A line cook's personal blog about the board games and books that get him through the wind-down after a late shift — honest, first-person, written closer to 1am than to a press release.https://grantafterhours.com/en-UShttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/snow-crash/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/snow-crash/The opening thirty pages are worth the whole book on their own, the rest is a good idea that keeps stopping to lecture you about Sumer.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/cloudspire/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/cloudspire/A MOBA in a box with poker chips instead of minis, gorgeous and dense and, honestly, more game than one night off deserves.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-night-i-almost-walked-out/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-night-i-almost-walked-out/A Friday in July when the walk-in died, a server torched a ticket, and I stood in the alley for four minutes deciding whether to go back in.Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/turning-down-a-review-copy/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/turning-down-a-review-copy/A two-man game company out of Lafayette offered me a free copy ahead of their Kickstarter. What saying no actually cost me, and what it didn't.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/oathsworn/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/oathsworn/Jamie Jolly's boss-battler with a narrated companion app and a genuinely clever cooldown combat system, if you can get past the footprint and the rounds where you're just trudging to a foregone conclusion.Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/war-and-peace-and-war/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/war-and-peace-and-war/A guy who does math tries to find actual laws behind why empires rise and fall, good idea, thin evidence once you leave Europe.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/thunder-road-vendetta/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/thunder-road-vendetta/A Mad Max dice-chucker that delivers on theme every time, but the insert fights you at teardown and six players sit around too long between slams.Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/closing-late-reading-later/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/closing-late-reading-later/People hear I read every night and picture some kind of discipline. It's closer to the opposite. I read because I can't sleep yet and the book is what gets me there.Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/being-you/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/being-you/A retired anesthesiologist at the bar wouldn't shut up about this one, so I finally read it, and it's changed how I think about the parts of the job I do without thinking.Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/faraway/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/faraway/A fifteen-minute set collection filler where you score your tableau in reverse, right to left, and the twist is dumb enough to be genuinely clever.Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/the-study-of-instinct/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/the-study-of-instinct/An old book on animal behavior, picked up on a whim, that turned out to be more than worth the effort, shows its age some but stays captivating anyway.Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/a-wrinkle-in-time/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/a-wrinkle-in-time/The book I did an unassigned book report on at ten still holds up at thirty-something, sagging middle and all.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/what-the-dishwasher-left/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/what-the-dishwasher-left/Most of what's on my shelf didn't come from a list, it came from a guy named Marcus clearing his station like he clears the rest of his life.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-ged-and-the-philosophy-book/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-ged-and-the-philosophy-book/Why a guy with a GED and no college keeps reading philosophy of mind books he half understands, and what it actually feels like when the sentence lands late.Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/kitchen-doesnt-have-undo/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/kitchen-doesnt-have-undo/On watching a guy at the after-shift table sit on a lunch-special decision for fifteen minutes, and catching myself doing the same thing, and what ten years of calls that don't get a redo does to a person.Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/supersizing-the-mind/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/supersizing-the-mind/A philosophy book about where thinking actually happens, read on the porch after a slow close, and it turns out a kitchen line is a decent argument for the thesis.Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/permutation-city/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/permutation-city/Egan builds a universe that runs forever on no hardware and never tells you how he pulled it off. First half's the good half, and I still don't trust the ending.Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/thinking-fast-and-slow/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/thinking-fast-and-slow/A Nobel-winning psychologist spends five hundred pages explaining why your gut is lying to you, and knowing that doesn't stop it from lying to you again tomorrow.Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/cyclades/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/cyclades/A gorgeous bidding-and-conquest game that runs long, drags when someone overthinks their offer, and gets ugly fast at three players.Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/what-i-do-on-a-slow-tuesday/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/what-i-do-on-a-slow-tuesday/Tuesday's the slow night in this business, not Sunday like people guess, and it's turned into the one night a week the job loosens its grip enough to actually read or play something.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/never-let-me-go/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/never-let-me-go/Somebody left this on the shelf above the coffee machine and I got through it in three nights. It's the small stuff, the pencil case fights, the missing cassette tape, that ends up doing the real damage.Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/sky-team/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/sky-team/A two-player cockpit puzzle you can teach at the bar in five minutes and be packed away again in twenty, which is exactly why it's become my after-shift default.Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-regular-who-cant-order/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/the-regular-who-cant-order/The AP-prone regular from four reviews finally gets a name, and a reason he sits on every decision like it's the last one he'll ever get to make.Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/spirit-island/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/spirit-island/A co-op where you play the island instead of the invaders, and nobody at the table can quarterback it, but give it a real setup window and watch your AP-prone friend.Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/why-i-read-standing-up/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/why-i-read-standing-up/Ten hours on my feet at work and I still don't sit down to read at home. Tried a chair once. Gave it up inside a month.Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/essays/two-blocks-from-work/https://grantafterhours.com/essays/two-blocks-from-work/The bar two blocks from work isn't a good bar by any real measure. It's a close one, and some nights that's the only quality that matters.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/forbidden-stars/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/forbidden-stars/Fantasy Flight's 40K conquest game earns its order-stack tension, but three-player kingmaking and long combats mean it only comes off the shelf on nights with real time to burn.Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/clank/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/clank/A deckbuilder with a dungeon bolted on, and a noise mechanic that makes you hear your own bad luck coming before it lands.Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/summoner-wars/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/summoner-wars/A fast two-player duel that teaches itself in ten minutes, though it only ever stays a game for two, and it'll expose the slowest thinker at your table fast.Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesGrant Ellisonhttps://grantafterhours.com/reviews/annihilation/https://grantafterhours.com/reviews/annihilation/A regular left this on the bar and said it scared him more than anything he'd read in years. He wasn't wrong exactly, though it's not that kind of scared.Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksGrant Ellison