Last Updated: December 2024.
The Song of Achilles ★3 · Circe ★3 {Madeline Miller}
TSOA and Circe are modern retellings of Greek myths, enriched by deep dives into their viewpoint characters: Patroclus and Circe, respectively. As an enjoyer of re-contextualized mythology (Percy Jackson, Hadestown, Epic the Musical), I enjoyed reading them. Their emotional intensity shines, portraying characters as deeply flawed and deeply human. However, the plots meander—perhaps true to the source material? Fans of The Song of Achilles also rave about its romance, which I found… fine. Good, but not earth-shattering.
This Is How You Lose the Time War ★3.5 {Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone}
I first learned that I should read Lose the Time War through a twitter meme.
Despite the fact that the recc comes from ‘bigolas dickolas’, the internet didn’t lead me astray. I’ll keep this spoiler free: while the prose tries way too hard, the book is a stunning collaboration between the two authors. Push through the flowery excess, and you might find a beautiful story.
1984 ★4.5 {George Orwell}
Speaking of good fiction, this book has been in my blindspot for a while. I’d tried 1984 a few times before but always abandoned it midway. This time, I persevered, and wow—the last third blew me away. It’s a vivid, terrifying dystopia, making the earlier sections entirely worth it.
Guards! Guards! ★3 · Men at Arms ★3 · Feet of Clay ★4 · Sourcery ★2 {Terry Pratchett}
h/t to Joe Gershenson for recommending Terry Pratchett and introducing me to the delightfully insane Discworld Reading Order Map.
The Watch novels (Guards! Guards!, Men At Arms, Feet of Clay) were a delight: dry humor, hijinks, and profound humanism. The Rincewind stories (starting with Sourcery) didn’t click with me — but stick with the Watch series through Feet of Clay. It gets shockingly good.
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives ★3 {David Eagleman} · The Five People You Meet in Heaven ★3 {Mitch Albom}
This year was one marked by loss, which got me thinking often about death.
Sum is a collection of imagined afterlives, each one thought-provoking and strange. Each challenges you to contemplate what version of the afterlife feels truest to you and gives you the most peace. My favorite was the idea that the universe is one massive living creature (similar to the Gaia Hypothesis) and all living organisms function as a single, self-regulating system. We are as insignificant to the universe as a skin cell is to us. Conversely, we are as essential to the universe as each of our cells. It captures both the humility and profundity about death well.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven takes a narrative approach – once you die, the afterlife is comprised of five people who share their stories, and in doing so, explain how they impacted you and you them. These stories explain who you became, and in turn, you get to be one of someone else’s five people. A simple tale about the interconnectedness of human life, and the ripples we unknowingly create.
The School of Life: An Emotional Education ★2 {Alain de Botton}
This untraditional pop psychology book is about emotional intelligence. It’s a litte cringe, but I never claimed to be immune from how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-itis. I probably don’t revisit it.
The Slight Edge ★2 {Jeff Olson}
A book about how consistent small efforts lead to big success. If you’ve read Atomic Habits, you can skip this one.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ★3.5 {Philip K. Dick}
Written by Philip K. Dick in 1962 and set in the far-off world of January 2021 (lmao), this book is better known as the basis for Blade Runner. Electric Sheep is set in a dystopia with life-like human and animal robots. Bleak, ambiguous and often uneasy, the book comes with compelling pace and beautiful writing. Controversial opinion: I think the movie is better.
Piranesi ★3 {Susanna Clarke} · The House in the Cerulean Sea ★3 {TJ Klune} · Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow ★3 {Gabrielle Zevin}
h/t Nayesha Gandotra. Thank you, and if you’re reading, you might want to look away now.
Piranesi is a novel about a kindly man living in a house unlike any others – this one has endless corridors, thousands of statues, where oceans flood the halls in seasons, and thunderstorms abound. But the house, and Piranesi, hold secrets that will unravel his life as he knows it. If you’re a fan of unique world-building, I think you’ll enjoy reading Piranesi. The weak story and characterization held it back for me.
The House in the Cerulean Sea should’ve been a slam dunk. It chronicles the adventures of a youth case worker, who discovers an orphanage of unique children, their kind and passionate caretaker, and finds family in unlikely places. It is a heart-warming story, but I never found myself moved by what it had to say about community, connection, and ambition.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow chronicles the lifes of two friends and creative partners who make video games and stories together. TTT is a nuanced, flawed portrait of human life and connection, but I never bridged the distance I felt to it. Like seeing a beautiful painting in a Museum of Modern Art but not really connecting with it, I never got pulled in.
Annihilation ★4 {Jeff VanderMeer}
Rarely do I finish a book and feel no need to read its sequels, even though they exist. Annihilation stands perfectly on its own. Dead simple premise – in some part of the world, something is driving expeditions insane, and our characters go exploring to discover what. This is molded into something haunting and personal. Also, the movie is excellent.
h/t to Jacob van Gogh
The Tao of Pooh ★2.5 {Benjamin Hoff}
A simple book about how Winnie the Pooh captures the essence of Taoism. A very short and breezy read, I’d recommend this to anyone who tried (like me) to read the Tao Te Ching unsuccessfully. As Pooh would say, it’s really not that complicated.
h/t Anton Zabreyko
The Martian ★4.5 · Artemis ★2 · Project Hail Mary ★4 {Andy Weir}
I love the Martian. It was one of the first hard scifi books I’d ever read, and it was crass, funny, and gorunded. It made me want to be a researcher and scientist. This year, I read two of Weir’s other books - Artemis and Project Hail Mary, neither of which capture the lightning in a bottle of the original, but still had their moments.
Artemis was the weaker of the two; it follows a resident on a lunar colony who uncovers and then combats systemic corruption. The story and the characters were not very compelling, and the setting didn’t add anything new to the classic corrupt-space-colony trope. Props for a rare scifi brown protagonist, though!
I quite enjoyed Project Hail Mary– about a amnesiac astronaut, the lone survivor on his ship, who needs to uncover why he’s on the ship to begin with, while helping combat the threat of extinction back home. I thought the scientific lean wasn’t as strong as the Martian, I enjoyed the characters, its heart, and inventiveness.
Recursion ★3 · Dark Matter ★3 {Blake Crouch}
Blake Crouch’s first book I read was Recursion, a tech sci-fi thriller about time travel, that I couldn’t help but enjoy (even though I found its emphasis on my home of Silicon Valley off-putting).
This year, I read Dark Matter, a story about a professor who finds himself jumping universes in a high-stakes race against time. As always, Crouch gets maximum juice out of the sci-fi setting and writes a compulsive page-turner. An absolute master at his specific craft, his work would be elevated to great for me… if only his characters got a bit less two-dimensional. He’s like Dan Brown with quantum physics.
Dungeon Crawler Carl ★2.5 {Matt Dinniman}
An absurd, deadpan fantasy about humanity’s survivors battling monsters in a game-show-like arena. Fans of absurd comedy and dungeons and dragons will love this read. It’s funny and heartfelt, but I’m unlikely to read the sequels.
Mistborn ★2.5 {Brandon Sanderson}
Set in a universe where a god emperor rules over all of the planet, we follow a street urchin who finds herself to be a powerful Mistborn.
As expected of Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn has a rich universe. Each character has their own voice, perspectives, and history. Objectively, there is little to complain about. My complaints – I wish I’d spent more time learning about the characters, connecting with them, and rooting for them. As it stands, I recommend this book while having no intentions to lead the other two in the series.
The Underwater Welder ★4 {Jeff Lemire}
The only graphic novel on the list, The Underwater Welder is about grappling with fatherhood, grief, and the crushing weight of legacy. The artwork is beautiful. I felt the grief and catharsis of the characters, despite the work being all black and white and so unassuming.
Neverwhere ★2 {Neil Gaiman}
It pains me to say this, but Neverwhere—from a writer I usually adore—left me underwhelmed. The universe is intriguing in theory (a shadowy, fantastical London Below) but never comes alive. The characters, while serviceable, don’t linger in memory. Probably still a fun read for die-hard Gaiman fans.
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective ★2 {Kenneth O. Stanley & Joel Lehman}
Written by two machine learning researchers, this book dives into the interplay between objectives and greatness, making a compelling case for curiosity and exploration as the true drivers of success. It’s an interesting and challenging premise, but the book can feel a bit labored. I also worry that you have, in reading this paragraph, read quite a bit of the book itself. I’ll probably never return to it.
One Last Stop ★2.5 {Casey McQuiston} · The Charm Offensive ★2.5 · Kiss Her Once for Me ★2.5 {Alison Cochrun} · Red, White & Royal Blue ★3.5 {Casey McQuiston} · The Falling in Love Montage ★2.5 {Ciara Smyth}
FINE everybody, gather round, let’s talk about how I burned through a good chunk of my reading budget on romcoms this year. Don’t judge. They’re simply delightful! As a lifelong romcom fan who grew up on Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, and Love Actually, discovering stories refreshed with Gen Z humor and worldview felt like finding money in an old coat pocket.
If you’re in need of recs, I implore you to read (and skip the movie) Red, White & Royal Blue, a charming romance between the Prince of Britain and the First Son of the United States. I also recommend Kiss Her Once for Me, especially if you’re reading this while it’s still winter—think cozy vibes, family drama, and a healthy dose of failure and redemption.
Any of the above will let you bask in a perfect world where family gatherings are full of witty one-liners, there’s only ever one bed to share, and true love always finds its way.
Foundation ★4 · Foundation and Empire ★4 · Second Foundation ★4 {Isaac Asimov}
The Foundation series is really exceptional for its sheer vision. About a scientific society meant to be preserved through the fall of a Galactic empire, the books walk us through centuries of adventures for the Foundation. While I wish we hadn’t spent so much time bouncing all across the centuries and various characters, I’d rather be on the side of admiring the scope of it all. For sci-fi fans, it is indeed (as everyone used to insist upon me) a must-read.
Lock In ★4 {John Scalzi}
I love me some buddy comedies, so when you mix that with a sci-fi setting, throw in a murder mystery, and layer it with an exploration of disability rights and culture, you’ve got a recipe for one of my favorite books of 2024. Lock In, by John Scalzi, was released in 2014, and promptly slipped under the radar, which feels criminal because, to me, it’s a modern classic. The universe is fascinating, the characters are engaging, and the story keeps you locked in (hah) from start to finish. Honestly, it almost feels too well-thought-out for just one murder mystery.
The Remains of the Day ★5 · Never Let Me Go ★4 · Klara and the Sun ★3 {Kazuo Ishiguro}
h/t to Jacob van Gogh, for absolutely crushing the ReccBowl, and recommending my favorite books of 2024.
Klara and The Sun centers on a naive character and themes of faith. The characters and stories are compelling, but the universe and story didn’t reach the beauty and nuance I’ve come to expect from Ishiguro. It’s solid, but certainly the least of these three of his works.
Never Let Me Go is a poignant tale about friends growing up in a British boarding school, gradually uncovering the harsh truths of their world. The universe Ishiguro builds is haunting and unforgettable, capturing the bittersweet naivete of childhood. Scenes from this lingered in my imagination long after I’d closed the book.
Remains of the Day is incredible. On the surface, it’s about a butler taking a car ride to visit an ex-colleague. But this is one of those rare works that transforms how you think about storytelling altogether. Ishiguro’s prose is breathtaking, immersing you deeply in the butler’s perspective. I usually dislike "journey, not destination” stories, but Remains of the Day is an exception. I give Remains of the Day my highest recommendation. If you read nothing else this year, make it this one.