An ER night-shift nurse's personal notes on the books and board games that survive being picked up and put down mid-shift — short entries, real ratings, written between codes.https://reidsnotes.com/en-UShttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/rules-dispute-triage/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/rules-dispute-triage/A rules argument at the table isn't that different from a bay full of patients who all say they're fine. Somebody still has to go first.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/mage-knight-board-game/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/mage-knight-board-game/A puzzle box disguised as an adventure game, and the only way it fits into a night shift is solo, one card at a time.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/vantage/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/vantage/An open-world co-op nobody's actually played yet, mostly preorder buzz and metal coin addons, so this is early impressions, not a verdict.Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-drive-down-route-51/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-drive-down-route-51/Twenty two minutes between the hospital and my apartment, and most nights that's the only twenty two minutes that belong entirely to me.Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/race-for-the-galaxy/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/race-for-the-galaxy/Small icons, a real learning curve, and a game that only clicks once you can actually read your own cards without squinting.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-information/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-information/Gleick's history of information theory is not a bedtime book, which I found out the hard way at 3am with a drum-language chapter I had to re-read twice.Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/why-my-phone-doesnt-get-to-read/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/why-my-phone-doesnt-get-to-read/I own a phone capable of holding every book I'll ever read. I still don't read on it, and I've stopped apologizing for why.Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-word-for-world-is-forest/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-word-for-world-is-forest/Short, angry, and built for interrupted reading, though the dream-time stuff took me two passes to actually understand.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/how-i-pick-a-book-for-a-shift/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/how-i-pick-a-book-for-a-shift/I don't pick books the way most people do. I triage them, sort by what kind of interruption they can survive, and match that against what kind of night it's probably going to be.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-fifth-season/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-fifth-season/A book that tells you 'you' are the mother whose son is already dead, and makes that grammar the whole engine of the grief.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/echopraxia/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/echopraxia/Watts writes like he's daring you to keep up, and most nights I couldn't, but the book stayed with me anyway.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/invisible-cities/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/invisible-cities/Kublai Khan never leaves his palace and Marco Polo describes fifty-five cities that may all secretly be the same one, and somehow that's the most restful book I've read in years.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/blood-rage/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/blood-rage/Losing well is half the game here, which is a weird thing to type at four in the morning but it's true. Drafting decides more than the dice ever will.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-fate-of-the-fellowship/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-lord-of-the-rings-fate-of-the-fellowship/Not a review, not yet, just the announcement chatter for a Pandemic designer's take on Middle Earth, and why I'm already circling it.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-vending-machine-on-3/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-vending-machine-on-3/Nothing medical here. Just the parking garage, a vending machine that only takes exact change, and what the hallway looks like at 4am when nobody's using it.Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-grace-of-kings/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-grace-of-kings/Silkpunk epic with airships and a herbalist who talks about dandelions like they're a whole philosophy, plus a general I wanted three times as much of.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-night-vast-almost-worked/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-night-vast-almost-worked/Three of us, one cave, one dragon, and a shift that wouldn't stay quiet long enough to finish the game.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/spoilers-are-not-the-crime/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/spoilers-are-not-the-crime/I'll take a spoiled ending over a slow reveal any night of the week. My actual pet peeve is people who treat withholding information as the same thing as good writing.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/i-was-wrong-about-7-wonders/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/i-was-wrong-about-7-wonders/I called it a spreadsheet with cardboard on top the first time I played it. Took about a year of six minute windows to figure out I'd triaged it wrong.Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/blood-on-the-clocktower/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/blood-on-the-clocktower/Werewolf finally fixed, mostly by making dying not the end of your night. Someone still has to carry the grimoire though, and that someone rarely gets thanked.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/android-netrunner/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/android-netrunner/A dead LCG that a community kept breathing for free out of spite and love, and it's still the sharpest two-player bluffing game I own. You have to memorize half a card pool to really play it though.Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/7-wonders/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/7-wonders/A drafting game that finishes before the next call bell, which on a night shift is most of the argument for it.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/vast-the-crystal-caverns/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/vast-the-crystal-caverns/Five different rulebooks stapled into one box, and the one time it clicked it was worth every page. Getting five people back at the table for a second try is the hard part.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/we/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/we/Zamyatin got to the surveillance-state dystopia before Orwell did, and wrote it as a math obsessive's diary falling apart in real time.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/Full Gloomhaven shrunk into something that fits a break room tray table, rules and all, except the rules aren't actually in the box.Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/teaching-priya-vast-went-badly/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/teaching-priya-vast-went-badly/A new grad's first slow overnight, I handed her the Cave in Vast: The Crystal Caverns thinking it'd be the easy seat. It was not the easy seat.Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/six-minutes-is-a-real-unit-of-time/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/six-minutes-is-a-real-unit-of-time/I used to think of six minutes as nothing, a gap between real things. I don't think that anymore, and I can tell you the exact night that changed.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-windup-girl/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-windup-girl/Bangkok after the oil runs out, powered by hand cranked springs, and a fruit called ngaw I still think about more than I should.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/foreigner/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/foreigner/Cherryh drops you into a language you don't speak yet and refuses to explain it, which is either the smartest thing this book does or the reason half the reviews I read gave up by page sixty.Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/A short, strange little essay about the tick's whole world being three signals, and I kept thinking about it on the drive home.Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahan