The 30 Books I Read in 2024

In 2022 I set the ambitious goal of reading 52 books, or 1 book a week. Goodreads helped me set and track that goal. I got a little dopamine hit every time I entered a finished book into the website tracker. I met my goal!

You can follow me on Goodreads here.

In 2022 I was mostly unemployed which gave me a lots of time to read. In 2023 my goal was lower: 20 books. I ended up reading 26.

In 2024 I set my goal at 40 books and managed to read only 30.

I feel grief thinking about all the books I won’t be able to read in my life. If I read 30 books a year and live 50 more years (until age 90), that’s 1,500 books. Think of the millions of books I won’t read! 😭

So, this year my genre:

• Fiction: 7

• Non-fiction, self-help/psychology/neuroscience: 7 (1 was psychology+memoir)

• Non-fiction, finance/economics: 6 (1 was finance+memoir)

• Non-fiction, culture: 4 (1 was culture+memoir)

• Non-fiction, Middle-Eastern history/politics: 3

• Non-fiction, US history: 2

• Non-fiction, Philosophy: 1

Some topic trends:

• I read two books by Michael Lewis. I’ve read so many of his past works (The Big Short, Moneyball), so I had to read his latest and his first. His latest book is about Sam Bankman-Fried and the cryptocurrency company he founded that landed him in prison. Lewis was profiling him when suddenly his company went from being worth billions to being bankrupt. This put Lewis in the right place at the right time to document the legal proceedings. His podcast, Judging Sam, was a great accompaniment to the book. In my amateur opinion, Sam got in way over his head and because he was so young, didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand the real-life implications of his decisions, which often involved glossing over the downstream impacts on real people who invested their money with him and could lose a lot if he lost. He could take huge risks, something that made him very excited and made his company grow fast. But risk-taking at that level can only happen if emotions are shut off. It seemed like he did care about others in the abstract. He was part of the “effective altruism” movement, trying to make the most money so he could do the most good. But this movement is dangerous without the ability to feel real human feelings and empathy, 1:1, which it seemed he could not do. It was an interesting case study on whether harm was done intentionally and whether we can classify someone as evil when they neglect, rather than perpetrate abuse.

• I read two books about the transgender movement that challenged my thinking, Trans: When Ideology Meets by Biology by Helen Joyce and Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier. This is an extremely hot-button issue with lots of fiery opinions. After watching and listening to Helen Joyce talk with biologist Richard Dawkins about the difference between biological sex and gender identity on his podcast, I wanted to get a more holistic perspective on this issue. In the past, I’ve dedicated time to understanding trans identity through reading books like Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, which was excellent. I noticed a cult-like mentality around the issue, with rage spewing online—that gave me pause. Any nuanced discussion could lead to someone being labeled as a “transphobe”. I’m so glad I took the time to understand the nuance of this movement better. Most people I know can have a nuanced conversation about it but many get immediately flooded and accusatory. If you’d like more information on this topic, a great place to start is the Cass Review, and independent review of child gender medicine funding by UK’s National Health Service.

• In an attempt to better understand the threat of fascism, I read:

  • Capitalism Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution by Maurizio Lazzarato

  • The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism by Clara Mattei

  • These two books are by Italian scholars. Italy is the birthplace of fascism. I tried reading the former and it was over my head. Once I read Clara’s book, I had enough context to go back and read Maurizio’s book. It seemed like at the heart of both was this idea that fascism was created by and will always support a small oligarchy at the top—on that path many in the group who already have all the wealth will convince those at the bottom that they don’t deserve or need more. They will use shaming and “I guess you just don’t understand economics” to convince people of this reality instead of coming together to create a society with more equally distributed wealth and robust social programs.

• Middle East

  • Last summer I lived in Türkiye for 2 months and then revisited it with my mom and friend LH. While on that trip, we wanted to know more about Erdoğan, the autocratic leader of Türkiye for the past 22 years. So we read a book about him, and when we were done we thought, “okay now we need to know more about Syria” so we read a book about Bashar al-Assad. When I finished that, I thought, “okay, now I need to know more about Saudi Arabia,” so I read one about Mohammed bin Salman. I’m learning a lot about Middle East history and present-day politics. These books also helped me understand US politics and how autocratic leaders are made.

• Tana French is the best detective novel writer!! She clearly sees people and their motivations, providing rich backstories and psychologies for every main character.

• 2 books about the neuroscience of manifesting:

  • The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain by Dr. Tara Swart

  • Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything by Dr. James Doty

  • These two books have helped me use visualization tools to move towards positive life goals and they explain why this works in the brain. If we don’t use visualization of the safer and better future we want to create, our brain will default to what it already knows, which could include a lot of fear and scarcity. Highly recommend these two! And I recommend watching this interview with Dr. Tara on Diary of a CEO—it has 15 million views!

• Health and Safety by Emily Witt was a wild romp through NYC and Berlin raves and drugs. Her tone and candor were refreshing!

• In psychology, I read Traumatic Narcissism and Sociopath. In Traumatic Narcissism he explained that in dysfunctional households, parents often can not see their children as being their own subjects—they are merely objects with functions to support the parent’s subjectivity. In modern terms, the parent is the main character and the kids are the side characters. The kids are not seen as being their own main characters in their story, which is damaging. They may grow up to not embody “main character energy,” or being the subject of their own story—related to others as objects serving other people’s stories.

• I listened to more Tana French and Lucy Foley murder mystery books—love these authors so much!

• The book I think about the most is probably Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History. It’s about how so many religious zealots founded America and shaped our culture. We tend to worship snake oil salesmen and elect actors as politicians. We love fame and greed and can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s made up. Did you know, for example, that US President Ronald Reagan had an astrologist that helped him make major political decisions??