My Year In Books: 2024

A few years ago I started writing an end-of-year recap of my reading from the previous year. Here are the links to the entries from 2017, 2018, 2019, the first half of 2020, the second half of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.  If you’re looking for the best of the best, my “Great Books” list is my central repository for books that I have read that IMHO are worthy of your valuable time. It is categorized and sub-categorized by genre for your scrolling convenience.

Let me start with my normal disclaimer about numbers: tracking and reporting on the number of books we read in a year is somewhat useful, but only “somewhat”. It can give us an idea of our reading progress over the previous year, but becoming overly focused on the number of books we read can lead us away from big books, which I’ll roughly characterize as being more than 500 pages in length.

In 2024, I read 32 books, which is a normal-ish year for me, however in that number were four 500+ page books: Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), Demon of Unrest (Erik Larsen), Dominion (Tom Holland), and The Covenant of Water (Abraham Verghese).  There were some standouts which I highlight below (with some honorable mentions at the bottom). A few of these highlighted titles will make it into my “Great Books” list I referenced above.

As is usually the case with me, these books flex across a range of fiction and non-fiction categories. Unlike my “Great Books” page however, I am not segmenting this list by genre, I have thrown them all into a pile for you to work through.

In our current digital age, many people notice a shortening of their attention spans and the ability to sustain the sort of focus that books require. I am no different. However the beauty of a good book is that we can become “lost” in it and inhabit a place where our attention is deeply held and we are elevated above the dopamine-laced world of alerts, apps, and “likes”.

Keep on reading, and I hope you enjoy this list of  a few of the books I read in 2024.

The Wager by David Grann — When we read the stories of great explorers from centuries’ past and the jaw-dropping crises those crews survived (or didn’t), our 21st century/first-world problems are immediately placed into a different light. This multiple award-winning book tells the story of one such crew on the British ship The Wager, the perils that befell them during their secret 1740 voyage, and what happens to an isolated crew when they devolve into warring factions. Part “Mutiny on the Bounty”, part “Endurance”, with a little bit of “Lord of the Flies” tossed in for good measure, backed up by considerable testimony from the participants during the inevitable court-martial proceedings that followed, this was a great read.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy — I’ve been tempted by this book for a number of years but it’s heft was always enough to cause me to save it for another day. Early in 2024 however I was able to commit myself to the great project. These big novels of the past are better appreciated when you realize that many of them – Anna Karenina being one, a number of Charles Dickens novels are as well – were “serialized”, meaning the story was released a section at a time, usually published in some well-known periodical. So this back-breaking novel (I think my copy clocked in around 800 or so pages), is better understood when you realize you’re engaging in the 19th-century version of binge-watching the entire season of a series on Netflix.  Much (much!) has been written about Anna Karenina. so I’ll simply say that like The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, the book is very readable. The book’s pace is the sort of pace you would expect from the period in which it was written, so chill out if things don’t move as fast as you would like, and try to place yourself in the shoes of Russian reader in 1876, excitedly pouring over the latest update on Anna, Kitty, Vronsky, and Levin and wondering what will happen next.

The Art of Haiku: It’s History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters by Stephen Addiss— I fortuitously stumbled across this book in a book store and grabbed it because it combines a few things I’m interested in: Japanese aesthetics, history, and haiku poetry. Along with the poems themselves, the book is filled with the art (“Haiga”) that the poet/artists commonly created to accompany the haiku’s terse 17 syllable form.  In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius famously said “brevity is the soul of wit”. While those words were written a hundred years before Basho was cultivating the haiku form in 17th century Japan, they ring true.

Ethics for Beginners: Big Ideas from 32 Great Minds by Peter Kreeft — I’m a big fan of Boston College Professor Peter Kreeft’s writing, including his book about Pascal’s Pensées which I have on my Great Books page, and so was interested in this very high level overview of the greatest philosophers ranging from Buddha to Jesus to Socrates to Hume, Mill, Locke, Sartre, Voltaire and all the gang. Don’t be scared off by the word “beginners” in the title – it isn’t written at an elementary level. If you’ve ever felt you’d like better understand philosophy, then this is the book for you.  I did a lot of underlining and scribbling in this book – I loved everything about it right up until an unhelpful and poorly-argued screed at the end, but everything up until then is worthy of your time.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen — I ran across one of those “The Best Books from the Past 100 Years” lists and this novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen was listed. High praise indeed. The novel chronicles the life of a double-agent immediately following the Vietnam War. Last year I read Alice McDermott’s excellent novel Absolution, also set with the conflict in Vietnam as a backdrop, as was Graham Greene’s celebrated novel The Quiet American. The Sympathizer will be considered as important and impressive a work as Green’s novel. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and has been adapted into a series which as of this writing is on HBO.

An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin — Another great book from Doris Kearns Goodwin, this one a woven tapestry of both the Johnson and Kennedy administrations from the ultimate Washington “power couple” who had front row seats throughout. This was a wonderful book and a great way to read first-hand accounts of that era.

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson — The subtitle of this book is “A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War”. It seems like there is no element of the Civil War unexplored by historians, but this focus on the days leading up to the Confederate’s opening shots at Fort Sumter felt fresh and new to me. The fevered rhetoric of Charleston during those days was hard to read without thinking about our current era.  Larson also wrote the incredible book “The Devil in the White City” so I pick up anything he writes. If you’ve not experienced his writing I recommend either book.

What Do I Know? Essential Essays by Michel de Montaigne — I have written about Montaigne’s creation of the “essay” format we so enjoy here.  This new translations of Montaigne’s essays was a great read. Should you read Montaigne’s essays from over 400 years ago?  My opinion is an emphatic “Yes!”. But the author himself provides the following warning in his typically enjoyable voice: “I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain”.

The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides — Subtitle: “Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook”.  July 1776 wasn’t just the month when the British saw their American colony rebel – it was also the month when Captain James Cook led this third (and most definitely final) exploration voyage on the HMS Resolution, charting a course into the Pacific Northwest and then down among the Pacific Islands, displaying bravado, curiosity and hubris as the inevitable miscommunicaations between people of such different worlds turned tragic. Like the book’s title, the scope of this book is “wide wide” indeed. For some reason I ended up reading two ambitious sea-based history books in 2024 (this book and The Wager, cited above). Coincidence?  Classic genre for men?  I’m not sure, although I do love this movie.

Other Rivers: A Chinese Education by Peter Hessler — Peter Hessler is one of the authors whose book I would pre-order without knowing anything about it. Although he’s written on other subjects, its his returning to China where is insights are the best. After a few years of family travel Hessler, his wife, and their twin daughters return to China just in time for…..the pandemic! To have a gifted writer who can both see the absurdities of some Chinese cultural habits while simultaneously having the greatest respect for the people and history of China during the COVID era was good timing indeed (for his readers, anyway). This book is a follow-up of sorts from his amazing book “River Town”, published nearly 20 years ago, and the “where are they now?” updates on the students he featured in that book.

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland — This is not a religious book, but a history book about Christianity. This book was an incredible undertaking, and though it is expertly written and edited it still comes in well north of 600 pages. Among the arguments the author makes is that even the most fervent atheists in today’s western world have been deeply formed by the Christian revolution – which itself was a reaction to one man’s death via a brutal Roman execution method – a method that was generally reserved only for slaves and the dregs of society. The book moves from Babylon to St. Augustine to The Beatles and even #MeToo. You needn’t be a believer to appreciate the majesty of this book.

Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee  — I only knew a little bit about the Franco-Prussian War – a war that lay waste to Paris in 1871 and caused some of the most despicable violence imaginable in it’s wake.  Yet during that time the school of “Impressionism” established itself. This book overlays the artists who stayed in Paris during that time – most notably Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas but also Renoir, Monet, Bazille, Pissarro and others. As is so often the case from the pre-digital era, the people who survived what Victor Hugo later referred to as “The Terrible Year” left behind a wealth of letters and diary entries that give us a glimpse into their art and their effort to survive. If you read this book you’ll learn about Paris, French History, and Art History all at once! Like most of the books I read in 2024, this one was celebrated by critics and readers alike.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese — My last novel of 2024 was Verghese’s epic story spanning generations of one family in south India, from 1900 to 1977. In addition to being a celebrated author, Verghese is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford – remarkable! The novel is first and foremost – as all great novels must be – a “great story”. Although it is a hefty 736 pages, the writing is entrancing. Verghese’s medical expertise also shows through as some of his characters suffer from, or are doctors who treat, leprosy (now called Hansen’s Disease) – a scourge that meant instant ostracization for those who suffered from it.

Honorable Mentions

These are some other books – no links – I thoroughly enjoyed in 2024 and also recommend.

Atomic Habits by James Clear – this was a re-read for me. A terrific book about habits that I return to every now and again.

The Good Life by Robert Waldinger, MD and Marc Schulz, PhD – This book covers the famous Harvard longitudinal study on happiness, with first-person accounts from the multi-decade study participants

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris – A re-read for me. I enjoy coming back to Norris’s books every so often.

One Nation Under Guns by Dominic Erdozain – A great book about the original establishment of the second amendment and it’s limited scope around national defense, the consistency of Supreme Court decisions in years’ past which upheld that intent, and the people who later intentionally sought to expand it’s definition to what we have today.

The Hunter by Tana French – French’s novels are always a fun read if you like a good murder mystery set in rural Ireland.

The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie – Another book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary – a subject I never tire of.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis – I’m sure I read this book years ago but it’s been so long is was like the first time. This is Lewis’s famous satire detailing the correspondence between senior demon Screwtape and his young nephew Wormwood as Screwtape tells the novice how to corrupt a particular man’s soul. Both funny and insightful.

In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger – The great author Junger came within a whisker of dying due to a burst aneurysm and, while hovering near death, is visited by his (deceased) father. This sets Junger off on a quest to better understand the common phenomena of near-death experiences. Awesome book.

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger – I would have bought this book for the excellent title alone, but I loved Enger’s earlier book “Peace Like a River” which made it doubly easy. This is a near-time dystopian journey narrative set around, and on, Lake Superior.

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster – This was my first Paul Auster novel. Auster was a highly celebrated author who died in 2024. This was a fun read and as a result I will be reading more of his work.

Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – I’d like to complement Gladwell for being the writer who can, in one book, cause me to laugh, learn, and yet also be tempted to fling his book across the room in annoyance. Always entertaining and thought-provoking.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury – I was looking for something to read when I grabbed this small collection of Sci-Fi stories set on an earth-like version of Mars. Many of the stories were written around 1950 and are set in the futuristic years of 1999 through 2026(!). These are fun stories that tell us as much about ourselves today as they do the characters they feature.

Wine and War by Don and Pete Kladstrup – Another view of WW II  – this one through the lens of the people in the French wine regions. The Germans wanted all the great French wine, and the French responded by serving up a blend of collaboration, resistance, and mislabeling to hang on to their vines, businesses, and make it to the other side of the war. If you like history and wine, this is a good read.

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Also published on Medium.