I've worked as a conservator at a small regional historical society for about nine years, which is a slower and more finicky job than it sounds, most of my week is humidity logs and deciding whether a donated diary gets rehoused this quarter or next. Before that I did two years in a university special collections department, which is where I got genuinely obsessive about condition, provenance, and the specific edition of a thing rather than just the text of it, a habit that followed me straight into how I write about book covers here.
I read hard science fiction and older philosophy of science the way some people watch true crime, and I play the kind of board games that eat a whole Saturday, on purpose. I'm a conservator at a regional historical society outside Asheville, which mostly means I spend my week deciding how much a nineteenth-century ledger can tolerate before it needs to go behind glass instead of staying on a shelf where people can actually touch it. I started this site because I kept writing long, opinionated notes about books and games for myself and wanted somewhere to put them that wasn't a Goodreads box nobody reads past the first line. No affiliate links, no newsletter popup, no star rating I don't actually mean.
Where I am: Asheville, North Carolina
Currently rereading Anathem for a possible rating revision. Send help, or don't, I've made my peace with the first 300 pages this time.
What's here
Book reviews, board game reviews, and personal essays. No schedule, no affiliate links, nothing sponsored. I write about a book or a game after I've actually finished it and have something to say, which is why the dates on here are irregular.