There’s a scene in Cosmos (the good one with Carl Sagan) where he is at the public library in New York City. It’s a massive building filled with books. Sagan begins talking about how many books you could read if you read one book each week. He takes a few steps in front of some bookshelves he’s standing in front of and stops shortly after. The entirety of one’s reading life is contained within a few humble steps of an enormous library. “The trick”, he says, “to read the right ones”.

In 2024, I read over 100 books. I say this not to brag but more so to highlight a glaring deficiency in my own habits and prioritization. I suppose I am perpetually overwhelmed at the sheer number of amazing books out there and the prospect that I’ll never be able to read and experience them all. I try to compensate with quantity, but 2025 will be about quality. I’ll be trying to focus exclusively on “the right ones”.

That’s not to say that 2024 was focused on reading low quality books, far from it. I feel as if I read many impactful books that deeply changed my thought process. Perhaps I just feel like those high-value books didn’t get the appropriate amount of “pondering” time post-read they deserved. Indeed, I will explicilty list and elaborate on these books below. I feel that the majority of the books that I read did not hit that mark, in fact, many of them were “guilt completion reads”; books that I felt needed to be finished because I started them.

My top 5 books of 2024#

These are in no particular ranked order.

I picked this up at a local bookstore, following the owner’s advice, when looking for Russian literature. I had not previously heard of Gorky, so I went into this book blind. This stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the writing of other well-known Russians (i.e., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc.).

It is a tragic story of trauma, violence, and strife written as an autobiography. While the other Russian writers came from some higher place in Russian society, Gorky gives us a view of the state of common life during the same time period. It’s the pure embodiment of the Russian soul and spirit, and this book’s writing is gripping and beautiful.

There’s a quote that I think does a good job of encapsulating the spirit of the text:

“Long afterwards I came to understand that Russians, as a result of the poverty and dullness of their lives, sought diversion in grief, playing it up like children, and rarely feeling ashamed of their misfortunes. When life is monotonous, even grief is a welcome event, even a fire is diversion. A wart is adornment to a vaccous face.”

In researching this text, I also stumbled on what I think was a really great video that showcases this book.

This is not the most uplifting of reads, but, a necessary one, I think. For me, this book tore off the blindfold of my all-too-human repression of death.

Kingsnorth talks about writing and escaping to a more rural area to live with his family. I’d say this is a “meta-memoir” on writing and one that is worth reading not only for aspiring writers but for anyone who strives to be authentic and deliberate in their thinking, actions, and speech.

This has also led me down a bit of a Kingsnorth rabbit hole and I’ve been enjoying his talks and writing on technology and his journey to Greek Orthodoxy.

It might be easy to dismiss this book before diving into it by assuming that Postman is a Luddite or that he is promoting the message that “television is bad, mmkay?”. His point is much subtler than that and one that I think articulates the fears that have largely come to pass and become amplified by the technological advancement of the computer, the internet, and social media. Postman passed away in 2003, so many of these insights did not make it into this book, but it is not difficult to extrapolate from his writing.

A vital point of this book is that in Orwell vs. Huxley, they proposed two very different dystopian societies. Orwell warned his readers against government control and Big Brother, whereas Huxley’s view was endless self-amusement. There is no conspiracy or over-arching thought-police, but instead, a world where people are selected to be in a constant state of amusement and distraction. This is the state worth being concerned about and this appears to be the trajectory that we are presently on.

I’m a big fan of Robert’s writing. It’s terse but dense in terms of content and life lessons. All of his stories end with a gut punch of saccharin goodness. A few repeated short stories from other books of his, but those were worth reading again.

My top 5 to-reads in 2025#

The following books are heffers and ones that I feel like I have read in some form simply due to the osmosis in which these books have pervaded multiple domains. Still, the broad brush strokes of the ideas within are only a topical view within.

This list is a “soft” list that I’m not going to too stringently hold myself to. The 2025 reading list will certainly contain much more than this, but I would feel content having experienced the depth that I know these books have to offer.

I started this a while back but did not finish. My wife got me a nice hardcover edition of this book which I’ll be starting fresh from. I am aware of the “punchline” of this book, namely, the dichotomy between Ivan and Alyosha and Dostoevsky’s implication that despite Ivan’s wit, Alyosha was the “correct” one. At least, this is my high-level impression of it now, and perhaps it will change as I read it. I know that Dostoevsky used these characters to battle his own inner thoughts on the matter of religion.

As one of the pioneers in my field, I feel a sense of obligation to read more of Deutsch’s writings. His expositions on quantum information and pedagogical lectures on the topic were instrumental for my own decision to pursue this area of research.

I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t read this one by now. Given all of the references to this book in countless podcasts, etc., I feel like I should actually take the time to go through it. I’m sure many of the themes are so prevalent now in other forms as to become trite, but I still would like to read through it for the sake of completeness.

I actually already started reading this. While I appreciate the writing and style, I simply don’t have the requisite literature background to fully appreciate all the references to the Odyssey and subtleties of the writing. Truly, it’s even difficult to know what is happening during certain scenes due to the “stream of consciousness” writing that Joyce employs. I’ve found that reading a chapter first and then consulting the Ulysses guide to be a helpful way of deciphering the text.

I’ve seen the movies but never read the books. I have read “The Hobbit”, but that was many moons ago. While I am certainly familiar with the primary story arch (due to cultural osmosis and the movie trilogy), I am excited to read the actual texts as J.R.R. Tolkien appears to have been a massively multi-dimensional and fascinating character and writer.

I’m looking forward to diving into these books, along with many others. If you’re a fellow reader and have a Goodreads profile, feel free to send me a friend request on my profile here.