I read some books in December!

  • 💿 The Shining by Stephen King
  • 🎧 The Big Short Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
  • 🎧 Moneyball The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
  • 🎧📚 Chernobyl 01:23:40 The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster by Andrew Leatherbarrow
  • 🎧 Liar's Poker Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
  • 🎧 Flash Boys A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
  • 💿 The Secret History of Christmas by Bill Bryson
  • 🎧📚 The Coddling of the American Mind How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff
  • 🎧 The Dog Sitter Detective's Christmas Tail Dog Sitter Detective, Book 4 by Antony Johnston
  • 🎧 The Sword of Shannara The Shannara Series, Book 1 by Terry Brooks

I read some books in October!

  • 🎧 This Is for Everyone The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee
  • 🎧 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius A Memoir Based on a True Story by Dave Eggers
  • 🎧 Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
  • 🎧 Hell Yeah or No What’s Worth Doing by Derek Sivers
  • 🎧 This Is Water Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Anything You Want 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers
  • 🎧 Your Music and People Creative and Considerate Fame by Derek Sivers
  • 🎧 How to Live 27 Conflicting Answers and One Weird Conclusion by Derek Sivers
  • 🎧 Useful Not True by Derek Sivers
  • 🎧📚 Mr. & Mrs. American Pie by Juliet McDaniel
  • 🎧 Heartwood A Novel by Amity Gauge
  • 🎧 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • 🎧 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Seems like a lot, but half of these were really short.

I read some books in September!

  • 🎧 Odyssey The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry
  • 🎧 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives by Jean Twenge
  • 🎧 Nowhere for Very Long The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life by Brianna Madia
  • 🎧 Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • 📚 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 The Circle by Dave Eggers
  • 🎧 The Every by Dave Eggers
  • 🎧 Ghost Work How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri

I finally finished reading Infinite Jest in non-audio form. I started it last December, though I did take a few breaks to read other non-audiobooks between then and now. Plus I only ever read it in 10-20 minute chunks right before bed. Plus I took the time to highlight 1,699 passages in the process. This is by far the hardest, yet most rewarding, book I’ve ever read. The audiobook is much more approachable, an absolute masterpiece. I’ve never enjoyed any book as much as I enjoy this one. It’s smart, funny, and weird as hell.

Here’s a random representative sample of snippets that make me grin:

it is often more fun to want something than to have it.

My dad used to bowl, too, when he still had a thumb.

tastes like skim with a brown crayon melted into it.

his handbag, which failed to complement his shoes.

it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person.

secloistered

I am kilometers ahead of you.

logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

My father was whispering to himself in brief expletive phrases

The string of mucus from Kevin’s nose trembles and swings.

‘The son described his father as quote “genre-dysphoric.”

Gately lay there, overhanging all four sides of his bunk,

He said ‘Fuck it’ again, and I remember not being clear about what he was referring to.

DeLint described winter sports as practically getting down on one knee and begging for an injury.

his weekend binges with the glass pipe caused them no end of Financial Insecurity, which he mispronounces.

A direct assault upon the Academy of Tennis itself was impossible.

I’d heard the term projectile vomiting but I never thought that I—you could aim, the pressure was such that you could aim.

their classes are usually fascinating the way plane-crash footage is fascinating.

He killed himself less than ninety days later. Fewer than ninety days?

no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

I read some books in August!

  • 🎧 Isles of the Emberdark A Cosmere Novel by Brandon Sanderson
  • 🎧 Mythos The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry
  • 🎧 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • 🎧 Heroes The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry
  • 🎧 Troy The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry

I read some books in July!

  • 🎧 Apple in China The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee
  • 🎧 Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Fahrenheit-182 A Memoir by Mark Hoppus, Dan Ozzi
  • 🎧 README.txt A Memoir by Chelsea Manning
  • 🎧 The Lives of the Caesars Translated by Tom Holland by Suetonius

I read some books in June!

  • 🎧 Six Days of the Condor by James Grady
  • 🎧 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • 🎧 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod
  • 🎧 No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
  • 🎧 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

I read some books in May!

  • 🎧 Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
  • 🎧 Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
  • 🎧 Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
  • 🎧📚 Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
  • 🎧 Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

I read some books in April! Okay, so most of Wind and Truth was in March.

  • 🎧📚 Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
  • 🎧 Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
  • 🎧 The Dog Sitter Detective Plays Dead by Antony Johnston
  • 🎧 Moonbound by Robin Sloan
  • 🎧 American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
  • 🎧 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  • 💿 Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • 🎧 Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
  • 🎧 Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I read some books in March!

  • 🎧 Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • 🎧 Morning Star by Pierce Brown
  • 🎧 Count Zero by William Gibson
  • 🎧 Training for the Uphill Athlete by Steve House, Scott Johnston, Kilian Jornet
  • 🎧 Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax
  • 📚🎧 Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

I read some books in February!

  • 🎧 The Big Year by Mark Obmascik
  • 🎧 Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • 🎧 The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • 🎧 Red Rising by Pierce Brown
  • 🎧 Golden Son by Pierce Brown

📚 I read some books in January!

  • 🎧 The Dog Sitter Detective by Antony Johnston
  • 🎧 The Dog Sitter Detective Takes the Lead by Antony Johnston
  • 🎧 The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman
  • 🎧 GO AS A RIVER: A Novel by Shelley Read
  • 🎧 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
  • 🎧 One Man's Wilderness : An Alaskan Odyssey by Richard Proenneke & Sam Keith
  • 🎧 Dumb Money by Ben Mezrich

📚 I read 94 books in 2024. The total count has been trending downward for the past couple years. Like the previous year though, I did read a number of longer than usual books.

I started the year with a fun challenge of reading 26 books whose titles start with A-Z. This had the effect of slowing things down a bit. Since I wanted to finish them in alphabetical order, I only read one book at a time from start to finish. Normally I have a few going at once that I read or listen to in different contexts.

Here’s the complete 2024 list:

  • 🎧 Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman
  • 🎧 But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct by Ken Kwapis
  • 🎧 Contact by Carl Sagan
  • 🎧 Determined by Robert M. Sapolsky
  • 📚 🎧 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
  • 📚 🎧 Finding Ultra, Revised and Updated Edition by Rich Roll
  • 📚 🎧 Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger
  • 🎧 Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
  • 📚 🎧 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  • 🎧 John Adams by David McCullough
  • 📚 Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu
  • 🎧 Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
  • 🎧 My Life in the Sunshine by Nabil Ayers
  • 🎧 Nomadland by Jessica Bruder
  • 🎧 Open by Andre Agassi
  • 🎧 Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf
  • 🎧 Quiet by Susan Cain
  • 📚 🎧 Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle
  • 📚 🎧 Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 Travel Light by Light Watkins
  • 🎧 Upstream by Dan Heath
  • 🎧 Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe
  • 🎧 What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
  • 🎧 Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 You Are Why You Eat by Dr. Ramani Durvasula
  • 🎧 Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
  • 🎧 Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 Breathless by David Quammen
  • 🎧 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • 🎧 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • 🎧 Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
  • 🎧 Marry Him by Lori Gottlieb
  • 🎧 Chip War by Chris Miller
  • 🎧 Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White
  • 🎧 Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
  • 🎧 Click Here to Kill Everybody by Bruce Schneier
  • 🎧 A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins
  • 🎧 Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras, PhD
  • 🎧 Good to Great by Jim Collins
  • 🎧 The Impossible First by Colin O'Brady
  • 🎧 Pegasus by Laurent Richard & Sandrine Rigaud
  • 🎧 Free Time by Jenny Blake
  • 🎧 Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
  • 🎧 Dark Wire by Joseph Cox
  • 🎧 Kleptopia by Tom Burgis
  • 🎧 The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien
  • 🎧 Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
  • 📚 Magic Pill by Johann Hari
  • 🎧 Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Above the Clouds by Kilian Jornet
  • 🎧 Everything That Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus
  • 🎧 Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
  • 🎧 God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Love People, Use Things by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus
  • 🎧 Things That Matter by Joshua Becker
  • 🎧 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
  • 🎧 Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 🎧 Slow Horses by Mick Herron
  • 🎧 Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 📚 In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
  • 🎧 13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 🎧 Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday
  • 🎧 Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter
  • 🎧 Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
  • 🎧 The Apple II Age by Laine Nooney
  • 🎧 Build the Life You Want by Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey
  • 📚 How to Live in a Car, Van or RV by Bob Wells
  • 🎧 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Doctor Zhivago by Borìs Pasternàk, Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
  • 🎧 The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
  • 📚 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
  • 🎧 Tribe by Sebastian Junger
  • 🎧 The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
  • 📚 Wisdom from the Road by Bob Wells
  • 🎧 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
  • 🎧 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Wool (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
  • 🎧 Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 The Armageddon Protocol (Galactic Cold War) by Dan Moren
  • 🎧 Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
  • 🎧 Shift (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 Dust (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell

📚 I read some books in December!

  • 🎧 Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky
  • 🎧 Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 The Armageddon Protocol by Dan Moren
  • 🎧 Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
  • 🎧 Shift (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 Dust (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell

📚 I read some books in November!

  • 🎧 Tribe by Sebastian Junger
  • 🎧 The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
  • 📚 Wisdom from the Road by Bob Wells
  • 🎧 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
  • 🎧 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Wool (The Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
  • 🎧 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

And so I read Infinite Jest again. Then when I finished it for the second time I immediately started over at the beginning. I’m fully aware of the irony. I may have a problem.

📚 I read some books in October!

  • 🎧 This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 Doctor Zhivago by Borìs Pasternàk
  • 🎧 The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
  • 🎧 The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

📚 I read some books in September!

  • 🎧 Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter
  • 🎧 Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
  • 🎧 The Apple II Age : How the Computer Became Personal by Laine Nooney
  • 🎧 Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier by Arthur C. Brooks & Oprah Winfrey
  • 📚 How to Live in a Car, Van or RV by Bob Wells
  • 🎧 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest might just be my favorite thing I’ve ever read.

📚 I read some books in August!

  • 🎧 Things That Matter by Joshua Becker
  • 🎧 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
  • 🎧 Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 🎧 Slow Horses by Mick Herron
  • 🎧 Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 📚 In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
  • 🎧 13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff
  • 🎧 Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday

📚 I read some books in July!

  • 🎧 The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
  • 📚 Magic Pill by Johann Hari
  • 🎧 Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Above the Clouds by Kilian Jornet
  • 🎧 Everything That Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus
  • 🎧 Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
  • 🎧 God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • 🎧 Love People, Use Things by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus

📚 I read some books in June!

  • 🎧 The Impossible First by Colin O'Brady
  • 🎧 Pegasus by Laurent Richard & Sandrine Rigaud
  • 🎧 Free Time by Jenny Blake
  • 🎧 Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
  • 🎧 Dark Wire by Joseph Cox
  • 🎧 Kleptopia by Tom Burgis
  • 🎧 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • 🎧 The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

📚 I read some books in May!

  • 🎧 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • 🎧 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • 🎧 Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
  • 🎧 Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb
  • 🎧 Chip War by Chris Miller
  • 🎧 Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White
  • 🎧 Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
  • 🎧 Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier
  • 🎧 A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins
  • 🎧 Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids – and How to Break the Trance by Nicholas Kardaras, PhD
  • 🎧 Good to Great by Jim Collins

I generate this list from data stored in the app Sofa. The recent major version update of this app wreaked havoc on my JSON processing script. Hopefully the file format doesn’t change again for a while now that I went through the trouble of updating my script.

📚 I read some books in April!

  • 🎧 Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 You Are Why You Eat by Dr. Ramani Durvasula
  • 🎧 Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

The first 26 books I read this year had titles starting with letters A-Z sequentially. This was an interesting challenge. I found books for each letter, though I must admit some of them I wasn’t very excited about (a few with good reason). Here’s a few stats that, interestingly, all contain the number 19:

  • 19 nonfiction, 7 fiction
  • 19 first time reads, 7 re-reads
  • 19 male authors, 7 female authors
  • 19 audiobooks, 6 eBooks, 1 paper book

After finishing, I considered making a second pass at the alphabet, and I also considered moving on to books whose titles started with numbers. In the end I decided I had too much of a backlog in my reading list, so I’m just going to start working through those books. Here are the other books I read in April:

  • 🎧 Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 Breathless by David Quammen

📚 I read some books in March!

  • 🎧 Proust and the Squid : The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
  • 🎧 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
  • 📚 🎧 Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle
  • 📚 🎧 Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
  • 🎧 Travel Light: Spiritual Minimalism to Live a More Fulfilled Life by Light Watkins
  • 🎧 Upstream by Dan Heath
  • 🎧 Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe
  • 🎧 What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill

📚 I read some books in February! And the pattern continues!

  • 📚 Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu
  • 🎧 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
  • 🎧 My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family by Nabil Ayers
  • 🎧 Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
  • 🎧 Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

📚 I read some books in January! And there’s a pattern!

  • ➖🎧 Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman
  • ➖🎧 But What I Really Want to Do Is Direct by Ken Kwapis
  • ➖🎧 Contact by Carl Sagan
  • ➖🎧 Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky
  • 📚🎧 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • 📚🎧 Finding Ultra, Revised and Updated Edition by Rich Roll
  • 📚🎧 Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger
  • ➖🎧 Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
  • 📚🎧 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  • ➖🎧 John Adams by David McCullough