At the end of 2023, certain events in my life led to a realization that I was spending way too little time on reading in the years past, even though I have always been an avid reader in my youth and adult life. Facing some “weltschmerz” and not finding enjoyment in series, movies or games that much anymore, I decided to set out to read more in 2024.
Overall, this has been a success. I found that I still enjoy reading, and the initial months of surpassing the brainrot and having to learn to focus again have been generally beneficial. These are the books I’ve read:
| Title | Year | Author | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Determined | 2023 | Robert M. Sapolsky | good |
| Behave | 2017 | Robert M. Sapolsky | ok |
| Venomous | 2016 | Christie Wilcox | good |
| Zero | 2000 | Charles Seife | book |
| The Courage to Be Disliked | 2013 | Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga | book |
| Broken Stars | 2019 | Ken Liu | great |
| Scattered Minds | 1999 | Gabor Maté | book |
| Invisible Planets | 2017 | Ken Liu | great |
| Exhalation | 2019 | Ted Chiang | great |
| All Tomorrows | 2006 | C.M. Kösemen | bad |
| Surrounded by Idiots | 2014 | Thomas Erikson | bad |
| Stories of Your Life and Others | 2002 | Ted Chiang | great |
| The Hidden Girl and Other Stories | 2020 | Ken Liu | good |
| The Paper Menagerie | 2011 | Ken Liu | great |
| Rubicon | 2003 | Tom Holland | book |
| The Body Keeps the Score | 2014 | Bessel van der Kolk | good |
| How to Live | 2021 | Derek Sivers | book |
| Blockchain Chicken Farm | 2020 | Xiaowei Wang | good |
| The Molecule of More | 2018 | Daniel Lieberman, Michael Long | good |
| The Gene: An Intimate History | 2016 | Siddhartha Mukherjee | book |
| Building Simcity | 2024 | Chaim Gingold | ok |
| This is Why You Dream | 2024 | Rahul Jandial | good |
| An Immense World | 2022 | Ed Yong | good |
| No Longer Human | 1948 | Osamu Dazai | great |
| Save Me an Orange | 2024 | Hayley Grace | ok |
| Het Vaticaan | 2024 | Rik Torfs | great |
| Calling Bullshit | 2020 | Carl Bergstrom, Jevin West | good |
| Entangled Life | 2020 | Merlin Sheldrake | good |
Don’t read too much into the rating system, I’m using a generally bad-ok-good-great assignment (inspired by https://davidmytton.blog/reading/ but this is based mostly on subjective aspects.
What I find particularly interesting is how the genre and book themes changed throughout the year. I hope to continue this in 2025.