About Reid's Notes

Six years an ER nurse, the last three on permanent night shift (7p-7a) at a Level II trauma center outside the city. Reads and plays in short interrupted windows, sometimes six minutes at a stretch before a call bell or a rig comes in, so anything that punishes you for stopping doesn't survive on his shelf. Came to reading through the ER's break-room paperback swap, and to games through a co-worker who wouldn't stop bringing Pandemic to the nurses' station on slow nights.

I work nights in the ER at a hospital outside Pittsburgh, and most of what I read or play happens in the gaps between codes, not on some tidy schedule off the clock. I got into board games because a slow Tuesday overnight is a real thing and someone left a copy of Pandemic in the break room. I keep notes on everything the same way I chart everything else. Habit, not hobby.

What this is

I chart things for a living, so I chart things off the clock too. Every entry gets a rating, but the rating comes last, after the actual notes, not before. If I can't tell you why something got a 3 instead of a 4, it doesn't get posted yet.

Nothing here was comped. I don't take review copies from publishers or game companies, and I don't post about things I bailed on partway through. If I stopped reading something at page sixty, that's a fact about my week, not a review.

Every so often something in the feed isn't a review at all, just a note about a shift, a coworker, the drive home at 7am when the sun's already up and you haven't slept. It's here because it actually happened and I wanted somewhere to put it down, same as the charts.

No newsletter, no affiliate links, nothing tracking what you click. I built this to have a record for myself, and other people reading it is a side effect, not the point.

Get in touch

Found something wrong, or have a book or a game you think would survive a night shift? Email me at reid@reidsnotes.com. I don't check it constantly, but I do check it.