One* takeaway from each of my 2024 reads so far
One* takeaway from each of my 2024 reads so far
* It was hard — “excruciating” is overkill, but not by much — to pick only a single thought from each book. But I took the chance to practice reining in my rambling.
1) Spark Joy by Marie Kondo
New read | ★★★
Display things that bring you joy where you’ll see them as often as possible. (Even, maybe especially, when it seems you’re the only one who gets that joy.)
2) Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Reread | ★★★★
Return to your childhood magic!
3) In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
New read | ★★★★
My typical twisty, emotional thriller reflection: I’m happy my friends aren’t, like, evil.
4) Bossypants by Tina Fey
New read | ★★★
It is nearly impossible to devote a few hours of your life to someone else’s firsthand accounts and not feel at least something for them… even if you’ve gone years only knowing them as a brief TV credit.
5) The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
New read | ★★★★
Teenage girls are terrifying. The end.
6) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
New read | ★★★★★
When it comes to grief, “pathological bereavement” happens if “the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another”. Didion asks of life with her husband — a sentiment that made me cry in the passenger seat next to Sean — “Were we unusually dependent on each other …? Or were we unusually lucky?”
7) The Push by Ashley Audrain
New read | ★★★
Motherhood is also terrifying.
8) The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
New read | ★★★
For that matter… add nannying to the “terrifying things” list.
9) The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser
New read | ★★★★★
Denying that we have needs does not make us more loveable. It just makes us lonely.
10) Clean: The New Science of Skin by James Hamblin
New read | ★★★★
Our skin microbiomes are fascinating—and fragile. Here’s to using as little soap as possible everywhere except my hands (since finishing this book, I’m down to washing my hair about once a month or less).
11) Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie
New read | ★★★★
“‘The world is much better; the world is still awful; the world can do much better.’ All three statements are true.”
12) Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
New read | ★★★
I need to spend way less time on social media. (This read, coupled with other ongoing reflections, helped inspire my Instagram break at the end of January.)
13) One by One by Ruth Ware
New read | ★★★★
Maybe someone should make the Snoop app for real.
14) Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala
New read | ★★★
When our world ends, we can only hope to start building a new one if we have a support network — people to unfurl our fingers from despair, make us reach for something else again.
15) People to Follow by Olivia Worley
New read | ★★★★
Young authors are out here Doing The Thing!! and I am here for it.
16) Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid by Thor Hanson
New read | ★★★★
I loved the Edward Everett Hale quotation: “I can’t do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not fail to do the something I can do”.
17) Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
New read | ★★★★
As we grow up, we can carry our younger selves (so, our old selves) inside us, the way our main character simultaneously holds Matthew and Piranesi and who he now feels himself to be.
18) Psych by Paul Bloom
New read | ★★★★
“Much of the variation that we see in a trait is due to genetic factors.” and “We can successfully modify this trait in some nongenetic way.” are perfectly compatible claims.
19) Calypso by David Sedaris
New read | ★★★★★
Strong sentences can transcend age and experience barriers. How did I relate so well to a gay man 40 years my senior who is a garbage truck’s namesake and owns a beach house? Because his writing is excellent.
20) 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert
New read | ★★★
The connection we — humans of all cultures, of all eras — can feel over food still amazes me.
21) Argylle by Elly Conway
New read | ★★★★
Spy-style suspense is much better in prose than on the silver screen.
22) The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
New read | ★★★★★
John Green said Rebecca Makkai writes some of the best sentences in the English language, so I am started this book with eyes open for structure — and almost immediately lost all writerly focus (not to mention my heart) to the characters. Bad writing can ruin a good tale but great writing can’t save a poor plot. When both are there? It’s magic.
23) Sound of Thunder collection by Ray Bradbury
New read | ★★★★
Stories don’t have to be lengthy to be worthwhile.
24) Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Reread | ★★★★★
I usually find the biology bits of science fiction novels unsatisfying. (It’s the science I know the most about.) Children of Time breaks that mold and then some.
25) Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl
New read | ★★★
What the hell even is the high end magazine world??
26) Deep Work by Cal Newport
New read | ★★★
Newport strikes me as a bit of a “productivity bro” — but it’s great to practice taking away the meaningful pieces (of which there were more than I expected) and letting go of the rest.
27) On the Road by Jack Kerouac
New read | ★★
I wonder how many people who claim they hate sitting down with a book are simply trying to read the wrong things for them.
28) Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
New read | ★★★★
Skills improve with deliberate practice. (I myself can memorize a shuffled deck of cards in about six minutes now; I’m not winning any USA championships, but hey, it feels pretty cool.)
29) Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
New read | ★★★
I still believe the best things personality tests do is give us a framework in which to discuss and validate traits we’ve noticed about ourselves.
30) The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Reread | ★★★★
Grand stories can, actually, be more important than my feelings about individual characters.
31) On Writing by Stephen King
New read | ★★★★
Fear is the greatest enemy of good writing. Fear of our audience. Fear of speaking truth to ourselves.
32) The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
New read | ★★★★
Translators have such an important (and touchy) job. They can change my perception of an author.
33) Know My Name by Chanel Miller
New read | ★★★★
I need to thank, again and again, the people who loved me when I barely knew what the word meant. Do you even remember how you held me? (I do.)
34) The Outsider by Stephen King
New read | ★★★★
Dialogue develops characters.
35) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
New read | ★★★
Just write one true sentence.
36) Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
New read | ★★★
Learn new things — do new things — without fear of embarrassment.
37) Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
New read | ★★★★
It feels like we’ve come so far. It feels like we haven’t come far enough.
38) The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell
New read | ★★★★
“Modern productivity dogma encourages us to act fast and milk our exceptionalism for all it’s worth. Under that kind of pressure, perhaps the truest rebellion is to embrace our ordinariness.”
39) My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
New read | ★★★
Protect your energy. Recognize what drains you, and what fills you, and make choices — about work, relationships, hobbies — accordingly.
40) 7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Reread | ★★★★
“Natural selection did not aim itself toward us—we’re just an interesting sort of animal with particular adaptations that helped us survive and reproduce in particular environments. Other animals are not inferior to humans. They are uniquely and effectively adapted to their environments. Your brain is not more evolved than a rat or lizard brain, just differently evolved.”
41) There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli
New read | ★★★
Exactly the title.
42) House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
New read | ★★★★
How incredible it can be to lose yourself in a fugue state because of a mind-bending (unhinged?) book.
43) The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel
New read | ★★★
I so wanted to love this book. Animals, biology, evolution, journalism, familial emotions? Yes, please! Sign me up! But it ended up not really being for me. (That’s okay.)
44) The Vital Question by Nick Lane
New read | ★★★★
How did I make it through AP Bio—4.0 in the class, 5 on the AP test—without actually understanding so much of what goes on in my cells?
45) The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
New read | ★★★★★
I want to read purely the “biologically satisfying sci-fi” genre from now on.