# books / 📚 Everything I read in 2024

In 2023 I read a LOT, but I sacrificed depth for breadth. This year I read less, with focus on getting more out of each. I think I succeeded.

My aim at the start of the year was to find 3 books to add to my personal literary canon of greats that I re-read and reflect upon. Unfortunately I didn’t discover as many wonders as I’d hoped, but still one or two make the top shelf.

Stats

I finished 24 books this year

Including several loving re-reads. If a book doesn’t have enough to justify a second reading, it usually doesn’t justify a first reading honestly. There are some greats in here that are fourth or fifth reads.

I abandoned at least 6 books.

I do this guilt-free. Many of these abandoned books were more “bad timing” than “bad book”, and I plan to return to some.

🏆 Fiction book of the year

🍎 East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s name alone was enough to trigger haunting memories of school days agonising over Of Mice and Men. East of Eden, though, was spellbinding, my first and favourite work of literature this year.

Published in 1952 this book largely contributed to Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize. A story of good and evil, fate and choice, circumstance and happenstance. What is it that defines us?

I reached the end and began it again, without pause. It takes a well-earned place in my personal literary canon..

Eastofeden

Other literary highlights

🩺 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

Gothic London is a weakness of mine. This is my first reading of this short classic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I knew the spoilers. At <100 pagers, put this on your winter reading list.

💐 Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

My relationship to Austen might’ve been described as “respectfully detested” prior to this re-read, and now my mind is entirely changed.

The art of timing. Perhaps it’s simply having a mother-in-law that brought this one to life, in a way that I couldn’t empathise with at 17.

How we may ruin classics for many by thrusting books filled with adult problems onto teenagers, whose pains, worries and state of mind can be quite different.

🚕 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In contrast, this book grasped me from my first read, nearly 15 years ago, and countless re-reads have not worn it down but built it up, like breeding shoe leather. I visited New York this year, and seeing the Plaza was what me to pick this up once again, for my 12th go round the Long Island Sound.

🧛 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas

The masterpiece. No reading year is complete without it. 1000 captivating pages. A plot like a spider’s web, prose you could frame, characters full of life, life full of character.

Every time I read it, I want to learn new languages and sail the Mediterranean.

If you’re interested, the best translation is the Chapman & Hall 1846 translation.

🧙Harry Potter — JK Rowling

This is the second time that I’ve listened to the full series with Stephen Fry. Comforting, and still thoroughly underrated, with one of the most compelling twists in modern literature.

🏆 Non-Fiction book of the year

🚀 Elon Musk — Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs is my favourite biography of all time. And Isaacson pulls it off again. Just like East of Eden, I finished this & immediately re-read it.

Musk was a cult figure of hope and progress 10 years ago. As of Christmas 2024 he’s now best connected with removing Twitter’s hate speech protections and putting Donald Trump back in the White House, all the while launching rockets, digging tunnels, and implanting chips into brains.

Undoubtedly a fascinating, complex, troubled figure. Someone intimately connected with the future of our world, worth trying to understand.

Musk

Other non-fiction highlights

🛟 Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman

A meandering path to some interesting conclusions. I’ve already written about my most important takeaway: Fitting more in vs Getting more out. This book got plenty of hype this year, but I’m not entirely sure why. A decent assemblage of wisdom on how to approach a life that is, in the end, going to end.

⛏ Tunnel 29 — Helena Merriman

Every year I like to find one Cold War tale to enjoy, a need typically addressed by Ben Macintyre. Lacking anything new of his, I turned to Tunnel 29. Less riveting than Macintyre’s suspense-fuelled romps through the 50s, nevertheless a worthwhile exploration of escapes from East Germany, including the largest of all.

👑 Civil War — Peter Akroyd

United. Beheaded. Protected. Restored. Exciled.

The private lives of four kings and one pseudo-God, through England’s most turbulent constitutional era. Akroyd paints these historic men in flesh & sweat & blood.