Joel Stanton keeps a running cabinet of book and board game reviews, plus the odd essay about whatever else is rattling around in there.https://joelscabinet.com/en-UShttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/a-dog-who-doesnt-care-about-my-hobby/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/a-dog-who-doesnt-care-about-my-hobby/She's completely indifferent to every board game I own and somehow still shaped how I think about von Uexkull's whole theory of animal perception.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/A hundred year old biology text that reads more like a strange little philosophy pamphlet, and it rewired how I think about what my dog is actually experiencing.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Foray into the Worlds of Animals and HumansJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/small-gods/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/small-gods/A god trapped inside a tortoise because almost nobody actually believes in him anymore, and somehow Pratchett turns that setup into the sharpest thing he's written about organized religion.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTSmall GodsJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-old-kings-crown/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-old-kings-crown/Simple mechanics that turn into real bluffing and mind games once you've actually got a few plays in, which took me longer to see than I'd like to admit.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Old King's CrownJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/phi/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/phi/A neuroscientist's theory of consciousness told through Galileo touring dreamlike vignettes with Darwin and Turing, and I still can't decide who this book was actually written for.Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPhiJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/use-of-weapons/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/use-of-weapons/Two timelines, one moving forward and one running backward, and the backward one is the reason this book has stayed with me longer than almost anything else I've read.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTUse of WeaponsJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/manufacturing-consent/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/manufacturing-consent/Not a fast read, and I'll admit I never finished the middle chapters the way I finished the front and back, but the thesis lands hard enough in the first hundred pages that I don't think it matters much.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTManufacturing ConsentJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/permutation-city/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/permutation-city/Ten million people on a chip, per the tagline, and Egan spends the whole book actually working out what that would mean instead of just gesturing at it.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPermutation CityJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-two-player-problem/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-two-player-problem/Most of my actual game nights are two people. Most games I want to love weren't designed for that, and I've made my peace with being annoying about it.Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/explaining-rules-the-same-way-i-explain-aftercare/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/explaining-rules-the-same-way-i-explain-aftercare/Ten years of telling worried pet owners the same three things in different words turns out to be pretty good training for teaching a board game.Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/android-netrunner/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/android-netrunner/One of the best two player games I've ever sat down to, and I say that even knowing the LCG well ran dry years ago.Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTAndroid: NetrunnerJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/what-boise-winters-do-to-a-reading-habit/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/what-boise-winters-do-to-a-reading-habit/Grew up somewhere you could read outside nine months a year. Boise is not that place, and my reading pace has never fully recovered.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/faraway/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/faraway/A drafting filler that scores backwards from how your brain wants to think about it, which is exactly why it's stuck around on my shelf.Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTFarawayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/solaris/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/solaris/A planet made of a single vast, possibly sentient ocean that humanity has spent decades failing to actually communicate with, and the book is honest enough to never pretend that failure resolves.Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTSolarisJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-kemet/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-kemet/Traded it away once after one bad two player game. Bought it back two years later and had to admit the problem wasn't the game, it was the table I brought to it.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-client-who-named-her-cat-after-a-discworld-god/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-client-who-named-her-cat-after-a-discworld-god/Called a cat in for its annual exam and the name on the chart stopped me cold. Turned into the best five minutes of small talk I've had at work all year.Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/unmatched-tales-to-amaze/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/unmatched-tales-to-amaze/A genuinely good co-op adaptation of a system I already loved, though it's showing me its ceiling faster than I'd like.Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTUnmatched: Tales to AmazeJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/kemet/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/kemet/The original, not Blood and Sand, and it shows its age in exactly the ways people warned me it would before I bought it.Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTKemetJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/andromedas-edge/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/andromedas-edge/Dwellings of Eldervale in space is the comparison everyone reaches for, and it's fair, but the toy factor here earns its own keep.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTAndromeda's EdgeJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/cthulhu-death-may-die/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/cthulhu-death-may-die/A dice chucker that shouldn't have worked on me and did anyway, mostly because the tension never lets up even when the dice are cruel.Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCthulhu: Death May DieJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/cascadia/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/cascadia/A tile and token puzzle that somehow gets calmer the more you play it, which is not something I say about most games in this box size.Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTCascadiaJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/reading-the-same-ten-pages-three-times/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/reading-the-same-ten-pages-three-times/I used to think rereading a chapter meant I wasn't paying attention the first time. Steps to an Ecology of Mind talked me out of that.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-name-of-the-wind/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-name-of-the-wind/A doorstop where almost nothing happens by plot standards and I still didn't want to put it down, which tells you something about how it's actually built.Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Name of the WindJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/A collection of essays by a man who called himself an anthropologist, psychiatrist, and cyberneticist depending on the day, and somehow the whole thing hangs together anyway.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTSteps to an Ecology of MindJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/townsfolk-tussle/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/townsfolk-tussle/A boss battler I'd hand to a total beginner before I'd hand them Kingdom Death, but I wouldn't call it a deep game on its own terms.Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTTownsfolk TussleJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/teaching-my-sister-netrunner-over-video-call/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/teaching-my-sister-netrunner-over-video-call/One of the best two player games I own, and I tried to teach it to someone six hundred miles away through a laptop camera pointed at cards she couldn't actually read.Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/arkham-horror-lcg/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/arkham-horror-lcg/The best story-generating game system I own, and also the one I've spent the most money keeping fed.Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTArkham Horror: The Card GameJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-grace-of-kings/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-grace-of-kings/People keep calling this the Asian Game of Thrones and that comparison does it no favors, because the two books aren't actually chasing the same thing.Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Grace of KingsJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-break-room-book-club-that-never-reads-the-book/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-break-room-book-club-that-never-reads-the-book/Three of us at the clinic started a book club eight months ago. We've finished one book. We meet every single week anyway.Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stantonhttps://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-cabinet-actually/https://joelscabinet.com/articles/the-cabinet-actually/People ask if the site name is a metaphor. It is not. There is an actual cabinet and it has actual rules about what's allowed in it.Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayJoel Stanton