The Must-Read Brain Books Of 2016

Posted December 19, 2016

Forbes’ “The Must-Read Brain Books of 2016” featured LMC professor Ian Bogost’s “Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games” (Basic Books 2016). Forbes - December 19, 2016

Excerpt:

The best of the brain books in 2016 featured deception, empathy, placebos, gaming, algorithms, microbes and that little voice in your head. Whether touching on psychology, neuroscience or the mind more broadly construed, the eight books on this list are top reads in a genre always popping with new titles… “Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games” by Ian Bogost (Basic Books) (Georgia Tech). Of all the books on this list, this may be the hardest to describe, and in my assessment that was an asset. The year saw a few new entries in the “Tackle life’s challenges like a game” category, a thesis that’s gaining momentum, but this book goes deeper than most via an enlightening discussion of the role of limits in both games and life. Bogost strikes me as equal parts philosopher and savant game enthusiast—a systems thinker with a penchant for high score formulas—and I’m glad he wrote Play Anything because it’s causing me to look at problems in a different way. Read it and I think you’ll see why.