a household term, arguing that self-awareness, self-control and empathy can matter more than IQ.

Why read it: Psychologist Ethan Kross on tools for managing your emotions so they don't manage you, from changing your surroundings to the way you talk to yourself. The follow-up to Chatter.

Why read it: Nathaniel Branden treats self-esteem as something you build through six practices, among them living consciously, self-responsibility and personal integrity.

Why read it: John Maxwell's 21 laws, from the Law of the Lid (your leadership ability caps your effectiveness) to the Law of Legacy. Each is short and story-driven, so it's a book to dip in and out of.

Why read it: A 4-in-1 beginner's toolkit: spotting logical fallacies, structured problem solving and better decisions. Not a deep text, but a fast refresher on reasoning tools you use every day in planning and incident reviews.

Why read it: Ryan Michler, founder of Order of Man, on men taking ownership of their lives: responsibility, discipline, and leading at home and in their community. Direct and demanding, in the same vein as Wild at Heart.

Why read it: Davidson and Rees-Mogg predicted in 1997 that the internet and digital money would weaken nation-states and let individuals choose where to be taxed and governed. Tech founders love it for how much came true; it's worth arguing with where it didn't.

Why read it: Eighty-five essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay arguing for ratifying the US Constitution. Courts still cite them for what the framers intended.

Why read it: Russell Kirk traces conservative thought from Edmund Burke to T.S. Eliot. The book that gave postwar American conservatism its intellectual history.

Why read it: Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies, from Caesar's invasion to the end of the Victorian era, published a few years after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The series: The Birth of Britain (not read yet); The New World (not read yet); The Age of Revolution (not read yet); The Great Democracies (not read yet).

The New World: From the Tudors through the English Civil War to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The Age of Revolution: From 1688 to the defeat of Napoleon, with the American Revolution along the way.

The Great Democracies: From 1815 to 1901: Victorian Britain, the American Civil War and the spread of the empire.

Why read it: Pat Buchanan, former Nixon and Reagan adviser and presidential candidate, argues that falling birth rates, mass immigration and cultural change threaten the survival of Western nations.

Why read it: Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk lays out how he wanted conservatives to push back against what he called woke ideology in schools, business and culture.

Why read it: Marie Kondo's KonMari method: tidy by category, all at once, and keep only what sparks joy. Ruthless about stuff in a way that tends to spill over into calendars and commitments too.

Why read it: Marie Kondo's method told as a graphic novel: a young woman in Tokyo learns to keep only what sparks joy. The fastest way to get the KonMari idea, and a fun companion to the original book.

Why read it: Whatever you think of the author, it's a firsthand account of 1980s New York dealmaking: leverage, hype and being willing to walk away. Read it as a negotiation case study and decide for yourself which tactics are worth keeping.

Why read it: The industry reference on how physical and paper oil actually trade: contracts, pricing, futures, hedging and risk. Dense, but it explains a market that quietly sets the price of nearly everything else.

A classic.

Why read it: Private notes the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, never meant to be published. The most powerful man in the world reminding himself to be patient, humble and focused on what he controls. Read a page a day.

A classic.

Why read it: 124 letters from Seneca to a friend on time, fear, wealth, friendship and death. Written by one of the richest men in Rome, so the advice on not being owned by your possessions comes with built-in tension. Read one a night.

A classic.

Why read it: Seneca's essay arguing that life is long enough, and we waste most of it on busyness and on other people's demands. Short, and it reads like it was written about the modern calendar.

A classic.

Why read it: Odysseus takes ten years to get home from Troy: monsters, gods, shipwrecks and a house full of suitors waiting at the end. Homer's poem is the oldest road-trip story in the West and still one of the best.

A classic.

Why read it: A few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, set off by Achilles' rage at his own king. Homer at his most brutal and most human, about what war costs the men who fight it.

A classic.

Why read it: Virgil's answer to Homer: a Trojan survivor carries his people across the sea to found what becomes Rome, giving up what he wants for what he owes.

A classic.

Why read it: Xenophon's own account of ten thousand Greek soldiers stranded deep in Persia after their employer dies, electing their own leaders and marching home. A war memoir that reads like an adventure.

A classic.

Why read it: The tortoise and the hare, the fox and the grapes, the boy who cried wolf: hundreds of tiny animal stories with a moral each, the template for every fable since.

A classic.

Why read it: Dante walks down through Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory and into Heaven, meeting the dead and judging them as he goes. The great poem of the Middle Ages.

A classic.

Why read it: Hesiod's two short poems: how the gods were born and fought their way to Zeus, then a farmer's hard-won advice to his lazy brother on work, seasons and justice. The Greek myths at their source.

A classic.

Why read it: Aeschylus' only surviving trilogy: a king murdered by his wife, a son's revenge, and the Furies hunting him until Athens invents the jury trial to end the cycle of blood.

A classic.

Why read it: Sophocles' three Theban plays: the king who hunts a murderer and finds himself, his last days as a blind wanderer, and his daughter Antigone choosing her conscience over the state.

A classic.

Why read it: Euripides' revenge tragedy: an outsider wife abandoned by Jason for a princess takes the most terrible revenge there is. Short, savage, and still argued over.

A classic.

Why read it: Aristophanes roasts Socrates as a con man running a think-tank in a basket. The funniest play to survive from Athens, staged while Socrates was still alive to watch it.

A classic.

Why read it: Herodotus, the first historian, on how the Greeks beat the Persian Empire, with every wild story he collected along the way: gold-digging ants, Egyptian kings and the stand at Thermopylae.

A classic.

Why read it: Thucydides watched Athens and Sparta destroy each other over 27 years and wrote it down with a cold eye: plague, propaganda and a democracy talking itself into ruin.

A classic.

Why read it: Plato's four short dialogues on the last days of Socrates: charged, defending himself in court, refusing to escape, and drinking the hemlock. The best way into Plato.

A classic.

Why read it: Aristotle on what a good life actually is: character built by habit, courage as the middle between cowardice and recklessness, and friendship as part of happiness.

A classic.

Why read it: Aristotle's short handbook on tragedy and the oldest book on how stories work: plot, reversal, recognition and catharsis. Every writing guide since is a footnote to it.

A classic.

Why read it: Apollonius' epic of Jason and the Argonauts sailing for the Golden Fleece, and of Medea, the princess who falls for him and makes the quest possible.

A classic.

Why read it: Plutarch pairs famous Greeks and Romans (Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero) to ask what character does to a life. Shakespeare raided it for his Roman plays.

A classic.

Why read it: The Stoic handbook, taken down from the lectures of Epictetus, a former slave: sort what you control from what you don't, and stop suffering over the second kind. Pocket-sized.

A classic.

Why read it: Cicero's last book, written to his son as the Republic collapsed: what we owe each other, and why doing the right thing and the useful thing are never really in conflict.

A classic.

Why read it: Julius Caesar's own account of conquering Gaul, written in the third person and in plain prose, partly as propaganda for the people back in Rome.

A classic.

Why read it: Lucretius' long poem explaining Epicurus: a universe of atoms and empty space, no angry gods, and therefore nothing to fear in death.

A classic.

Why read it: Ovid's fifteen books of transformations, from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar becoming a star: Narcissus, Daedalus, Pygmalion and the rest. The great storehouse of myth.

A classic.

Why read it: Livy's history of Rome from its founding: Romulus and Remus, the rape of Lucretia, Horatius at the bridge and Hannibal crossing the Alps. Where Rome's stories about itself come from.

A classic.

Why read it: Tacitus on the emperors after Augustus (Tiberius, Claudius and Nero), and on a Senate that learned to flatter its way through tyranny.

A classic.

Why read it: Suetonius' gossipy biographies of the first twelve emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian: their habits, their vices and the omens before their deaths.

A classic.

Why read it: Horace's short lyric poems on wine, friendship, love and getting older, where carpe diem comes from. Written by the son of a freed slave who became Augustus' poet.

A classic.

Why read it: Juvenal's furious poems against Rome's corruption, the source of 'bread and circuses' and 'who will guard the guards?' Required reading for Grunt Force.

A classic.

Why read it: A short early Christian manual, probably from the late first century, on morals, baptism, fasting and the Eucharist. It was lost for centuries until a copy turned up in 1873.

A classic.

Why read it: Seven letters Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote while being taken to Rome for execution. Some of the earliest Christian writing on bishops, the Eucharist and church unity.

A classic.

Why read it: Irenaeus of Lyon's five-book refutation of the Gnostics, and an early defense of apostolic succession and the four Gospels.

A classic.

Why read it: Tertullian of Carthage, the first major Christian writer in Latin, was sharp and often sarcastic, and the first to use the word Trinity in Latin. His defenses of the faith and writings on Christian life.

A classic.

Why read it: Eusebius of Caesarea's history of Christianity from the apostles to Constantine, and the main source for much of what we know about its first three centuries.

A classic.

Why read it: Augustine's early commentary on Genesis, written against the Manichaean sect he had belonged to before his conversion.

A classic.

Why read it: Augustine's account of his restless youth and his conversion, written as a prayer. The first real autobiography, and the bridge from the ancient world to the medieval one.

A classic.

Why read it: Written in a cell while Boethius waited to be executed: Lady Philosophy visits and argues him out of despair. One of the most-read books of the Middle Ages.

A classic.

Why read it: The Old English epic of a hero who kills the monster Grendel, then Grendel's mother, and in old age a dragon. Seamus Heaney's translation reads like it was written yesterday.

A classic.

Why read it: The oldest major work of French literature: Charlemagne's rear guard ambushed in the Pyrenees, and Roland too proud to blow his horn for help until it's too late.

A classic.

Why read it: Thomas Aquinas's unfinished masterwork: thousands of questions on God, ethics and human nature, each answered only after laying out the strongest objections. The backbone of Catholic theology.

A classic.

Why read it: Chaucer's pilgrims tell stories on the road to Canterbury: knights, millers, a nun and the Wife of Bath. Bawdy, funny and the start of English literature.

Why read it: St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic, on the stretch of faith when God seems absent, and why he believed that darkness purifies the soul. The source of the phrase.

Why read it: William Tyndale's 1526 New Testament, the first printed in English and translated straight from the Greek. He was executed for heresy in 1536, and much of his wording lives on in the King James Version.

Why read it: Martin Luther's reply to Erasmus, arguing that the human will is enslaved to sin and salvation depends entirely on God. Luther counted it among his best work.

Why read it: John Calvin's systematic theology, which he kept expanding until 1559, and the foundation of Reformed Protestantism. Book IV covers the church and the sacraments.

Why read it: G.K. Chesterton's account of how he arrived at Christianity while trying to think his way past it. Witty and packed with paradoxes.

Why read it: Norman Geisler and Frank Turek build a step-by-step case, from the existence of truth and God to the reliability of the New Testament.

Why read it: Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi argues that the Bible shaped the West's ideas about human dignity, science, universities and freedom.

Why read it: Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears walk through the core Christian doctrines, from the Trinity and creation to the church and the end times.

Why read it: James White's defense of sola scriptura, the Protestant teaching that the Bible is the only infallible authority for Christians.

Why read it: Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie compare Catholic and evangelical theology point by point, setting out where the two agree and where they still differ.

Why read it: Gavin Ortlund, a pastor and historian, makes the case for Protestantism to people drawn toward Catholicism and Orthodoxy, arguing the Reformation recovered the early church rather than breaking from it.

Why read it: Trent Horn answers classic and modern Protestant objections to Catholic teaching, from the papacy and Mary to purgatory and justification.

Why read it: Trent Horn's plain case for the Catholic faith, from the existence of God and the Resurrection to the Church itself, for skeptics and for Catholics who struggle to explain what they believe.

Why read it: Trent Horn takes a Catholic approach to the Bible's hardest passages, from apparent contradictions to the violence in the Old Testament.

Why read it: Trent Horn argues that Christ saves through the Church he founded, so faith in Jesus and the Church's sacraments belong together.

Why read it: Trent Horn looks at the factions of "progressive" Catholicism and argues they depart from Catholic teaching on doctrine and morals.

Why read it: Trent Horn's guide to talking about abortion in everyday conversation: how to make the pro-life case calmly and answer the common counterarguments.

Why read it: Leila Miller and Trent Horn help Catholic parents explain the Church's teaching on marriage, sexuality and other moral questions to their kids.

Why read it: Trent Horn and economist Catherine Pakaluk explain why the Catholic Church has rejected socialism, and what its teaching says instead about property, markets and the poor.

Why read it: Charlie Kirk's last book, finished weeks before his death and published that December, on how keeping a weekly Sabbath changed his life and why he urged others to do the same.

Why read it: Chan Thomas argues that Earth's crust periodically slips and wipes out civilization, and that flood myths remember the last time. The CIA released a copy it had kept classified, which gave it a cult following; geologists don't accept the theory.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

My review: My favorite film. When William comes back to his blind father. That genuinely gets a tear out of me.

Why watch it: A peasant squire fakes a noble pedigree to compete in medieval jousting tournaments, all set to a 70s rock soundtrack. Heath Ledger's breakout, with Paul Bettany as a gambling-addicted Geoffrey Chaucer.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

My review: This is peak fantasy for me. It's a masterpiece and you don't need me to tell you that. However, I had my very first beer called Sobering Thought in the Green Dragon Inn. That's the 1% beer they drank on the actual set!

Why watch it: Peter Jackson shot all three films back to back in New Zealand, and every fantasy adaptation since gets measured against them. Watch the extended editions if you have the weekend.

The series: The Fellowship of the Ring (watched); The Two Towers (watched); The Return of the King (watched).

The Two Towers: The Fellowship splits up. Frodo and Sam follow Gollum toward Mordor, while Aragorn's company ends up defending Helm's Deep against an army of Uruk-hai.

The Return of the King: The war comes to Minas Tirith while Frodo and Sam make the last climb up Mount Doom. It won all eleven Oscars it was nominated for.

Rated 4.5 out of 5.

My review: I say the lines under my breath as this film plays in the Yule-Tide background. We've watched it every year without fail since we got the DVD. It's tradition!

Why watch it: Jim Carrey, under hours of green makeup, plays the Grinch, who sets out to steal Christmas from the Whos down in Whoville. Ron Howard's live-action take on the Dr. Seuss book.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This is a movie I can watch multiple times. It's funny and bad choices are meant to feel like bad choices. The smug irredeemable Kuzco getting redeemed only after intense humility is biblical.

Why watch it: A selfish young emperor is turned into a llama and has to rely on the peasant he wronged to get home. Disney's funniest film, and Kronk is why.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: Probably my favorite Dreamworks production. There's a few moments in this trilogy that just punch me in the gut.

Why watch it: A Viking kid who can't bring himself to kill a dragon befriends one instead. DreamWorks' best trilogy, and John Powell's score is worth the watch on its own.

The series: How to Train Your Dragon (watched); How to Train Your Dragon 2 (watched); The Hidden World (watched).

How to Train Your Dragon 2: Five years later, Hiccup and Toothless find Hiccup's long-lost mother and a dragon trapper building an army.

The Hidden World: Hiccup searches for the hidden homeland of the dragons while a hunter goes after Toothless.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This is a movie my Dad and I will quote at each other the moment anything tangentially related comes up that deserves a Monty Python quote.

Why watch it: King Arthur and his knights search for the Holy Grail on a budget so small they couldn't afford horses, so they bang coconuts together instead. Engineers have been quoting it for fifty years.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: Perfect Valentine's Day film. I love this love story. It's also hysterical!

Why watch it: A grandfather reads his sick grandson a story about a farm boy, a princess, a giant and a Spanish swordsman hunting the six-fingered man who killed his father. Nearly every line is quotable.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: DUN DUN DUNNA DUH DUH DUN DUN DUNNA DA DA DUH DUN DA!

Why watch it: A movie based on a theme park ride had no business working, then Johnny Depp showed up as Captain Jack Sparrow. The first one is a great swashbuckler, and the sequels get bigger and stranger.

The series: The Curse of the Black Pearl (watched); Dead Man's Chest (watched); At World's End (watched); On Stranger Tides (watched); Dead Men Tell No Tales (not watched yet).

Dead Man's Chest: Jack owes his soul to Davy Jones, and everyone wants the chest that holds Jones's heart.

At World's End: The crew sails to the land of the dead to bring Jack back for a last war against the East India Company.

On Stranger Tides: Jack and Blackbeard race each other to the Fountain of Youth.

Dead Men Tell No Tales: A ghost captain named Salazar escapes the Devil's Triangle to hunt Jack, while Will Turner's son searches for Poseidon's trident.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This was a nostalgia watch and formative for my childhood, my dog's namesake was Luke Skywalker. I had the lightsabers as a kid playing with my brother. The latter third of this collection was trash, but that doesn't spoil what it once was for me.

Why watch it: The Skywalker saga: nine films across three trilogies, all about one family. The original trilogy is the must-see, and the prequels were our childhood, memes and all.

The series: A New Hope (watched); The Empire Strikes Back (watched); Return of the Jedi (watched); The Phantom Menace (watched); Attack of the Clones (watched); Revenge of the Sith (watched); The Force Awakens (watched); The Last Jedi (watched); The Rise of Skywalker (watched).

The Empire Strikes Back: The Empire chases the rebels from the ice planet Hoth to Cloud City, Luke trains with Yoda, and it ends on the most famous twist in movies.

Return of the Jedi: Han is rescued from Jabba, the rebels attack a second Death Star, and Luke faces Vader and the Emperor. Ewoks included.

The Phantom Menace: Decades before A New Hope, two Jedi find a slave boy named Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine. Podracing, Darth Maul and Duel of the Fates.

Attack of the Clones: Ten years later, Anakin guards Senator Padmé Amidala while Obi-Wan uncovers a secret clone army, and the Clone Wars begin.

Revenge of the Sith: Anakin falls to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader as the Republic turns into the Empire. The best of the prequels.

The Force Awakens: Thirty years after Return of the Jedi, a scavenger named Rey and a runaway stormtrooper named Finn fall in with Han Solo and Chewbacca.

The Last Jedi: Rey finds Luke Skywalker hiding on a remote island while the Resistance runs from the First Order. The most argued-about film in the saga.

The Rise of Skywalker: Somehow the Emperor is back, and Rey, Finn and Poe race to find him before his fleet launches. The end of the Skywalker saga.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Not only was this a good movie, but it's philosophically relevant and really makes you think outside the movie when the premise hits you.

Why watch it: A grumpy weatherman wakes up to the same day in a small Pennsylvania town over and over again. Bill Murray's best, and the reason the title is now a phrase.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: My cousins and I will quote this movie at each other. Seeing that we all went through that 2000's teenage angst together!

Why watch it: An awkward Idaho teenager helps his new friend Pedro run for class president. Made for about $400,000 and quoted in every high school hallway of the mid-2000s.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: It's on our yearly Christmas rotation of must watch films. I can recite most of this film. It definitely makes the season start to feel like Christmas.

Why watch it: A human raised by elves at the North Pole goes to New York to find his real father. A Christmas movie people actually rewatch every year.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Weirdly enough I credit this movie with my initial interest in space, even though it had very little to do with space.

Why watch it: A boy in 1957 Maine befriends a giant robot from space while a government agent hunts it down. It flopped in theaters and became a cult classic.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This was good, good acting and good premise. It does get brought up in some philosophical discussions sometimes. I feel like it could've meant more to me though.

Why watch it: Truman Burbank doesn't know his whole life is a TV show, broadcast live around the clock from a giant dome. Jim Carrey's best dramatic role.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I read all the books and saw all the movies. It was a fun novel experience for me and the fam. It kicked off the young adult genre for me.

Why watch it: Katniss Everdeen volunteers for a televised fight to the death to save her little sister, and turns the Capitol's show into the start of a revolution. The YA adaptation that actually worked.

The series: The Hunger Games (watched); Catching Fire (watched); Mockingjay – Part 1 (watched); Mockingjay – Part 2 (watched); The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (watched).

Catching Fire: The Capitol sends Katniss and Peeta back into the arena with past winners, and this time the districts are watching. The best of the films.

Mockingjay – Part 1: Katniss becomes the face of the rebellion in District 13's propaganda war against President Snow.

Mockingjay – Part 2: The rebels march on the Capitol for the last fight.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: A prequel set decades earlier: a young Coriolanus Snow mentors a girl from District 12 in the tenth Hunger Games.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Good super hero, great message. It also helps strengthen my own philosophy that all authority comes with accountability.

Why watch it: Sam Raimi's trilogy with Tobey Maguire, the Spider-Man our generation grew up on. The train fight in Spider-Man 2 is still one of the best superhero scenes there is.

The series: Spider-Man (watched); Spider-Man 2 (watched); Spider-Man 3 (watched).

Spider-Man 2: Peter Parker is broke, behind in school and losing his powers, and then Doctor Octopus shows up.

Spider-Man 3: Venom, Sandman and a black suit that makes Peter strut down the street. The source of a hundred memes.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I probably saw the first movie over 20 times as it was the only movie we had on a house boat for like a week and we just put it on for background noise for the kids. Great movie, and the sequel was also fun.

Why watch it: A nervous clownfish crosses the ocean to find his son, with a forgetful blue tang named Dory along for the ride.

The series: Finding Nemo (watched); Finding Dory (watched).

Finding Dory: Dory remembers she has a family and sets off to find them, ending up inside a California marine institute.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Great moments, super meme-able. Has a couple of my favorite songs such as All Star, Hallelujah, Believer, Boots are made for Walking, Living la Vida Loca. Though, Farquaad did nothing wrong and ran a good kingdom by mostly any metric that's relevant. Shrek is a villain painted to be a hero if you divorce your feelings from the plot.

Why watch it: An ogre goes on a quest to rescue a princess so he can get his swamp back. It made fun of every Disney fairytale and won the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

The series: Shrek (watched); Shrek 2 (watched); Shrek the Third (watched); Shrek Forever After (not watched yet).

Shrek 2: Shrek meets Fiona's parents in Far Far Away, along with Puss in Boots and a Fairy Godmother with plans of her own. Plenty of people think it beats the first.

Shrek the Third: Shrek has to track down the next heir to the throne, a teenage Arthur, before he's stuck being king.

Shrek Forever After: A deal with Rumpelstiltskin drops Shrek into a world where he was never born.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Who doesn't love a good Batman film, and Heath Ledger's Joker is by FAR my favorite. Maybe I need to give it a re-watch to score it higher.

Why watch it: Christopher Nolan's Batman, played straight as a crime saga. Heath Ledger's Joker won a posthumous Oscar and is still the villain every comic book movie gets compared to.

The series: Batman Begins (watched); The Dark Knight (watched); The Dark Knight Rises (watched).

The Dark Knight: The Joker arrives in Gotham with no plan and no limits, and pushes Batman, Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent to breaking point.

The Dark Knight Rises: Eight years later, Bane takes Gotham hostage and a broken Bruce Wayne has to come back as Batman.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: It's great. The musical score is probably the most memorable out of all Disney films. I can play "In the Jungle" on the Ocarina.

Why watch it: Hamlet with lions: a young prince runs away after his uncle kills his father, and has to come home to take back the throne. Elton John's songs and Hans Zimmer's score, from the peak of Disney's 90s run.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Classic trilogy I used to watch with my family every now and again. Shame we don't have widely used hoverboards in the year 2026 irl.

Why watch it: Marty McFly takes Doc Brown's DeLorean back to 1955 and accidentally gets between his parents before they fall in love. Almost every setup in the first act pays off by the end.

The series: Back to the Future (watched); Back to the Future Part II (watched); Back to the Future Part III (watched).

Back to the Future Part II: Doc takes Marty to 2015 to fix his future kids' problems, and a stolen sports almanac rewrites 1985. Hoverboards and self-lacing shoes.

Back to the Future Part III: Marty goes back to 1885 to save Doc from being shot in the Old West. A western, with a steam train pushing the DeLorean to 88 mph.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I technically have watched them all in a movie marathon that I fell asleep for a few movies through, so it needs an actual watch. Growing up Seventh Day Adventist, I wasn't really allowed to watch this, but seeing the first movie a few times, I think it's good.

Why watch it: Eight films following Harry from his first letter to the last stand against Voldemort, with the same young cast growing up on screen over a decade. If you were born in the 90s, each one came out right around the age Harry was in it.

The series: The Sorcerer's Stone (watched); The Chamber of Secrets (not watched yet); The Prisoner of Azkaban (not watched yet); The Goblet of Fire (not watched yet); The Order of the Phoenix (not watched yet); The Half-Blood Prince (not watched yet); The Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (not watched yet); The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (not watched yet).

The Chamber of Secrets: Something is petrifying students, and the writing on the wall says the Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Harry's second year, with a basilisk and a flying car.

The Prisoner of Azkaban: A convicted murderer escapes Azkaban, apparently to find Harry. Alfonso Cuarón took over as director, and the series gets darker and better looking from here.

The Goblet of Fire: Someone enters Harry into the deadly Triwizard Tournament, and the final task ends with Voldemort back in a body.

The Order of the Phoenix: The Ministry won't admit Voldemort is back and sends Dolores Umbridge to take over Hogwarts, so Harry starts teaching his friends to fight in secret.

The Half-Blood Prince: Dumbledore walks Harry through old memories of Voldemort's past to find the secret of his immortality, while Draco Malfoy works on a mission of his own.

The Deathly Hallows – Part 1: No Hogwarts this time. Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the run, hunting Horcruxes across Britain while Voldemort takes over the Ministry.

The Deathly Hallows – Part 2: The Battle of Hogwarts and the final duel. It was the highest-grossing film of 2011.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

Why watch it: A young woman disguises herself as a man to take her father's place in the army. Comes with Eddie Murphy as a tiny dragon and 'I'll Make a Man Out of You'.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a cute play on emotions. Though I don't like the characters.

Why watch it: The emotions inside an eleven-year-old's head, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, try to steer her through a move across the country.

The series: Inside Out (watched); Inside Out 2 (not watched yet).

Inside Out 2: Riley turns thirteen, and Anxiety moves into headquarters with a few new emotions.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: A very fun movie with a dubious moral. Please don't lie to get ahead. If it does work in the real world it always comes at a cost and the debt will come knocking.

Why watch it: A failed rock guitarist poses as a substitute teacher at a prep school and turns his class into a band. Jack Black was made for it.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I liked it, it was fun, Jack Black is super expressive. I think the moral was good too that Po is enough.

Why watch it: A clumsy panda from a noodle shop is named the Dragon Warrior over the Furious Five, who trained their whole lives for it. Jack Black's best role, with beautiful fight scenes.

The series: Kung Fu Panda (watched); Kung Fu Panda 2 (not watched yet); Kung Fu Panda 3 (not watched yet); Kung Fu Panda 4 (not watched yet).

Kung Fu Panda 2: Po learns where he came from while stopping a peacock whose new cannon could end kung fu.

Kung Fu Panda 3: Po finds his birth father and a hidden panda village as a spirit warrior steals the chi of China's masters.

Kung Fu Panda 4: Po has to pick his successor as Dragon Warrior while a shapeshifting sorceress called the Chameleon raises his old enemies.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Does Ferris exist though? Feels like he's just a figment of the side-guy's imagination.

Why watch it: A high schooler fakes sick and takes his best friend and girlfriend on a day out in Chicago, with the principal on his trail.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Y'know the idiocracy and laziness that seems to be growing might make this movie prophetic.

Why watch it: A trash-compacting robot left alone on an abandoned Earth falls for a sleek probe named EVE and follows her into space. Its first act has almost no dialogue.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: The Genie carried this movie, but I didn't much care for Aladdin himself. I remember getting frustrated with his round-aboutness of his wishes.

Why watch it: A street thief, a princess, a magic lamp and Robin Williams as the Genie, doing every voice he can think of.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I had a lot of fun with this as a kid. Idk why but it made super heroes feel a little more accessible to craft up? I started drawing some comic doodles around this time of various heroes.

Why watch it: Superheroes have been outlawed, so Mr. Incredible is stuck in an insurance job until a secret mission pulls his whole family back in. Brad Bird's spy movie in a supersuit.

The series: The Incredibles (watched); Incredibles 2 (not watched yet).

Incredibles 2: Picking up right where the first ends, Elastigirl goes on a mission while Bob stays home with the kids, and baby Jack-Jack's powers start showing up.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I saw all these movies with my dad, and he really enjoys this stuff. I have a good time as well but if it weren't for my dad, I probably wouldn't go and see these. Blows my mind that Indy wasn't at all relevant in the first movie to the plot.

Why watch it: Harrison Ford as an archaeologist who keeps getting into fistfights with Nazis over ancient relics. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the adventure movie in its purest form.

The series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (watched); Temple of Doom (watched); The Last Crusade (watched); Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (watched); Dial of Destiny (watched).

Temple of Doom: A prequel set in India: Indy, a nightclub singer and a kid named Short Round take on a cult. The darkest of the five, mine cart chase included.

The Last Crusade: Indy and his father, played by Sean Connery, race the Nazis to the Holy Grail. The funniest of the films.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: It's 1957, the villains are Soviets and the relic is a crystal skull with ties to aliens. Fans are still sore about the fridge.

Dial of Destiny: An aging Indy goes after Archimedes' dial before a former Nazi scientist can use it. Harrison Ford's last time in the hat.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It was an adorable set of movies, and as the middle child who has been forgotten a couple of times, I find it relatable.

Why watch it: Kevin McCallister gets left behind when his family flies to Paris for Christmas, and defends the house from two burglars with paint cans and a blowtorch.

The series: Home Alone (watched); Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (watched).

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: Kevin gets on the wrong plane, ends up alone in New York and runs into the same two burglars.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's Action Slop. It's fun to see the fun effects. However with a cast this big and the movies making a cinematic universe, it's a little exhausting to keep track of. Mile wide and inch deep.

Why watch it: Marvel spent four years of solo films building up to one team-up. These four Avengers films are the spine of the Infinity Saga, and the solo movies fill in the gaps.

The series: The Avengers (watched); Age of Ultron (watched); Infinity War (watched); Endgame (watched).

Age of Ultron: Tony Stark builds an AI to protect the world, and it decides humans are the threat.

Infinity War: Thanos goes after the six Infinity Stones, and nearly every Marvel hero so far stands in his way. It ends on a snap.

Endgame: The survivors of the snap get one shot at undoing it. The payoff for twenty-two films, and for two years the highest-grossing film ever.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Honestly, the memories I have from the melody alone made this movie worth it for me. And the MEMES, that "life.. uh.. finds a way" have made plenty of memorable moments for me.

Why watch it: A billionaire clones dinosaurs for a theme park, and the power goes out during the preview tour. Spielberg's mix of animatronics and early CGI still looks better than plenty of films made since.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: Cute, fun, and bad moral lesson. It's got the same Shrek problem of "I'll risk everyone for the sake of my dream".

Why watch it: A rat who wants to be a chef teams up with a kitchen boy in a Paris restaurant, steering him by pulling his hair. The food critic's speech near the end is one of Pixar's best scenes.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: "I see dead people" is quotable, the twist predictable. The watch, fun.

Why watch it: A child psychologist tries to help a boy who says he sees dead people. Go in knowing as little as possible.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It got some laughs out of me.

Why watch it: Three friends wake up in a trashed Las Vegas suite with no memory of the night, a tiger in the bathroom and the groom missing.

The series: The Hangover (watched); The Hangover Part II (not watched yet); The Hangover Part III (not watched yet).

The Hangover Part II: The same thing happens again, this time in Bangkok.

The Hangover Part III: The Wolfpack goes after Mr. Chow, with no wedding this time.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: Good movie but not much of an impact on me.

Why watch it: A widower ties thousands of balloons to his house and floats off to South America, with a young Wilderness Explorer stuck on the porch. The first ten minutes are famous for a reason.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I saw it as a kid and thought it was cool, but I need to give it a re-watch.

Why watch it: A Roman general is betrayed by the new emperor, sold into slavery and fights his way back to Rome in the arena. Best Picture, and Best Actor for Russell Crowe.

The series: Gladiator (watched); Gladiator II (not watched yet).

Gladiator II: Years later, Lucius, the boy from the first film, is enslaved and forced into the Colosseum himself.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It was a cute fun movie. Glad I saw it, but wasn't super impactful on me.

Why watch it: Monsters power their city with children's screams, and a little girl named Boo gets loose in the factory. Sulley and Mike are one of Pixar's best double acts.

The series: Monsters, Inc. (watched); Monsters University (not watched yet).

Monsters University: A prequel: how Mike and Sulley went from rivals at scaring school to best friends.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's isekai for Americans. I think it was a fine movie but I have no desire to watch the sequels.

Why watch it: James Cameron's trip to the moon Pandora, and still the highest-grossing film ever made. The plot is simple, so watch it for the world, on the biggest screen you can find.

The series: Avatar (watched); The Way of Water (not watched yet); Fire and Ash (not watched yet).

The Way of Water: Jake Sully's family flees to Pandora's reef clans when the humans come back. Much of it was shot underwater.

Fire and Ash: The Sullys run into the Ash People, a hostile Na'vi clan, as the war over Pandora goes on.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I thought it was funny, and had a couple of good lines. I did see it young and didn't really get the relevance.

Why watch it: A kind, simple man from Alabama stumbles through thirty years of American history, from Vietnam to a ping pong tour of China, while waiting for Jenny. It won Best Picture.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I think this is one of those movies where the premise carries it more than the substance. The writing wasn't bad, it in fact had great moments with the pills/spoon/dodging. I just wasn't hooked enough to care to watch the sequels.

Why watch it: A hacker named Neo learns the world is a simulation run by machines, and that he might be the one to end it. Bullet time and kung fu wrapped around a question about reality people still argue over.

The series: The Matrix (watched); The Matrix Reloaded (not watched yet); The Matrix Revolutions (not watched yet); The Matrix Resurrections (not watched yet).

The Matrix Reloaded: Neo, Trinity and Morpheus try to save Zion from a machine army, and Neo meets the Architect who built the Matrix. The freeway chase is the highlight.

The Matrix Revolutions: The machines reach Zion, and Neo travels to the machine city to make a deal.

The Matrix Resurrections: Twenty years later, Neo is a game designer who doesn't remember being Neo. Lana Wachowski's sequel is half reunion and half joke about sequels.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: The first one was good, the other ones weren't so memorable to me. I remember playing I think an old N64 game based on Toy Story that was fun.

Why watch it: The first fully computer-animated feature film. Woody and Buzz grew up alongside us, and Toy Story 3, where Andy leaves for college, wrecked a generation of teenagers.

The series: Toy Story (watched); Toy Story 2 (watched); Toy Story 3 (watched); Toy Story 4 (not watched yet); Toy Story 5 (not watched yet).

Toy Story 2: A toy collector steals Woody, who learns he's a valuable collectible, while Buzz leads a rescue across town.

Toy Story 3: Andy is leaving for college, and the toys end up donated to a daycare run by a strawberry-scented bear. Bring tissues.

Toy Story 4: Bonnie makes a toy out of a spork named Forky, and a road trip reunites Woody with Bo Peep.

Toy Story 5: The toys face a new kind of rival: a tablet called Lilypad that Bonnie can't put down.

Rated 1.5 out of 5.

My review: I don't have much thoughts on this, it didn't strike me as a particularly good twist, and I hardly remember the actual plot beyond the premise of entering peoples dreams.

Why watch it: A team of thieves breaks into people's dreams, and this time they have to plant an idea instead of stealing one. Nolan's heist movie, with a spinning top ending people still argue about.

Rated 1.5 out of 5.

My review: I liked space as a kid, even went to space camp. E.T. just looked kinda gross, and it didn't really give or grow my appreciation for space.

Why watch it: A boy hides a stranded alien in his house and helps him phone home. The bike flying past the moon became the logo of Spielberg's company, Amblin.

Why watch it: A rich girl and a poor artist fall in love on the Titanic's maiden voyage. Eleven Oscars, and the highest-grossing film ever until James Cameron beat it himself with Avatar.

Why watch it: The Corleone crime family, and the youngest son who never wanted any part of it. The first two are regularly named among the best films ever made.

The series: The Godfather (not watched yet); The Godfather Part II (not watched yet); The Godfather Part III (not watched yet).

The Godfather Part II: Michael's reign as don, cut together with his father's rise in 1920s New York, with Robert De Niro as the young Vito. The first sequel to win Best Picture.

The Godfather Part III: An older Michael tries to make the family legitimate through the Vatican. The weakest of the three, but it closes the story.

Why watch it: A banker convicted of killing his wife spends two decades in Shawshank prison, where he finds a friend in Red and a way to keep hoping. It flopped in theaters, then found its audience on video and cable.

Why watch it: Two hitmen, a boxer, a gangster's wife and a mysterious briefcase, told out of order. Tarantino's breakout, full of lines people still quote.

Why watch it: A novice nun becomes governess to the seven children of a widowed Austrian naval captain on the eve of the Nazi annexation. Julie Andrews, Best Picture, and songs you already know.

Why watch it: A great white shark starts eating swimmers at a beach town before the Fourth of July, and three men go out to kill it. The original summer blockbuster.

Why watch it: An insomniac office worker meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden, and the underground fight club they start grows into something much worse. Read nothing about it first.

Why watch it: After D-Day, a squad is sent behind enemy lines to bring home a paratrooper whose three brothers have all been killed. The Omaha Beach opening changed how war movies are shot.

Why watch it: A teenager who grew up homeschooled in Africa starts at an American high school and falls in with the Plastics. Tina Fey wrote it, and on Wednesdays we wear pink.

Why watch it: Crops are failing across Earth, so a former pilot leaves his kids behind to search for a new home through a wormhole near Saturn. The physicist Kip Thorne worked on the science, and Hans Zimmer's organ score does the rest.

Why watch it: Detective Benoit Blanc, Daniel Craig with a thick Southern drawl, investigates the death of a rich mystery novelist whose whole family had a motive. Rian Johnson's modern whodunits, each one a standalone case.

The series: Knives Out (not watched yet); Glass Onion (not watched yet); Wake Up Dead Man (not watched yet).

Glass Onion: Blanc joins a tech billionaire's murder-mystery weekend on his private Greek island, and the game turns real.

Wake Up Dead Man: A disliked monsignor is found dead on Good Friday in a small upstate New York parish, and Blanc works the case with the young priest who looks most guilty, played by Josh O'Connor.

Why watch it: An FBI trainee asks an imprisoned cannibal psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, to help her catch a serial killer. One of only three films to win all five of the top Oscars.

Why watch it: A German businessman saves more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. Spielberg's Best Picture winner, shot almost entirely in black and white.

Why watch it: Mel Gibson's film of the last twelve hours of Jesus's life, spoken in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin. Graphic and hard to watch, and for over a decade the highest-grossing R-rated film in the US.

Why watch it: Three scientists lose their university jobs and start a ghost-catching business in New York. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and a giant marshmallow man.

The series: Ghostbusters (not watched yet); Ghostbusters II (not watched yet); Ghostbusters: Afterlife (not watched yet); Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (not watched yet).

Ghostbusters II: Five years later, the team gets back together when a river of slime turns up under New York.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Egon Spengler's grandkids find his old gear on a farm in Oklahoma.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Egon's family moves into the old firehouse just as an ancient ghost threatens to freeze New York.

Why watch it: Thirty years in the mob through the eyes of Henry Hill, who always wanted to be a gangster. Scorsese at his fastest and funniest.

Why watch it: Tom Cruise as Maverick, a hotshot Navy pilot at the Top Gun school, with a volleyball scene everyone remembers. The sequel came 36 years later and beat the original.

The series: Top Gun (not watched yet); Top Gun: Maverick (not watched yet).

Top Gun: Maverick: Maverick goes back to Top Gun to train pilots for a near-impossible mission, among them the son of his late wingman, Goose. The actors really flew in the jets.

Why watch it: A young man learns that the men in his family can travel back through their own lives, and uses it first for love and then for something bigger. Richard Curtis wrote it, with Bill Nighy as his dad.

Why watch it: Ron Burgundy, San Diego's top anchorman in the 1970s, feels threatened when a woman joins the newsroom. Will Ferrell at his most quotable.

The series: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (not watched yet); Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (not watched yet).

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Ron and the news team move to New York to work on one of the first 24-hour news channels.

Why watch it: Two best friends try to score alcohol for a party before they split up for college. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg started writing it as teenagers, and McLovin is why everyone remembers it.

Why watch it: A janitor at MIT turns out to be a math genius, and a therapist played by Robin Williams tries to get through to him. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the screenplay Oscar for writing it.

Why watch it: A death row guard in 1935 meets a gentle giant convicted of murder who seems able to heal people. Tom Hanks, from a Stephen King serial novel.

Why watch it: A cop goes undercover in the Boston mob while a mobster goes undercover in the police, and each is hunting the other. It finally won Scorsese Best Director.

Why watch it: Two detectives hunt a killer whose murders follow the seven deadly sins. David Fincher's bleakest thriller, with an ending everyone knows about.

Why watch it: How Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook in a Harvard dorm room and got sued by nearly everyone around him. Aaron Sorkin's script, with a Trent Reznor score.

Why watch it: Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man and meets Spider-People from other dimensions. It looks like a comic book come to life, and studios have been borrowing the style ever since.

The series: Into the Spider-Verse (not watched yet); Across the Spider-Verse (not watched yet).

Across the Spider-Verse: Miles follows Gwen Stacy across the multiverse and runs into a society of Spider-People who think his story has to go a certain way.

Why watch it: Two hours of car chase across a desert wasteland, with Charlize Theron's Furiosa as the real lead. It won six Oscars.

Why watch it: A swinging 60s spy is unfrozen in the 1990s to stop Dr. Evil. Mike Myers plays both, and the Bond spoofs get sillier with every film.

The series: International Man of Mystery (not watched yet); The Spy Who Shagged Me (not watched yet); Goldmember (not watched yet).

The Spy Who Shagged Me: Dr. Evil travels back to 1969 to steal Austin's mojo, and Mini-Me joins the family.

Goldmember: Dr. Evil teams up with a Dutch villain named Goldmember to kidnap Austin's father, played by Michael Caine.

Why watch it: A poor family cons its way into working for a rich one, one job at a time, until it all goes very wrong. The first non-English film to win Best Picture.

Why watch it: Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, who won't approve Henry VIII's divorce and pays for it with his life. It won Best Picture.

Why watch it: Jesuit missionaries in 18th-century South America try to protect a Guaraní community caught between Spain and Portugal. Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons, with Ennio Morricone's score, and the Palme d'Or.

Why watch it: A traveling handyman stops at a farm in the Arizona desert where a group of East German nuns are sure God sent him to build their chapel. Sidney Poitier became the first Black man to win Best Actor for it.

Why watch it: Two rival magicians in Victorian London try to ruin each other over one trick. Nolan's puzzle box, with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.

Why watch it: A boy who dreams of being a musician ends up in the Land of the Dead on Día de los Muertos and has to get home by sunrise. The ending gets everyone.

Why watch it: A teenage con man poses as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer while an FBI agent chases him across the world. Loosely based on Frank Abagnale's memoir.

Why watch it: A young jazz drummer at a top music school and the abusive teacher who pushes him until he bleeds. J.K. Simmons won an Oscar for the teacher.

Why watch it: Terrence Malick sets a 1950s Texas family's story, with Brad Pitt as a strict father, against the birth of the universe. Won the Palme d'Or.

Why watch it: Terrence Malick's film about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer executed for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler. Long, quiet and beautiful.

Why watch it: A good priest in rural Ireland is told in confession that he'll be killed in a week, for the sins of another priest. Brendan Gleeson in a dark comedy-drama.

Why watch it: Two forty-year-old men who still live with their parents become stepbrothers when those parents marry. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as overgrown children.

Why watch it: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost made three loosely linked British comedies, each one spoofing a genre and each with a Cornetto ice cream in it.

The series: Shaun of the Dead (not watched yet); Hot Fuzz (not watched yet); The World's End (not watched yet).

Hot Fuzz: A London supercop is transferred to a sleepy village with a suspicious number of accidents. A buddy cop spoof.

The World's End: Five old friends retry an epic pub crawl in their hometown and find it's been taken over by robots.

Why watch it: The owner of a run-down gym enters a dodgeball tournament to save it from Ben Stiller's corporate fitness chain. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

Why watch it: A sinister carnival led by the mysterious Mr. Dark rolls into a small Illinois town, and two boys discover it grants wishes at a terrible price. Disney's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel, with Jonathan Pryce.

Why watch it: Two failed cops go undercover at a high school, where the nerd is suddenly cool and the jock isn't. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum make a great pair.

The series: 21 Jump Street (not watched yet); 22 Jump Street (not watched yet).

22 Jump Street: This time they go undercover at college, and the movie spends most of its time making fun of sequels.

Why watch it: A cast of spoiled actors shooting a Vietnam war movie end up stranded in a real jungle. Tom Cruise's cameo as a foul-mouthed studio boss steals it.

Why watch it: Two divorce mediators crash weddings to pick up women, until one of them falls for a senator's daughter.

Why watch it: Liz and her boyfriend Malcolm spend their anniversary at his remote cabin, and something there starts coming for her. Osgood Perkins, director of Longlegs, shot it before The Monkey, with Tatiana Maslany in the lead; critics were split.

Rated 4.5 out of 5.

My review: This is one of the best coming of age stories of my generation. Korra though is just a Mary Sue and dragged the world building through the mud.

Why watch it: In a world where some people can bend the elements, the last Airbender wakes up after a hundred years frozen in ice and has to stop the Fire Nation. One of the best stories in animation, kids' show or not.

The series: Avatar: The Last Airbender (watched); The Legend of Korra (watched).

The Legend of Korra: Seventy years later, the next Avatar, a hotheaded Water Tribe girl, learns airbending in a city that's racing into the industrial age.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: The lore is DEEP on this and me and my Sister watched this religiously together. Memories, and stellar writing!

Why watch it: Twins spend the summer at their great-uncle's tourist trap in an Oregon town full of mysteries. Two seasons, with every clue planned from the start.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: It's hard to give this a rating because each episode is like its own movie and it can sway up and down a point from 4.5 to 2.5. The Bees is just Death Note btw.

Why watch it: A standalone story each episode about technology going wrong in the near future. Start with 'San Junipero' or 'White Christmas'.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Fast Food but more culturally relevant. It got a bit repetitive with the Trump stuff. Still beats most fast food type shows.

Why watch it: Four foul-mouthed fourth graders in a Colorado mountain town. Episodes are made in about a week, so they can mock whatever is in the news.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: I could quote this show all day. Integral to my childhood.

Why watch it: A sponge who flips Krabby Patties in Bikini Bottom, and his best friend Patrick. The first three seasons are half the internet's reaction images.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: It's well written and very real other than the horseplay of it all. It does capture that living in a dying society feeling that my generation has been feeling. Probably why nostalgia core is so popular.

Why watch it: A washed-up horse who starred in a 90s sitcom tries to matter again in Hollywood. It starts as a cartoon comedy and becomes one of TV's best shows about depression.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I don't play League of Legends, but the first season of this was good.

Why watch it: Two sisters end up on opposite sides of a war between a rich city and the undercity below it. Set in the League of Legends world, though you don't need to know the game, and it looks like a painting in motion.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I only saw the first season and honestly that's all I'll ever need to see. It was well written and gives me Battle Royale vibes. It's a sort of horror, and I like scary stuff.

Why watch it: Hundreds of people buried in debt compete in deadly versions of children's games for a huge cash prize. Korean, and worth the subtitles.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: The Rugrats Movie was peak, though the show still gave me a lot of entertainment and memories as a kid. Reptar is the goat!

Why watch it: Babies go on big adventures in the backyard while the grown-ups don't notice. Angelica was the villain of our childhoods.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This is my first "The Office" styled show. It was fun and I had a good time watching it.

Why watch it: Leslie Knope runs the parks department of a small Indiana town with endless optimism, next to Ron Swanson, who'd like government to disappear. It gets great in season two.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: The early seasons had me at the edge of my seat waiting for the new episodes. I lost interest though.

Why watch it: A drunk mad scientist drags his anxious grandson on adventures across the multiverse. Dark, gross and smarter than it lets on.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: The world is so rich, and I'm sure the books are even more amazing. I wish the show runners didn't flub the resolutions so hard with the latter seasons.

Why watch it: Noble houses fight over the Iron Throne while something far worse gathers beyond the Wall. The first four seasons are as good as TV gets, and people are still arguing about the ending.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: It was a fun story to see how power corrupts.

Why watch it: A high school chemistry teacher with terminal cancer starts cooking meth to provide for his family, and slowly turns into someone they won't recognize. Five seasons with almost no filler.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I enjoyed the hijinks in this show! Trying to get those jawbreakers. Man was I disappointed when I had my first irl jawbreaker. They're cumbersome and too sweet for me for too long.

Why watch it: Three boys run scams on the other kids in their cul-de-sac to buy jawbreakers. They never work.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a Fast Food show. Not bad.

Why watch it: Hank Hill sells propane and propane accessories in a small Texas town. Gentle, grounded and funnier than it looks.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's dorky and cute. Sheldon is a meme. I don't have much to say on it.

Why watch it: Four Caltech scientists and Penny, their neighbor across the hall. Twelve seasons, and one of the most-watched sitcoms of its time.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I think it was pretty fun while I watched it. I got up to Negan. I just don't feel the need to continue watching it.

Why watch it: A sheriff's deputy wakes from a coma into a zombie apocalypse and ends up leading a group of survivors. For a few years in the early 2010s it was the biggest show on TV.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's Fast Food like the Simpsons and only marginally different. Fun, but meh.

Why watch it: Peter Griffin, his family and a talking dog in Rhode Island, mostly as an excuse for cutaway gags.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: The Fastfood of TV shows.

Why watch it: The longest-running scripted primetime show in America. Seasons three through nine are the ones people quote.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I didn't like this as a kid, but I was easily frightened as a kid.

Why watch it: A terrified pink dog protects his elderly owners from the monsters that keep turning up in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Creepier than a kids' show should be.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: This was the older kid cartoon when it was airing. I couldn't relate. Maybe it's good though.

Why watch it: A kid with a football-shaped head lives in his grandparents' city boarding house. Helga's secret crush on him is Nickelodeon's best running joke.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I didn't really *get* this as a kid. I'd watch it and be entertained, but wasn't integral.

Why watch it: A boy genius hides an enormous lab behind his bookcase, and his big sister Dee Dee keeps getting in.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I didn't care for it so much when it was on, but it was fun to say MOJOJOJO!

Why watch it: Three kindergarten superheroes made of sugar, spice and Chemical X defend Townsville from Mojo Jojo.

Why watch it: Six friends in their twenties in Manhattan, mostly hanging out at a coffee shop. It's been on in the background of every millennial's life.

Why watch it: The Scranton branch of a paper company and its manager, Michael Scott, who badly wants everyone to love him. Push past season one.

Why watch it: The show about nothing: Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, four selfish New Yorkers obsessing over small things.

Why watch it: A New Jersey mob boss starts seeing a therapist for his panic attacks. The show that kicked off the prestige TV era.

Why watch it: A boy vanishes in 1983 Indiana, and his friends find a girl with psychic powers who escaped a government lab. Built out of 80s Spielberg and Stephen King, D&D campaign included.

Why watch it: The Baltimore drug trade, seen from a new corner of the city each season: the street, the police, the docks, city hall, the schools and the newspaper. Slow to start and worth it.

Why watch it: A plane crashes on a strange island, and the survivors find polar bears, a smoke monster and a hatch in the ground. Watch it for the characters, since not every mystery gets an answer.

Why watch it: Will Smith plays a kid from West Philadelphia sent to live with his rich aunt and uncle in Bel-Air. You already know the theme song.

Why watch it: In 2030, Ted tells his kids the very long story of how he met their mother. Barney Stinson is legendary; the ending splits people.

Why watch it: A pizza delivery boy is frozen on New Year's Eve 1999 and wakes up in the year 3000. Matt Groening's other show, written by a room with math degrees.

Why watch it: A 1960s Madison Avenue ad man living under a stolen identity, with the decade changing around him.

Why watch it: Teenagers hanging out in a Wisconsin basement in the late 1970s while Red Forman threatens to put his foot somewhere unpleasant.

Why watch it: A gifted kid stuck in a loud, broke family of brothers, with Bryan Cranston as the dad years before Breaking Bad.

Why watch it: Easy Company of the 101st Airborne, from training through D-Day and Bastogne to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. Ten episodes from Spielberg and Tom Hanks, based on the real men.

Why watch it: A rich family loses everything when the father is arrested, and the one sane son tries to hold them together. The jokes build across episodes, so it rewards a rewatch.

Why watch it: Years before he was Breaking Bad's sleazy lawyer, Saul Goodman was Jimmy McGill, a small-time con man trying to go straight. Some fans rank it above Breaking Bad.

Why watch it: J.D.'s years as a young doctor at Sacred Heart hospital, told through his daydreams. Funny until it suddenly isn't.

Why watch it: Five terrible people run a dive bar in Philadelphia. The longest-running live-action sitcom in American TV history.

Why watch it: Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson in modern London. Each season is three feature-length episodes.

Why watch it: A goofy, brilliant detective and the stone-faced captain of a Brooklyn precinct. The Halloween heist episodes are the high point.

Why watch it: Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker. The version of Batman a lot of people still call the best.

Why watch it: The 1986 nuclear disaster and the scientists who fought the Soviet system to get the truth out. Five episodes that stay with you.

Why watch it: A Mandalorian bounty hunter takes a job delivering a small green child and ends up protecting him instead. Star Wars as a space western.

Why watch it: Based on the video game: a smuggler escorts a teenage girl who may be the cure for a fungal pandemic across a ruined America. The third episode is the one everyone talks about.

Why watch it: A boy and his shapeshifting dog in the Land of Ooo. It starts silly and slowly reveals the ruined world underneath.

Why watch it: A disbarred lawyer forms a study group at a community college, and every few episodes the show turns into a parody of another genre. The paintball episodes are the place to start.

Why watch it: Seinfeld co-creator Larry David plays himself and turns every small social rule into a fight. Mostly improvised.

Why watch it: A media mogul's four children fight over who gets the company. Awful people trading very funny insults.

Why watch it: A samurai is flung into a future ruled by the demon Aku and searches for a way back to his own time. Genndy Tartakovsky's show is nearly silent and gorgeous, and a fifth season finished the story in 2017.

Why watch it: Robin, Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy and Cyborg protect Jump City. The original anime-styled series with the bigger story arcs, before Teen Titans Go!

Why watch it: An American college football coach is hired to manage an English soccer team, a sport he knows nothing about. Kind without being soft.

Why watch it: Tina Fey runs a sketch comedy show at NBC, with Alec Baldwin as her boss. More jokes per minute than almost anything else on TV.

Why watch it: A shy programmer invents a compression algorithm and tries to turn it into a startup. Engineers watch it like a documentary.

Why watch it: Tommy Shelby's gang takes over Birmingham after World War I, razor blades sewn into their caps, to a modern rock soundtrack.

Why watch it: A rich family goes broke and has to move to a small town they once bought as a joke. A slow start with a big payoff.

Why watch it: A crew of smugglers on a small spaceship takes whatever work it can find: a western set in space. Canceled after one season, then wrapped up with the film Serenity.

Why watch it: Office workers have their memories surgically split between work and home, so their work selves never get to leave the building. The best show about a job since The Office.

Why watch it: A mockumentary about four vampire roommates on Staten Island, spun off from the Taika Waititi film.

Rated 5.0 out of 5.

My review: My favorite anime, and I've been on this ship for YEARS. Is it Stockholm Syndrome or beautiful world building and unforgettable characters? Watch over 1000+ episodes! Feels like a lot until you've caught up, then it feels like it wasn't enough.

Why watch it: Monkey D. Luffy, a pirate with a rubber body, sails the Grand Line looking for the legendary treasure called the One Piece. Over a thousand episodes long, and fans swear the long arcs pay off.

Rated 4.5 out of 5.

My review: Low-key, my first cartoon crush. That and the story is so charming and its ability to romanticize the normalcy of every day life kindles something within me.

Why watch it: A thirteen-year-old witch moves to a seaside town for her year of training and starts a flying delivery service, until her magic starts to fade. Miyazaki's gentlest film about growing up.

Rated 4.5 out of 5.

My review: This is my go to recommendation for anyone who hasn't watched anime before. It's a charming story that shows how much magic this medium can bring.

Why watch it: A girl wanders into a bathhouse for spirits and has to work there to free her parents, who've been turned into pigs. Hayao Miyazaki's best-known film, and it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: I can only speak to the dub, but the gamer lingo in this and the action of the main character ooze of someone who is actually a gamer and knows how we act and talk. This show is extremely fun to watch and I'm the target audience.

Why watch it: A gamer who loves terrible, broken games finally takes on a hugely popular, polished VR game, and plays it like a speedrunner.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This is what Death Note and Code Geass could've been. The plays here are smarter and there's no super natural cop outs. Each victory feels earned.

Why watch it: Sherlock Holmes's nemesis as the lead: young William James Moriarty plots crimes against the cruelty of Victorian England's class system.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: Once this show steps on the gas pedals, it doesn't let up. It just gets more and more insane as time goes on. The stakes get higher and the magic gets wilder! It just doesn't give up!

Why watch it: Two orphans dream of becoming the Wizard King, one a prodigy and one born without any magic at all. A classic long-running shonen that gets better as it goes.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This one is a bit of a recent cultural nexus of memes, but it's also beautifully animated and it's discourse on demons is philosophically poignant.

Why watch it: An elf mage who outlived her hero party sets out again to understand the humans she barely got to know. A quiet fantasy about time and grief.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: This show was at the core of my weeb phase that I watched with my siblings. I even rewatched it all in my adulthood. I used to do the hand-signs for fireball, chidori, and shadow clone.

Why watch it: An outcast ninja kid with a fox demon sealed inside him wants to become his village's leader. Long, with plenty of filler, and the source of the Naruto run.

The series: Naruto (watched); Naruto: Shippuden (watched).

Naruto: Shippuden: A few years older, Naruto comes home from training as the Akatsuki start hunting the tailed beasts, his included.

Rated 4.0 out of 5.

My review: Both entries into this art were great by my standards. I think the philosophy of this show is deep and impactful. It also plays on my favorite Father & Son motif.

Why watch it: Two brothers try to bring their mother back with alchemy, lose far too much, and set out to get their bodies back. The first adaptation caught up with the manga and went its own way.

The series: Fullmetal Alchemist (watched); Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (watched).

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: The retelling that follows the manga to its real ending. Fans often rank it the best anime ever made.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This shows the importance of mindset in a very clear way. It's a great moral study, and I heavily recommend it!

Why watch it: In a kingdom inspired by imperial China, a scorned consort candidate uses forbidden magic to swap bodies with the court's beloved maiden, who turns out to thrive in the villainess's place.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Suspense. This show does it extremely well. You'll want to binge it.

Why watch it: A walrus taxi driver's passengers in a city of animals all turn out to be tied to a missing girl. A sharply written mystery that pays off every detail.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This show tries to teach you science facts as you're watching and I appreciate this immensely as someone who clicks on random YouTube videos to learn random things that I'll never practice.

Why watch it: Thousands of years after all humanity was turned to stone, a science-obsessed teenager wakes up and sets out to rebuild civilization from scratch.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This is a show I think about once or twice a year. There's so much packed into it and often I think about its premise, and how we're heading towards something that may resemble this.

Why watch it: In a future Japan where a citywide system scans everyone's likelihood of committing a crime, a rookie inspector hunts criminals with guns that only fire on the guilty. Cyberpunk with real questions about free will.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: I feel genuinely bad for the main character, he's a broken individual who's getting by with putting on a brave face and trying with reckless abandon.

Why watch it: A teenager pulled into a fantasy world discovers that dying sends him back to an earlier moment, remembering everything that went wrong. Isekai where every death costs something.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: While not the progenitor of the Isekai genre, it had an effect on Isekais that came after it. The world building is solid, and while there are some questionable themes in this show, I can't deny that it tells an effective story.

Why watch it: A shut-in who dies in Tokyo is reborn in a world of magic and resolves to live his second life properly. Often credited as the start of the modern isekai wave, with a deeply flawed lead and lavish animation.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This sports anime is motivational. It has such an impact on whether or not I'd go to the gym the following day. It makes me want to get up and move!

Why watch it: A short kid obsessed with volleyball teams up with a gifted, prickly setter on a high school team that used to be great. The sports anime people who don't watch sports anime love.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: If you can stomach the child abuse, it tells a very real story that has a good chance of making you cry. I'm not a virtuoso, but I'm sure this would hit me harder if I was.

Why watch it: A piano prodigy who stopped being able to hear his own playing after his mother died is dragged back to music by a free-spirited violinist. Bring tissues.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Everything is not what it seems. This has really good writing, and has very humanized characters. Don't let the magical girl-ness of it all dissuade you.

Why watch it: A cute-looking magical girl show where the wish-granting contracts come with a terrible price. Twelve episodes that rewrote the genre.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: This did time travel right and Okabe is an inspirational character. In fact, each character in this show has so much charm. It also had great stakes and constantly had me questioning my perspective on what I thought I knew in the show.

Why watch it: A self-proclaimed mad scientist accidentally builds a microwave that sends texts into the past. The first half is slow, and then it becomes one of the best time-travel stories anywhere.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: To me this was the better Death Note. The games played by the main character got to get to a grander scale and the intellectual turn-about was of higher caliber.

Why watch it: An exiled prince gains the power to command anyone once and leads a rebellion against the empire that conquered Japan. Chess-match plotting with giant robots.

Rated 3.5 out of 5.

My review: Not only is it well animated but the gusto to bring to life even the small moments to show the impact that has on an unreachable being like Howl is dignifying and honorable. It's a really good message.

Why watch it: A young hatmaker is cursed into an old woman and takes a job cleaning the walking castle of a vain wizard named Howl.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I only watch this show if I'm starving myself for a multi-day fast. Which makes this show feel like a 4.0 when I'm watching it! The food is so beautifully animated!

Why watch it: A man summoned to a fantasy world gets a seemingly useless skill: online grocery shopping. It turns out legendary monsters love Japanese supermarket food.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: The early seasons is like Dr. Stone with an Isekai person bringing their know-how into a new world. The later seasons are more political. Both I find enjoyable.

Why watch it: A book-loving woman is reborn as a sickly girl in a medieval world where books are a luxury, so she sets out to make them herself.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Are you tired of when the romance anime ends after they get together? This one doesn't and it's heart warming! It's also very referencable!

Why watch it: A popular girl and a gloomy classmate discover each other's hidden sides outside school. A gentle romance that skips the will-they-won't-they.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This is a tragedy masked as a power fantasy. Imagine being overcome with emotion even for a little bit, but having the world force calmness upon you. Are your actions your own, or are you a witness to your life unfolding before you.

Why watch it: A player stays logged in as his favorite game shuts down and finds himself trapped as its undead overlord, with fanatically loyal servants. Isekai from the villain's side.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This character is overpowered, but still manages to get challenged. It does swing into the political for some series of episodes where it's mostly just talking and deals. I joke with my brother that they're saving the funding for the fight scenes.

Why watch it: A salaryman killed in a stabbing is reborn as a slime in a fantasy world and starts building a nation of monsters. Cozy, overpowered isekai.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This show is morbidly adorable, and the inner court to a Chinese emperor is actually a really good setting for drama. Who would've thunk!

Why watch it: A sharp-witted apothecary sold into the imperial palace as a servant quietly solves poisonings and court mysteries. Palace intrigue with a terrific lead.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: If you enjoyed intellectual game anime, and are in the mood for a romance, this does fit the need pretty well. These love games of trying to get the other to confess first is heart warming while being cognitively stimulating.

Why watch it: Two student council geniuses are in love and too proud to confess, so each schemes to make the other say it first. A romantic comedy played like a war.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: 6 episodes of "What the hell did I just watch". Which, being about a boy going through puberty- super apt! The musical score is also ridiculous which fits so perfectly for this show.

Why watch it: A bored kid's suburban life ends when a Vespa-riding alien hits him with a bass guitar and robots start coming out of his head. Six chaotic episodes about growing up, set to the Pillows.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: To me this is a classic. Very fluid animation, and a collection of well written short stories that accompany them to their journey to find the Sunflower Samurai. I watched this a few times back in high school. It was shared among the boys dorm.

Why watch it: A wild swordsman, a stoic ronin and a girl looking for the samurai who smells of sunflowers wander Edo-period Japan to a hip-hop soundtrack. From Cowboy Bebop's director.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: Stay AWAY from the Fandom! The show is good, and it's as or more compelling than most super hero flicks. I found it fun!

Why watch it: In a world where most people are born with superpowers, a powerless boy inherits the power of the greatest hero and enrolls at a school for heroes. The defining superhero shonen of the 2010s.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I think this story hits on something most media likes to stray away from these days. That would be the violent thoughts of men that get subdued and turned religious. The seasons of this show tell a full story but each season might attract different viewers. I like the later seasons, but the early ones were fun.

Why watch it: A boy fights for the Viking warband led by the man who killed his father, waiting for his chance at a duel. It starts as a revenge story and becomes one about what it takes to give up violence.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: It's a fun show and it's constantly recommended to me. I'm recently on episode 90ish, and this is my 2nd time getting this far. Maybe I'll skip the filler.

Why watch it: A teenager who can see ghosts becomes a Soul Reaper and fights the monsters called Hollows. Along with Naruto and One Piece, one of the big three of 2000s anime.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I watched season 1 of this and it's hilarious because it plays on the tropes of other shonen anime and it's parody quality is phenomenal. Had me laughing!

Why watch it: A hero who can beat anyone with a single punch is bored out of his mind. A superhero parody whose first season has some of the best fight animation around.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: It's a fun film, and you can't go wrong with Ghibli. Tangentially, I also remember getting scared as a kid by some Totoro creepy pasta and that kinda puts a different spin on this movie than a normal viewer would get.

Why watch it: Two sisters move to the countryside and meet the forest spirits living nearby, including a giant, fluffy one named Totoro. A gentle film with no villain, and Totoro became Studio Ghibli's logo.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I like this one as art piece and it has good morals in it. The only complaint I have is that I wasn't super invested into the main character for some reason.

Why watch it: A cursed prince gets caught in a war between forest gods and an iron-mining town, and Miyazaki won't make either side the villain.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: I watched this around the same time as Game of Thrones and appreciated that the world started out feeling real and that no-one was safe. Then it later evolved into a Biblical Allegory if you look hard enough and poses some serious questions that I enjoyed.

Why watch it: Humanity hides behind giant walls from man-eating giants, until one breaks through. The show keeps changing what you think it's about.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This was the show that got me to think that Anime was more than just Pokemon and Cartoons. I like the pseudo-intellectual cat and mouse of it all, the show makes you feel very smart.

Why watch it: A top student finds a notebook that kills anyone whose name he writes in it and sets out to rid the world of criminals. A cat-and-mouse game with a genius detective named L.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This was the trend setter for a lot of shonen anime going forward. I watched it on variable 2-5x speed (sometimes 16x) so I can get to the good parts. So I'm guilty for not actually watching the full stuff.

Why watch it: Goku, a monkey-tailed boy with superhuman strength, sets out to find the seven wish-granting Dragon Balls and grows up through one martial-arts tournament after another. Nearly every shonen since has borrowed from it.

The series: Dragon Ball (watched); Dragon Ball Z (watched).

Dragon Ball Z: Goku and his friends defend Earth from aliens, androids and a pink blob named Majin Buu, in fights that last for episodes. The heart of Toonami.

Rated 3.0 out of 5.

My review: This was peak when I was a kid, to this day I have most Pokemon memorized. We had the VHS tapes of season 1 when I was a kid. Though the rest of the series is so formulaic that I can't see myself actually watching all 1000+ episodes.

Why watch it: Ash Ketchum and Pikachu leave Pallet Town to become Pokémon Masters. The first season, Indigo League, is the one we all watched before school.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This was a wild ride, but I watched it on the floor tv with my friend. Those memories make this show great. It has a lot of WTF moments.

Why watch it: In a post-apocalyptic Japan eaten away by rust wind, a mushroom-shooting archer and a young doctor hunt for a legendary cure.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Mixed Media does have me thrown for a loop, it's like 10 shows mixed into one that all converge. Some sections are better than others. It's like Trail Mix.

Why watch it: In a world where heroes' powers come from public trust, the top heroes are ranked by it and meet in a tournament every two years. A Chinese-Japanese co-production mixing 2D and 3D.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This was the first non-mainstream anime I watched. Someone on Gaia Online recommended it to me. I think it's good but I know I could be biased.

Why watch it: In 2100, a scientist's daughter fuses with an energy being in a lab accident. Years later, working as an agent for hire, a second being splits from her body as a girl of its own. A Bones sci-fi drama.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I need to return to this show, I just haven't in a while. I have an inside joke with my friend Brad who we call Bread about this show.

Why watch it: A boy raised by three undead guardians in a ruined city learns everything they know, then sets out into the world. Earnest, old-fashioned fantasy.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This anime got me out of a slump of unemployed nihilism. I'm a sucker for a show that can romanticize the mundane.

Why watch it: A workplace comedy at a family restaurant in Hokkaido, staffed by a sword-carrying waitress, a waitress who punches men on sight and a boy who loves small things.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: You know the version I'm talking about. This has my random humor down pretty well and my sides can only handle one episode at a time. That being said, the writing is GOD AWFUL and that's its purpose!

Why watch it: A short horror anime about kids fighting ghosts, best known for its English dub, whose cast turned it into an anything-goes comedy.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a parody of anime in general, like One Punch man. Imagine if Harry had no magic but was buff as all hell. The comedy is fun!

Why watch it: In a world where magic decides everything, a boy with none enrolls at a magic academy and solves every problem with muscle. Harry Potter meets One-Punch Man.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: The magic system in this show is intricate and really fricken cool. That being said, the jury is still out on how the story will turn out.

Why watch it: A girl who dreamed of magic learns that it's drawn, not born, and becomes a witch's apprentice. Adapted from one of the most beautifully drawn fantasy manga.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I'm interested to see how this story plays out. It's like a mix of Political Plays and Battle Royale.

Why watch it: At an elite school where classes compete for points that decide their futures, a quiet student in the lowest class plays everyone. Mind games in a school uniform.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I really like playing social deception games with my friends. So when a show has an OP protagonist that has to keep a secret or risk death, it's a very fun storyline for me.

Why watch it: A 32-year-old who cleans up dead kaiju for a living, and once dreamed of fighting them, suddenly gains the power to turn into one.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I'm a sucker for a good time travel story. I'm also a sucker for trying with reckless abandon. This does both.

Why watch it: A dead-end twenty-something suddenly travels back to his middle school years and tries to save his ex-girlfriend by climbing the ranks of a delinquent gang.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a bit Ecchi, but for people who are big on individualism this is a great romance to watch.

Why watch it: A loner who wants to craft traditional hina dolls gets recruited by his popular classmate to sew her cosplay outfits. A wholesome romcom about craft.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a little heavy handed with the Jung philosophy and not everything makes total narrative sense. What is real vs. what is fiction. I can appreciate the distillation of a hard-to-grasp philosophy though.

Why watch it: In a domed city built on obedience, an inspector investigates androids infected with a virus that makes them self-aware. Slow, dense, philosophical cyberpunk.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I endearingly call it "Edgy Soccer". It's a good show, pretty motivational for a sports anime. Though if you're not used to anime tropes, it can come off a little cringe.

Why watch it: Japan locks 300 high school strikers in a facility to forge the world's most selfish striker. Soccer as a battle royale.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This show has you empathizing with an alien/foreign mind. The main character isn't human, he's more like an infant. There's something about that perspective shift that's illuminating.

Why watch it: An immortal being sent to Earth takes the shapes of those it meets and learns to be human through a string of losses. From the author of A Silent Voice.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a weird one but if you find yourself to be in perpetual covid, it does inspire you to take the first step and live your life.

Why watch it: A college dropout who hasn't left his apartment in years blames a conspiracy, until a mysterious girl decides to cure him. A funny, uncomfortable and honest show about isolation.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This one hits home for me. I have more than my fair share of dead friends.. Though it does blow things out of proportion in only ways anime can.

Why watch it: Childhood friends who drifted apart reunite when the ghost of the friend who died young appears with a wish. Eleven episodes and a reliable tearjerker.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I was assigned to watch this since I'm notoriously bad at crying at movies or even shedding a tear. My high school friend group wanted me to watch this and the afterstory. While a tear jerker, I did not cry, though most would.

Why watch it: A delinquent high schooler helps a shy girl revive the school's drama club. Its sequel, After Story, is famous for wrecking viewers.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Aliens. Ghosts. Espers. It's a mash up of just phenomena that lies beyond the veil. It's weird in ways that are hysterical.

Why watch it: A girl who believes in ghosts and a boy who believes in aliens find out both are real, and very hostile. Fast, strange and beautifully animated by Science Saru.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's a good watch, it does introduce itself as sort of a casual watch, but this space Western has some themes that need a rewatch to fully digest. Other than that, it's a fun watch.

Why watch it: Vash the Stampede has a sixty-billion-double-dollar bounty on his head, yet refuses to kill anyone. A goofy space western that turns serious.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: The premise carries the show, if you want the best experience for Sword Art Online, watch the abridged version by Something Witty Entertainment. That's a parody my brother and I quote to each other at least once a month.

Why watch it: Ten thousand players are trapped in a virtual reality MMO where dying in the game means dying for real. The show that made trapped-in-a-game a genre.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Season 1, 2, and 3 were fun. The idea of multi-lineage storylines is something you don't often see. AND THE MEMES. Amazing. Cinema. I just got a bit tired with the "Stands".

Why watch it: Generation after generation of the Joestar family fights vampires and, later, rivals with ghostly fighting spirits called Stands. Flamboyant, loud and the source of endless poses and memes.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's fun, funny, and grotesque. If your stomach can handle it, it's a great comedy.

Why watch it: A broke teenager fused with his chainsaw-devil dog becomes a government devil hunter, mostly for the free meals. Gory, grimy and darkly funny.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: I saw the first season of this and it's really cool for a show and the main duo have a fun dynamic going on between them. It's also inspirational that Mob doesn't just rest on his laurels of psychic powers and wants to work out to get his body in shape.

Why watch it: A shy middle schooler with world-ending psychic powers just wants to be normal, and works for a con-artist exorcist. From the creator of One-Punch Man.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: It's Shonen edgy teen action. Which is fun, and I would've enjoyed it more as a teen than I get from it now.

Why watch it: A high schooler swallows a cursed finger to save his friends and ends up sharing his body with the King of Curses. Some of the best fight animation of recent years.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Beautifully made, storyline is a bit predictable but otherwise the characters I enjoy. Inosuke is best boy.

Why watch it: A boy joins the Demon Slayer Corps to find a cure for his sister, who has been turned into a demon. The animation, especially episode 19, is what made it a hit.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Classic Shonen, though the Nen system is super intricate beyond what they show in the show and that was fun to theory craft with as an adult.

Why watch it: A boy sets out to pass the deadly Hunter Exam and find the father who left him. It starts as an adventure show, and the Chimera Ant arc goes somewhere much darker.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: Beautifully animated and a good love story to watch. I've made a memory with this film.

Why watch it: A Tokyo boy and a country girl start waking up in each other's bodies, until the swaps suddenly stop. For a few years it was the highest-grossing anime film ever.

Rated 2.5 out of 5.

My review: This was charming and the opening song is a bop. I'd call it beautiful, and deep (with a side of wacky). Though I didn't have much take away from it.

Why watch it: Broke bounty hunters drift around the solar system in 2071, set to a jazz soundtrack. A good first anime for people who don't watch anime.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: Fast food anime, but man... you know you're getting old when you empathize this deeply with an old man that just wants peace.

Why watch it: A nearly forty-year-old illustrator wakes up in a monster-filled forest in another world, with access to a huge online shopping site that delivers anything.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's fast food anime, but if you've been around long enough it plays to parody the tropes often seen in this genre, and executes it better than most.

Why watch it: A man who loved vending machines is reborn as one in a fantasy dungeon. He can't move, so a strong-armed girl carries him around.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's weird but funny. Middle Aged Man gets Fountain of Youth'ed and is tasked with protecting a girl the same age as his daughter. There's a lot of funny and uncomfortable moments.

Why watch it: A veteran assassin is stung by a strange wasp, shrinks into a fourteen-year-old, and has to go back to middle school. From the creator of Kuroko's Basketball.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's a fun watch, not much of an impact though.

Why watch it: A goddess summons a hero with incredible stats who refuses to take any risks, grinding and over-preparing for everything. A comedy that skewers isekai.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's a dumb show, but it's trash I enjoy watching and the info in it is real. It has good tips for working out.

Why watch it: A schoolgirl joins a gym to lose weight and gets swept up in its muscle culture. A comedy that teaches real exercises every episode.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: It's a fairly vanilla anime with an intense first episode, so you also hate the GOBLIIIINZZ. Grim Jack did an abridged of it and my brother and I quote the abridged whenever GOBILINSZS come up.

Why watch it: An adventurer who only hunts goblins, the weakest monsters, because he knows how dangerous they really are. Dark fantasy with a brutal first episode.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I'm upset that they ditched this to make a 2 season show for a popular side character. It was fun though.

Why watch it: A cheerful boy with a djinn in his flute and a young merchant clear dungeons across an Arabian Nights world. An adventure that grows into politics and war.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: Power trip fantasy with good animation. That's all it was trying to be.

Why watch it: The weakest hunter in a world of monster-filled dungeons gets a mysterious system that lets only him level up. Adapted from a huge Korean web novel and webtoon.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: EXPLOSION! Other than being kinda pervy, the main character is fairly accurate to how I feel most people would react to being Isekai'ed.

Why watch it: A shut-in reborn in a fantasy world ends up with the most useless party imaginable, starting with the goddess he dragged along. The definitive isekai parody.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: I watched the original and then returned to the remake for this one. The storyline is good and for people into zodiacs, it's a vibe.

Why watch it: An orphaned girl moves in with a family whose members turn into animals of the zodiac when hugged. The 2019 remake adapts the whole manga, heavier parts included.

Rated 2.0 out of 5.

My review: The first season was good. It's all about the escape after realizing the horror they're living in. The other seasons diverge from this so I feel no need to continue beyond where I left off. I think a bleak ending suits this show too well anyways.

Why watch it: Orphans at an idyllic home discover what they're really being raised for and plan an escape. The first season is the tight thriller fans rave about.

Rated 1.5 out of 5.

My review: Middle aged man gets sent back to WWII as a magical girl, and has a vendetta against God. It's fun but I don't connect with the characters much.

Why watch it: A ruthless salaryman is reborn as a little girl in an alternate-history world war and becomes a terrifying mage officer just to survive.

Rated 1.5 out of 5.

My review: I saw the first season, and it's edgy teenager slop. The opening song is a banger though.

Why watch it: A college student turns half-ghoul after a deadly date and has to survive in hiding among flesh-eating monsters. Dark urban horror; the first season is the strongest.

Why watch it: Teenagers pilot giant robots against mysterious Angels, and the show turns into a study of depression. Watch the film The End of Evangelion after episode 26.

Why watch it: In a rebuilt Neo-Tokyo, a biker gang leader's best friend gains psychic powers the military can't contain. Every frame is hand-drawn, and it's the film that put anime on the map in the West.

Why watch it: In a grimy city that sorcerers use for practice, a man with a lizard's head hunts the sorcerer who cursed him. Bloody, funny and unlike anything else.