About Dean

My name is Dean Hollis. I keep inventory for a distribution warehouse outside Louisville, so I spend my whole workday tracking where things live on a shelf, and somehow that job never stays at the job. Weekends I'm digging through thrift stores, used game shops, and the odd estate sale looking for whatever's weird enough to earn a spot on my own shelf. My wife plays most of the two-player games with me, and everything here got read or played all the way through before it got a rating, no exceptions.

I've worked inventory and logistics at a regional distribution warehouse for a while now, which means I spend forty hours a week thinking about how things get tracked, stored, and organized, and it turns out that's exactly the wrong job to have if you want to stay casual about a game's box insert. Weekends I'm out at thrift stores, used game shops, and whatever estate sale looks promising, hunting for the odd stuff, not just whatever's popular, the weird footnote book or the game with the ugly cover nobody else wanted. I'm married, and my wife is my regular two-player opponent when a game calls for one. Used to pour money into Magic: The Gathering boosters chasing rares until a fixed-deck game quietly broke the habit. I read without much of a plan, hard sci-fi one week, an old satire the next, whatever a book club pick or a clearance bin turns up.

What this is

Every review here comes from something I actually own, played to the end or read cover to cover. The rating is whatever I honestly landed on after it was done, not a first impression, and not a number picked to be nice. If something's a 5 it earned it, if it's a 2 I'll say why without dressing it up.

Some of what's here isn't a review at all, just notes about the collecting side of the hobby or whatever else was on my mind that week. It all goes in the same feed, no separate section walled off for it.

No review copies, no affiliate links, nothing tracking what you click through to. If a game or book shows up here, I paid for it same as anyone else would.

Get in touch

Email dean@deansoddities.com. I read everything eventually, replies might take a bit.