2024 was an action-packed year…
- Got married (joy)
- Drove an electric smart car up a Norwegian mountain (advice from car rental guy: “probably don’t stop on the way up”)
- Read 100 books (and emerged victorious in our 3-person Goodreads reading challenge; sorry to H and M.)
Let’s look back and try to make sense of the books I read and associated metadata (h/t Goodreads archive tool)
Data
Rating books from 0-5 feels off; I instead am going to opt for 0, +1, +2.
- 0: neutral; some good, some meh for me personally,
- +1: recommend with probably a couple of reservations,
- +2: help me shut up about this book
I used Claude to help me categorize my 100 books into ~3-6ish categories and it came up with:
- How the World Works: Science, Space, Nature
- Speculative Worlds & Weird Futures
- Classics & Mythic Foundations
- How We Live: Society, History, Craft
- Human Stories: Literary, Memoir, Poetry
Charts
Below are two charts summarizing my year in reading. (1) shows CDF of books read with individual points (sized by rating, colored by category). (2) shows category on the y-axis to see if there were thematic ~seasons.
A few things jump out to me:
- Strong start and strong end to the year
- April to June and September to November were pretty slow months; I’d like to think that the start and end of good weather in Boston caused this
- Lots of blue/purple near the end (How We Live, Human Stories) and maybe hints of more red/teal (How the World Works, Speculative Worlds & Weird Futures) near the beginning of the year.
In the collapsible section below, I’ve grouped all the books I read by “Help Me Shut Up About This Book”, “Recommend With Reservations”, and “Neutral”.
Individual Reviews
- Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1) by Neal Shusterman
FUN read! What happens in a "perfect" society where every problem has been solved by a benevolent ASI ("Thunderhead") but people still need to die to control population?
- Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Stunning writing. Ordinary day-to-day facets of Black life and identity talked about extraordinarily.
- Children of Time (Children of Time, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Intersection of things I've recently been interested in: language, intelligence, time, spiders.
- Children of Memory (Children of Time, #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
What does it mean to be conscious?
- Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words by Anne Curzan
English can be fun! Also, everything is made up and we should be nicer to each other.
- The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Rich book! I learned that I need to learn more biology.
- The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
Blurs the line between history and fiction. Unsettling, interesting.
- Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler
Truly devastating to read. How do we remember and grapple with our history through music?
- The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski
OCEANS ARE AMAZING. A systematic view of the oceans as engines that keep life going on earth.
- Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway
Human-centered story on how interconnected, fragile, and weird the raw materials ecosystem is.
- Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
Simultaneously one of the funniest and most information-dense books I read in 2024
- Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season by Forough Farrokhzad
Beautiful.
- Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla
Heart-breaking memoir about caste, politics, power, and oppression.
- The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane
Very physics-y book on the origins of life. Well-argued!
- Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad
Beautifully written. Who gets recognized in narratives?
- Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha
:(
- The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Another devastating but amazing book. DO NOT RECOMMEND READING ON A PLANE - you will cry.
- Be With by Forrest Gander
- Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir by Yashica Dutt
Well-written book on caste in modern India.
- Probably Overthinking It: How to Use Data to Answer Questions, Avoid Statistical Traps, and Make Better Decisions by Allen B. Downey
Nice explanations - in particular, the inspection paradox section was great.
- Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom
Wild story about Iridium satellite network's history.
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
:(
- Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, #1) by Sylvain Neuvel
Really interesting premise, but wasn't as hooked as I wanted to be
- How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
- Stay True by Hua Hsu
Sad, beautiful
- Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
- Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Pretty, sad, pretty sad
- Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) by Garth Nix
- Lirael (Abhorsen, #2) by Garth Nix
- Abhorsen (Abhorsen, #3) by Garth Nix
- Clariel (Abhorsen, #4) by Garth Nix
Recommend this whole series! Interesting world-building and magic system. #2 is best IMO. Audio books are solid.
- Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
Confusing and interesting.
- String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis by David Foster Wallace
Tennis!
- Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3) by Martha Wells
- Joothan: An Untouchable's Life by Omprakash Valmiki
:(
- Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori
- Candide by Voltaire
- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
- If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho; Anne Carson (translator)
SO good
- May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases - And What We Can Do About It by Alex Edmans
- A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand
In conversation with "Ordinary Notes"; really good
- Antigonick by Anne Carson
- Shrek! by William Steig
- Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
- How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball
Loved it! Super well-written
- Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (Pigeon, #1) by Mo Willems
H's favorite children's book; solid
- Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler
- Book of Poems (Selection) / Libro de poemas (Selección): A Dual-Language Book by Federico García Lorca; Stanley Appelbaum
- The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho
- How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth by The Moth; Meg Bowles; Catherine Burns
- Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
- Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
- Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar
SO MUCH PARKING IN THE WORLD
- The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
- The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
- Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
- Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson
- The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle
- Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
- Winter Solstice: An Essay by Nina MacLaughlin
- Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age by Lori Garver
- Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Funny and fun
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
- The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
- To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
- When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance
- The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Rose/House by Arkady Martine
- The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
- All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells
- Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2) by Neal Shusterman
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
- This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara
- Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann
- There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
- The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life by A.J. Jacobs
- The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3) by Neal Shusterman
- The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
- Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4) by Martha Wells
- Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2) by Martha Wells
- Children of Ruin (Children of Time, #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Diaspora by Greg Egan
- Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg
- The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey
- Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall
- Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine by Madeline Puckette
- The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- More than Curious - A Science Memoir by William H. Press
- Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach
- The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
- Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy
- Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke