My favorite books of 2024(So far!)

I used to absolutely love reading. When I was in elementary and middle school, I would do those Summer Reading Challenges that my local library would offer 5 times in one summer(mostly to get the rewards and coupons that came with completing the challenge, but I was actually reading the books)! I was mostly reading fiction at that time, so it was easy to knock out the whole Harry Potter Series, or the Lord of the Rings, or Artemis Fowl in a couple of weeks. I didn't gain a lot from those books, but it was a lot of fun, and certainly a better use of time than scrolling Instagram or Twitter, as I tend to do too much nowadays.

Then in high school, I would mostly read non-fiction. My pace slowed down, and I was averaging maybe 1 book a month, but I was hopefully learning something. I was reading Tim Ferriss, and philosophy and books on nutrition and business, and while I probably wasn't understanding a lot of it, I can imagine there was some value in that. 

Unfortunately when I went to college, it all sort of stopped. I suppose the 34 credit hours a semester plus internship was taking up the bulk of my time, but I actually suspect the fact that I had a long term girlfriend around that time had a bigger influence. Now, I was spending a lot more time watching movies and shows, playing games, etc.

So with 2024 rolled around, I made a goal to try and get back into my good reading habits. I set a goal to read 12 books, one a month seemed more than reasonable. I also wanted to experiment audiobooks, something I have never done before. So far, I have read about 20 books this month, and am on track to read about 24 or more. I have absolutely loved reading more, and wanted to highlight my favorites so far! I track them all in a Notion database(and I think I should make a blog post about Notion, I am a huge fan and use it for so much now).

Now, it would be very dificult for me to order my top 10 favorites, in that each book I read was interesting for different reasons, so I can't exactly compare one to one. As a result, this list is only organized by date, with these just being all the books I would rate 5 stars. I am making this blog now as I just read my 10th book that I would consider a 5/5!

Into Thin Air - Jon Krauker (Finished Jan 19)

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and is a tale about one man's journey climbing Mount Everest during one of the worst disasters that the mountain has ever experienced. The book was immediately captivating, and the narrative structure was easy to follow even for someone who does not know anything about mountaineering, or what's dificult, easy, etc. It is beginner friendly, has interesting ideas about why we take on these challenges, what life is like in the mountains, and has cautioned me against any sort of cockiness  of "I could probably climb Everest one day".

How To Be Perfect - Micheal Schur (Finished March 29th)

This book offers a series of philosophies about what it means to be "good" or how one would live a good life. It is written by the creator of the show "The Good Place", which dives deeply into that exact subject, and basically is a abbreviated list of the research he did to make that show. It goes over value ethics, diontology, utilitarianism, objectivism, nihilism, existentialism, giving a quick primer into what the creators of those philosophies probably meant, and how they might be applicable to your life. In this way, the book is does show a bias, tending to be assume that a "good" life is one that values progressive or liberal ideologies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it is worth noting that the author is not super objective in that capacity.

The Puzzler - AJ Jacobs (Finished April 9th)

Each chapter of this book is about a different type of puzzle, from number puzzles, to crosswords, to rubiks cubes, to sudoku, to riddles, to jigsaws. Each chapter dives into the author, a journalist, meeting with experts of the respective puzzle type, learning the history, trying to solve extremely dificult versions of the puzzle(with all the puzzles appearing in the book so that the user can do them too, along with additional puzzles made just for the book itself)!. I loved the concept, narrative structure, learned a ton about why we do puzzles, and left wanting to do puzzles of all kinds as soon as possible.

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty - Dan Ariely (Finished April 17th)

Dan Ariely is a researcher who spends the book going over various studies he has performed on what makes people choose to lie, cheat, manipulate, etc. All of those premises you could think of, such as "do people cheat more if they work in groups or individually" and "does making people sign a code of conduct actually do anything" are answered along with things that I would have never thought to ask, but was amazed by the implications of , like "Does wearing a pair of fake gucci glasses make someone lie more than if they are wearing real ones". It asked good questions, it was humorous, it made no moral judgements on what was is "right" or "wrong" for the most part, just asked the reader to think about the choices they make and how they are subtly manipulated by circumstances and our own human behavior.

Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins (Finished May 8th)

I know I said I wasn't going to pick a "favorite" book, but this autobiography of the life of David Goggins is certainly the one that I could see myself re-reading over and over. In fact, I've already read it twice. The guy has had an insane life, growing up in an unbelievably abusive situation, being dirt poor, being black so close to the capital of the KKK, and going on to become a Navy Seal with 3 hell weeks, winning dozens of ultramarathons, beating the pull up world record, and becoming one of the most respected speakers in the world. It has 10 ideas for how you can get off your ass and get hard shit done, and I do feel a rush of inspiration and motivation to do more every time I read it. It was so captivating that I finished the whole thing in about a day.

Never Finished - David Goggins (Finished June 16th)

While his previous autobiography goes over his life from birth til the date the book is written, this sequel written 4 years later dives into more details that he could not cover in his first one for space reasons, or because the memories are too painful, as well as going into what he's been up to in the last 4 years, which incredibly does warrant a whole separate book. 

Humble Pi - Matt Parker ( Finished July 14th)

The subtitle of this book is "When math goes wrong in the real world", and the book delivers on that premise, going over things such as bridge construction, lottery mishaps, how statistics can be manipulated, various coding things that I do not know if you could understand unless you have a basic understanding of how to code, etc. It was entertaining, with tons of jokes, and while I did have to reread many parts of it to make sure I understood the math correctly, I found the concept of the book super interesting, and enjoyed how it made me think outside of the box in so many ways.

Antifragile - Nassim Talib (Finished August 18th)

I understood maybe 60% of the book at most and do believe that Nassim Tablib may be one of the smartest people currently alive. I do subscribe to the theory that modern books are written at a lower grade level than we used to write in(i.e. we now write almost all books with the word choice and vernacular that 5th graders should be able to understand, as opposed to in the past writing books that only a college-educated person could follow), and this book does tend to reach for that higher demographic. It forced my brain to think again at that higher level, while also presenting this interesting idea of antifragility. Literally, the opposite of fragility, as in things that gain from disorder, or from being damaged. This book goes into economics, into how we should invest, and then even more fundamentally into how we should learn and how we should try to add value.

Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (Finished August 31st)

I was recommended this book by my father, who told me it was his favorite book growing up. It is a philosophy told as a fictionalized account of the author and his son going on a cross-country road trip by motorcycle. There are the obvious, superficial themes about the importance of learning to take care of your stuff, experience the present and enjoy the world rather than get so bogged down in technology and social media, etc. of course. Then there is the main idea that the author keeps revisiting in various scenarios, building up and breaking down over and over to feel like he has done his due diligence in presenting - the concept of Quality itself(yes, it is capitalized in the book).

Slow Productivity - Cal Newport (Finished September 21st)

Another extremely fast read that goes over how the way we do work has changed in the last dozen years, including how COVID rapidly changed the nature of work. 

The principles of slow productivity are:

• Do less things
• Work at a natural pace
• Obsess over quality

Cal then just spends the entire book with annecdote after annecdote and story after story to convince you that these are the methods that produce the most meaningful work, and result in the healthiest mindset. It's an interesting idea that I think would apply to me, as someone who does find it somewhat hard not to take on a lot of busy work or convince myself that I'm productive when I'm not.