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/reviews/the-thursday-murder-club/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-thursday-murder-club/Four residents of a retirement village meet weekly to pick over cold cases for fun, until an actual murder lands in their laps. Cozy, sharp, and easy to pick back up mid shift.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/marcus-is-moving-to-days/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/marcus-is-moving-to-days/The guy who started all of this is switching to day shift in the fall. I'm happy for him. It's going to change more than I expected.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-housemaid/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-housemaid/A woman with a record takes a live-in housekeeping job for a family that isn't what it looks like from the outside, and the twists come fast and cheap.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-full-moon-is-not-a-real-thing/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-full-moon-is-not-a-real-thing/Every night crew has a superstition. Ours is the moon calendar taped to the supply closet, and nobody will admit how much we actually believe it.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/project-hail-mary/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/project-hail-mary/A guy wakes up alone on a spaceship with amnesia and the fate of Earth riding on him figuring out chemistry problems, and somehow it's a comfort read.Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/spirit-island/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/spirit-island/A cooperative colonization resistance game with real depth and real teeth, but one that needs an uninterrupted block of hours I almost never actually have.Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/klara-and-the-sun/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/klara-and-the-sun/An artificial friend watches a sick child from a store window and then from her bedroom, trying to figure out how to save her. Quiet, careful, and it wrecked me a little.Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/please-stop-asking-for-my-craziest-story/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/please-stop-asking-for-my-craziest-story/It's the first question almost everyone asks once they find out what I do, and it's the one question I actually can't answer honestly.Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/ticket-to-ride/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/ticket-to-ride/A train route building classic that's easy to teach and easy to pick back up, just not one that sticks with me after the box closes.Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/point-salad/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/point-salad/A quick vegetable card drafting filler that resets fast enough to play three times in a row without anyone getting antsy, which on break is exactly what you need.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/codenames/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/codenames/A word association party game that somehow works for four people or fourteen, which makes it the single most reliable pick for a break room full of tired coworkers.Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/anxious-people/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/anxious-people/A failed bank robber takes a group of apartment viewers hostage and it turns into the gentlest, saddest, funniest interrogation transcript I've read all year.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/piranesi/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/piranesi/A man lives alone in a vast house of statues and tides, keeping meticulous records of a world that isn't what it first appears to be.Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-crew-quest-for-planet-nine/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-crew-quest-for-planet-nine/A cooperative trick taking game in a deck of cards and an envelope, that quietly turns into one of the hardest puzzle campaigns on the shelf.Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/three-years-on-permanent-nights/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/three-years-on-permanent-nights/I picked permanent nights on purpose. It still took about a year to actually adjust to what I'd picked.Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/just-one/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/just-one/A cooperative word guessing game with zero setup and zero learning curve, which on a night shift is basically the whole ballgame.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-silent-patient/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-silent-patient/A woman stops speaking after shooting her husband, and the psychotherapist assigned to her case gets a little too invested. Fast, twisty, and I saw the shape of the ending coming from a ways off.Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/how-the-paperback-shelf-started/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/how-the-paperback-shelf-started/The break room reading swap wasn't anyone's idea. It just accumulated, the way most good habits at work do.Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-chair-by-the-window/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-chair-by-the-window/One chair, one lamp, one shelf. It took a while to admit that's all I actually needed.Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/sagrada/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/sagrada/A dice drafting stained glass window game that looks incredible on the table but punishes you hard if you have to walk away mid draft.Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/pandemic/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/pandemic/The coop disease game a coworker dragged to the nurses' station on slow overnight shifts is the reason I own a board game shelf at all.Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/circe/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/circe/A goddess's exile turned into the best kind of slow-drip read, the kind that rewards you for coming back instead of punishing you for leaving.Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/verity/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/verity/A struggling writer takes a job finishing a bestselling author's series and finds a manuscript in the house that she was probably never meant to read.Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/azul/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/azul/A tile drafting game that survives being set down mid turn better than almost anything on my shelf, which for a night shift nurse is the whole ballgame.Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-drive-home-at-seven/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-drive-home-at-seven/Twenty two minutes, same route every time, and it's the closest thing I have to a ritual.Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-night-we-lost-to-our-own-argument/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-night-we-lost-to-our-own-argument/We were winning. Then Marcus and I got into a genuinely heated debate about optimal turn order and let the board fall apart underneath us.Sun, 14 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-sanatorium/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/the-sanatorium/A detective on leave attends her brother's engagement party at a converted tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, and people start disappearing during a snowstorm.Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/reviews/wingspan/https://reidsnotes.com/reviews/wingspan/Beautiful bird engine builder that plays great solo or two player and gets a little quieter, socially, once the table fills up.Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/what-i-do-after-a-bad-one/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/what-i-do-after-a-bad-one/I'm not going to describe the shift. I'm going to describe the two hours after it, which is the part I actually have some control over.Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahanhttps://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-guy-who-brought-pandemic/https://reidsnotes.com/essays/the-guy-who-brought-pandemic/I've mentioned the coworker who dragged a ziploc bag of cardboard tokens into the break room a few years ago. Never actually named him. Here's Marcus.Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalReid Callahan