5 Great Books from 2024
Since the only thing I can predict is the past
A quick programming note: I’ll be taking the month of January off from publishing on Substack to work on some other writing projects. Paid subscriptions will be paused during this time.
Last year, Goodreads became my primary form of social media.
It’s the perfect platform. It reflects my real social life: I have three connections, and one of them is my wife. I log on for two reasons: to update a list of what I want to read and to update a list of what I’ve read. The content is useful: when I read others’ reviews, I know how to feel about a book. And the feed is so hopelessly disengaging that it dooms scrolling. If I want to browse books, Goodreads says, then go to a bookstore.
Again, the perfect platform.
Anyway, Goodreads tells me I read 47 books last year, a personal high. Rather than reflect on my writing outputs in 2024, I thought I’d share some of my inputs. Good reads in, good reads out, as they say.1
Let’s start with a few honorable mentions:
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt—for its feverish atmosphere that seeped into my real life, as I rushed through passages at 3AM in the morning while battling the flu.
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Vern—for filling in Reviewer 2’s origin story in dramatic fashion.
The Cult of Smart by Freddie DeBoer—for advocating for an education system that benefits everyone, especially those who will never have a chance to make it to the top.
The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe—for finding the exact threshold at which a protagonist can be seen positively, and for its record-breaking use of the word “fuligin”.
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet by Yancey Strickland et al—for turning Internet essays about life on the Internet into a physical book. It was nearly disqualified, however, because the boutique 1st edition print was the worst-smelling object I’ve willingly held.
You can see the full list of books read here. (You may even be able to sort them.) But before we move on to the top five, I want to call out a ghost from my past that I gave a second chance. It failed.
This year’s Dishonorable Mention goes to…
#47: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
I read Wuthering Heights in high school, and I hated it. But the reason, in retrospect, has been cloudy. Was it the domestic-focused plot? The verbosity? The mood? My only recollections were of desolate English landscapes and the uttering, “Heathcliff! Heathcliff!” It’s unquestionably a classic, so I thought I’d chalk my feelings up to high school and try it again.
This book is even worse than I remember. It is a three-generation train wreck of isolation, bad decision-making, and cruelty to children. It is well-written, yes, using layers of narrative to tell the story: on a business trip, the patriarch of the family brings home an orphan, who everyone (except for the patriarch and daughter) dislikes. Then, there’s fifty years of low-temperature vice.
It’s quite possible that I’m missing the point, that I’m supposed to dislike the book, that it’s about the emotional valence itself and not the direction. Perhaps it’s a flaw in me that I’m emotionally stunted. But if that is so, I prefer to stay outside—don’t let me in, Heathcliff.
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s move on to the good stuff.
#5. Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #3) by Cixin Liu
Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past series evokes science fiction classics like Foundation, not only in its scope but in its storytelling. Starting with The Three-Body Problem, Liu uses a portfolio of characters to tell a time- and universe-spanning epic—but like those epics, the characters frequently feel flat, more like props on stage than protagonists we’re rooting for.
It’s as if Liu wants to tell a story about the universe, expansive in all its dimensions. but his editors had to remind him, “Readers care about people! Make sure to include those, too!” (The notable exception is Three-Body Problem’s Ye Wenjie, the scientist who first contacts the Trisolarians.)
In the first book, we have a mystery to solve; in the second, we have politics. In the third, Liu finally gets to focus on his love: physics.
In other words, Death’s End is where things get weird. It’s always interesting and sometimes delightful. Even when it doesn’t work—a scene in which all of humanity must move to Australia is particularly dubious—it moves on quickly enough to forgive. And when it does work, it’s original, thought-provoking, and well worth the read.
In a postscript, Liu shares that, as a student, he remembers everyone else having a hard time grasping string theory and its many parallel dimensions beyond time. Not so for Liu. More than anything, that’s what comes through in Death’s End: the universe’s multi-dimensionality. So, if the characters feel a bit 2D, it’s balanced elsewhere, and, frankly, it suits them in the end.
#4. Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith and Boulet
Bea Wolf is the crown jewel of dad jokes. An entire published book, complete with splendid illustrations, premised on trolling—ahem, reimagining—the epic poem Beowulf. It works flawlessly. (Just like dad jokes.)
The stoic Northerners and a horrendous monster Grindel are now tribes of candy-crazed kids and the schoolteacher, Mr. Grindel, whose touch turns children into boring, phone-absorbed young adults. Bea, the titular hero, does not travel across the sea to reach the arboreal fortress of Treeheart but across the neighborhood.
Bea Wolf straddles the line of parody, but the result is neither disrespectful of the source nor a watered-down prose. It was an interesting challenge for my kids to follow along with the text and try to tease apart all the jokes.
Listen to the lives of the long-ago kids, the world-fighters,
the parent-unminding kids, the improper, the politeness-proof,
the unbowed bully-crushers,
the bedtime-breakers, the raspberry-blowers,
fighters of fun-killers, fearing nothing, fated for fame
The illustrations are vivid and hilarious. Black and white, they vibrate with energy. Mr. Grindel’s long limbs and opaque glasses are monstrously mundane. There’s a lot of subtlety in both the writing and illustrations.
I, for one, would welcome more of this type of myth recasting into modern times—particularly if they keep the lyrical nature of the source material. Bea Wolf manages to be original and entertaining, while also whetting an appetite for the source.
#3. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck
I’ve been Arthur-curious since reading The Once and Future King, but have been too intimidated in the decade since to go deeper. I tried Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, but couldn’t stomach the old English, which means I can’t even touch the Malory. Then I found Steinbeck’s The Acts in a closet last year and found myself sucked in.
The Acts is not a complete book. Steinbeck stopped work on it early and never finished it. The book ends at the first evening tryst between Lancelot and Guinevere, right at the cusp of the tragic end to Camelot. But the sections that are complete are a faithful updating in modern English of Malory’s Le Morte D’Artur.
What stands out, besides the matter-of-fact bloodiness of it all, are the never-ending episodes of knight antagonizing knight. They look for any opportunity: they camp out on hills, they wear false colors, they provoke, and of course, they go questing. The entire time, I was telling myself—all this energy is now going into social media. We murder with words those we used to with spears.
All told, though, it’s a captivating read, particularly the final section on Lancelot and Galahad. This is where Steinbeck starts to exert himself as a writer more. The imagery gets more colorful, the characters deeper. We see Galahad’s modern contempt for virtue being overcome by Lancelot’s pure will to master himself. We see the four queens, using their feminine magics to try and woo Lancelot to their side. And we get the first taste of tragedy in an evening meeting with Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
“But is it enough?” Galahad asks Lancelot after the latter defends the life of virtue. Though half-finished, The Acts of King Arthur is enough to get a full seat at my 2024 table.
#2. The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle #3) by Ursula Le Guin
I expect to reread The Earthsea Cycle another two, three, or four times. I place it on par with The Lord of the Rings, or even exceeding it, book for book. The archmage Ged is every bit as interesting a wizard as Gandalf, but has the benefit of being mortal, in both character and fact.
The Farthest Shore follows Ged at his twilight. Taking a young prince under his wing, he sets out to investigate a creeping ennui that is taking over the kingdoms of Earthsea and weakening the magic to which its accustomed. Ged is as vital as ever, but he is in his endgame. This is not a journey of “finding his destiny” but of “facing one’s history”—for the benefit of those who come next.
There is so much wisdom in this book that in reviewing my highlights, I found myself just stopping and rereading whole passages. Take, for example, this note on discipline.
For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted.
Or, this admonishment on motive.
My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.
The fantastic elements are so physical in the Earthsea books that I barely feel them as fantastic. Much of the magic in the travels comes from the water, from the act of sailing itself and conversation, rather than the magewind that blows them along. Life, it seems to say, is full of magic.
#1. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
In Jules Vernes’ Journey to the Center of the Earth, the professorial protagonist is a total megalomaniac. He brings his nephew and guide along a perilous journey with no fear or caution, seeking the glory of scientific discovery. To his credit, the drive is pure ambition, little poisoned by material matters. He wants to know. Dying during the attempt would be nothing compared to the shame of abstaining. It’s both comical and inspiring—but clearly fiction.
Endurance, however, is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. Ernest Shackleton, a chief hero of the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration, took 28 men on an attempt to make the first overland crossing of the Antarctic. (The pole had been reached already by Amundsen.) The motives here are many: patriotic glory, personal ambition, and thrill-seeking—this was a repeat journey for Shackleton— and, of course, scientific exploration.
Here’s the rub. When the team makes it into the Weddell Sea, their ship gets trapped in pack ice. Eventually, it gets crushed by the pressure, leaving the men stranded on ice floes in the middle of the Antarctic, with only a few small boats at their disposal.
Shackleton’s position is that of the leader, the man who got everyone into this situation. No help can be expected, either from other humans or from nature. Shackleton must lead these men—and so he does—through the worst situation imaginable, month after month after month.
Much praise is due to Lansing, who braces the narrative with enough detail to satisfy the historian, while keeping the story’s pace high. The passages on pressure alone make it worth the read. Lansing gets to explain the science—how much force is passing through each of the massive ice floes in the Antarctic, how the roiling waves influence it—but he also gets to show the explosion of The Endurance.
This is history, but by the end, it reads like a thriller. The challenges get greater and greater with each month of the journey, and the stakes get higher. By the end, I was giving Shackleton and his team a standing ovation. (I mean this literally. I stood and clapped when I reached the end.)
Endurance, too, is a book on leadership, and Shackleton has been hailed for his leadership traits. But do any of these extend to the modern remote worker?
Certainly, we could make some recommendations: staying grounded but optimistic, being sensitive to team morale and correcting issues quickly, and embracing the dual role of leader and crew member, all come to mind. But those aren’t the main point, to me.
What comes through again and again in Endurance is the indifference of nature. Antarctica is a harsh mistress, yet the crew endures. The journey is a testament to the human spirit, its drive to not be dominated. Life finds a way. Sometimes, you just have to pick the right journey—and survive it.
If my writing skewed heavily towards the Et cetera end of the scale recently, well, maybe this will explain it. I’ve got plans to read more technical work this year. Who knows? 2025 could be the last year that genre is written for humans.
Liked hearing about which books you are reading!!