D&D Basics (Getting started)

The Absolute Basics

First you will want to grab either the Basic rules (Free), the Starter Set (Cheap), or the Players handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Probably Monster Manual

Then you need to have at least a few items

• Dice (Phone apps will work if absolutely necessary, or these)
  
• Paper & Pencil (for notes)
  
• Character Sheet (In the free PDF or an app)
  
  The starter set is nice because it does a bunch of the work for you, it has an easy to follow adventure, pre-made characters, Dice, and rules for the DM and players. And at half the cost of just the players handbook AND including an adventure, it is an incredible value.
  
  Once you finish that then looking at at least a players handbook for the extra races, classes, backgrounds, and other things is a good deal. That should let you run free adventures people have put online.
  
  The DM's guide will let you get deeper into rules and the right way to call them, break them, and make them.
  
  The monster manual can be a great tool to make better encounters.
  
  If you want to run a commercial adventure after the one's included in the starter set, "Tales from the Yawning Portal" includes the Sunless Citidel, considered by many to be an excellent adventure for those new to the game and just recently brought up from 3.5e into 5e
  
  

  Common Tools of the Trade
  

  
  As you start running more complex adventures you are going to want to have a few tools to keep things moving, either as a player or as a DM.
  
  

  As a Player
  

  
  The bare essentials every players should have are listed above, but most players agree having a few extras can make the game run really quick.
  
  

  Spell Cards
  

  
  These cards have all the spells available for specific classes or from specific books on really well organized cards that make it easy to set aside your prepared spells and quickly reference all the core details.
  
  Cleric, Arcane, Ranger, Druid, Bard, Paladin, Martial Powers and Races, Xanathars Guide to Everything
  
  

  Binders & Sheet Protectors
  

  
  Keeping everything neat and organized can be a huge time saver and make it much easier for you to find what you need. Binders can be a great way to keep your notes and other materials organized. In addition many sheet protectors easily erase dry erase markers making it easy to keep track of spells and other changes without ruining character sheets with constant erasing.
  
  

  As a DM
  

  
  DMs have their work cut out for them. But a few simple tools can make the game run smooth and leave everyone having that much more fun.
  
  

  Index Cards
  

  
  A set of index cards can go a long way to speeding up the game. Players can put details on spells or magic items on them. You can prepare loot for the game ahead of time and hand it out allowing players to look over the gear as the game continues. You can also use them to hide portions of a battle map or commerical map to give the effect of fog of war.
  
  

  Game Mats
  

  
  A game mat let's you make single maps by drawing on them with dry erase or wet erase markers. Many are made of vinyl and can last a long time. Normally they will have either 1" squares or hex shapes.
  
  

  Minitures
  

  
  These things can be expensive, but giving your game that 3D upgrade and helping players better manage space in a game can be well worth it. You can use actual miniatures (Like those from Reaper), Create custom ones on Hero's Forge, or even just buy some cheap stand in tokens from Game Mash.
  
  If you just need a cheap way to keep track of positions army men, bottle caps, colored game pieces, and even legos can all play the role.
  
  No matter what you use, you can pick up colored rubber bands to mark status conditions or other information.
  
  

  Where Can I Play?
  

  
  You can find tons of places to play D&D.
  
  

• Get together a gaming group.
  
• Find a Guild or club in your area. Meetup.com,
  
• Most hobby shops and especially comic book and gaming shops offer games, usually Adventure League. WotC offers a tool to find stores here.
  
• /r/lfg can be a great way to find others to play online with.
  
• Play by Mail sites like RPoL allow you to play by forum post.
  
  

  Also:
  

  
  Critical Role - Voice actors playing DnD, Matt Mercer (The DM) is an amazing Dungeon Master and shows how the game should be played.
  
  Matthew Colville - Amazing videos on being a DM, must watch material for every DM. Even when your opinions differ he gives good reasons and great advice.
  
  

  Compendiums
  

  
  These let you ciew all the free open rules (SRD & Basic Rules) for D&D 5e at no cost.
  
  Roll20 Compendium - Has all the open rules for the game, so a good source for monsters, items, spells, etc.
  
  DnDBeyond - A more official source for the content, plus you can buy all the materials released by WotC to use, and has a great character builder.
  
  

  Adventures & Maps
  

  
  DMsGuild - Tons of free and paid adventures and other materials. The quality can be varying, but many are free and that can be great.
  
  /r/dndmaps/ - What more can they say, D&D Maps.
  
  Mike Schley Makes many of the maps for the D&D Adventures.

1. We don't know each other, but I creeped and noticed your career change would mean you're entering nursing school. My mother was a nurse and I have a lot of good friends in nursing. I think it's incredible when people decide to do something so selfless with their lives. It takes a really amazing person to take care of others like that! I'm so glad you're on track to do something that will make you happy! :)
   
   
2. I'm in about the same place as you right now- going back to school in the fall, but until then (and during school...) I'm working at a job I really don't like but I need to pay the bills. My piece of advice? Focus on why you're doing what you're doing. I really want to be a teacher, so I think about all the kids I've worked with over the years and how much of an impact I will have on kids like them once I'm done and have a teaching job. It helps me most of the time to really take a deep breath and put up with all the crap I deal with from work and such.
   
   
3. I have a few happy and sunshine themed playlists that I'll listen to if I'm having a hard time getting through something or I'm super bored. Music really pulls me in and can definitely make my day brighter. I also like to browse my inspiration board on Pinterest and read all the quotes I posted forever ago and see all the adorable puppy pictures :) And if that fails, I have an album of photos of my family (my baby nephew, my adorable 7 year old cousin, etc) that I flip through and smile at :) Sometimes little things can really change your day in a big way!
   
   
4. I forgot to mention coloring really helps me too. :) This unicorn coloring book would definitely help with my long work days :)
   
   
   Edit: Good luck!! I'm sure we can make it through this and when we're out of school and doing what we love, we'll look back and be grateful we kept pushing through :) Hugs!

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I got hit with a pretty nasty respiratory bug which put me down for awhile.

Anyway, on to talking about a general plan for this project. I think that the best thing to do would be to start with a light touch, and see how well she takes to it.

With that in mind, I might recommend starting with 'Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar'. Plato and a Platypus is a cheap, and reasonably instructive (though superficial) introduction to a range of philosophical questions through jokes. It is a strange approach, but one I think works quite well as a something like a philosophical appetizer that introduces lots of interesting topics. It has a sequel focused on politics ("Aristotle and an Aardvark") which is also quite good. I will warn that not all of the jokes are appropriate for all audiences, so whether you like this book might depend on how liberal you feel like being regarding jokes featuring explicit language, adult themes, etc.

I also definitely recommend anything from the Oxford Very Short Introduction series, particularly (given your interests) the Very Short Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics. In my experience, the entire VSI series is excellent, and I've used some of them to teach philosophy at the community college level. They are extremely brief (they can fit into my pockets) and accessible, and also quite cheap (usually about 10 bucks a piece). They are written by leading experts on each given topic, and there is an enormous selection if you decide that you want to explore particular topics (Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Theology, etc). They will be a bit tougher than Plato and a Platypus in that they don't typically have much fluff, but should still be generally relatively accessible. The Ethics volume is pretty solid, built around a series of major questions that ethics needs to respond to. I will offer two warnings about the VSI series:
(1) VSI formatting is largely left up to the author, so the approach varies considerably from text to text. This allows authors to structure the material however they feel is best, which usually turns out great. Just be ready for some jumps in how they deal with things (e.g., the Ethics volume is divided into sections which each review some set of related questions and possible answers, while the Logic volume is problem centered and features new tools of formal logic to address various problems presented in each chapter)
(2) Authors of VSI are almost always working scholars with particular philosophical viewpoints - and this will come across in their texts. Expect some axes to be ground, and presuppositions assumed. That said, of the one's I've read (maybe 5 or so at this point), they still presented a rather fair overview of the field.

I think for books, you will be hard pressed to do better than Plato and a Platypus/Aristotle and an Aardvark to provoke the feeling that philosophy is worthwhile, and the Very Short Introduction series to provide an actual introduction into the field.

There are also some great philosophy podcasts. The best for a non-philosopher is likely "Philosophize This", which is a largely chronological review of a fair chunk of the most significant philosophers in history (even including some non-Western thinkers). Again, the material isn't explicitly aimed at younger folk, so there may be some touchy content, but it is generally an exceptional program. They have quite a backlog now (something like 90 episodes), so there is plenty of material there.

Also, I've found a couple of course plans for philosophy in middle school. The strongest looking one to me is this one from UNC. Definitely worth looking at as a way to structure your thoughts, but I would augment it with some of the resources covered above.

I think this would yield a pretty low cost way to test if this approach will work. Assuming you were to buy all four books I've mentioned, I think it would run a total of about $40 per person, which should make this a pretty light investment in terms of money. Likewise, the books are all relatively short, so you might make it through them in as little as a month (if you were really motivated).

I think the real trick will be in deciding where to go after the initial introduction has been made and more serious texts are being considered, but this will depend a lot on how this project develops. I think the best thing to do with that is to wait and see how things turn out, then plan the next leg of the introduction. I'll be around for the foreseeable future, and would be happy to help you figure that out when the time comes.

Let me know what you think, and keep me in the loop as the project unfolds. I am very interested in this project and would be happy to lend a hand when possible.

There were three indispensable tools for me as a DM:

Dungon Master for Dummies -- Seriously, this is a fantastic book. It was written for 3rd Edition, but most of the book's advice is relevant for any RPG. Both authors have a long pedigree in designing and writing for D&D.

Sly Flourish's The Lazy Dungeon Master -- This book is now on its second edition ("The Return of...") and is amazing. It basically distills a lot of conventional wisdom related to running your game with the least amount of effort. That sounds bad, but when you get into DM'ing you will find yourself burning out quickly if you don't find a way to reduce the amount of boilerplate planning you have to do.

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy -- By Orson Scott Card. This book is recommended because of its world-building chapters. The way he thinks about and approaches world-building has influenced many other amazing writers, such as Brandon Sanderson, his protege and successor as creative writing professor at BYU. This is worth reading, again and again.

--EDIT: I hit "Post Reply" instead of "Insert Link". Whoops.

Here are some other bits of advice that I hope are helpful:

Know the rules

Seriously; read the PHB, know the PHB, love the PHB. 90% of you disagreements with players will be covered by the PHB. Do your due diligence so you can make trustworthy and authoritative rulings. If they players know they can trust your rulings, they will question you less.

As a newbie DM, I failed to do this, and the result was that my players did not trust me or my story. Engagement is hard to come by in that situation.

Also, read your DMG cover-to-cover. But I do find myself referencing that book quite infrequently (I make my own magic items, so I don't really consult the loot table, either). What the DMG has, and is worth reading for, is its advice on running games. This is also true of the 4E DMG, which is worth a read even if you never run that system (no one will ever ask you to).

Embrace Rule Zero

If you know the rules, and the players trust you, you are ready to employ Rule Zero: "The DM is always right." This is absolutely necessary. Many a time I've had a player attempt to use the RAW to create situational advantages that did not square with what I believed was common sense. The rules aren't running your game: you are.

Now, having said that...

Always Say "Yes"^H^H^H^H^H"But"

In 4E, the designers of D&D distilled a common and effective "design pattern" of DM'ing, and called it, "Just Say Yes." The idea was that you could maximize player buy-in and investment (and therefore, engagement) by giving them the most possible creative control over your story. Taken to its extreme, however, this proves disastrous; players are not uniformly interested in advancing your story, and I have some players that often need to be constrained a bit from taking every license possible.

The modern incarnation of this philosophy is "Always Say 'But'." "Yes, but..." and "no, but..." are incredible tools that help you keep control of the narrative while mitigating player frustration.

"Yes, you can run up to the BBEG in the middle of his monologue and bunch him in the face... (hidden bogus roll a couple times) ...but with a casual wave of his hand, you are thrown back 30 feet." (aside: this scenario requires maximum player trust, as well as Rule Zero4)

"No, you cannot by any means use deception to convince the king that he's a potted plant, but you can convince that dimwitted guard over there."

In short, be lenient, but don't be too lenient.

A word on voice acting: DM's that are good at it are amazing; the best DM I know is a veteran stage actor and drama teacher. It helps that he is a great storyteller. But it is absolutely not necessary to have an immersive, compelling game. In fact, done badly, it can be awful. I ran a 1E Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game, and I wanted to play up the village of Hommlet by giving them all Irish accents. After two hours my players asked me to stop. Faking a voice that is wildly different than your own here and there is fine, but if you absolutely cannot pull it off (through no fault of your own), your game is best served by not trying. Speak in your own voice, and add adverbs like a book would. Don't try to lower your voice; describe his voice before you speak for him, and then speak naturally.

Caveat: joke characters or comedic relief situations you should totally ham up voices.

First thing first: If you're american, I would suggest joining Origami USA for the lending library. I've never used it (not american) but it seems useful.

If you're looking to get past the youtube videos and simple models, I would recommend some of the classics (though they might not be the newest). They are also more likely to be available. [Origami Omnibus] (http://www.giladorigami.com/BO_Omnibus.html) gives a good overview of the field though it was written before the Tessellators made it big. It should help you decide what kinds of origami you're interested in.
Origami from Angelfish to Zen has a nice overview of the history of origami.
[Origami design secrets] (http://www.giladorigami.com/BO_DesignSecrets.html) is a newer classic and covers a lot of the technical advances in the latter half of the century.

As for intermediate/advanced books, the best ones are "boutique" books from special publishers.
origami house does all the hard core japanese designs like Kamiya, Komatsu, and Nishikawa. They also publish the annual tanteidan convention book which is hands-down the best collection of diagrams each year. I almost always buy it (though sometimes I wait and buy several at once)

[Passion Origami] (http://www.passion-origami.com/marques.php) is the other major publisher and has the books by Roman Diaz, Quentin Trollip, and the VOG.

If you don't want to pay for shipping dead trees around, [Origami USA] (https://origamiusa.org/catalog/newest-downloads) has some diagrams for online purchase, I haven't looked at them all, but there are some good names there.

Modular origami is actually kinda diverse. Are you interested in pure geometrics (phizz, sonobe), clever decorative (Miyuki Kawamura), kusudama balls (glue!). Try the flickr group or browsing.

For Tessellations, it's Eric's book Origami Tessellations, and the Origami tessllations flickr group.

Other books I like (and can name off the top of my head right now):[Origami Dream world] (http://www.giladorigami.com/BO_Dreamworld.html) and origami dream world 2, Brilliant Origami is a classic for animals and has many clever models, Origami for the Connoisseur is a mix of good models from other sources, Fuse's Spirals a gorgeous art book. I have a soft spot for Origami in action .

Hopefully that's enough so that you can get a feel for what's out there right now. If you can tell us more about what you like, then we can give more specific suggestions.

Last comment: Go to an origami convention! That's really where the new and exciting stuff happens and you can meet all the designers.

I think I understand what you are trying to experiment. You are asking if 2 beginners start playing chess while reading different beginner books, how will their play styles and understanding of the game change? I think this is a very interesting idea, and although I hypothesize that "no matter how different the books are, the difference will be because of the players, not the books" I will gladly suggest some ideas for your experiment.

There are plenty of chess books that are written by classical GMs that many people still find amazingly helpful.

"Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals" is still a very good for learning strong end game and good idea of how pieces work together. His end games are still considered some of the cleanest. He was somebody who could take puzzling situations and make them simple. It's very satisfying to following his games.

"My System" by GM Nimzowitsch is a bit different. Where as Capablanca relied more on classical openings and simplified situations with strong piece control, Nizomwitisch was of the hypermodern school which focused more on challenging the old classical fundamental beliefs and positional superiority.

If both of you start with one of each book, it'd be interesting to see how both of you end up playing. But honestly as beginners, (I'm a low level asshole myself aka patzer) some of the higher level things we're talking about here may not even mean anything for a long time.

Honestly, everybody in life has a certain chess style. Some play for the tactics, some for positions, some for the calculations, while others for the pattern recognition, some play sharp while some play loose, some play meek while some play aggressively. It really depends on you as a player, and I think that in the end, no matter which book you start with, you will end up the player you are going to be anyway.

As for other books that may be of interest for both of you, as they always say in chess "tactics, tactics, tactics": it may be a good idea to supplement both of your books with a tactical book such as https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861 or https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Champions-step-step/dp/081293671X or this https://www.amazon.com/Predator-At-Chessboard-Field-Tactics/dp/1430308001

and also supplement tactics with mating motifs like this: https://www.amazon.com/How-Beat-Your-Chess-Gambit/dp/1901983056

I hope you and your friend have a lot of fun playing and learning together. I have definitely enjoyed playing with my work mates. If you guys haven't chosen an online platform already, I suggest lichess.org or chess.com. Both are very great sites for playing chess for free. One is absolutely free and offers some very cool features for self analysis and community study material, while the other has paid premium memberships which offer a breadth of learning material in videos and articles.

I don't know your level, but if you're a novice (as it sounds like you are) here's my advice:

• Plan to play one long game per day. Find out the time controls you will be playing in, and create those challenges on Lichess or chess.com. I would suggest filtering the games to your rating +100. Don't waste time playing much weaker opponents or much stronger.
  
  
• Find a coach/friend that is at least >500 rating points above you. Hell you can probably find one for free here that would find this challenge fun. Spend some time going over your games with them, or just playing while talking through games.
  
  As for the specific parts of the game, here are my suggestions. in order of importance:
  
  Endgames: Learn to your level, then practice them on Chesstempo/friend/computer.
  
  
• I strongly suggest Silman's Complete Endgame Course and learn to where it get's complicated. You should be able to get through the first 3 parts.
  
• Create an account on Chesstempo and do the endgame training. It's unlimited for the Gold plan which is cheap.
  
• Keep in mind, when up in material, trade. I have been told countless times by computer analysis that trading pieces (especially queens) was not the best move, but when I was up a few pawns or the exchange, getting pieces off the board made the win so much clearer.
  
  Tactics: It's tactics all the way down!
  
  
• I strongly suggest Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics or Bain's Tactics for Students. You need to be familiar with the motifs
  
• Get a ChessTempo membership, and do tactics. The price of membership gives you all the analysis lines of all the wrong moves.
  
• Do both Blitz tactics and Standard tactics. You want the pattern recognition of lots of blitz tactics, but also the practice of calculating more difficult problems
  
  
  Openings: Play with the same openings. Don't spend too long on each, but maybe watch a few videos to get the ideas behind them.
  
  
• White: 1.e4. These are more tactical in nature, and you should be playing them because you will be working on tactics. Your goal is to survive the opening without being down material, severely behind in development, compromising your king, or completely screwing up your pawn structure. Anyone at your level that memorizes deeper into black's responses to e4 is just memorizing lines and will soon be in a complex position (perhaps up half a pawn) but unable to hold that advantage when the tactics take over. Have something for 1...c5 (and I'd look at both the Najdorf and the Dragon, but again, don't memorize, just get a flavor), 1...e5 (I'd suggest the Ruy Lopez. And look at the Philidor, but it's pretty quiet), 1.e6 (the exchange is easy to play), and 1.c6 (again exchange is easy).
  
• Black against 1.e4: Pick one of the above and play it exclusively. I suggest 1.e5 to start, but I also like 1...c5 and 1...c6.
  
• Black against 1.d4: 1...d5. No need to get fancy. Both the QGA and QGD set up good play. 1...Nf3 is more useful, since you can play the QGD, Grunfeld, or KID, but since you aren't building a tournament repertoire, just survive the opening with a classical queenside response.
  
• Black against anything else: Build a strong pawn center, get developed, get castled, and don't chase the enemy. And give an extra second to think about your opponents position. If they used a non-traditional opening, they are probably doing something wrong, but rushing will help them justify things like developing their queen to early or pushing all their pawns.
  
  Thought process:
  
  
• Have fun
  
• Utilize all your time. Hopefully you've been practicing at that time control as I said above)
  
• Breathe. Sometimes just close your eyes, take a deep breath, assess where you think you are, and come up with a plan
  
• Have a plan, always.
  
  That's all I got for now. Good luck!
  
  

The general consensus for novice chess players is to do a few things:

• Play as much as possible (the slower the time control, the better) and analyze those games.
  
• Study tactics (Hammer single motif tactics into your brain first. Over & over & over... Then you can move on to combinations.).
  
• Develop your pieces using opening guidelines, rather than in-depth study/memorization-without-knowledge of openings.
  
  ---
  
  So let's look at each of those items quickly.
  
  Playing as much as possible.
  
  If you can't play OTB, you still have a billion options. Here are some online options:
  
  
• chess.com
  
• lichess.org
  
• chess24.com
  
  Don't have wifi and still need a game? There are plenty of apps for your phone/tablet:
  
  
• Play Magnus
  
• DroidFish
  
• Mobiala
  
• SCID on the Go
  
• Shredder
  
  Analyzing your games.
  
  This is crucial. When you are done with your games, go over them and analyze the moves yourself. Where did you/your opponent go wrong? What did you do right? Did you miss tactics or mates? Did your opponent play an opening you were unfamiliar with? Did you reach an uncomfortable endgame and not know how to proceed? If your opponent played the same moves again in a different game, what would you do differently? Answering questions like these on your own will help you in future games.
  
  After your initial analysis, you can then show it to a stronger player (you can submit your games to this subreddit to get criticisms, if you provide your initial analysis along with the PGN) and/or using a program to run a deeper analysis for you. Lichess provides free computer analysis on their site and I also made a quickie SCID/Stockfish tutorial a while back if you want more control over the depth of analysis.
  
  Studying tactics.
  
  "Tactics is almost undoubtedly the most productive single area that beginners and intermediates can study to improve their game - the more practice, the better." -- Dan Heisman (PDF)
  
  There are a ton of places to study tactics online and you should make use of them.
  
  Chess Tempo seems to be the gold standard when it comes to online tactics training. I would start with their standard set (Which means that time isn't a factor. You can stare at a board forever until you find the tactic, and the time won't affect your rating.) at first, but eventually play the other sets as well. I do a mix of each of them every day. Don't make it homework though, or you'll burn out, and chess will feel like a chore.
  
  Don't forget to make use of their endgame trainer. After the first 20, you can only do 2 per day, and I recommend making it a top priority. Studying endgames, even for just a few minutes per day, will be very beneficial to your play.
  
  Chess.com also has a tactics trainer, and for free users you get 5 tactics per day. At the very least, do the 5 chess.com tactics and the Chess Tempo endgames. You can find time for this every day, I assure you.
  
  As a side note, this isn't really tactics but lots of people like this Lichess Coordinates Trainer for learning the names of the squares. If you do this once a day, for both black & white, it will take you about 1 minute. Easy.
  
  Developing your pieces in the opening.
  
  Read Dan Heisman's Beginner Guidelines, which I copied into this thread. At this stage, you don't need to study opening lines. However, whenever you read a point in the opening that you are unfamiliar with, you should look it up in an opening book, database, or online to find the common moves in that position. This will help you spot errors in your play and will set you up for success when you play that line in the future.
  
  ---
  
  There are a ton of other resources that you should look into.
  
  For videos, I would recommend these channels:
  
  
• Kingscrusher
  
• ChessNetwork
  
• St. Louis Chess Club (Their beginner level lectures should be on your must watch list.)
  
• ChessExplained
  
• Greg Shahade
  
  As for books, the ones that seem to be promoted for you level the most are:
  
  
• Logical Chess: Move By Move - Irving Chernev
  
• Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess
  
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess - Patrick Wolff
  
• Everyone's Second Chess Book - Dan Heisman
  
  There are a bunch of great chess columns out there, but I suggest starting with ChessCafe.com, and specifically Dan Heisman's Novice Nook.
  
  ---
  
  Well fuck. I thought I was just typing out something quick, but I turned it into a novel. Sorry about that.
  
  Time to eat some pumpkin bread and watch Sunday Night Football!

Orson Scott Card's book How to write Science Fiction & Fantasy is a great reference.

In terms of fantasy books, some of my favorites include:

• The Black Company by Glen Cook - great, memorable characters, a compelling storyline, and an author not afraid to kill off his characters to advance the plot
  
• The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher - urban fantasy about a Chicago wizard; Butcher is a magnificent storyteller.
  
• The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien. Not everyone's cup of tea but I love the intricate worldbuilding and the tragic stories.
  
• The Dark Angel trilogy - Meredith Ann Pierce - an unconventional heroine and a combination of romance, horror and magic.
  
• Lyonesse by SF&F Grand Master Jack Vance. Jack Vance has a unique writing style that is filled with noble and quirky characters, fascinating footnotes and a very rich story. This is one of those book series I re-read often.
  
• The Gift by Patrick O'Leary - perhaps one of the greatest single book fantasy novels I have ever read. Terrific story-inside-a-story construction, great characters and emotional impact.
  
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I love Neil Gaiman's writing voice and his many novels and short stories, but this is one of my favorites.
  
• Hawk of May and the other two books in the trilogy by Gillian Bradshaw. Imaginative telling of the story of Gwalchmai (aka Gawain) in the Arthurian cycle.
  

Thanks Jagabond, really appreciate that. I’m relatively new to hosting the show, having taken over in June, around episode 209. Shaun Farrell created the show and deserves all the credit. I was a huge fan and when I saw the distance between episodes spreading out, I offered to help provide interviews. Shortly after he offered me the job. I’ve tried to keep it close to the original feel.

That’s not your question though. As for the most important factor, I guess I’d say that while the industry is shifting, you never know if you’ll be successful until you try, and one of the most favorable factors to this industry is the abundance of resources to help you get started. Finishing a book should be your first goal, because that already puts you into the minority.

When you say “shifting industry” I assume you mean the effect of ebooks on pricing, revenues and whether we should self-publish or traditional publish. The good news—depending on how you look at it—is that none of this matters to someone getting started writing, because all you need to worry about is how to tell a good story, and that advice doesn’t change. Are you referring to getting started writing or getting started selling?

For someone getting started writing, a very important factor to be aware of is that you probably have a story worth telling. Writing resources can show you how to start a story. As much as I try, I’m an organic writer, so I don’t use any systems any more except for a notepad and pen and just start asking myself questions about the characters I want to be in the story, what kind of conflict they’ll encounter, how this conflict will cause them to grow or fail. If it’s science fiction, I start researching main technologies to the plot, far enough to make sure the concept is plausible. If it is Fantasy, I essentially just talk to myself about the magic system, how it started, what powers it has, what limitations (costs) using the magic has, etc.

Here are some resources I’ve enjoyed:



The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova – I loved how well this taught character arc. (Character arc is the emotional progress/failure that your character goes through from start to finish.) In the brainstorming stage, he says to find a character that has to choose between two emotions, such as love vs. hate. He gives a very helpful list of questions to ask yourself that essentially brainstormed my novel for me.

Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card – great breakdown of the types of story (M.I.C.E.) and I believe has a section on how to ask yourself questions to make the story unique from genre tropes (The One finds The Sword to save The Girl).

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card is also very helpful. I like how he says that you don’t have a story until you have at least two separate ideas, maybe three, and then you try to combine them.

Lane Diamond offers paid coaching. He’s the head guy at Evolved Publishing, which puts out some very well written books, no doubt a credit to his editing skills. He also edited the first 5k of my novel, so I know from experience he’s good.

Another couple editors I’ve worked with are C.L. Dyck and Joshua Essoe, if you’re at the stage of finding an editor. This could bring up the topic of when to search for beta readers (readers who read your story after you’ve cleaned it up) and when to hire an editor. My novel had such complicated technology weaving through the plot, that I didn’t know how to clean it up enough to give it to beta readers, so that’s why I hired C.L., and she helped me break down how the technology worked and where it didn’t. I suppose a good beta reader could do that, but I’ve not been fortunate enough to find ones that will stick around (i.e. finish reading and give me feedback).

Free resources:

The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson – I’ve started this, but never finished. I’m just not an outliner. Plot evolves out of each progressing scene as I write them. He has a lot of writing tips on his site beyond just the Snowflake.

StoryFix by Larry Brooks – never used this, but hear great things about it.

And of course, podcasts. I love hearing authors tell us their story of how they got started and found success. Their advice never gets old, and often I hear just what I need. For example, I have an upcoming interview with Ronald Malfi, where he says: "The characters and their problems come first. If you've got really good characters and really good problems with those characters from the get-go then the stories build themselves around them."

Did by “getting started,” you mean being at a point where you have a story ready to sell? I’ll answer that when I get back in a few hours, if that was your question.

It's not often that I see someone that would fully benefit from the Sword Coast Adventure Guide, but you fit the bill perfectly. Especially since you want to run a homebrew moving forward.

That being said, it is 30 bucks, so I understand if you don't want to purchase it - so I'll do my best for you.

First, it's a good idea to read over the Sword Coast and Northern Sword Coast to get an idea of the area you'll likely run the immediate portion of your continuing campaign. There are three major cities that are worth knowing about: Neverwinter, Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate. Any of these three are a suitable setting for a big-city game.

The setting as a whole lends itself to a 'straight down the middle' feel when it comes to magic. It exists, is used commonly enough that adventurers will come across it - but not so much that the default setting has magical street-lamps and stuff like that. Magical items (at least in 5e) are rare and very prized by those who own them. The magic setting is perfect for whatever you want to do because it's so 'down the middle'. If you want a low-magic campaign it's easy to adjust - and the same goes for a high-fantasy concept.

The area is a melting pot of the core races minus the Drow and Dragonborn, although the latter would be more common than the former. Humans still dominate the coastal cities, but the other races are represented well.

Truly, the Sword Coast Adventure Guide will be your best resource if you're going to create a homebrew in this area and are unfamiliar with the region. Failing that, there are numerous online resources to familiarize yourself with the area. A simple Google search will point you in the right direction.

Dude, good god. LOL. That's an INSANE amount of tactics problems. Definitely props to your discipline and focus; it is impressive.

I make training routines for fun. Right now I'm 1800uscf. (I should be careful talking about myself, people get butthurt if I sound too "great" to them.) but aside from that, I'd like to assure you my latest scalp was a player rated 2051uscf; this is MERELY a reference to tell you what I am doing seems to be working. Now, back to the important thing, YOU!

I would like to suggest to you a plan based on raising your skills in every area of the game.
--------------

--------------------

Tactics: ChessTempo Everyday. You already do this! so that's really good. You could probably afford to do less than 100... or even 50... lol. I'd probably say around 10-30 problems daily.

---------------------------

Positional understanding: I'd recommend something like

1. Jeremy Silman's Reassess your chess 4th edition, [http://www.amazon.com/How-Reassess-Your-Chess-Fourth/dp/1890085138/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y/189-2411552-9649030]
   
   
2. or another great one, Jeremy Silman's "The Amatuer's Mind" [http://www.amazon.com/The-Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions/dp/1890085022]
   
   -------------------------------
   
   Annotated Games: As far as annotated games are concerned: Logical chess move by move should be serving you well for now. So you're covered there and on tactics.
   
   ------------------------------
   
   Endgame: Now, I swear to God i'm not an advertiser for Jeremy Silman, but I'd also recommend his endgame book: "Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course" [http://www.amazon.com/Silmans-Complete-Endgame-Course-Beginner/dp/1890085103/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z]
   
   ------------------------------
   
   Openings: These are the hardest thing I have recommending to people... I wouldn't get a very serious opening book right now. Training openings on a serious level will probably cause a decline in your overall chess ability for simply not having enough time to spread out your training. I'd recommend checking out some wikipedia sources or maybe even Roman's Lab with white's 1.d4 on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX9Ax29jZ1k). That series served me well vs 1700-2000uscf in tournament play.
   
   As for black I usually just say learn something solid vs e4 and d4. Like Caro-kann and Queen's Gambit Declined. Check it out on Wikipedia and look up games on chessgames.com
   
   1.Caro-Kann [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caro_Kann]
   
   2.Queen's Gambit Declined [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Gambit_Declined]
   
   -------------------------
   
   
   
   Then to wrap this all up into a schedule i'd do
   
   Daily: Mon-Sun, Chess Tempo and 1 annotated game
   
   Every Other day: Mon-Tues-Thurs-Sat, jeremy Silman's Amateur's Mind or Reassess your chess (Which ever you own or buy)
   
   Weekends:Friday-Saturday-Sunday, I'd do opening and endgame studies.
   
   
   
   

You've got to get yourself some good books and devour them. I have unconventional advice, but if whatever you've been doing isn't working, give it a shot.

My beginners routine
---

• Do 10 tactics puzzles a day (use a free chesstempo account)
  
  
• Get your hands on a copy of Silman's Amateur's Mind [Go through the book cover to cover] I usually follow along with a program instead of a real board b/c I can log in variations and whatnot.
  
  
• Play one 15-minute game a day, if you can't find people who want 15-minutes, go to something like 10minutes or 10min+2seconds. Then, analyze your game. If you go to lichess you can make a free account and they have computer analysis. If you're playing on chess.com you can just take the pgn (game notation) and put it into the lichess computer and they'll analyze it for you. You can move the pieces around and bounce some ideas off the computer on there as well.
  
  
• Develop an opening repertoire. This is not supposed to be the way a grandmaster does it.... not yet. You need to play the same thing because you can't learn and figure out mistakes if you're always switching openings, because the positions you get change too much. If you're playing random openings you'll get: Isolated queen pawn positions, French structure positions, caro-kann positions, central pawn structure vs c5/e5 pawn pushes, fianchetto positions that require h4-5-6 to attack etc.
  
  You need a consistent motif; so, if you want to play 1.e4 try to stick to that. For black choose 2 defenses: one against 1.e4 and one against 1.d4
  
  What you need to do here is learn the first few moves of the opening just so you can get yourself inside that structure... maybe the first 5 moves or so. And you're going to feel lost I promise you, but just do it, ok. When you win/lose, whatever, a part of your analysis is going to be to go to www.chessgames.com >set the year to >=2000 or 1980 something like that>set the openings to the opening you played or enter the ECO code>click search and you can watch Grandmasters play your opening. This will give you a good idea of what kind of moves are made and where you play on the board. You may even be able to extract some plans out of it.
  
  
  
  
• I'm not a silman salesman but you also need to work on your endgame and I like Silman's Complete endgame course This books is divided by rating, which is really good; i worked up to the A class section and then moved on to Dvoretsky's endgame manual. Dvoretsky's is a dictionary though, and you definitely don't want that now.
  
  

So for 5e there are a couple of things you can look at getting:

• Basic Rules: Look at the section for "Free Basic Rules". These PDFs are basically what you need to start playing D&D. The D&D 5e Player's Basic Rules has information about the basics of the game for players. It's got 4 races (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human) and 4 classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard) and one "subclass" for each class (Life Domain Cleric, Champion Fighter, Thief Rogue, and School of Evocation Wizard). Items, customization, character building, and the general "here's how you play!" are included in this document. Great resource for a simple lookup if you want to introduce someone to the game, since the characters you can build out of it are generally solid characters. The D&D 5e Dungeon Master's Basic Rules is the starting point for your DM. For the most part is bunch of creature/enemy stat blocks with explanations on how to balance encounters to the players' levels, as well as a quick off-hand on how to generate magic items. DMs are the creative source of the campaign, so there isn't much required to actually build a simple campaign.
  
• Dungeons & Dragons 5e Starter Set: This is the most basic form of the game you can get with most things included. Looks like it's $13 on Amazon right now, which is pretty good. The box set comes with a 32-page player guide (mini Player's Handbook), a 64-page Dungeon Master's guide (mini Dungeon Master's Guide/Monster Manual), a couple of pre-generated characters, and a few dice. It's good for getting into 5e if you've never played before since the rules are greatly reduced down to levels 1-6 and there are only 8 classes. Most of the content is the same stuff you can find in the Basic Rules, minus the story that comes with the Starter Set. If someone gets this, everyone else can download/print the Basic Rules and should be good. Most of the content is all about how to play the characters that are in the starter set, not about character generation and the like, so make sure to look at the Basic Rules if you want to play a Halfling Fighter for example. See this comment for more explanation.
  
• Player's Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons 5e): This is the core of most of your games of 5e at this point. This has all of the basic necessities, like character classes, character races, items, spells, feats, etc. This is exactly what you need if you are a player, since this and some imagination allows you to build some pretty fun characters. If you end up playing 5e a lot, I'd recommend that everyone have somewhat regular access to a PHB, considering that 90% of the characters you make will come in most part from this books.
  
• Monster Manual: This is where you'll find the largest collection of all of the "basic" monsters that you can meet in a game of D&D. Enemies in general are in this book, and there is a lot of good explanation into the monsters, their stats, their decision routes, etc. This is super helpful since you can basically do whatever you want with this book and make some awesome fights. Find an enemy you like, but it's too high level? Nerf it somehow, and have your players fight it. I'm actually planning on setting a dragon with her wings clipped and her firebreathing removed, give them a fight, and see how they react.
  
• Dungeon Master's Guide: This is basically world building, combat building, enemy building, item building... basically, if it's not covered in the PHB or MM, the creation of object X or something similar will be in the DMG. It's there for the DMs to be able to balance items or enemies against certain requirements, since there is a lot to take into account. Helpful for the DM who doesn't have as much experience.
  
  So the Basic Rules help out a lot, the Starter Set is basically a physical copy of the basic rules (plus some), and then the core 3 books in order of (my personal opinion of) usefulness are PHB > MM > DMG. I'd say you probably want at least everyone to have a PHB, or access if you guys continue to play.
  
  Aside from that, most of the other 5e stuff you can pick up from wizards are modules. Modules are pre-created campaigns that have quests, items, locations, enemies (number, size, etc.) already pre-designed for you. Each of the following books has some sort of extra character information (like more subclasses, new races, etc.), but nothing is absolutely required. Generally if one person wants to play something (say, an Half-Elf Bladesinger Wizard) they should pick up the book to help build their character and to provide the GM with references to how the character works, but it's not necessary.
  
  
• Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat are two halves to the same campaign aimed at stopping the biggest baddest dragon of them all, the five-headed chromatic dragon Tiamat.
  
• Princes of the Apocalypse is a cool campaign all about cults related to the 4 elements (Air, Water, Earth, Fire) trying to be bad. Pretty well designed, I'm currently running this with my group. They seem to be liking it a lot, but then again, I'm throwing a lot of other things in with it.
  
• Out of the Abyss is a campaign set in the Underdark. it sounds really cool, but I haven't looked into it much.
  
• Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide isn't a campaign but rather a campaign setting book. It's useful for reading up on how the Sword Coast in Forgotten Realms (the "main" D&D world) works. It's interesting.
  
  If you need any other help, please feel free to ask!

Would it not be just as easy to ask /r/chess?

Anyway, in addition to what /u/Dazvac has said, you'll also want to learn about tactics; this is probably the most important part of chess. You can learn about them here and practice them here. Read through the first few pages of each chapter of the former site, then see if you can obtain the answers to the rest of the pages in each chapter. When you're fairly confident with the material in it, then train with the latter site. Don't worry if you fail the first 200 problems or so; you'll soon get to a point where the tactics are at your level (if you create an account).

As for reading material, I would suggest the two books "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" and "Logical Chess Move By Move". You can easily find pirated PDF copies online, but you can also buy them here and here. "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" mainly focuses around checkmating the king; "Logical Chess Move By Move" walks through games explaining EVERY SINGLE MOVE. It's also best if you have a chessboard set up when you read "Logical Chess", as it sometimes lists variations.

So here is, in summary, what the full list is:

1. Learn the values of each piece (see first table), and make sure you can immediately see the 8 squares a knight can move to from anywhere on the board. Also learn algebraic notation, as that's used almost everywhere now. Finally, make sure you know correctly the rules of pawn promotion, castling, and en passant.
   
   
2. Simple endgames (RQ, RR, Q, R, BB, BN, P). You can easily learn these online with a bit of searching. Recommended reading: "Silman's Complete Endgame Course"
   
   
3. Learn the strengths of each square; most notably the centre, and the weakness of the f-file and h-file pawns.
   
   
4. Learn the opening lines. I'd actually disagree with this; one should learn the general principles of the opening instead; namely:
   
   
5. Control the centre. This means developing knights to the c3 and f3 squares for white, c6 and f6 squares for black, and moving your d- and e- pawns two spaces forwards so as to gain space in the centre.
   
   
6. Develop all your pieces. That is to say, move all of them off the back rank. Start off with your minor pieces (knights and bishops). Leave your queen and rooks until quite a bit later.
   
   
7. Castle your king. This is to make it less susceptible to attacks, which are easier to direct towards the centre.
   
   
8. Open the centre once you have done all this. This is often done by exchanging pawns in the centre.
   
   
9. Tactics, tactics, tactics. Did I mention tactics?
   
   
10. Find some opponents to play with. Stronger opponents will show you your weaknesses, opponents of similar ability will bring you delight when you win, and weaker opponents will give you chances to experiment with different play styles and openings.
    
    
11. Tactics. Seriously, that's how important they are.
    
    
12. When you're up material, don't hesitate to trade away material. It makes the game harder for your opponent to win.
    
    
13. Finally, check out /r/chess; it has a wealth of information.

I've found the Tales from the Yawning Portal to be a good book for when you want to do something completely different than what you've done previous and have a short little side adventure. There's 7 different adventures in it with very different settings.

I ran this two different ways. The first was as if the Bartender was telling a story that had happened many years ago. I rolled up a new party that was an appropriate level for the adventure and they got to play completely new characters for that adventure. Once he was done telling the story, the bartender rewarded the characters with some of the loot the story characters had left to him to give to worthy adventurers. I know this won't work for every group, but they were very interested in switching up their characters they'd been playing for years.

The other way I ran it I had the party descend the well in the middle of the bar with their own characters and entered a portal they had discovered down there placing them directly into a story the bartender was telling. It allowed for moments of narration to occur every now and again that the players could hear which was fun:

"Little did the characters realize, but a colourless, odorless gas was spreading into the chamber at an alarming rate."

"We pushed the boulder behind us sealing the entrance!!"

"The heroes had been successful in stopping the gas from entering the chamber! But quickly became light headed as they searched for a way out. It turns out these heroes rely on oxygen to survive, which this chamber was now deprived of." <- Evil I know, but it got a good laugh and they learned that the narrator occasionally "embellished" what actually occurred and wasn't entirely on their side.

I chose an adventure that matched their level and at the end of the adventure, they found the portal to return to the bar with all their loot and XP they found.

In no particular order:

1. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I love this book so much because it's full of odd characters, unusual situations, and great descriptions. He describes stuff so uniquely and it sucks me in every time. It's also the longest book I've ever read, at around 1200 pages.
   
   
2. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurace Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman. This is a book with a different take on the end of the world. Satan is a baby, and an angel and a demon are trying to keep the apocalypse from happening by switching him at birth with another baby. It's hilarious and also has some very good moral points, I think. It's got his realistic nonsense in it that I love so much.
   
   
3. The Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J. R. Ward. This isn't on my wishlist because I have all of them but they are one of my favorite series. It's an adult vampire series, and I love it. It has sex, seriousness, humor, and the way its written makes you wonder if there really are vampire warriors walking the streets of Caldwell, and maybe you can see them, if only you look hard enough.
   
   I would love something vampire related, maybe with a couple. I would like it to be somewhat dark, but with the love still there. Like maybe an evil aura or something? I'm sure whatever you come up with would be cool. A painting or a drawing is fine with me, and you can use whatever style you like. Thank you for the contest.

Really anything will work at first, but it is a lot more rewarding to use decent paper. I've found Tant to be a great compromise between price and quality; here's where I got mine.

As for instructions, it really depends what you're interested in making.

I would recommend YouTube videos since you're just starting out; it will pretty much eliminate the confusion that comes along with diagrams and crease patterns.

Sara Adams has a great channel, as does Jo Nakashima. There are a bunch more, but those two are what I remember off the top of my head.

Just searching around I found one for a hummingbird - I haven't folded it or watched it before, but it looks decent.

I almost exclusively fold tessellations; I'm not sure if that would interest you or not. Shuzo Fujimoto's Hydrangea might be a good place to start. Or Eric Gjerde's Tiled Hexagons, which is a more traditional tessellations, although it isn't diagrammed as well here as in his book (which you should definitely get if you are at all interested in tessellations).

That's like saying "I hate multiplication. Remember when all we had to do was add?" New and better stats help us better understand the game around us. It's laughably absurd if you want to discount them and look only at 'fantasy stats' which are incredibly misleading and are situational based more often than not. That's on you. You may not like it, but there are interesting ways to learn about the game and think about the game that provide value.

If you're actually interested in learning I can recommend this book. It's an easy and simple read that will help you better understand the sport you're watching. This book is a little dated, but it's still pretty good and helpful.

Inverting the Pyramid - Jonathan Wilson
A pioneering book that chronicles the evolution of soccer tactics and the lives of the itinerant coaching geniuses who have spread their distinctive styles across the globe.

Teambuilding: the road to success - Rinus Michels
The late Rinus Michels, FIFA's Coach of the Century, offers his unique insight into the process of "teambuilding".

The Coaching Philosophies of Louis Van Gaal and the Ajax Coaches - Henny Kormelink and Tjeu Seeverens
Louis van Gaal, Frans Hoek, Co Adriaanse and fitness coach Bobby Haarms discuss their training methods and philosophies in this book full of creative ideas for soccer coaches at any level.

Dutch Soccer Secrets - Peter Hyballa & Hans-Dieter te Poel
This book is a first attempt to present expert knowledge of internationally proven useful and effective Dutch soccer coaching in theory and practice, based on qualitative data collection.

Attacking Soccer: a tactical analysis - Massimo Lucchesi
This book examines match strategies for creating goal scoring opportunities out of various systems of play.

Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong - Chris Anderson, David Sally
Innovation is coming to soccer, and at the centre of it all are the numbers—a way of thinking about the game that ignores the obvious in favour of how things actually are.

Football Against the Enemy - Simon Kuper
Kuper travelled to 22 countries from South Africa to Italy, from Russia to the USA, to examine the way football has shaped them.

Congrats on the job. Boo on moving in with your sister!

You're awesome because monkeyslut! Those monkeys are sluts!

I am odd and enjoy coloring in coloring books to de-stress. There are some funny adult coloring books that may give you a few laughs and help you chill out. Just search "adult coloring book" in Amazon; you'll see what I mean-> [here's an example] (http://www.amazon.com/Coloring-Grown-Ups-Adult-Activity-Book/dp/0452298253/ref=pd_sim_b_1) . I enjoyed the book [Unicorns are Jerks] ( http://www.amazon.com/Unicorns-Are-Jerks-coloring-exposing/dp/1477468528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369842721&sr=8-1&keywords=unicorns+are+jerks). Also, listening to music that is uplifting to you or puts you in your "happy place". Is always a good idea.

I hope things start looking up for you. Maybe with your new job you can start saving up to move in with friends or something :)

Okay, so I'm not home so these are the few off the top of my head that I can remember I've read and loved.

• On Writing Well - this book was used for my Script Writing class in college - I loved it, and I still have it on my bookshelf.
  
  
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy - This book by Orson Scott Card is genre themed, but I really suggest it no matter what genre you write. It's just a great source to have all around.
  
  
• No Plot? No Problem - Somewhat humorous take on those of us who procrastinate and have lots of writers block.
  
  
• Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction - Okay, so I haven't read this yet, but it looks amazing and I might actually just pick it up myself.
  
  
• Book In A Month - Okay, so this isn't really in the same category, but it's incredibly hands-on, fun book that can really, really, really help with outlining. I always suggest this book to people who participate in NaNoWriMo, because it's just super helpful.
  
  I hope one of these can help out!

Over five but wanted you to see this

Okay, now. Here's your item! Unicorn stickers! They are lovely and you can stick them in random places and feel special! This coffee phone topper is mine because maybe Unicorns love coffee and that is why they are so hyper and love rainbows because they are so awake...okay that was silly but you never know!!

FIVE DOLLA! :)

Discipline is a tough thing, indeed.

Kanji/vocab are something you learn over time, not at once. If I were you, given the problems you mention with "sticking to it", I'd do the following.

1. Kanji Damage is a deck that (a) focuses only on Japanese>>English, (b) removes 1200 kanji from the standard RTK deck to focus only on ones you would reasonable expect to see (basically meaning ones that don't appear only in names, aren't the names of plants/trees/etc). You won't learn to write the kanji, but you will learn to recognize them -- all you need to do to read. Learn 5 per day and pay special attention to the vocabulary under each card. Do 5 per day and in 1 year you'll recognize the vast majority of kanji you see, unless you're into some really niche/technical stuff.
   
2. Do 12 cards of Genki I+II per day, and in about a years time you'll have all the vocab and grammar in Genki down. This will give you the foundation that you can make sense of most things you see with a grammar dictionary and patience, and you can also begin following simple/slice-of-life animes with Japanese transcripts on animelon.
   
3. In 6 months or so after you finish Genki one and are through around about half the kanji, I'd begin with The Core 2k -- to be able to read big things you need to first be able to read small things. You should have built up the vocab/grammar/kanji you need to begin working out these sentences by that time. You don't need to finish all 10 of the decks by any means; just keep trucking along until it becomes not-so-difficult to figure out each sentence.
   
   Once you get confident with working your way through sentences, find yourself a copy of Read Real Japanese: Contemporary Fiction and [Read Real Japanese: Comtemporary Writings). The book is natural Japanese -- as would appear in a normal Japanese rendition -- on the right side, then the left side is a gloss translation into English. In the back is a running grammar dictionary that gives good quality of literally every grammar point that doesn't appear until towards the end of Genki II or isn't in Genki (around that difficulty). This is gold to me because (a) you're reading real Japanese, and (b) 100% of what you learn while reading these books is in context and will be directly useful for understanding the story you're reading, and the slightly more difficult ones that come in succession. Expect to need to read these more than once; I read the fiction one 3 times before I read a normal book, and I want to read them again even though I've now read several books in Japanese .
   
   Once you get confident with these books, you have two options.
   
4. Breaking into Japanese Literature is a more difficult graded reader; it basically leaves you alone, but there is a running dictionary on each page so that you can read the book without referring to your phone or jisho.com to look up every other word. The downsides are (a) it does not explain grammar, and (b) the stories (I don't remember for sure) from the Meiji period, meaning that they will use more difficult words and have some unique grammar forms you definitely own't have encountered yet, and might not be the most useful for reading modern day stuff. That being said, if you struggle with Meiji stuff for awhile and then suddenly change to a contemporary book, the contemporary book will suddenly seem easier in comparison.
   
5. Look into reading some contemporary stuff if you have access to Japanese books. I think that Otsuichi is a very accessible first author, but he is a horror writer and the writing makes some people uneasy. I recently read Kino no Tabi; they're adventure stories and make you think critically about life and your values in a light-hearted way. I found it to be very easy, also -- but I had also read several books after finishing Otsuichi's collection, so maybe it was because I was just more experienced.
   
   Good luck!

My favorite tessellations (including your one) comes from Eric Gjerde (Sarah Adams did many of those in her channel). Get his book and visit his website and flickr.

Start with this one. It is not a tessellation by mean, but it is fun model and good for practicing precise folds and some skills.

This one is interesting model and it will give you an idea how important is to fold a grid (basically how to "prefold" a paper before making creases).

And finally - this one followed by [multi-level version] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=474PmBXekK8) is your holy grail. If you stick with this one and find yourself enjoying hours spend with this bad boy you'll know that you're hooked on tessellations (here is my humble 5-hour contribution). Then just go through the book and videos and diagrams.

I just find it so relaxing. Just turning on some music, and for hours creating something complex and symmetrical. Have a great time!

Hi, I have a degree in Philosophy and teach Philosophy/English to high schooler. The following advice and recommendations are what I give my students who are interested in philosophy. I would not recommend Kant as an introduction (not that he's bad, but he is difficult to understand). Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a book that explains philosophical topics and questions through humor and uses jokes to illustrate the concepts. It is accessible and thought provoking. If you are interested in logic you might enjoy Logicomix. It is a graphic novel that gives a biographical narrative of Bertrand Russell, an English philosopher whose work is the basis of all modern logic. It is not a book about logic per se, but it does give a good introduction to what logic is and how it can be used. Also, Russell's book A History of Western Philosophy is a good place to start your education in philosophy. If you are interested in atheism, read Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. This book goes through the most common arguments for the existence of God, and debunks them using logic and reasoning. Good luck and read on!

Play Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seriawan (&Jeremy Silman)

A fantastic beginners book, and he's got a whole series out there that are very easy to read, filled with tests and practice and examples. Each chapter starts out with a different tactic, some personal story from Yasser, and then tests at the end of every chapter to reinforce what you learned.

The end of the books have biographies of famous tacticians and advanced tests where you put everything you have learned together. The answers and explanations are complete in the book. I found it a great book to begin learning with and have often recommended it to others. I have some of the Silman books recommended in this thread, and I don't think any of them are as good for beginners as Yasser's.

I also recommend in the same series Play Winning Chess Openings and Play Winnings Chess Strategies They are all on Amazon or ebay for purchase.

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Japanese-Diversity-Lifestyles-Conversations/dp/030010958X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162331&sr=8-2&keywords=living+japanese

I think that is an amazing recourse. Natural, REAL conversations with people of all ages and topics. Its really good for getting exposure you can learn from easily to native speaking that isn't "dramatized" or too over the top like most anime and Japanese TV acting in general.


LingQ.com (is also a great recourse. and its free if you don't use the in site word marking tools)

https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-1&keywords=read+real+japanese

https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-2&keywords=read+real+japanese

https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-3&keywords=read+real+japanese

the last three are good for written japanese, which is more polished and different than real "spoken" japanese (like any language). But they all 3 come with audio, grammar and vocab explanations and are an amazing recourse IMO.

Ok, here is what I recommend:

Start with a book like "Logical Chess: Move by Move". It is a very instructional book with every move annotated and will help you understand why certain moves are made. It is very basic and would be a great place to start, it's only assumption is that you already know how the pieces move. Go through at least one game a day, go through it slowly, and play it out on a board.

Second, study tactics. Make sure you start with a beginning tactics book, stuff you can solve. I recommend picking up Winning Chess Tactics and Chess Tactics for Students.

After that, just play games. Lots of slow games, not fast. When I say slow, I mean at least 60 minutes a game so you have time to think. Make sure you think about every single move, don't play any of them fast. A good rule of thumb is divide the time you play the game by 40 (so a game with 60 minutes per side would mean you should spend roughly a minute and a half on every move).

What about running the adventures from Tales from the Yawning Portal? Classic Fantasy. Old school modules updated for 5e. Designed so you can run them individually or string them together as a longer adventure. https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Yawning-Portal-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/0786966092

​

There are also support materials on the Dungeon Master's Guild for TftYP. Sunless Citadel has this one (probably more but that was one I knew about) https://www.dmsguild.com/product/208783/The-Sunless-Citadel-CRD

That way you aren't committing to a huge long campaign right out of the gate. Do The Sunless Citadel (really geared towards newbie DMs but also a good adventure) and then the other adventures can be done in order or you can leap off and go do something else. Maybe now you have a better idea of which much longer campaing you want to run and can choose something that fits your play style.

Or maybe something on the Dungeon Master's Guild.

Running these epic modules can be fun, don't get me wrong, but they can also fizzle. Also, its a big commitment. Like planning to move in with someone you only just met. Maybe get your feet wet first.

First, you're young enough to become very strong at chess, especially if you're competitive. For best long term results, I would really recommend you join a chess club and start playing OTB, because that's where you'll learn real chess.

Now as for training, a very important part of chess is pattern recognition : the patterns are the words you need to 'talk chess'. The more you know, the better speaker you are.

First set of patterns are 'tactical patterns' - you can learn them through a tactics book (better than online training because of the structure). Just go over it 2 or 3 times. There are a couple of tactics books of similar value, such as Polgar's Tactics for champions, or Seïrawan's Winning chess tactics.

https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Champions-step---step/dp/081293671X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467101252&sr=1-1&keywords=polgar+tactics

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467101274&sr=1-1&keywords=seirawan+winning+chess+tactics

Dofleini mentions that "what was on [the] desk at the moment."

Broom is much less demanding time-wise, although I agree with your sentiments... Not only is it much less polished than his later work, I think it's also less rewarding. It almost seems as though he was warming up for Jest... I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I read it after Jest & Interviews. For me, it falls into the same category as the early Dickens novels: entertaining in their own right, but more interesting as a window into the foundation for more developed later work.

I'd recommend Brief Interviews or A Supposedly Fun Thing as entry points for Wallace, followed by Infinite Jest if you like what you've read.

A little off-topic to this conversation but there is a book called 'The Magicians' and it has to do with a college of Magic. It's more adult than Harry Potter but it's interesting. Link!

Back to the topic. Love the thoughts that went into this. I've thought of what the american version of the Harry Potter wizarding world would be like but I've never gone into so much detail. Great work! :)

It all depends on your preference but I recommend 5th edition also theirs a starter kit https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dungeons-Dragons-Dungeons-Dragons-Starter-Set-Game/37282882 if you down to buy that it comes with a premise campaign for beginners and I believe it comes with premade characters it’s ideal for 4-6 players. One of you will have to be the dungeon master(dm) who leads the characters through the story and plays the npcs(non playable characters) you’ll also play the creatures/characters your players fight against id recommend these books for now or later on when you start building your own characters etc... this for the dm https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Dungeon-Rulebook-Roleplaying/dp/0786965622 and this for more monsters https://www.amazon.com/Volos-Guide-Monsters-Wizards-Team/dp/0786966017 and this for character creation etc https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Dungeons-Dragons-Wizards/dp/0786965606 as for dice it’s not that hard each player needs one d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and a d20 you’ll also want a 10 sided percentile die here’s a cheap set off amazon with plenty of dice(theirs probably cheaper this is just the first thing I saw) https://www.amazon.com/Polyhedral-Drawstring-Dungeons-Pathfinder-Including/dp/B07DSCST6K now non of this is required of course for character creation you can always use sites such as dnd beyond or apps like fight club 5 which are free the only thing that’s really required is the dice. Now I know that’s a lot but honestly it’s a externally fun game and I’ve met some of my closest friends through it

Yes! I bitched on here about my situation a while ago. I bought my SO this book and gave it to him when I found out I was pregnant, but he didn’t start reading it until recently (I’m almost 32 weeks). I had a major meltdown a couple weeks ago where I told him that I didn’t feel like he was being emotionally supportive. After having talked to friends and family, I found out that this can be normal for men.. and it does not mean they won’t be good fathers. I ended up signing us up for a childbirth class, as well as a baby basics class. We’ve had 2 out of 5 classes so far and he’s been attentive and will interact with me in class, which I didn’t expect at all.

Maybe he’s like my partner, and giving him that little push will help. Have you communicated any of this with him?

My girlfriend bought me the D&D colouring book for my birthday. It is amazing! Highly recommended if your father is artistic. Even if he isn't, it is still fun.
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/monsters-and-heroes-realm

If your father is a DM and has a cheesex mat for drawing his maps, you can never go wrong with a new set of markers. They tend to run out in the least expected circumstances.

http://www.chessex.com/Accessories/Accessories2.htm

And of course, you can always go with rulebooks. If he has a library, I'd start by seeing which books he is missing. The following are for players of D&D, there are many adventure books as well for DMs.

Volo's Guide to Monsters: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786966017/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1478899218&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=dungeons+and+dragons&dpPl=1&dpID=51yD0I7mRXL&ref=plSrch

Sword Coast Adventure's Guide: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786965800/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=52RFJNRP5HSVN5MTMT06

Aside from this, you can always just get him random D&D knick knacks.t think geek is a good spot to start your search for any and all things nerdy.

D20 Chip Bowl: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1d89/

Whiskey stones: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/14d6/?srp=16

Light up D20: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/deaa/?srp=10

D20 spin ring: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/iuov/?srp=54

Hope this helps spur some ideas for the holiday season. Good luck shopping!

The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and the sequel The Magician King.

http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Novel-Lev-Grossman/dp/0452296293/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324348733&sr=8-1

If you liked The Chronicles of Narnia/Harry Potter/The Lord of the Rings/any Terry Pratchett books/any books regarding other worlds and magical lands/schools, you'll love this book. It takes all of those stories (some, admittedly, written for a younger generation) and pulls them into the real world, the adult world. The Magicians is like Harry Potter/Narnia with drugs, sex, and murder. It's full of gritty realism, but also fantastical magic, and it's amazingly written. :)

I hope you'll enjoy it! ^_^ Also, I'm quite hungry, and my paycheck's account didn't have the funds available to be deposited today, so here's hoping you'll pick me. :)

Thanks for mentioning you're seventeen; it does make a difference (to my mind!). M'colleagues below have recommended some pretty heavy reading, which I don't think is what you're really looking for on the face of it. If I were to recommend a book about philosophy to a seventeen-year-old, I wouldn't recommend a textbook, I'd recommend the following:

Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar. This is a book of jokes about philosophy. They're not very funny, but it's a good way to learn some ideas. Doesn't talk about people (old dead white men, for the most part); focuses on ideas.

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten. This is a little less frivolous; it's 100 little thought experiments. I'd say this is a bite-at-a-time book; read one, put the book down and think about it for a bit, then read another. I really enjoyed this.

Philosophy 101. This little volume is a pretty decent intro to some of the key ideas and thinkers of philosophy. No, it's not a textbook and it's not written by a professional philosopher, which is why I've recommended it. Its mistakes are small enough that if you get interested and start reading some more about the topic you'll pick up where the author went wrong pretty quickly. Again, this is a bite-at-a-time book.

Hope that helps, and of course if you find an idea and you have questions about it: ask away. :)

I have heard good things about the Starter Set. It comes with some basic rules, pre-made characters, an adventure (Lost Mine of Phandelver) and a set of dice. Although I personally haven't played it. For the more savvy players, they can of course roll their own characters.

I personally like the Sunless Citadel module, found in Tales of the Yawning Portal. It's a bit tougher for the PCs, but it's a solid two or three session adventure which will start the party at level 1 and go to about level 3.

I think these shorter adventures are the best place to start as a new group. Once your group tackles a few of these shorter adventures, maybe try an official campaign or homebrew your own.

Three things:

1. Writing Excuses: 15 min podcast featuring Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Taylor, and Marry Robenette Kowal. They give amazing advice and have awesome guest stars (Pat Rothfus, Brandon Mull, John Scalzi, Dave Wolverton/Farland, off the top of my head)
   
   
2. On Writing: A memoir by Stephen King: First half is his life story (SUPER FASCINATING!) second half some the best writing advice there is.
   
   
3. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card: Some of the advice is outdated, but most of it is still good.
   
   of course this is assuming from your use of the word creatively you are looking to do genre fiction. There is two pieces advice that all three sources will repeat endlessly
   
   
4. Read a lot
   
   
5. Write a lot
   
   Edit: Also see if your favorite author keeps a blog, as they will usually give writing advice in those as well. I know Card, Rothfus, Sanderson, and Wells all do.

It looks like a great start! :) Once your book is out you'll want some really clear information on a dedicated page describing what the book is about and how to buy it.

Check out the Amazon.com Associates program. Ever listen to a podcast and they ask you to visit their page and click through if you're going to shop Amazon.com? Well Amazon gives a small percentage of each sale when the shopper comes from a referral partner. Since some of your sales will come directly from your author platform, why not take advantage?

For example, I really liked How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy (referral link) by Orson Scott Card. I read it in college and it really gave me some insight on the topic, and I highly recommend it for new authors.

Now if you click on that link and buy the book, I get 3% of the sale price, and if you wander off in the same session and buy other stuff, I think I get 1%. I don't remember the details, since I haven't really used the referral link stuff. But that's how it works. You can read up on the program yourself.

>he is fairly nonplussed and doesn't really seriously discuss it with me

This is going to be your biggest hurdle, you need to have an open line of communication. We don't have a perfect marriage by any means, but we've been together for 5 years (baby status I know) but we don't fight. We communicate and have discussions, it makes a HUGE difference and keeps stress levels WAY down now that I'm pregnant.

Anyway. I got him the book, Dude, You're Gonna Be A Dad. He's really enjoyed reading it. It goes through a lot of what to expect during each trimester, how to prepare for baby care, and most importantly (to me) momma care. It explains what we're going through physically and emotionally. It does a really nice job laying things out in terms that guys can relate to, or at least as closely as possible.

I wouldn't go for something like Murakami to practice translation because, as atgm points out, the translators wouldn't be translating 1:1.

Why not try one of the "Breaking into Japanese Literature" or "Read Real Japanese" books (any kind of reader really)? They usually come with a direct translation and a more artistic translation. The texts are shorter which should keep your interest up for longer but there's still enough stories for you to have enough to do.

There's plenty of others but a few examples would be:

Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text

Exploring Japanese Literature: Read Mishima, Tanizaki, and Kawabata in the Original

Read Real Japanese Fiction: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers

Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers

Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors

I think all of those had the "look inside" enabled so you can decide which style of translation you prefer.

If translation is something that interests you, I recommend heading over to /r/translationstudies to get a few tips on good books on translation studies.

I don't, sorry, but I'm talking about like actual anthropological or historical textbooks. I'd start by asking her about the world she wants to write about, whether it's your standard medieval European fantasy or something else, and what kind of story she wants to tell.

Like if she wants to tell a story about a rise to the throne it might help her to have the biography of a famous king or queen or ascended to the throne despite the odds being stacked against them.

But something that talks about the daily lives and customs of the people who lived during that time is usually a safe bet/interesting read too.

Of course, you could always fall back on actual writing books too.

Orson Scott Card's book on how to write science fiction and fanasy is the only actual book about writing/world building I've ever read. It was pretty good from what I remember, but I read it years ago.

I would recommend you start with Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess as a starting point.

Yes, he turned into a freakshow, but the man could play some chess. You're not going to learn to be a champion by reading this, but it will help you learn the basics and, more importantly, teach you what you need to learn.

Then go out and play. Pick up a decent chess set you can carry around and get as many people to play as you can. Take notes. Learn from your mistakes. And keep playing.

I can tell from your comments: You are a close minded die hard atheist who demonizes religion, and you blindly hate the very idea of religion based on what you have heard from others.

Isn't that the something as someone who is dedicated to a church and demonizes the "heathen Atheists" based on what others have told them?

Just think about it. You claim all this bad things will come from Pastafarianism but just from your questions I can tell you have never even read a page of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Reply if you wish but I have no desire to continue a conversation with a close minded individual like you currently are being, so I will no longer be replying to any of your comments. You have a good life and I honestly do hope you find inner peace.

Dude, you’re going to be a Dad. Cannot remember the author, but the audiobook narration was solid. Felt super informative too. And has good quotes to start each section.

Edit: Found the link finally after work; Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!: How to Get (Both of You) Through the Next 9 Months https://www.amazon.com/dp/1440505365/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_xatVBb21N3E69

Also, congratulations!! My wife is 12 weeks today, so I’m interested to see what others here recommend!

Reading a book on tactical patterns could help you; the free Chess Tactics Explained or Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics aretwo good options.

Another thing that helped me recently was taking some time off, and when I came back, taking more time to solve each puzzles. Instead of playing the first move that looks good and reacting to the computer's move, figure out in advance what the computer can play and how you can keep on going. It makes problem solving longer, can make you pull out your hair, but is extremely rewarding when after 20 minutes you figure out the complete sequence of moves.

Good luck!

Yeah, sure.


It depends on a few things. How seriously do you want to take it, and what are your goals. If you want to just casually learn about the game and kind of play it from time to time, that's greatly different from someone that wants to try and get really good etc.


I guess, what does get into chess mean to you? ;)


I'll give a more detailed writeup after that, haha.



edit: Some starter info I guess!

1. Just start playing! Make an account on Chess.com or Lichess.org - both are free.
   
2. Read a beginner oriented book - they typically cover a wide variety of basics. This is often considered very good
   
3. Familiarize yourself with basic Tactics themes If you want a book on it, this is ok and there are websites for practicing them - I think Lichess has them.
   
4. Play slow games - Speed Chess is very popular online but relies on a lot of pattern recognition and intuition which you won't have built up yet
   
5. Study common endgame technique - this often feels more like homework and can be very dry. This is where I guess you have to decide how "seriously" you want to take Chess.
   
6. Just keep playing and have fun!
   
   
   
   There can be more details etc but that's basically it.

Chess is hard. To be honest I don't really remember how I got over that initial hump in the learning curve myself where things started to make sense to me, but I'll link you a video that will probably be somewhat helpful to you.


It's a deep game though, don't think that you can just watch some videos and get good. You need practice and study. Practice chess tactics and learn some basic opening principles. The first chess book I ever got was this one.

If I recall correctly it is pretty beginner friendly. Once you know the rules and how the game works knowing basic tactical patterns will help you.

When you play games, longer time controls will be better for a beginner. It gives you more time to think and plan. If you are playing blitz or bullet games, there is not much instructional value to be gleaned from them, especially for a beginner. I'd say 15 minutes +.

In my post about reading strategies I suggested starting with translations of books you are familiar with, particularly those aimed at children and adolescents (primarily for the extensive furigana).

While I agree that good translation requires you to understand all the nuances of the text, translation is a completely different skill from comprehension. I also wonder if too much translation actually hinders the second language acquisition process. Isn't the goal to understand it in the target language, as is, rather than making sure you understand it in a language you already know?

Some suggestions for authors and books:

乙一（おついち）: He writes horror and light novels and was first published at age 16. It's not classic literature my any means but it's easy and most of the stories are short. I particularly liked "Seven Rooms" which was in one of the Zoo collections.

EDIT: Apparently there is a 30min short film adaptation of "Seven Rooms".

奥田英朗（おくたひでお）: His Irabu-sensei series of short stories is fun and fairly accessible. Although they are all connected through the eponymous doctor, the main character(s) of each vignette are different and the language varies accordingly.

夏目漱石（なつめそうせき）: While most of his work is incredibly difficult, 夢十夜 is an excellent collection of short stories made better by the free audio released by the publishers of Breaking into Japanese Literature.

I second the prismacolors, I swear by them as an artist and an art teacher. I also suggest a battery-operated electric eraser, they are a game changer in prismacolor drawing. Here's a cheap one:


Depending on your mom's taste and sense of humor, here are 3 of my favorite off-beat coloring books (way better than just mandalas and stuff):


This crass one is my favorite

Unicorns are Jerks - funny but not offensive

[Thrill Murray, the Bill MUrray coloring book (weird but fun, lots of Wes Anderson film stuff) ] (https://www.amazon.com/Thrill-Murray-coloring-book-Coley/dp/0957490909/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482086999&sr=1-1)

You could also consider making her your very own coloring book. One of my art students made me one that was all pictures of dinosaurs and cats riding on bicycles (my 3 favorite things). If you can't draw, it's super easy to turn photographs into drawing pages with Adobe Illustrator or similar.

You could also get her some frames so she can display her favorite completed pages.

A Discovery of Witches is the first in the All Souls trilogy, which is written by a historian named Deborah Harkness. She integrates a lot of history and alchemy into it, which is cool. I don't think it's anywhere near as well-written as Lord of the Rings, but it is interesting. However, it is a love story, so if you're not into romance, then steer clear.

I liked The Magicians a lot better; the series is kind of like Harry Potter but more serious and literary. It's not that fantastical, and kind of plays off Harry Potter/fantasy stereotypes, but it's a cool series nonetheless.

For those stuck behind the paywall, here are a few key sections

​

>There is a theory, most notably explored in the book “The Numbers Game” by Chris Anderson and David Sally, that some sports are strong-link games and others are weak-link games. The point of the book, and a subsequent podcast on the subject by Malcolm Gladwell, was to demonstrate how soccer is a weak-link game in that a team would be better served making sure its worst players are better than the other team’s worst players in order to win more games. Basketball is on the opposite end of that spectrum, quite clearly a strong-link game in which the team that has the best player on the court is most likely to win that game.
>
>Where hockey sits on that spectrum is not quite clear. Arguments have been made it is clearly a strong-link game, but it’s not quite as obvious as it is in the cases of soccer and basketball. But on that weak-link/strong-link spectrum, the Canadiens are undoubtedly closer to the weak link end of it and the Maple Leafs are at the strong link end of it. It is not possible to see it any other way.
>
>They are a study in contrasts. Contrasts that are born out of necessity. Contrasts that manifested themselves Saturday at Scotiabank Arena.
>
>The question of strong-link versus weak-link sports was posed to Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock on Saturday morning. He coaches the three highest-paid players in the NHL this season; Tavares, Marner and Matthews, Babcock’s three shooters in the shootout, will make $47.8 million among them this season. All the Canadiens forwards combined will make $35 million.



>Having a team’s best player in goal is a debatable strategy, but it is one the Canadiens have embraced and it is their reality, debatable or not.
>
>When the Maple Leafs wind up with breakaways from Marner and Tavares in overtime and Price turns them aside, when Tavares makes an incredible move with five seconds left in overtime and Price gets across to stop it, when Price stops Matthews, Marner and Tavares in the shootout, the Canadiens’ strong link essentially wins it for them.
>
>But what gave Price that opportunity to shine is the Canadiens’ weak-link offence, the one that allows them to roll four lines and stay fresh and forecheck and force mistakes. They find themselves in a division with three of the strongest-link teams in the NHL in the Maple Leafs, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins. For the Canadiens to survive, they will need to make the argument hockey is a weak-link game.
>
>For one night at least, they made that argument quite convincingly.

Depends on what you like. There are books out there for just about everything.

I you like somewhat simple and strange designs The bizzare coloring book for adults, and the sequel are good.

The adult coloring treasury. Is a nice way to get a bunch of samples from different artists to see what you like.

If you like animal designs This one is good.

And if you like irreverent coloring books Unicorns are Jerks is a fun and funny book

The absolute best way to get started is the Starter Set. It's everything you need to get started including some dice and an adventure. As you get more into it, you'll want to pick up the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide (If you don't want to get them all at once, I recommend getting them in that order.) Also very useful is a Dungeon Master's Screen. Moving into more advanced stuff, Xanathar's Guide to Everything is a book full of a bunch of optional rules to spice up the game, and Volo's Guide to Monsters gives more monsters for players to fight, and some you can actually play as. If you need more adventures to run, Tales From the Yawning Portal is a nice big book of dungeons.

That's pretty cool! I've experimented with coloring the paper before folding, and you can get some pretty cool things. Have you tried using wax paper?

If you like tesselations you definitely check out Eric Gjerde's book, I found it really helped me to get into the spirit of it, which is useful for reading fold patterns and intuiting new patterns.

I feel a little like I'm cheating since it's only 10:34pm here in Hawaii right now! Haha! But I'm awake darnit, and contests are fun. :D

Oh goodness, I could never pick a favorite song I don't think, but I've been listening to The Blanks' cover of Hey Ya! constantly lately. It's just wonderful.

As for an item?? Hm...Would it be taboo to ask for a gift card toward my Wii U? If you'd rather not do a gift card I'd be thrilled to have a new book to read!

I love my inner child. :)

And this unicorn book looks like it would be awesome. Because it's got unicorns. XD

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/030788743X
The first time in a long time I have been so sucked in that after finishing int in 3 days, I wanted to go right back to it. Every child of the 80s I have shared it with, especially those who were extra-nerdy, loved this book.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347860128&sr=1-1
If you want non-fiction, I finished this recently and it is hands down the best non-fiction book I have ever read. History filled with compelling narratives rather than dry dates and facts, Bryson brings the past to life - the story of how Halley convinced Newton to write the Principia even though Newton would rather have been searching for King Solomon's tomb for the dates of Christ's second coming or practicing alchemy is just one example of the wonderful narratives that fill this book.

Unless you know what books they already have it might be a bit risky getting a book, but if you do get a book I would suggest getting something not in the "big three" as someone who's really into D&D is likely to get the players handbook, monster manual, and dungeon masters guide on their own. Better to get them something they'd like but might not buy for themselves since theyre not as "essential", like Volo's Guide to Monsters, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide or Xanathar's Guide to Everything I think. Also, any d&d player will always appreciate a new set of pretty dice, a cool bag to keep their dice in or a dice tray to roll on are also solid choices.

I know I must be missing some, but these are all that I can think of at the moment.

Fiction:

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

White Noise by Don Delilo

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW

Infinite Jest by DFW

Of these, you can't go wrong with Infinite Jest and the Collected Fictions of Borges. His Dark Materials is an easy and classic read, probably the lightest fare on this list.

Non-Fiction:

The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy

Chaos by James Gleick

How to be Gay by David Halperin

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

Secret Historian by Justin Spring

Of these, Secret Historian was definitely the most interesting, though How to be Gay was a good intro to queer theory.

Aha! I see a Menger sponge or two and some Thomas Hull intersecting tetrahedra. Excellent!

I'd highly recommend this book (http://www.amazon.com/Origami-Tessellations-Awe-Inspiring-Geometric-Designs/dp/1568814518) for getting started in tessellations. They're similar in spirit to modular origami (to which I see you're well-informed), but I find it much easier to fold these when I travel for work (It's just one piece of paper) and make better gifts (they can be hung from a wall/window for backlighting and fit an "adults" house better).

Bonne chance!

Haha funny thing, my best friend bought me a baby owner's manual written in the same fashion as an appliance instruction manual. It was both humorous and helpful.

I would also agree with "The Sunless Citadel."

You can grab it on [Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Yawning-Portal-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/0786966092/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498073181&sr=8-1&keywords=tales+of+the+yawning+portal) for 29.99 if you have prime in the Tales of the Yawning Portal book.

It basically has 7 stand alone adventures that you could weave together to go from lvl 1-10. This might be a good way to share the DM role as well. Someone could jump in and pick up 1 of the 7 or you could all trade off, each doing one.

EDIT: YES, I would DM if I were you:) Especially since you already have a group of friend who you know are cool and that you know won't be jerks and that you will get along with.

EDIT 2: Check out the APP "Game Master 5" for iPhone, iPad, or whatever. It lets you plan out you encounters. I have started to do this because I wasn't to run The Sunless Citadel myself. It will be my first time DMing:/
You can input all of the NPC's beforehand with all of their stats, keep track of their initiative & HP, and basically plan out every encounter.

Just like last time you ran this contest I can say that the Unicorns are Jerks coloring book would Make me Smile! Mostly because I really want to give it to my best friend because it would make her smile. It fits her personality so perfectly and she loves to color.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Came out in August, 2011. Prodigies in the year 2044 get PhD's in pop-culture of the 1980's in order to save the greatest videogame ever made. Best entertainment value I've read since World War Z. I wrote Ernest Cline to tell him how much I loved it, and the man actually wrote me back. Fellow gunters, unite!

>Except you can play your 3 max contract guys 40/48 minutes in the NBA. Not so much in Hockey.

​

Good point. There have been books written about this: Strong link vs weak link sports. But it appears hockey is a strong link sport. So you're better off upgrading you're high end talent. Good article on it here.

I read the book The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong by Chris Anderson. Its not specifically about betting but it covers alot of great analysis about football that can totally apply to betting. It was a great read, definitely changed the way I understand the game and what kind of bets I was making.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Numbers-Game-Everything-About-Soccer/dp/0143124560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465081904&sr=8-1&keywords=the+numbers+game

Baby Owners Manual for to-the-point advice.

Everywhere Babies is a classic the parents will love reading to their baby. It has great rhyming and as the toddler grows, he/she will enjoy looking at the many types of babies in various types of scenes. The book exudes parental love.

I think The Amateur's Mind and How to Reassess Your Chess are staples to any chess player's book collection. Not only is Silman's language friendly, but the content in his books are incredibly thorough without any verbosity when it comes to n lines of notation and the occasional "...and White is better because of their knight on d5."

I own My System but have yet to manage to find myself at the halfway point of the book. From what I've read, it's rather dense (in language) but informative, however, I have a strong bias toward Silman's language because it's more digestible.

To put it simply: if I could employ routinely everything I've learned in How to Reassess Your Chess, I would be a much better player. There's so much content in that particular book that you could find yourself working through it for a couple years, especially if you purchase it's companion workbook.

From reading some reviews on Amazon, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy seems to appeal to strong club players and up-- but that's not to say that the material isn't educational. You'll have to write back if you decide to pick it up and let us know.

I don't know about you, but I love having time to read during the summer!

BINGO! Thanks! :)

There are a lot of good resources to learn how to DM, but the most important thing you can do is DM a bunch. In some ways it's probably easiest to start off with a book adventure, something like one of the adventurers league books in DnD with lots of prewritten details you can hang onto, but it's also very valuable to be able to just turn shit upside down on a whim if you've got decent improv skills.

As far as writing off a core subsystem because you don't understand it- no. Bad. The GM doesn't need to be an encyclopedia, but they NEED to be able to make basic rulings on the fly in systems that the entire game is based around, and in DnD magic is core to the experience and eventually a feature of almost every single class (even if some of it works differently for several of them). This isn't Burning Wheel, you need spells. Reread the chapter once, then ask on a forum dedicated to that game, then try a different game you'll be able to play more than a third of if you still can't make heads or tails of it.

Congrats! This is a good book for you for the next 7.5 months. It is not so much about what to do with a new baby, but I found it an easy and someone useful info for being a good partner in pregnancy.

Dude You're Gonna Be a Dad!

I loved Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline and read by Wil Wheaton.

I just finished this book last night, I listened to it at every moment it was so fun. Engaging, interesting, exciting, new, GOOD.

Ready Player One book reviews on Amazon

Ready Player One on Audible

Colouring books are probably one of the best things I've discovered on amazon, last year for Christmas I got my mom this one and she thought it was awesome. It's also a bit of a fun/unexpected gift which is nice! Everyone should colour more.

Ready Player One

>Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future--the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline.

One tactic I'll suggest from my personal experience: comparative reading.

1. Read the Japanese line.
   
2. Roughly translate it yourself (in your head or on paper; use a dictionary for any terms you don't know).
   
3. Compare to a competent translation.
   
4. Profit.
   
   It's no replacement or shortcut for the tried-and-true method of studying grammar and basic alphabet, but it accelerated my learning by leaps and bounds. Grab one volume of a manga you like (English and Japanese) and that'll be a good start. Alternatively, a Kodansha bilingual comic (which exists for Chihayafuru, for instance) or parallel text volumes for classic Japanese short stories (example) are also great resources.

1. Yup!
   
   
2. Well, she passed when I was 5, but I loved how she always smelled like strawberries.
   
   
3. This book would be absolutely lovely.
   
   
4. Hey Bean! My mom called me Messie Jessie and Maria. :)

If you liked Safe Baby Handling Tips available from amazon, then you'll love
Safe Baby Pregnancy tips (read it here), also available from amazon

Seriously, if you like it, buy it, who knows when someone you know will get knocked up, and you'll have the perfect gift!

Once you decide to get in into chess, no matter how good you are, you start to notice just how many people participate in global chess beyond a game occasionally played with friends/family. If you want to get into chess, you should really buy yourself a couple of books, starting at a child's level, and go from there. I would really suggest Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer himself as a good, easy, interactive starting point to learning how to solve chess logic puzzles and situations. I didn't know about chess puzzles until I got into them, and I like them more than Sudoku and Crossword Puzzles now. After understanding a bit, then you can really benefit from the tons of videos online. And of course, nothing beats playing chess just by itself to learn!

Congrats on your win!. Try this book https://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Fischer-Teaches-Chess/dp/0553263153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481030940&sr=1-1&keywords=bobby+fischer+teaches+chess

It basically starts with one move to win, then two moves to win, then 3, etc. You'll start to notice patterns and see tactics. Write in the book and do everything in order. After I did this I was able to beat the computer easily and noticed my playing went up drastically online. However you have to keep it up so do the puzzles every day and when you're done with the book get more chess puzzles.

That's an unfortunate reaction from your husband. He probably doesn't understand that being supportive means being proactive.

I was browsing Amazon today for some journals and landed on this https://www.amazon.ca/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365. I'm tempted to get it for my husband this Father's day, but I'm not gonna lie, it's a bit of a gamble, given his reaction so far, though I'm hoping the humorous tone will lessen the blow of the "lessons". The fact that the author is a man might help with that (husband dealt a lot better with the news after he spoke with a newly minted dad about it).

I've been working on my own homebrew world, too, and it is very daunting! Here is what has helped me thus far:

• STEAL! Steal everything! Take from movies, book, tv, games, other players, anything!
  
• Resources. I get modules and premade maps from here, I'm picking up this book to help me form the regions and there will be domain play in my game. Waiting for this one to arrive to help me flesh out the politics. And I've been reading through The Sword Coast Adventurer's guide just to get more ideas.
  
• /r/DnDBehindthescreen has seriously helped me a lot. I don't post a lot, but I get a lot of ideas and resources. LOADS of random tables. And they are actually creating a 10K of everything series. The even have a chatroom for quick questions and discussions where you can bounce your homebrew ideas around.
  
• I have started carrying around a journal where I jot down all of my random ideas for dungeons, NPCs, loot, adventures, and plot ideas, or entire games/campaign ideas. It's nice for whenever I find myself stumped for ideas, I just pull something out of the back and tailor it.
  
  
  EDIT:
  But yes, as most people are saying don't plan on everything done before the game starts and improvise a lot. I am making key areas and regions and from there I will have resources to pull from as I make things up along the way.

I think 5e is far better but your mileage may vary.

You can look at the Basic Rules here for free.

The buy-in for 5e is really slim. I HIGHLY suggest the Starter Set.

> You have the Core Rulebooks:

• Player's Handbook
  
• Dungeon Master's Guide
  
• Monster Manual
  
  Not bad to start.
  
  > Then there are only a few splatbooks:
  
  
• The free Elemental Evil Player's Companion
  
• The Sword Coast Adventurers Guide has some options but 3/4 of it is setting lore/fluff for the Forgotten Realms so if you dislike that, it might not be worth the price for the few pages of options.
  
• Volo's Guide to Monsters is an EXCELLENT sourcebook that expands lore and options on a dozen or so of the most iconic monsters but it also has a section of new races and stuff for players.
  
• In November, Xanathar's Guide to Everything comes out and will be the biggest crunchbook yet. It is mostly the playtest Unearthed Arcana content that has been finalized, but it will be well worth the cover price.
  
  The only other products are the mega-adventures. I'm out of time or I'd link em for ya but here is a list of products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_rulebooks#Dungeons_.26_Dragons_5th_edition

I read a lot as a kid, but I think I read more as an adult--typically about two to three hours a day if I'm not working, and a half-hour to an hour on days I'm working. Currently reading Christopher Hitchens' Arguably. My favorite three books for the moment are The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (technically a three-volume set of 8 books, but the serialization was done by the publisher and wasn't the author's intention--without a doubt it is greatest story I've ever encountered), Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.

There's this series that has a book for pregnancy, new baby, and toddler. My husband LOVES it, very informative, fun, not so earthy-crunchy like the women's books. Good luck!

This came up not to long ago and I will put what I put before
It is very informative and research based but still fun "Caveman's guide to ...." http://www.amazon.com/Cavemans-Pregnancy-Companion-Survival-Expectant/dp/140273526X
A something a lot lighter and just fun to get him into the idea
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Owners-Manual-Instructions-Trouble-shooting/dp/1931686238
The latter has a lot less hard fact but I know I enjoyed it and it got me prepped to read the bigger, harder stuff.

Yay! Since it's your first born, I'm contractually obligated by my past self to recommend a book: The Baby Owner's Manual You can get it for a couple of bucks and it's a life saver.

Congrats you two! Don't forget to be a good dad AND a good husband! Sometimes babies distract people from maintaining their relationship with their spouse, and they end up partners in child raising and rather than partners in life.

The Baby Owner's Manual - I loved this book and found it to be useful as well as entertaining. One thing I found out pretty quickly, however, is that your baby is unique and is not necessarily going to follow some book(s) you read.

You should get this book Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs by Eric Gjerde, you can buy it from here,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Origami-Tessellations-Awe-Inspiring-Geometric-Designs/dp/1568814518/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415997968&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=origami+tessillations

Its a very good starting place, the models start of very simple, and get slightly more difficult as you progress through the book, the diagrams are very clear, pictures are shown for most steps and there is also a coloured Mountain and Valley Crease pattern for each model which helps ALOT! :).

If you dont want to buy the book, you can find lots of examples and tutorials on youtube, ill provide a link to a few,

Five-and-Four Tessellation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2boGii3i9s

Star Puff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhyM6_ioTCE

For the paper, you can use Glassine, super thin, which you can get from the Origami shop.com
http://www.origami-shop.com/en/extra-thin-glassine-xsl-207_215_624_633.html

Tant
http://www.origami-shop.com/en/tant-papers-origami-xsl-207_215_458_625.html.

Hope this helps! :D

For those new to philosophy, I'd recommend The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher, as well as Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. I'm not all the way through the second one but it seems interesting. These are fairly simple but interesting introductory books that teach you some of the issues philosophers deal with.

Hope this helps!

This book, "Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar" is very helpful for understanding basic philosophy concepts through jokes. I read it when I was younger and it was very entertaining to read, not overwhelming or intimidating, and pretty funny also.

https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-into-Understanding/dp/0143113879

hah.

yeah. let me point out something you said... " I've been trying to get better for a couple of days" & " I would assume ... a huge improvement spike"...

not so man. not so. you can do this self-taught to a fair degree, but you're still going to have to read and practice. hundreds of games, not a few days worths.

There are some base concepts and tactics that can help, once you see them in use. it's kinda like any other interest, there is a language and skill-set all it's own. I highly suggest Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. It hits home 3 very important concepts. Some of it is overly simple, but it does hit home those 3 big tools. You'll also read through it, get done, and not ever see the need to og re-read it. I suggest it only because you seem to be having some basic-level troubles. Here's a PDF Version.

Agreement. This may be a better book for tactics at the OP level.

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861

Seirawan books deserve more love. Much better than the oft lauded Silman tomes.

I would also recommend Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. I found the book extremely entertaining because of the corny jokes (and some of them are god awful), and it made some schools of philosophy easier to understand for me.

There is also a new blog someone from Reddit started yesterday, and it is highly entertaining.

This coloring book. My mom will be visiting me next week and we still love to color. (I know, corny.) I would love to surprise her with this one, should be different from our normal fare. :D

Thanks for the contest, X-Ray and Vav!

The best general overview of the Realms I've found is Elminster's Forgotten Realms. It's system- and edition-neutral, and talks about many aspects of the Realms, including common festivals, education, literacy, and other elements that explain how this fantasy world is different than others. That said, the 5th Edition Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide gives you more stats and recent history, so it might be the more practical book.

That said, I recommend that you don't try to be completely true to the Realms. There's just far too much history and geography to learn if you want to be accurate. Start small and read up what you can, but feel free to shift things around as you see fit.

Don't worry about openings for now. You can have perfect opening knowledge and still get killed by weak players with a basic grasp of tactics and an ability to find threats. Those areas are the starting point.

To that end, assuming you know the rules already, and can read chess notation, start with a VERY simple book on tactics. Go through "Simple Checkmates" by A. J. Gilliam (Amazon link) seriously at least seven times--preferably about 10 to 20 times--until you can instantly see the right move in each diagram.

Learning chess is all about building up your knowledge of basic patterns, and I've yet to find a book that gives such a good grounding in the most fundamental and important of these basic patterns.

More advanced (but still cheap) books that are good for learning to see patters in chess would be 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, by Fred Reinfeld (ignore any books of his that don't consist of just diagrams, though) and the excellent Chess Training Pocket Book: 300 Most Important Positions, by Lev Alburt.

I found Winning Chess Strategies, by Yasser Seirawan helpful as an introduction to strategy when I first started out, but some people think his writing style is more suitable for kids.

How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course, by Jeremy Silman or The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery, also by Silman are big touchstones for chess learners in the late-beginner phase. A less-known author that I highly recommend is C. J. S. Purdy. He wrote quite a while ago, but he's incredibly insightful in teaching amateurs to break bad chess habits and generally understand how to think in chess. Here's an Amazon search result for his books. (By the way, I don't necessarily endorse Amazon as the best place to buy chess books, but the links are convenient.)

Main thing is, get the basics down. Build up the basic patterns. Go over the simpler diagrams over and over until you know them cold. Then move on to strategy, more advanced tactics and endgames, then worry about openings.

Throw away all other books, buy this one (and only this one) The Baby Owner's Manual

It was given to us as a gift, and we've in turn bought it for every expecting family we know. Truly the best reference for the care of a newborn.

I got this book Baby Owner's Manual as a semi gag gift when we were having our first. I actually read through this book and found it really helpful overall. I even referred back to it a few times when we weren't sure on some things.

What to expect is great and all, but it's just TOO much stuff. This keeps it straight and to the point. Plus it's funny because it's written like an instruction manual.

There was a great study recently comparing the competitive advantage of spending money on superstars vs using that money building up a solidly above average rest of the team.

They did this with football/soccer and basketball. Basically what they found is spending money on superstars is pretty wasteful in soccer and doesn't really improve your team as much as investing in the whole team. Whereas in basketball the opposite is true. It actually is worth spending a lot of money on a Lebron James or Steph Curry.

So all in all he might be right. In the big picture Ronaldo is probably overpaid while Lebron is probably not...

Source: this book https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Game-Everything-About-Soccer/dp/0143124560

YouTuber Sarah Adams has a couple of videos on tessellations. Here's a playlist of her videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL13A44D22E042BB7F


Book-wise, I am personally very fond of Eric Gjerde's Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs.
You can buy that here: https://www.amazon.com/Origami-Tessellations-Awe-Inspiring-Geometric-Designs/dp/1568814518


Good luck and happy folding!

By mastering the tactics I'm assuming you mean learn the strategy? The phrase is ambiguous because 'tactic' has a special meaning within chess.

To be honest, my first exposure with 'real chess' was with one of Jeremy Silman's books, The Amatuer's Mind. I was rated ~1200 at that point, and used to just shuffling my pieces around and hoping my opponent blundered. The Amatuer's Mind taught me about the basics of planning, and that's something I've been learning about ever since.

Annotated game collections are an amazing way to learn.

Two of my favorites, from two of the all-time best science fiction writers:

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

World-Building by Stephen L. Gillett and Ben Bova

Both look at it from more of a writing standpoint, but they're great resources for RPGers or hobbyists too.

Haven't read them yet but just caught up with The Magicians TV series and am on the waiting list to read the trilogy of books the show is based on. Might be a bit more campy than you're looking for (think Harry Potter for adults) but I've found it entertaining and there's definitely strong elements of time travel / time looping.

When I became a first-time dad several year ago, I found The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance EXTREMELY helpful, and humorous, too.

There is also a toddler edition of this book.

After a little while you can get used to it - at one point I could even tell if my runt was tired/hungry/dirty just by the type of cry she emitted. Best of luck!

I have a few suggestions.

The Philosophy Gym has 25 short philosophy things, with pictures and dialogues. Stephen Law also has a lot of other books of similar style that might be worth looking into.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a philosophy joke book, which might be a fun coffee table book.

The Philosophy Bites book has 25 interviews with leading contemporary philosophers.

The Stone Reader has articles by leading contemporary philosophers that were published in the New York Times philosophy column, The Stone.

Hope that helps!

I personally recommend reading "How to write science fiction and fantasy" by Orson Scott Card.

Lots of great advice in there, esp. about what NOT to do, rookie mistakes, etc.

And as a sci fi author, don't feel shy with starting with fanfiction, I started there. (No, you can't read it. Too embarrassing 😅)

TVTropes is also a great resource for writing, but it requires great willforce not to get sucked into opening 100s of tabs 😛

Not really; when I started folding tessellations 7 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of information available online. The few people who had done it before had not published much on the matter, or if they did it was completely inaccessible. (like, hand-published Japanese texts printed out on a mimeograph in 1977 inaccessible, and I actually managed to find one of those...)

So as I taught myself how to do this, I shared my discoveries on Flickr, and my website. I created a group on Flickr, called Origami Tessellations which became a pretty important part of the current resurgence of this style of folding. I published a book, titled "Origami Tessellations: Awe-Inspiring Geometric Designs", which happens to be where these images are from.

I'd heartily recommend checking out the Flickr group, there's over 9,000 images there, and lots of great info from a community of folders contained within.

You need the following, if you are planning to run the most recent edition:

• https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Dungeons-Dragons-Wizards/dp/0786965606
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Masters-Guide-Core-Rulebook/dp/0786965622
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Manual-Core-Rulebook-Wizards/dp/0786965614
  
  I recommend getting the following set in order to play a great starting adventure:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Starter-Wizards-Team/dp/0786965592/
  
  You can expand with:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Coast-Adventurers-Guide-Accessory/dp/0786965800/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Volos-Guide-Monsters-Wizards-Team/dp/0786966017/

Credit to /u/yanray for making these:

>I made these crayons / took this photo... never expected to see it pop up here on Reddit. It was for a contest to win the crayons, the deadline (in a weird coincidence) is tomorrow. Proof: http://coloringforgrownups.com/post/34581772735/crayons-for-grown-ups
I'm glad Reddit likes them. I also directed the "K is for Knifeball" video that took off here not too long ago... Long story short, the crayons are a real-life version of one page from a book I co-wrote & illustrated called "Coloring for Grown-ups" - Available right now wherever fine books are sold (and also at Urban Outfitters)! This: http://www.amazon.com/Coloring-Grown-Ups-Adult-Activity-Book/dp/0452298253

Currently, official resources are fairly scarce, and we won't be getting anything new for a bit, as the next book (The Curse of Strahd) won't have any new character options.

Currently, your official options are twofold:

Elemental Evil Players Companion:
This free resources adds 4 new races and a handfull of new spells.

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Currently the most recent book, is roughly 80% setting information, but towards the back contains new race variants, background options, a handful of new cantrips, as well as new class options for the following:

• Barbairan (Path of the Battlerager and more options for Totem Warrior animals)
  
• Cleric (Arcana Domain)
  
• Fighter (Purple Dragon Knight)
  
• Monk (Way of the Long Death and Way of the Sun Soul)
  
• Paladin (Oath of the Crown)
  
• Rogue (Mastermind and Swashbuckler)
  
• Sorcerer (Storm Sorcery)
  
• Warlock (The Undying)
  
• Wizard (Bladesinger)
  
  If you would like, I can go more in depth on those extra class options if any one or all pique your interest.
  
  Your unofficial options are much broader
  
  Be sure to check out /r/UnearthedArcana, as this is the 5e Homebrew subreddit, and there's a lot of good stuff here, but it will require a lot of close monitoring by the DM to keep it fair and in-universe.
  
  Secondly, DM's Guild is the WOTC 'marketplace' for homebrew content. It allows creators to host their stuff and set a price (or not) to purchase it. I would highly suggest looking at Matthew Mercer's Witch Hunter Class and Gunslinger Fighter Archetype (Both are "Pay what you want") as they have gone through some pretty rigorous testing and I can personally attest both are an absolute blast to play.

this delights my inner child in a way I can't fully explain. The makeup all looks really good. I've been meaning to check out new makeups, so I'll have to see if I can get my hands on some samples.

Thanks for the contest! Looking good!

This is my second choice, but my first was over the limit. Could pair it with crayons to make it $10.

Just for the giggle it gives, check out the pooping pooches calendar sometime. Great gag gift!

Here's where you can buy it
The paperback is cheaper, but I definitely like the quality of the hardcover.
Here is the pdf version
It's free, but I always preferred a physical copy.

Woo YEAH! This is the only coloring book on my WL. Life is about using the whole box of crayons

/u/lauran2323 would love this coloring book!

Don’t study openings. Study fundamentals. Chess.com is a great way to get free information. This series is excellent https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861

This is so amazing. I love it mucho

I kind of think that /u/martysthreegirls might like Unicorns Are Jerks ... haha!

Life is about using the whole box of crayons. :) (ps, thanks for the contest, you rock!)

Not like this, no. Still, you can put in the work, build your own, and share it with others if you're feeling generous.

The closest example would be to get some of the Japanese readers out there like "Read Real Japanese", "Breaking Into Japanese Literature", and "Exploring Japanese Literature". These are aimed at people still learning so they're chosen to be notable, but still easy to read. More relevantly they typically have vocabulary at the bottom of each page to help you. Admittedly, there are other features present (full parallel text in English, Japanese audio for each, etc.), but that's why they're specifically sold as teaching tools.

The Book of The Righteous. A book all about Dnd pantheons, almost entirely lore, with some mechanical stuff as extras. This is probably the one I'd recommend most given the concentration of lore(plus cool pictures and stuff).

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Righteous-5E-Aaron-Loeb/dp/1934547816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526601339&sr=8-1&keywords=book+of+the+righteous+5e

The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Mostly lore about the Sword Coast, a region in the forgotten realms. It's almost all lore, with some mechanical stuff towards the end.

https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Coast-Adventurers-Guide-Accessory/dp/0786965800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526601688&sr=1-1&keywords=sword+coast

Volo's Guide to Monsters. About half the book is the lore of certain monster races, and the other half is monster stat blocks.

https://www.amazon.com/Volos-Guide-Monsters-Wizards-Team/dp/0786966017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526601471&sr=1-1&keywords=volos

Mordenkainen's tome of Foes. It isn't out till May 29, but it's supposed to be largely lore about the plains and various cosmic conflicts throughout time, and then several more monster stat blocks.

https://www.amazon.com/MORDENKAINENS-FOES-Accessory-Wizards-Team/dp/0786966246/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526601510&sr=1-1&keywords=mordenkainen%27s+tome+of+foes

I recommend going into a local game shop and seeing which of these they have and flipping through them to get an idea of what they're like and which ones interest you the most. Also this is only listing some of the books from the most recent edition (5e), largely because they tend to be the prettiest(design has improved significantly over time). Past editions are absolutely full of books about everything to do with anything you could want in the dnd multiverse.

My first chess books and they laid a great foundation IMO.

Winning Chess Tactics (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1857443861/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_6cxuyb72M9N01


Winning Chess Strategies (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1857443853/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Kdxuyb38ZVT8B

Gravity's Rainbow is Thomas Pynchon's epic, wandering, convoluted WWII novel.

Infinite Jest is either the greatest novel of all time or the most overrated novel of all time, depending on who you ask (I happen to fall into the former category)

I used "dude, your going to be a dad!"

It's not a huge book and actually a pretty fun read with an overview of what's going on. Think of it as supplemental. Some good tips as well.

Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!: How to Get (Both of You) Through the Next 9 Months https://www.amazon.com/dp/1440505365/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_kMfNzb5YTJK4Q

The two books I've read over the last 9 months are [Baby Meets World] (http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Meets-World-Smile-Toddle/dp/0312591349) and [Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads] (http://www.beprepared.net/). Both have something different to offer.

Baby Meets World uses basic motions a baby makes - suck, smile, touch, and toddle - as launching points for baby care techniques. The author, Nicholas Day, examines current trends and opinions related to breast feeding, swaddling, pacifiers, etc. and historical practices along the same lines. The book is not good at telling parents what to do. It's strength is putting current trends in context, describing human development in the baby months, and offering often funny anecdotes about Day's own experience as a first time father. The big takeaway from the book is there are many ways to care for your child and you're free to choose what is best for your family.

Be Prepared, as the title suggests, is a how to book. Gary Greenberg, author of the Pop Up Book of Nightmares, offers up some something of a Boy Scout Handbook for early fatherhood. His guide is a sequential arc of a baby's development from the [baby's first day] (http://www.beprepared.net/samples_willnwont1.html) through his or her first birthday all with a good sense of humor. Greenberg describes various activities that will be both interesting to dad and help build baby's skills at different stages of development. I wish a second edition would come out to update some of the references, ditch the audio/visual equipment chapter (can be replaced with "Get a smartphone.") and add something about social media. A father friend of mine gave me this book and my wife and I enjoyed reading it on long car trips.

The one book I didn't like was the one my parents gave me: [Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!] (http://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365) by John Pfeiffer. I've seen other people recommend it here, but, I really hate the tone of the book. My wife and I started hate reading it and, to Pfeiffer's credit, his writing did spark some important conversations early in the pregnancy. My biggest objection is the author's lazy portrayal of men as oafish self-centered douchebags - the kind that get you lots of karma in /r/cringepics. If the dad to be is an oafish self-centered douchebag, this book is great. The takeaway here is "Stop being a oafish self-centered douchebag! Step up your game and be a dad." I tend to see the men in this sub as already over that obstacle.

TL;DR [Baby Meets World] (http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Meets-World-Smile-Toddle/dp/0312591349) = interesting read. [Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads] (http://www.beprepared.net/) = funny how to guide. [Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!] (http://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365) = for douchebags.

Many of the 5e modules have sections about running them in other D&D settings, so they are easily adaptable.

The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is the campaign setting book for the FR, thus far. Tho I also recommend Dungeonology by Matt Forbeck. It's a pithy little FR campaign primer and has THE best Sword Coast map produced in 5e, to date.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786965800/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_3/167-2967996-5756223?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=2HSMNV0WGXZWD01G04RC

https://www.amazon.com/Dungeonology-Ologies-Matt-Forbeck/dp/0763693537


My favorite out-of-a-can campaign setting is actually Mystara. After I finish my next couple FR games, I'm gonna run a 5e Mystara campaign.

You can use any campaign setting book from any edition in 5e. You're just using the flavor text to tease out the world. Don't worry about the edition mechanics.

I own a few beginner books like this. If you like folk tales, this is exactly what you're asking for: Treasury of Japanese Folk Tales - the stories are in English on the first half of the page, and on the bottom half in mostly kana with furigana over any kanji. It's a nice hardcover book with color illustrations on each page, so I think it's worth the price.
Clay and Yumi Boutwell have written Japanese readers that are very similar- furigana and kana text with definitions for each kanji/vocabulary on the bottom half of the page, followed by a full English summary afterwards. I own Hikoichi, Momotaro, and Inch High Samurai. I think the Boutwells' readers are good learning material but way overpriced considering how small each reader is. Since the Treasury of Japanese Folk Tales also contains many of the stories covered by each of the Boutwells' readers, it's a better bang for the buck (though missing the 1-1 definitions for each kanji/vocabulary).
I also own the red Giles Murray Breaking into Japanese Literature, but it's a bit above my current skill level since many of the kanji don't have furigana.
I have also looked into Kodansha's bilingual series, but since it's aimed at Japanese readers trying to learn English- manga have speech bubbles in English with no furigana kanji on the sides, but regular Japanese manga + English translated counterpart is more helpful since regular Japanese manga aimed for children have furigana.

Truly one of the best philosophy jokes... This is a fun book
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143113879

I know this is slightly off topic, but let me play Grandma here and suggest some books for you that have gaming influences which you might enjoy. Coincidentally, my nerd book club is reading these three for April:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson, and Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf.

Also, happy late birthday!

Star Trek bib and spoons! My husband is a Star Trek and Star Wars fan so when I saw this bib being sold I had to get it. (this was 4 years ago and currently it is not being sold in Denmark so I'm so thankfull I got it while it was here!). The shop I got it from sometimes imports a few items from the US to see if they sell well in DK. I think this one sold well but it might not have been worth the logistics anyway.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/e578_star_trek_light-up_feeding_system_anim.gif

Edite: I nearly forgot! I got him the "Safe Baby Handling Tips" by Kelly and David Sopp. So funny!

https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Baby-Handling-Tips-David/dp/0762424915/

You can view many of the images here: http://old.marcofolio.net/imagedump/how_to_and_not_to_take_care_of_a_baby.html

Read the Gospel and the Loose Canon. Conversion ceremonies can be fun, and you can create your own. They should, of course, include pasta, pirate regalia, and grog.

Our holiday's include fridays, Holiday- a vague celebration around december- and ramendan, where we eat ramen in remembrance of all the college students who survive on it.

Keep the 8 I Really Rather You Didn'tsin mind, and have fun!

>not every GL wants to be in the business of approving books

Without standards, you end up with this and comic books on your altar.

Congratulations! You have been made a tool.

This is why Florida made their changes. And good for them.

Umm. you do realize this is exactly how the book Ready Player One started right? if any of you havnt read it already. do yourself a favour. :). Pretty much, the majority if the planet is educated like this in the book.

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

> how much he neeeeedddssss it

I would say you should explain to him that you neeeeeed him to respect you in this and to have some compassion.

I got my husband a copy of the Expectant Father and he's found it helpful and informative. If your guy won't listen when you explain what you need, maybe he'll listen if it's coming from a book. Or, no offense, I'm sure he's a great guy and has tons of redeeming qualities, but if he's as immature as this post makes him sound, maybe Dude, You're Gonna be a Dad might be more his speed.

Also, explain to him that pregnancy pulls crazy shit with our senses of smell, and for now you need him to either stop using his cologne or understand that he needs to wash it off before you can be near him.

But as far as meeting those neeeeeeds of his ... would it be nuts to take a trip to your local woman-owned sex toy shop to look for some toys to tide him over? There are some very classy men's masturbation devices out there, like tenga (nsfw) though they can get pricey. Maybe seeing that you still care about his sex needs would help him feel better, even if you're not able to drain his nuts yourself?

I'm working my way through "The Numbers Game". It looks at soccer analytically and delves into different tactics, managers and clubs. Also challenges a lot of conventional wisdom the same way Moneyball did for baseball. Really helped me get an understanding of what to look for and get a better appreciation for what's really going on during the game

http://www.amazon.com/The-Numbers-Game-Everything-Soccer/dp/0143124560

It's not a book. This is an excerpt from a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. If you like this, you should definitely check out the full speech or check out one of his three collection of essays. He's also got a number of short story collections, including a particularly famous work Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He's probably most famous for Infinite Jest, a novel well over a thousand pages in length.

Depends on what she likes. I bought a "Coloring for grown-ups" for my friend. She likes coloring and mean jokes.

I love my inner child!!

Either:

Coloring for Grown-Ups: The Adult Activity Book

Or

Unicorns Are Jerks: a coloring book exposing the cold, hard, sparkly truth

Thanks for the contest!! It reminded me how much I LOVE to color! It's therapeutic for me.

Edit: I also have Between the Lines: An Expert Level Coloring Book == and == Outside the Lines: An Artists' Coloring Book for Giant Imaginations (totally stole that one from /u/chickenfriedsoup so if you pick this particular book, give it to them)

Mine loves this one. He loves the silly humor and pictures. It's very informative too.

Wouldn't it be funny is someone HAD a Ruger on their gift list? Wonder how that goes...

Anyway, I suppose of all the things on my list (besides the expensive stuff like mics and the Roku box) I really want to read Ready Player One so it's really desired. However, any of the 80 something albums I have listed are important too!

As someone that has much of this problem as well all I can say is reading books or following courses on writing fantasy.

Personally I really appreaciated the two books from Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game if anyone does not know him) which are: How to write science fiction and fantasy and Characters and viewpoint.

There are also uploaded on Youtube the lectures held by Brandon Sanderson (MIstborn) which are free to watch and great to get abearing on writing. Here's the most recent one.

I thumbed through the one on Aristotle. I thought it was entertaining, though not entirely accurate. Symposia, for example, would probably be better understood as "drinking parties," rather than "dinner parties."

I appreciate the joke-approach, e.g. Plato and a Platypus, though I suspect that these sorts of books are more entertaining for philosophers than they are to the general public.

I would recommend giving the Magicians series by Lev Grossman a read. It is a pretty cool and dark take on a wizarding ivy league-esq college in upstate New York.

These are from the book Safe Baby Handling Tips:

Safe Baby Handling Tips https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762424915/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_g2dYxbJEZKJZV

My wife and I received this when my wife got pregnant and I still pick it up for a laugh every now and then.

Happy Birthday!

I think you'd like this because unicorns. <3

thanks for the contest. :D

I think that makes the game better.

I know it sounds weird, but for me, this makes the game more like an actual sport, which is the biggest draw for me. It allows for more strategies and more emphasis on learning what went wrong the prior game besides just mechanical mistakes. Furthermore, I think the team based aspect allows for more comebacks.

I understand people have different opinions, but the quality of playing and watching League feels better when it is driven by having your worst player being better than the teams worst player. League is most similar to soccer in that respect. I respect all other opinions though, just my thoughts

Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Game-Everything-About-Soccer/dp/0143124560
Here is the book that I got the fact that in soccer it is more important for the worst player to be better than the best player.

Oh my GOD. I just thought to myself, "I would actually legit like that" and looked up coloring books on Amazon for fun and found this. I may actually buy this and a box of crayons .............

There should be 4 posts up there, but thanks for the advice. I'm in the middle of Ready Player One, and I'm feeling inspired to get back into writing... not sure why this didn't take off, but I had an outline with quite a few ideas to continue with.

The Knife of Never Letting Go and the rest of the "Chaos Walking" trilogy is an amazing read, with plenty of awesome combat. It also brings up many modern ethical questions. I loved it.

He might also like Ready Player One which I am not quite finished with yet, but has really sucked me in. Even though there are several pop-culture references from the 80s, the reader doesn't need to be familiar with any of them to enjoy the story. I was born in 1983 and was too young to really have experienced much of it, but I'm enjoying the heck out of the book. I believe there is one passage where the main character alludes to masturbating, but content-wise, that's the only thing that a parent might consider questionable that I've come across so far.

Both titles have teenage fighter-type males as protagonists.

You can sign up and play on these websites.

1.chess.com

2.lichess.org

3.chess24.com

​

Watch beginner videos on youtube. You can subscribe to these channels and watch their videos regularly. Many of these channels are not entirely aimed at beginners. You can watch them for entertainment and learn chess history too.

1.https://www.youtube.com/user/AGADMATOR

2.https://www.youtube.com/user/ChessNetwork

3.https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub

4.https://www.youtube.com/user/wwwChesscom

5.https://www.youtube.com/user/RosenChess

6.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqLLqbclDQ6IQg39Wsgy-4w

7.https://www.youtube.com/user/PowerPlayChess

8.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWRXqVXhkHYp9HU9gJATgJA

Check out these books that are great for beginners and intermediate players.

1.https://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Fischer-Teaches-Chess/dp/0553263153/

2.https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Champions-step-step/dp/081293671X/

I used this one. Helped me understand some of the stuff that was going to happen. That being said, I would suggest you learn to tolerate an extra sprinkle of crazy that your wife will exhibit. Congratulations and good luck!!!

https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539975454&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dude+you+are+gonna+be+a+dad&dpPl=1&dpID=51UysnNAM-L&ref=plSrch

You'll figure it out fairly quickly. Mine is 6 months and we've got it covered. My few books:

The Baby Owner's Manual

Pacify Me - One of the best chapters in here talks about listening to friends and family, but mostly family and disregard the crazy stuff. You'll get to a point where you learn to listen to your instinct, its going to be right (We reference my wife's instinct as it seems to be better honed in, or so she says)

Relax, don't stress, you'll manage.

Congrats!

I found this book to be really helpful and well written.

https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Gonna-Be-Dad/dp/1440505365/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TDHWHW231P89TR81TDZ8

I'll probably have to re-read some of Hero pretty soon and figure out to what extent the stages of the monomyth might be used in the plotline of IJ, but I really like your point about the external/internal. It runs through a lot of Wallace's work and its such an important of IJ because its dealt with across many characters and themes.

I looked at pg. 607, I couldn't see it and I have this edition.

Avril is a total enigma to me. I read up to about 550 last year, and one of the last scenes I read was [spoiler](/s"Pemulis walking in on Avril & Wayne playing football").

A few other books you might want to add which fit nicely with the Bible (in no particular order):

• The Satanic Bible
  
  
• The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of Grimm Brothers: The Complete First Edition
  
  
• The Qur'an
  
  
• The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
  
  
• Deities & Demigods (Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 Edition Roleplaying Supplement)
  
  
• How to Practice: The Way of a Meaningful Life
  
  
• Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

Currently reading, and would like to finish:

1. Interaction Ritual Chains by Randal Collins
   
   Started in 2014, put down, would like to finish in 2015:
   
   
2. Aztecs by Inga Clendinnen
   
   
3. The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger
   
   Would like to re-read in 2015:
   
   
4. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
   
   
5. White Noise by Don DeLillo
   
   
6. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
   
   Would like to read in 2015:
   
   
7. The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
   
   
8. A couple of books for /r/SF_Book_Club
   
   
9. Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts, back-to-back
   
   
10. At least one or two books on Buddhist philosophy / practice
    
    
11. At least one or two books on philosophy, either philo of mind or more cultural studies / anthro / sociology type stuff.

The picture is from the very funny book called Safe Baby Handling Tips.

Safe Baby Handling Tips https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762424915/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_vlCnub1SC51BM

Michael Lafosse books are good, like Origami Art and Advanced Origami
http://www.origamido.com/

I like Eric Gjerdes diagrams in here
http://www.amazon.com/Origami-Tessellations-Awe-Inspiring-Geometric-Designs/dp/1568814518

Also John Montrol has lots of animal books

I made a little dad prep kit: an extra large 'Papa Bear' mug, Dude, You're Going to Be a Dad, Oreos (since we can't celebrate with wine!), and the tests in a heart polka dotted bag. He loved it!

I also studied Japanese in college. I had a lacuna of about 10 years before restarting my Japanese studies. After about two or so years of study, I now have my N1. Here are some things I did:

• I did Read the Kanji for a little bit, getting to some N1 sentences.
  
• I read bilingual texts like Breaking into Japanese Literature, though I never got around to finishing it.
  
• I also used readers such as Modern Japanese: A Basic Reader. These have graded reading lessons with a glossary of the words used in English in a separate volume/section. Basically I followed the reading program outlined here.
  
• I kept reading, getting to the point where I read editorials every day. Reading, reading, reading.
  
• I also listened to podcasts all day long at work. I think that’s why my JLPT listening score was relatively higher than the other section scores.
  
  Start with something basic, then try to work your way up any way you can.

I found this some time ago and it looked like a great idea so I bought it (or actually, I bought this one, not really sure what's different). I haven't actually looked closer at it since I bought it though, so I can't say how good it actually is.

It has short Japanese stories with the Japanese text on the left and English translation on the right, with vocabulary at the bottom. I'm not sure the content is as simple as you want though, it seems like there's only furigana for harder words, but they seem to have translation and reading at the bottom for all words.
Also, I don't think they have translation for the same word more than once - so if a word appears with translation on the first page, there won't be a translation for the word if it appears on later pages (though you still have the full English translation that includes the word).

The amazon link for the red book lets you look at the first few pages so you can see what it looks like.