Previous editions: 2024, 2022, 2018 , 2016
Best of the best
A Woman of No Importance. Wow. A work of nonfiction that reads like fiction. Forget David Goggins, get some Virginia Hall in your life. Not since Hillenbrand’s Unbroken did I read a book that was so powerful and inspiring.
4000 Weeks. Though I’ve read a lot of time management/ productivity books and followed hustle porn online, this book was different. It fit with a shift towards timelessness, depth, long term goals and thoughts, etc.
10 to 25 and The Anxious Generation were the best parenting, teaching, and coaching books I read this year. The former reinforces the effects of status, and what the authors call “earned prestige”. The latter goes beyond infinity pools and shows how the life of young people has changed (since the 90s) and what the adults in their life can do. Along with Good Inside, these are my favorite family books.
Your Money or Your Life. The classic is classic for good reason. Reading it after Early Retirement Extreme is backwards, but it was a reminder about why we talk about money so much, because we need that much help to live better.
Second tier
Revenge of the Tipping Point. Enjoyed this much more than expected. Gladwell was the non-fiction author who got me interested in reading as an adult but I didn’t care for much of his recent work (and don’t follow his podcast). But this was great!
The Art of Frugal Hedonism. This book wasn’t great – but it was fun! It’s like Your Money or Your Life but written by a pair of Australian hippies. It’s the most fun “personal finance” book I’ve ever ready.
Thinking in Systems. Another classic that was good, but resonated differently because we’ve been playing with these ideas.
Self improvement
The Four Agreements and Who Moved my Cheese are life compasses. We need to regularly read things to get our bearings.
Fun Fiction
Theft of Fire, a science fiction space trip. Overall fun and the first true “space travel” book I’ve read. I continued to enjoy the Slow Horses series to the point of bugging my daughters about the exploits of Jackson Lamb. The show is on Apple TV.
Speaking of which, the Murderbot stories continue to thrill though the Apple TV show didn’t resonate with me. Stick with these books first.
I read a handful of Jack Reacher books this year, mostly comfort rereads. It’s great to have a series of books that are plentiful enough to be different but also follow familiar trails.
ChatGPT was helpful to find older fun fiction: The Old Man from Thomas Perry, The Bourne Identity, and The Kill Artist. The Bourne Identity has a heavy Vietnam shadow, something that was part of all the movies I watched as a kid but few of the books I’ve read.
Misc.
Two books that were great but I need to think about more were Inner Excellence and Designing Your Life.
This year was a shift in reading patterns. Of the 29 books (not all listed) 16 were fiction. What used to be a handful is now more than half. Happy holidays and happy reading.
The Waiter's Pad 