Thread by @funranium

Okay, I'll bite. Have at, varlets.

This is one of the books in Phil’s D&D Reference Library that got me an arch eyebrow from the FBI agent doing my background investigation.

When I explained what it was for he said “Your games must be *fascinating*.” And outed himself as gamer.

This is for a sister laboratory project that never happened.

I have given so many copies of this book away I’ve lost count. It may be one of the best books depicting how pseudoscience arguments never change, just the subjects of them.

Yes, I actually own this. Picked it up off the shelf at Neutral Zone in Mt. View when it was new. Apparently the owner of the store was rather upset I bought it.

This is an economics/history treatise by an Oxford professor. It is the most potent insomnia cure I know, as I don’t think I ever managed to read more than two pages at a time. But, BY CROM, you will know how the ideal feudal State was supposed to function.

This is one of my last remaining artifacts from my parents’ old tropical fish store.

If there’s a book I’ve recommended as much as Dark Light this decade, it’s this. And it’s all @cstross’ fault.

I got detained at SLC because a concerned mother saw the top words of the title of this book and reported me to security.

This is how my Australology studies into all things foolish and Australian began.

This is the best non-@GreatDismal Cyberpunk novel I’ve ever read.

This is the book that taught me there is a musical which I actually like.

I thought this setting was a very interesting and genuinely new idea for D&D. Shame they dropped it like a dead skunk.

I received this first edition as a ridiculous gift from @edzitron.

This would be the other book that caused the FBI agent to stare long and hard at my D&D Reference Library.

If you haven’t been on the Seattle Underground tour, do so. If you aren’t local, then get this book, read it, and then go looking for the dirtbag history of your town that are every bit has hilarious.

I found this abandoned inside a newspaper machine in Boulder Creek back when newspaper delivery was my dirty college job.

I’ve seen hundreds of copies in used bookstores since. I wonder how many people actually read it. It’s an interesting history.

One of the rarer books in my White Wolf/Black Dog Games collection. It is extremely well done. It is also, accordingly, very hard to read.

When people asked what Antarctica was/is like, I always recommend this. I regret that going to Afghanistan lead to Nick Johnson’s suicide because man did he have a keen eye and caustic wit.

Just...read it. And then despair that the only law more intractable than maritime is riparian. Some of those precedents date back to Imhotep.

Collect ‘Em All!

In my head, this book has been turned into a procedural cop drama as one gun a week is taken from the room and the mystery of the murder associated with it is solved.

Get me on the horn, HBO. @vrunt can do this.

If you’ve ever wondered why explanation conversations with me often seem like weaved networks of information where I always seem to start at the Romans...

Well, this was one of my favorite shows as a kid. It may just come to me naturally.

While these aren’t books, they do live on my shelves. They were a choice purchase when visiting Exeter and I wish more agencies did what the Ordnence Survey pulled off here.

This movie captured my childhood imagination in a way that Star Wars never quite managed to. Maximillian and STAR still are stuck in my head.

Which is why I took care of it and still have it all these years later.

My first, very well loved copy that I’ve been reading since I was 8.

Another one from the D&D Reference Library. You see, *eventually* the players of the Pleistocene Adventures were going to find someone that made that first step to urbanization.

And their major memetic technological innovation: gods

This is probably the fourth copy of this I’ve owned, the previous three having been reduced to a tattered mess from use. This, accordingly, is the one I bought right before I stopped playing.

I like to think of this as a lost Conan novel. I really liked the concept of magic as a consumable resource introduced here. Willing to to guess this book helped inspire the Dark Sun D&D setting.

The only Tom Clancy novel on my shelves to survive the Great Paperback Purge of 2016.

(guest starring Law & Order Special Beverage Unit by @Brandon_Bird)

Another bit of the D&D Reference Library. Thanks to this book, one year I gave @twistedcat some lead sheets and stylii (nails) as a DIY Roman Curse Kit.

This was one of three books gifted to me by British Nick after our time in Antarctica on the grounds of “You. You need this. This very specifically speaks to your sense of humor and horror.”

He wasn’t wrong. @cstross has been keeping me entertained and thinking for 15 years now.

When we went to visit Richmond, @l_c_black insisted I needed this. She was correct.

I was told I needed this too by @l_c_black. She was correct again.

Moral Of The Story: do what @l_c_black tells you to do

Were you feeling happy today? Well, we can fix that with this “Wraith: The Oblivion” alternate era setting.

Wraith is almost unplayable but their books are an absolute delight to read, though some like this one will hit like a ton of bricks on the ol’ feels.

Along with Debt and Dark Light, this my the third part of the “You Are Aware How Humans Work, Right?” Trilogy.

My favorite of the old AD&D settings.

While the logical conclusion of this essay is that chain gangs are the best punishment, it’s nice to see someone in the 18th century come up with the best refutation of the death penalty.

I backed the ridiculous level of the Kickstarter just so I could get this art book. The game was just a nice bonus.

I read this so many times it’s falling apart. Also since all of Brian Herbert & KJA’s crap disagrees with this, I’ve decided their books are the ones that are wrong.

One of my several copies of this book. I’m particularly fond of the old Corgi Press art, but I wasn’t gonna pass this one up when I saw it.

At some point my mother got very tired of my dinosaur phase as a kid and decided that my interests should move beyond the K/T Boundary.

The variety of mammal weirdness in the last 65Ma is an eternal delight.

Because the D&D Reference Library needs multiple sources on cannibalism. (The previous book is also in the library for monster design)

One of the first classes I took at UCSC was an upper dividsion course called Philosophy of Science.

I got a B- and the professor told me that my outlook is more historian than philosopher. He wasn’t wrong.

Don’t find the Great War depressing enough? DON’T WORRY, I can make it worse!

This was recommended to me by my History of Science & Technology professor’s wife when we visited them in England. Seems her father figured in this book a bit and for the longest time you couldn’t actually buy a copy of this in the UK.

This had been abandoned, sitting on the floor (ice) of the library in Old Pole Station. I saved it from being entombed under 25m of ice, as they imploded the station several years later.

Yes, I own this too. It’s part of the Phil Has A Grudge Against Time Travel Plots Collection.

I believe you’ll find that this title is self-explanatory.

This book of beautiful aquatic nightmares is by local artist @MikeManoArt who I met because of the Alternative Press Expo. It was a kickstarter project and I got this little extra bit of art tucked into it.

I solemnly swear that I have never been part of an Urban Beautification Campaign.

Been *SORELY* tempted, though.

The things you find cleaning out dead men’s desks...

My parents bought me this at the Mt. St. Helens ranger center gift shop when we visited shortly after the eruption. As you can see, I loved it thoroughly.

I rescued this out of the pile of library donation books that grew next to my dad’s bedstand. This was my first encounter with R.R.

Another one of the rarities from the White Wolf/Black Dog Games Collection. Again, Wraith is a great game to read as literature but damn hard to play. There were things in this book THAT SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO HAVE MAIN RULES.

Playing a specter tho? Hell no. Those are NPCs

I mean, you wouldn’t want to do it unsafely. That’s just silly.

Another part of the D&D Reference Library. Very important for the Pleistocene Adventures campaign. In conjunction with...

...this. You better believe I knew what was going on in the physical and metaphysical worlds of the Pleistocene Adventures.

This gem is from the University of California Department of Eugenics, circa 1936. I stole this from a nascent white power youth gang. The White Aryan Resistance liked to seed new gangs with books like this.

Now there’s 4chan...

Considering I got to help make this happen, I am extremely proud of it. Including an excerpt which effectively makes it part of the Phil Has A Grudge Against Time Travel Plots Collection.

While my favorite thing to do with the new World of Darkness core set is to just play normal humans, “victim characters” as the old Beyond the Supernatural game called them, this is my favorite of the other product lines.

There’s an atomic promethean. C’mon.

In my opinion, the best non-Dune book Frank Herbert wrote and my reference point for all generation ship stories.

This is one of the most valuable textbooks I bought as an undergrad. One of the few I continue to go back to years later.

The second of the trio of books British Nick gave me after Antarctica. There is no gothic horror book that horrors gothically more than this. No need to write any more. Tim Powers took care of it.

Read Shelley’s Frankenstein and then this back to back.

When you read this on a train, and people recognize what it is, they will sit far away from you. Perhaps even go to the next car.

At least that was my experience in Italy.

America’s foremost artist in the Dilbertean oeuvre, @Lubchansky, made this masterpiece for all humanity.

Because @warrenellis loved us so much that he went to the dark corners of the Internet in the 1990s and then returned to make sure we knew the words “macroherpetophile” and “Godzilla bukakke”.

Might as well add this one to the list since it’s been in the background of so many shots of other books.

I miss getting to read new hilarity from @AllieBrosh. It’s been a few years and I hope she’s doing alright out there.

I picked this up at @blarkytopia’s strong recommendation and was not disappointed. The ending is quite the gutpunch.

If you aren’t already enjoying the adventures of @zeecaptein perhaps you should. romanticallyapocalyptic.com

Another entry from the D&D Reference Library. Fear the coming of the pantheon destroyers who bring the One True God, player characters. Especially you, cleric.

I own several CRC handbooks. Brodsky is one of those books that people who wrangle detectors basically MUST have.

I bought this copy of Quicksilver in Christchurch at Scorpio Books they day after I got back from Antarctica. I then spent my entire third day back in civilization, in my hotel room, reading it, to the shock of my fellow winterovers.

A photo collection from the Viking lander series. I inherited this from my friend’s library after he got hit by a bus.

The only thing better than reading about @petridishes doing embarrassing things is to do them with her.

Since we all appear to be CRC-likers in this crowd, I do have a few different ones. There’s hardly a point in printing this one again with things changing so quickly.

Reading the rules for prisoners at Alcatraz is a little disheartening when you realize that they had better workplace freedom and work-life balance on The Rock than most modern jobs.

I look forward to someone asking me to read bedtime stories to their children as this looks good at first glance.

This was a gift from an ex’s father. I don’t want the ex back, but I do miss her dad.

A little treat from after my tour of the Nevada Test Site.

Sorry...Nevada National Security Site. Call it whatever you like.

Because of this meme I have discovered that @AntTree_Art & I aren’t the only people that own this book. Despite the “Over 2 Million Copies Sold!” until @Diraccone revealed himself today, I’d never met another.

In short, Nuke Porn.

This game is effectively an improv exercise which can be goddamn hilarious with a good crew.

Which reminds me, @pablohidalgo we do need to figure out a way to make a Fiasco night happen.

This is a tale of corruption. The subsequent “Blood of the Lamb” trilogy, which is a FASCINATING retelling of the story of Jesus, is actually connected back to this book and its sequel.

“Fungus-effigy of Yourself Sex Garden” is definitely a scene I’ll remember forever.

I got this at what was, once upon a time, The Bookstore LLNL Shopped At.

They didn’t have a vault type room as such but for a local bookstore their security to protect customer purchasing habits was surprising. Sadly, they’ve long since closed.

At one book signing I presented this to @cstross, which gave him a bit of a shock as I don’t think he’d seen one out in the wild before.

He signed Angleton’s statement as “That’s only thing in this book I *actually* wrote.”

Do you crave wasteland adventure? Fallout New Vegas not good enough for you and you need some fresh air?

Got ya covered.

I highly recommend keeping one of these in your car so you can play one of my favorite road trip games “What The Hell Is In That Truck?”

I found this tucked in the crack behind my bed at South Pole Station. Considering weight restrictions, you tend not to bring books down.

When I shared this with @neilhimself, he got a weird smile and said “I like the idea that my books lurk, waiting for people in Antarctica.”

Of all my textbooks from undergrad, this is the one that has seen the most use, been most borrowed, with the most effort exerted to get it back afterward.

As @Diraccone said, statistical and error analysis is *SO* important.

I swear I am still making coffee and steins and not just taking pictures of books, but jeez do a lot of you seem to enjoy my library and commentary.

This was available free for the taking at the National Cryptology Museum. I am a sucker for things printed for free by the federal press. They don’t tend to be very durable but are easy enough to rebind.

I was given the Chilton edition of Dune by @blarkytopia on the grounds that it is very funny to have a copy of my favorite book published by the people who do all the car repair manuals.

The historical setting books were remarkably useful. For example, this is where I first learned how the Roman naming system worked as a kid and exactly how not competent I was at pronouncing Gaelic.

Also a part of the Phil Has A Grudge Against Time Travel Plots Collection, but it’s iffy. There never was much in the way of plot to Choose Your Own Adventure books in the first place.

I have some regrets I got rid of my Time Machine CYOA book series.