C. Thi Nguyen · 2026The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game
The Score is a red pill for the way numbers rule our lives. Just not in a cringe, manosphere sort of way.
It's not a self-help book or a philosophy book, either. It's more like growing a third eye in the middle of your forehead.
The Score gives you the words to explain why you feel out of breath running races you don't remember starting.
C. Thi Nguyen is a fascinating guy, a gamer, a philosopher who writes about games, a cook, and a climber. He's seen how letting the wrong numbers rule you can turn something you love into a slog.
Because we're all playing games. And games have scores.
I'm a writer. I live to write and I write to live. I'm obsessed with my daily word count. But after reading The Score, I realized I'm sacrificing what makes writing special (creativity, accomplishment) for something that doesn't even really matter (bIg NuMbEr gO uP!).
The Score isn't about eliminating numbers and scorekeeping. Scores help you make sense of a world that's too damn big. But you should know when you don't need them. Because games, real ones, end. You mark up the scoreboard and then throw it away.
Keeping a never-ending tally in the game of life will just fuck you up.