Should we encourage posts that merely want to discuss what other people thought of a certain piece of media, but have no real recommendation or opinion either way? Some of that happened naturally in the first thread, and it seems like a natural extension of this, but it wasn't really the original purpose, I don't think. I'm not really sure we have enough volume in recommendations to hold a monthly thread, and I think encouraging this might make the thread more substantial.

Non-Fiction

Fiction

* Limitless: intelligence enhancement as a positive factor in life improvement * Colossus: The Forbin Project: superintelligent AI done right * Last Night (1998): existential risk from a personal perspective

Unthinkable - consequentialism examined with unflinching honesty.

Many have probably already heard of this game, but Dominion is an excellent strategy card game that I quite enjoy. You can play it online for free. The basic premise if that you start with three estates, which are worth one victory point each, and seven coppers, which are worth one dollar each randomly shuffled into a deck, like Magic: The Gathering. Each turn, you draw five cards. The game (and all of it's expansion sets) consist of specific cards, of which you randomly pick 10 for each game. Most of these cards are action cards, and will do special things. You can buy these cards with your money, putting them into your deck or you can buy better money, (Silver - $2, and Gold - $3) that will let you buy more expensive cards, or you can buy Victory cards (Estate - 1 VP, Duchy - 3 VP, or Province - 6 VP) that will help you win the game. The person with the most victory points in his deck at the end of the game wins. The game ends with you run out of three of the cards you can buy OR when you run out of provinces. (As a note, each victory point deck starts with 8 cards in the pile, and every other deck starts with 10, except coppers, silvers, and golds, which for all intents and purposes, don't run out.) For a more detailed explanation of a turn: Each turn, you start with one action, one buy, and you draw five cards from the top of your deck. (Technically, you draw at the end of your previous turn, but that's largely irrelevant for understanding.) Action cards can give you additional actions, letting you play even more action cards that might let you, for example, draw more cards. This allows you to build very powerful decks based on the synergies between different cards. Once you run out of available actions or available action cards, you can automatically play ALL of your treasures. Lets say you played a Silver, Gold, and a Copper, for a total of $6, and had an action card that had given you $2. This would give you $8 total to spend, so you could buy one $8 card, o