Board Games, Video Games, Books
This is by no means all inclusive of anything, except what I remember as recently new to me.
Board Games
Agricola: I thoroughly enjoy this resource-management game. It's tough for me to categorize, which is good. The resource elements make me suspect that people who like Power Grid will like this, but I have trouble picking out exactly why. It's a bit solitarish, but not nearly so bad as many such games. There's also what seems to me to be a giant element of luck in the game with regards to determining the winner, but thus far that hasn't reduced my enjoyment of the game (and I'm certain there are variants online that ameliorate this). Don't bother playing the "basic" version.
In the Year of the Dragon: Another resource-management game, where some kind of DOOM will fall on your head. You merely get to influence how much of which kinds of doom will help destroy you. This is a game with surprisingly little luck throughout the whole game, but that hasn't bothered me! There's definitely some possibility of analysis-paralysis here, but things usually move quick enough. This game makes full use of the "each player frequently does a small thing" compared to the monolithic turns of some games of old.
Video Games
Team Fortress 2: I still play this competitively and a lot in general. If you want to find me in a game, friend up my Steam account. This is my default multi-player game of choice, for sure.
Civilization 4 (with two expansions): This continues to be able to eat up any time I care to feed to it. My ongoing single-player game of choice.
Beyond Good and Evil: I'd heard good things about this adventure game for some time, and it was on sale via Steam for $5. It was a very good game. It's light and entertaining, with reasonable variety of gameplay including lots of exploration, stealth, picture-taking (camera) simple fighting by hitting people with sticks, puzzle aspects, and a bunch of mini-games. I believe the normal Steam price for it is $10, and I can easily recommend it at that price. (Probably it's available other ways too.) I'm glad to hear there's a sequel underway as well.
X2: The Threat: I picked this up cheaply on Steam at some point because I was idly looking for something like Privateer: An exploration game with a story that I could play as I liked or not, and in a spaceship is a fine way to do that (though it wasn't the goal per se -- Mechwarrior: Mercenaries fills a similar space in my desire). But I've only played for about an hour before the interface was frustrating me enough to make me stop playing. This paragraph is awful as a review, but maybe someone can suggest something for me along these lines!
Books
Transmetropolitan: This is a comic written by Warren Ellis (and lots of other talented people contribute). I've never considered myself a comic book guy, though in the past couple of years I've been catching up when people tell me, "Hey, you should read this." This is well written, visually beautiful while also grotesque when it wants to be, and overall entertaining. I will say that the first dozen pages didn't immediately grab me, and I might not have finished the first volume of my own volition but that multiple people had recommended it strongly to me. I'm glad I kept at it (and it wasn't so long before I was hooked in).
Dianna Wynne Jones: While pillaging my upstair neighbors' fairly vast collection of fiction, Jones was recommended to me as "Like Harry Potter but better." I agree (and I do like me some Hogwarts). At this point I've probably read about a dozen books by her and enjoyed them all (some immensely, all worthwhile). I believe the canonical starting point for Jones is "Charmed Life", though "Deep Secret" grabbed me the most. If you like fantasy and it's OK that it's aimed at kids (i.e. Harry Potter), I highly recommend Dianna Wynne Jones.
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik): I read the first two books of this series, very randomly having plucked it off my previously mentioned upstairs neighbors' shelf. These remind me greatly of any of Anne McCaffrey's Pern dragon books, or Mercedes Lackey's Companion series: In all cases there's a fantastic animal (here, dragons again) who bonds closely to a single human as essentially a life-long companion (or Companion). Perhaps the biggest differentiator between those books and the Temeraire series is that Temeraire is grounded in historical fiction: It's the Napoleonic era, focused on the British-centric wars and politics of the times, but throw dragons into the mix (and the resulting changes to technology as well). The short version is that if you liked McCaffrey's or Lackey's series, there's a good chance you'll like this as well.
Board Games
Agricola: I thoroughly enjoy this resource-management game. It's tough for me to categorize, which is good. The resource elements make me suspect that people who like Power Grid will like this, but I have trouble picking out exactly why. It's a bit solitarish, but not nearly so bad as many such games. There's also what seems to me to be a giant element of luck in the game with regards to determining the winner, but thus far that hasn't reduced my enjoyment of the game (and I'm certain there are variants online that ameliorate this). Don't bother playing the "basic" version.
In the Year of the Dragon: Another resource-management game, where some kind of DOOM will fall on your head. You merely get to influence how much of which kinds of doom will help destroy you. This is a game with surprisingly little luck throughout the whole game, but that hasn't bothered me! There's definitely some possibility of analysis-paralysis here, but things usually move quick enough. This game makes full use of the "each player frequently does a small thing" compared to the monolithic turns of some games of old.
Video Games
Team Fortress 2: I still play this competitively and a lot in general. If you want to find me in a game, friend up my Steam account. This is my default multi-player game of choice, for sure.
Civilization 4 (with two expansions): This continues to be able to eat up any time I care to feed to it. My ongoing single-player game of choice.
Beyond Good and Evil: I'd heard good things about this adventure game for some time, and it was on sale via Steam for $5. It was a very good game. It's light and entertaining, with reasonable variety of gameplay including lots of exploration, stealth, picture-taking (camera) simple fighting by hitting people with sticks, puzzle aspects, and a bunch of mini-games. I believe the normal Steam price for it is $10, and I can easily recommend it at that price. (Probably it's available other ways too.) I'm glad to hear there's a sequel underway as well.
X2: The Threat: I picked this up cheaply on Steam at some point because I was idly looking for something like Privateer: An exploration game with a story that I could play as I liked or not, and in a spaceship is a fine way to do that (though it wasn't the goal per se -- Mechwarrior: Mercenaries fills a similar space in my desire). But I've only played for about an hour before the interface was frustrating me enough to make me stop playing. This paragraph is awful as a review, but maybe someone can suggest something for me along these lines!
Books
Transmetropolitan: This is a comic written by Warren Ellis (and lots of other talented people contribute). I've never considered myself a comic book guy, though in the past couple of years I've been catching up when people tell me, "Hey, you should read this." This is well written, visually beautiful while also grotesque when it wants to be, and overall entertaining. I will say that the first dozen pages didn't immediately grab me, and I might not have finished the first volume of my own volition but that multiple people had recommended it strongly to me. I'm glad I kept at it (and it wasn't so long before I was hooked in).
Dianna Wynne Jones: While pillaging my upstair neighbors' fairly vast collection of fiction, Jones was recommended to me as "Like Harry Potter but better." I agree (and I do like me some Hogwarts). At this point I've probably read about a dozen books by her and enjoyed them all (some immensely, all worthwhile). I believe the canonical starting point for Jones is "Charmed Life", though "Deep Secret" grabbed me the most. If you like fantasy and it's OK that it's aimed at kids (i.e. Harry Potter), I highly recommend Dianna Wynne Jones.
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik): I read the first two books of this series, very randomly having plucked it off my previously mentioned upstairs neighbors' shelf. These remind me greatly of any of Anne McCaffrey's Pern dragon books, or Mercedes Lackey's Companion series: In all cases there's a fantastic animal (here, dragons again) who bonds closely to a single human as essentially a life-long companion (or Companion). Perhaps the biggest differentiator between those books and the Temeraire series is that Temeraire is grounded in historical fiction: It's the Napoleonic era, focused on the British-centric wars and politics of the times, but throw dragons into the mix (and the resulting changes to technology as well). The short version is that if you liked McCaffrey's or Lackey's series, there's a good chance you'll like this as well.