Favorite books of 2024

47 books. 21,000 pages. That’s 17 more than my target this year. One big factor that caused this is that I’ve been listening to audiobooks far more than reading books (40 out of the 47 were audiobooks), so it was easier to get through more books.

Non fiction

Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)

Brilliant exploration of why different societies developed at different rates, and the geographical and environmental factors that affected them. If you liked books like Sapiens or The Ascent of Man, you’ll like this one.

The Innovators (Walter Isaacson)

Isaacson traces the evolution of computing technology from the days of Babbage and Lovelace, all the way to the likes of Jobs, Torvalds, and Gates. His biographies are always excellent, so there’s no surprise here that he manages to create a compelling narrative about the advances in computer technology over the years.

Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss)

Voss used to be an FBI hostage negotiator, and he shares his wisdom on how to use those techniques for any kind of negotiation. The book is a fascinating look at how you should approach a negotiation in everyday scenarios. I might need to revisit the book to really internalize the ideas.

Millionaire Teacher (Andrew Hallam)

Does a thorough job explaining why index funds are the way to go for building wealth. There are other books like The Wealthy Barber that have taught me these lessons already, but this one gets to the point very quickly and doesn’t play cute with the style of writing.

The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football (David Goldblatt)

A fantastic history of football (soccer), going from its origins in ancient games played around the world, to its effect on culture and politics in the twentieth century. Covers the evolution of tactics throughout the years, but its primary focus is the cultural impact of the game.

Net Gains (Ryan O’Hanlon)

Analytics has only recently taken hold of the football world. This books puts it all in perspective, drawing a picture of a tradition-bound sport that is finally being dragged into the world of sports analytics. Because this is all so recent, many of the teams described here are familiar, and that makes it much easier to follow.

Factfulness (Hans Rosling)

Always loved Rosling’s TED talks and lectures, and his final book perfectly distils his ideas. If there’s one takeaway here, it’s that contradictory-sounding statements like “things are bad” and “things are getting better” are not mutually exclusive. Puts the state of human development in the world in perspective by showing data on how much things have improved, and where we need to focus.

A Very Short History of the Israel–Palestine Conflict (Ilan Pappé)

Provides a very concise outline of the history of the region, starting with the late Ottoman period, all the way to modern times. And all this is condensed into 160 pages! An important read given the current crisis in the region.

Programming

High Performance Browser Networking (Ilya Grigorik)

Fantastic book that walks you through the low level details of TCP/IP all the way to browser APIs for things like XHR, websockets and webRTC. Has a lot of context to help understand performance implications of different architecture decisions. So much good stuff packed in such a short book. A must read for anyone working on web applications.

The Staff Engineer’s Path (Tanya Reilly)

For a long time, there weren’t many books for software developers on the individual contributor track, and now in recent years, there have been two great ones - this one and Will Larson’s Staff Engineer. This one has some great practical ideas and mental models that will especially serve people in the earlier stages of their Staff+ journey, compared to Larson’s book, which covers a broader range of seniority.

Fiction

American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

An incredibly absorbing and imaginative epic where the old gods like Odin, Anansi, etc, battle the new gods of technology, media and globalization for the control of America. The ending was slightly anticlimactic for the scope of this book, but the journey itself was breathtaking. I listened to the audiobook narrated by a full cast, which added a whole new dimension to the book.

The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K Le Guin)

George Orr is a man who can alter reality with his dreams. He is sent to a psychiatrist, who helps him dream of ways to make the world better, but every dream accidentally makes things worse. This is an interesting comparison between George, who doesn’t want the power, and the initially well meaning psychiatrist, who ends up doing the opposits of what he wanted and starts craving power for himself.

The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)

Imagine Jungle Book, but set in a graveyard. Instead of animals, it is ghosts that take care of a young boy whose family have been brutally murdered. Gaiman does a stellar job of showing vignettes of the boy’s life as he grows up. The audiobook with a complete cast was fantastic.

Dark One: Forgotten (Brandon Sanderson)

This audio drama is structured like a true crime podcast. A college student tries to create a podcast similar to Serial, about missing people who seem to have been forgotten by family, friends and everyone around them. As she digs deeper into the mystery, she herself becomes a target of the supernatural killer. This story couldn’t have worked as a written book, and the audio narration was so good. The voice acting was excellent, and the background score and sounds made it much more effective.

2025

Target for the year is 50 books, which isn’t too far off the 47 I read this year. I want to make time to read a few more books rather than mostly listening to audiobooks this time.