The 2024 Review of Books

This year was a decent year for reading. I read less than last year, which has been better all round. The quality of books have been higher and I’m abandoning medicore books with ease. The start of the year, I was mostly going through audiobooks, the spring was mostly library books, the summer was a lot of physical copies and by the end of the year, I was back in an e-reader phase. A significant change has occured and that has been my notetaking system. I’m in the final throws of converting nearly all my book notes from digital to physical, onto index cards and notebooks. It has taken its sweet sweet time. It’s safe to say these new methods has improved my comprehension and eased anxiety that I’m less chained to the cloud. I’ve also managed to curb some hoarding tendencies, I’ve reduced my book collection to one bookcase, without them sprawling all over my flat.

Category Breakdown

These subtleties won’t been seen in the category stats below. My health reads have shifted from nutrition based to psychology based. Technology books have gone from ‘Big Tech is Bad’ to the ‘philosophy of technology’. Education reads have shifted from ‘why public schooling sucks’ to ‘how to educate yourself’.

2024 76% Non Fiction. 24% Fiction

21% Education. 18% Memoir/ Essays. 18% Health. 8% Technology. 7% Classic Fiction. 7% Self Help. 6% Modern Fiction. 6% Biography.

2023. 87% Non Fiction. 12% Fiction.

26% Memoir/Essays. 22% Health. 13% Modern Fiction. 12% Classic Fiction. 10% Education.10% Technology. 6% Religion/Spirituality.

Recommendations Without Reservation

East of Eden, John Steinbeck. My holiday read at the start of the year. I tore through this in days. It’s a sprawling epic with gorgeous prose, with the bonus of a gripping villain too.

Mastery, Robert Greene. The book is a composite of historical and modern day figures, cross examining their discipline and study methods. I doubt I’ll read another Robert Greene, but this was excellent.

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, Lawrence Lessig. This was the year the Mickey Mouse curve died and Disney’s long haul tyranny over copyright was decimated, hurrah! It felt the right time to tackle this book. It explores the relationship between copyright law and creativity, and more broadly how the structure of technology impacts the art that’s made. For it’s dense material, it is well structured and paced to appeal to a popular audience. I found it fascinating and I’ll likely be re-reading.

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren. People have said there are two phases of reading, before you’ve read this book and after. They are absolutely true. I’m getting so much more out of reading Edmund Burke currently than I did at the start of the year with Machievelli. Two works of political philosophy, and the difference between my reading comprehension is palpable. In the appendix, this also includes the reading list ‘Great Books of the Western World’ which I have discovered has a status in it’s own right. I’d highly recommend.

Stoner, John Williams. This was an unexpected delight. It’s about an mid-level academic with a humdrum life. Well written and moving in places.

Letters to a Stoic, Seneca. This took a few months to chew, and my paperback copy took a beating being transported all over. It was worth it. A grounding read, and like a good stuffy classic should, it felt modern.