Happy Holidays! Some Reading Recommendations
Happy holidays, everyone! Publishing will be light this week and next due to holiday activities. I hope everyone has time to enjoy the season with family and friends. I look forward to seeing people in the new year.
Best Books I Read in 2024
I have read 58 books this year and will hit 60 by year’s end. And there are 15 or so books that I failed to capture and another handful that I attempted to read and gave up on. So, let’s say 80 books total were looked at this year, which is about average.
My reading rate hasn’t slowed much over the years, tho I am much more willing to give up on a book now. Between my ebook library and physical books, I have about 250 books in the queue to read. At my reading rate, that is a 3-year backlog — I should probably quit buying books, or I need to give up faster on books.
I keep track of all my reading on my blog; you can head there if you are interested in any books I’ve read this year or in the past. Following are the books that stuck with me the most this year.
Books About Current Events
All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians] by Phil Elwood. What a great look behind the scenes of the PR industry. I know some people don't like that the author participated all those years in supporting some bad actors and only now tries to make amends, but it is a great look inside. I was suspicious of media before, now I am doubly so!
Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles. Hilarious and sad, Bowles rips apart the worst excesses of the progressive movement. I generally like progressive thinking, as in "let's make the world better for everyone", but sometimes people head off down some unproductive rabbit holes.
History Books
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson. What a train wreck of hubris. Ego-driven rush into conflict without any consideration of the consequences. War sucks. Sadly we repeatedly forget these lessons.
Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East by Uri Kaufman. A lot of modern Israel history that I did not fully know. And also, war really sucks.
Fiction
James by Percival Everett. Everett is a great writer, and this is a fantastic retelling of Huck Finn. Perspective is everything. And now I want to reread the original.
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. The best novel I have read in some time; the reimagining of America is fascinating and vivid.
Autobiography
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. More detail about surfing than I ever wanted (I don't surf), but all shared compellingly. And man, the author's life choices fearlessly chasing after his surfing compulsion – a set of choices that I could never have imagined making.
Short Reads
Books aren't all I read, I get a ton of newsletters. Here are some of the best things I read in the last little bit.
Silicon Valley's favorite video games of 2024 ($) — I just don’t play many video games any more, but there quite a few in here that I am compelled to fit in.
"Corn is a Shitty Solar Panel: 160x more energy from an acre of solar than an acre of corn ethanol" — Stephen Leahy
AI-Based Metamaterial Design — AI is going to transform material design just like it is transforming protein design.
"When developing new software products this "reduce variance" approach is the opposite of what you need for key components. Instead, we need High Variance Management." — Sebastian Bensusan. Love this — and boy do big problems occur when everyone is not on the same page.
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