Today is December 23rd. For many people, myself included, this will be the last day of work before a week-long holiday.
I don’t know about you, but I like to spend my holiday time doing three things:
1) Spending quality time with friends and family
2) Reflecting on the previous year and planning for the next one
3) Kicking back and relaxing with some good books, movies, TV shows, and other fun distractions!
I hope you have planned some time in the next week or two to do some serious relaxing. If not, re-consider – this should be your recharge time!
To help you properly prepare for your relaxation time, I have created a list of books, TV shows, games, and music that you should consider reading/watching/playing/.etc. They brought/bring great joy to my heart, and I think you may enjoy them too:
Fiction Books
Fantasy – A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
This is book one of Martin’s A Song of Ice and fire series. It is unlike pretty much any other fantasy book I have ever read:
- There is a lot of character development
- There is a lot of political intrigue and discussion
- Magic, while present, plays a relatively small role
- Martin is not afraid to have stuff…happen. I can’t say more without spoiling, but suffice it to say, you can’t ever say, “no, he would never do that.”
Books 2 and 3 are excellent as well. Two warnings:
1) I haven’t read four and five yet, but I understand they take a drop in quality from the first three
2) There are projected to be two more books. Martin took something like five years between books 3 and 4, and another six years between books 4 and 5. So there’s a chance you’ll get hooked, read the first five books, and then have to wait for years to finish the series…
Consider yourself warned.
Thriller – Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
This is the only Lehane I have read and all I can say is, “Wow!” This was awesome. I didn’t know what to expect, so this book sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally picked it up. When I did, I tore through it, unable to put it down. Just a great book that keeps you reading right up until the end.
If you’ve seen the movie or know how it ends, you won’t enjoy it nearly so much. So go read it now before someone spoils it for you!
Non-Fiction Books
The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons
I’ve written about this before. Go read that post, or just pick up the book before. It’s very interesting…
Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims
This is a great book that stresses the importance of making “little bets” when it comes to developing new ideas, strategies, and innovations. The premise of the book is that rather than spending a ton of time and effort researching, thinking, and planning, the most innovative companies and people make many “little bets.” These are “low-risk actions taken to discover, develop, and test an idea.”
These small actions let you quickly get feedback, see if an idea is worth pursuing, and discover what adjustments you might need to make before moving forward. I have started applying some of the approaches from this book into how I do some of my own work.
If you think about it, “taking little bets” is a very “Say ‘Yes, And!’” of idea…
Movies
I don’t know, I’ve been struggling with this one. I saw a few movies this year, and some were very good, but none have me jumping out of my chair wanting to tell people to run out and see them.
Instead of a long write-up, here’s a list of movies I saw this year that I enjoyed, and you might too:
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
- CaptainAmerica
- The Help
- Super 8
- Bridesmaids
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
If you saw some great stuff this year, let me know what I missed!
TV Shows
I am going to recommend three shows that are actually quite popular, so you may have seen them already. But they are great, and all three have most or all of their episodes available on Netflix streaming.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since it’s won something like four Emmys for Best Drama. But I didn’t get around to watching until a few months ago, and I have to say, it had me hooked.
I can’t really explain why. It’s not like the usual type of show that hooks me in (24, Lost, Alias, etc). Sometimes it can seem downright slow. The main characters are often annoying, mean, and unsympathetic. And yet, as soon as I finished each episode I wanted to watch the next.
Here’s another one that people have been telling me about for years, and yet I only recently got around to watching. Turns out, I was missing out on a great show.
This is a ridiculous, off the wall, and downright hilarious show. Give this show a chance and watch the first episode or two. If you like those, you’ll like the whole series.
One of my favorite shows. This one I have been watching since day 1, and it still makes me laugh, every single time. This is the only show that consistently makes me laugh out loud, even when I am watching alone (think about it – how often do you truly laugh out loud when no one else is around…?)
If you grew up in the 80s and like pop culture references, then you absolutely have to watch this show. Even if you didn’t and don’t catch the refernces, you’ll still enjoy the show (trust me – my fiancée can attest to this)
Video Games
I am not a hard-core video game player. In fact, I don’t own a Playstation or X-Box, and the only reason I have a Wii is that my fiancée brought one with her when she moved in.
However, I do enjoy a good PC game (yes, my nerdery knows no bounds). For whatever reason, I have been playing older games, and I have been loving it. Below are two PC games I enjoyed this year. Both are set-up as “first-person shooters,” but are very different from your traditional “Doom” type games.
This game is literally more than a decade old (it came out in 1999). I dusted it off and played it early this year, and I was sucked in. I couldn’t stop until I finished. Even more telling, as soon as I finished playing, I immediately started replaying it, using different skills and strategies (the game is designed in a way that you can use a variety of tactics to get through it). After my second run-through, I played it again. Then again. Then again. I honestly lost track of how many times I played it.
It’s immersive, entertaining, engrossing, oftentimes scary, and definitely one of my favorite games of all time.
Portal is a much newer game (it came out in 2007) and very different from System Shock 2.
In Portal, you play a character who has a “Portal Gun.” This gun lets you shoot portals onto floors, walls, ceilings, and other surfaces. Step through one portal and you will come out the other.
What makes the game really interesting is that the portals maintain your physics. That is, if you jump off a ledge and fall through a portal on the floor, you will emerge from the other portal with the same velocity you had from your fall!
There are no enemies (for the most part) in the game. Just about every mission involves you figuring out how to get from Point A to Point B by creating portals. At its core, it is a puzzle game. And a damned good one.
Board Games
Even as technology improves and video games get more and more sophisticated, I have found myself playing more board games with friends. They offer a social element that video games lack (even the multiplayer online ones). Also, as someone who spends most of his day on the computer and quite a bit of time watching TV, it’s nice to be able to turn off the tech for a while.
I am just starting to get into the world of “Euro-Gaming.” These are games that are much more involved and strategic than what we here in theU.S. think of when we hear the term, “board games.”
If your only experience with board games is games like Monopoly, then you don’t know what you have been missing!
Settlers of Catan is a strategy game where the players compete to set up villages, cities, and roads on an island. You have to manage resources, trade with other players, and carefully plan your expansions. It’s a fun game that has tremendous replay value.
If nerdy strategy games aren’t your thing, then you might enjoy a good party game instead. I enjoy quite a few of them. For this list, I went with Taboo.
For those who are unfamiliar with Taboo, the basic mechanic of the game is that one player has to get their teammates to guess words without using five words that are “Taboo.” If you say one of the taboo words, the other team gets a point. You try to get your teammates to guess as many words as they can in a short time period.
I picked Taboo for two reasons:
1) It’s a ton of fun
2) It’s high-energy
3) You can scale the length of games
4) It’s a great game to practice/develop improv skills
Yes, I realize that #4 is where my bias comes from. But think about it: Taboo is a game where you have to consistently try to achieve a fixed goal without being able to go down traditional paths. It’s a great way to have fun and practice your creativity!
Music
Do I really need to explain this? If you have been reading my site for a while, then you’ll already know that Rush is my favorite band. .If not, then read the following posts:
- Great Motivational Lines from Rush Songs
- Does Greatness Just Happen?
- More Lessons From My Favorite Rock Band of All Time!
If you don’t know any Rush songs, then watch my “Intro to Rush” Youtube playlist:
Happy Holidays!
That’s my list. Whatever you celebrate this time of year, even if you celebrate nothing, I hope you got some ideas you can use to relax and recharge.
Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you in 2012!
