When the opportunity for self-improvement in 2014 knocked, I consumed all this media instead.

Books

• A Clockwork Orange
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• A Little Riak Book
• Air Force Gator
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything
• Code Monkey Save World
• Eloquent Ruby
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
• Ghosts of Greenwood: Dispatches from Freedom Summer
• Gulliver's Travels
• Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law
• Losers
• Missing: A Boy and the Evidence Against His Accused Killer
• Old Man's War
• On a Pale Horse
• S.
• Scala for the Impatient
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Michael Lewis did it again in Flash Boys and made an entertaining page-turner about boring economics, all while exposing various injustices in the American economic system. I knew about the arms race among traders for getting faster connections to marketplaces to facilitate high speed trading, but I had no idea about the shenanigans the various marketplace owners themselves were taking part in. If you read that, you'll probably also want to read The Big Short.

Movies

• 12 Years a Slave
• Alan Partridge
• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Blackfish
• Caliber 9
• Captain Phillips
• Dallas Buyers Club
• Deep Red
• Escape Plan
• Frozen
• Fruitvale Station
• Fury
• Her
• In a World...
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Jodorowsky's Dune
• John Dies at the End
• Leviathan
• Like Someone in Love
• Love and Death
• Margin Call
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
• Oslo, August 31st
• Rambo: First Blood Part II
• Short Term 12
• Stories We Tell
• The Act of Killing
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• The House I Live In
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• The Incredible Hulk (2008)
• The Lego Movie
• The Loved Ones
• The Seven Year Itch
• The Spectacular Now
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• This Is Not a Film
• This is the End
• Thor: The Dark World
• Troop Beverly Hills
• Wuthering Heights

As much as I want to give a favorite nod to This is Not a Film or The Act of Killing or any of a number of other very worthy smaller movies I saw last year, I have to be true to my heart and give it to The Lego Movie, which was just the most dumb fun I had watching a movie all year.

Games

• A Bird Story
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
• Destiny
• Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
• Jazzpunk
• Joe Danger 2: The Movie
• Mario Golf: World Tour
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies
• Ridiculous Fishing
• South Park: The Stick of Truth
• The Room
• The Stanley Parable
• The Walk
• The Walking Dead: Season 2
• The Wolf Among Us
• To the Moon
• Transistor
• Zombies, Run! 5k Training
• Zombies, Run: Season 1

Again, I want to say my favorite is The Stanley Parable or Jazzpunk, but if I'm honest the latest Diablo III expansion Reaper of Souls is just a perfect Skinner Box, fixing pretty much all the issues from the initial Diablo III release. Even if it's all just a carefully concocted science experiment providing intermittent positive reinforcement, it tickled just the right parts of my lizard brain to give me the sensation of fun.