2024 - A Year in Books

Jan 18, 2025

Introduction
Non-Fiction
Fiction
Games
1. Ghost of Tsushima
A Final Word
Stats

Introduction

Welcome to the 5th edition of my annual reading round-up, where I write about my favourite books I read in the year.

For me, 2024 was a year of mainly highs and a few lows. After a mini career crisis, I settled into a challenging but fulfilling job at Oak National Academy. I went on several adventurous holidays: skiing, scuba diving and a trip to Albania. I had a handful of exciting (and terrifying) new experiences: coasteering, gliding, driving supercars, wakeboarding and major surgery. And finally, I watched a lot of live sport (mainly cricket) and generally settled into a regular rhythm of life after last year's travelling exploits.

I've also continued to make time to read, despite buying myself a Steam Deck in August and rediscovering a love for video games. In 2024, I read 59 books (25,334 pages), with a healthy average of 429 pages per book. That's 9 years of reading over a book a week, and something I'd never have dreamed of when I started the challenge in 2016.

In this post, I've written about the top 10 books that I read in 2024, 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction. As usual, I had one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go at any one time. I read on my Kindle, and depending on the book, I might make a few notes on my Notes app. I track my reading on Goodreads and I tend to find new books on there, recommendations from family and friends, or by browsing the shelves in Waterstones. I've also got into the habit of finding a few options and asking ChatGPT which one I should read next, which is a surprisingly useful way of deciding.

As a bonus section for anyone interested, I've also written about my favourite game I played the year.

Let's get started...

Non-Fiction

After going rogue with 8 favourite non-fiction books last year, we're back to formula with 5 this time. In no particular order...

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness - Jonathan Haidt

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the alarming rise in mental health issues in Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) has been caused by the rapid integration of digital technology into children's lives. He begins the book with an analogy that with smartphones and social media we're "raising children on Mars", with no idea how this new environment will impact their social and neurological development (a similar point could be made about ultra-processed foods). His central argument is that a shift from unsupervised outdoor play to a “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s has led to increased anxiety, depression, and social isolation. This effect can be seen in many 'developed' countries. As a solution, Haidt argues for delaying smartphone and social media usage until 16, phone-free schools and promoting unsupervised play where children take risks and test their limits without adult supervision, as they have for almost all of human history.

I was on the cusp of a "phone-based childhood", with my teenage years split between talking to my friends online (MSN and Xbox Live) and meeting them in person. This was just before, in roughly 2010, big tech companies figured out how to make their products far more addictive, with adolescents particularly vulnerable to the techniques used (Snapchat streaks, anyone?) It's a terrifying prospect to raise children in a society where it's safer than ever to play outside, but their emotional and social development is tied to for-profit mobile apps controlled by people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg.

We should raise our children on Earth first before sending them to Mars.

"We are overprotecting our children in the real world while underprotecting them online."

"Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents."

"Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development."

"Stress wood is a perfect metaphor for children, who also need to experience frequent stressors in order to become strong adults."

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will - Robert Sapolsky

Determined explores the concept of free will through the lens of neuroscience and behavioural biology research. Sapolsky presents compelling evidence to suggest that human behaviour is determined by a complex interplay of genetics, environment, and neurobiology, with no room in there for 'us' actually to decide to do something. It leads on from Behave, which made my top 10 in 2020.

The first half of the book explains the science of free will, and the second examines the serious implications this has for traditional notions of autonomy and responsibility, particularly in our justice system. What if you never really 'decide' to do anything? Instead, all actions are caused by your genes, your hormone levels this morning, what happened to you as a young child, or how the decision-making areas of your brain developed as an adolescent. This goes against how it 'feels' to make a decision in the moment, but us humans are masters of fooling ourselves.

This is paradigm-shifting. From a biological perspective, our self-control, intelligence, and social and emotional development are all dependent on our brain structure, which can develop differently based on a multitude of factors outside our control. If our decision-making arises only from our biology, as Sapolsky argues, then there is no room for free will.

It also means that society's duty should be to give every child the best possible chance to develop a healthy brain. Avoidable factors such as inadequate nutrition and poverty significantly impact brain development. A similar theme also runs through Unprocessed by Kimberley Wilson, which nearly made the top 10 this year.

It's not your fault if you're born poor, and it's not your fault if you die poor either.

"You cannot decide all the sensory stimuli in your environment, your hormone levels this morning, whether something traumatic happened to you in the past, the socioeconomic status of your parents, your fetal environment, your genes, whether your ancestors were farmers or herders. Let me state this most broadly, probably at this point too broadly for most readers: we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment."

"In order to prove there’s free will, you have to show that some behavior just happened out of thin air in the sense of considering all these biological precursors. It may be possible to sidestep that with some subtle philosophical arguments, but you can’t with anything known to science."

"It’s impossible to successfully will yourself to have more willpower. And that it isn’t a great idea to run the world on the belief that people can and should."

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel

Less Is More challenges the prevailing notion of "growthism", or the pursuit of growth for its own sake. The book begins with a scathing and well-researched critique of the foundations of capitalism: the rise of dualism (the idea humans separate from nature), appropriation and privatisation of shared land and resources, enforcing artificial scarcity, pushing overconsumption, ignoring climate change and the obsession with GDP as a measure of 'success'. The second half of the book then discusses ways to address these shortcomings, focusing on degrowth, equality, living a meaningful life and accepting our place within the natural world.

Less Is More has given me a greater understanding of the foundations of our economic system and the inequality and underhand tactics required to feed it. It left me feeling powerless, as the majority of Hickel's suggestions are at the government level and target creating a 'post-capitalist' world. However, I did come away with a stronger idea of how to live a more meaningful life in a world of mass advertising, overconsumption and rampant inequality, as well as an increased scepticism of growth for the sake of growth.

"All living organisms grow. But in nature there is a self-limiting logic to growth: organisms grow to a point of maturity, and then maintain a state of healthy equilibrium. When growth fails to stop – when cells keep replicating just for the sake of it – it’s because of a coding error, like what happens with cancer. This kind of growth quickly becomes deadly."

"All of this upends the usual story that we’re told about the rise of capitalism. This was hardly a natural and inevitable process. There was no gradual ‘transition’, as people like to assume, and it certainly wasn’t peaceful. Capitalism rose on the back of organised violence, mass impoverishment, and the systematic destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies."

"When people live in a fair, caring society, where everyone has equal access to social goods, they don’t have to spend their time worrying about how to cover their basic needs day to day – they can enjoy the art of living. And instead of feeling they are in constant competition with their neighbours, they can build bonds of social solidarity."

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz - Erik Larson

The Splendid and the Vile tells the incredible story of Winston Churchill's first year as prime minister of the UK from May 1940 to May 1941. During this year, Churchill faced Nazi Germany at its most belligerent, the fall of France, the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and months of nightly bombing during the Blitz. While also trying to convince the Americans to join the war. The book is written using open-secret intelligence reports and private diaries, creating a vivid portrait of Churchill's daily life as the last bastion of freedom against Hitler.

WW2 is fascinating: the multitude of causes, global scale and lasting impact, as well as incredible tales of human bravery and untold suffering. Unlike the other non-fiction books on this list, I didn't take any notes. I was engrossed in Larson's storytelling, fast-paced chapters and the depth of detail that made me feel like I was there. Interestingly, the book also shows the classism of the British Government at the time. Leadership circles were filled with nepotism, country estates, debutant balls and seemingly endless champagne, even in wartime. That being said, it's a must-read for an insight into one of the 20th century's most important people.

"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

"'I never gave them courage,' he said. 'I was able to focus theirs.'"

"One young boy, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, a fireman or pilot or such, answered: 'Alive.'"

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts - Oliver Burkeman

Meditations for Mortals is much along the same lines as Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, which made my top 10 in 2022. Structured as 28 short chapters (meant to be read one per day for 4 weeks), Burkeman continues his crusade against the notion of 'super-productivity': the idea that every minute should be filled with something productive, that everything should be optimised and that we should be doing 'hard' things all the time. Instead, he proposes a guiding philosophy of 'imperfectionism', letting things happen and working with our non-negotiable limitations.

Burkeman's classification of an "insecure overachiever" hit me hard. I often struggle with seeing the day as productivity debt, a never-ending list of items I need to get done. Even on holiday, I find myself trying to 'optimise' the time and fit more things in. For anyone else who struggles with this, Meditations for Mortals is a useful grounding. I also read Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang this year, which have similar themes of letting go, being finite and getting more done by 'doing' less.

These books have helped me reflect on and accept my limits. Over the last few years, I've regularly pushed myself to mental and physical exhaustion, which has led to regular burnout. I'm now happier, healthier and living a more balanced life. Even if it means the book count isn't quite as high as it could be!

"We feel pressured to do something extraordinary with our lives, or to an extraordinary standard of merit, or in a way that’s applauded by an extraordinary number of people – even though it’s true by definition that only a few people can ever be extraordinary in any given domain. (If we could all stand out from the crowd, there’d be no crowd from which to stand out.) Why shouldn’t an anonymous career spent quietly helping a few people get to qualify as a meaningful way to spend one’s time? Why shouldn’t an absorbing conversation, an act of kindness, or an exhilarating hike get to count? Why adopt a definition that rules such things out?"

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."

"Facing up to reality – as finite humans must – means facing up to the reality of your moods, desires, and interests, too. This is why it takes courage to ask yourself the question that I suspect all those gurus promoting the ‘warrior mindset’ and ‘mental toughness’ are too frightened to ask themselves: How would you like to spend your time today?"

And some honourable mentions:

Fiction

Fiction-wise, I tried to avoid long series in 2024, after getting bogged down in some very long ones in 2023. As such, we're back to 5 fiction favourites. Once again, in no particular order.

The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese

The Covenant of Water tells the story of a Malayali family living in Kerela, India. It's a fascinating tale of sacrifice, relationships and a country coming out from under colonialism. The story spans three family generations from 1900 to 1977, and revolves around an affliction that causes several members of each generation to drown, otherwise known as 'The Condition'.

It's excellently written, with Verghese drawing on his medical knowledge (he's also a physician) and his family history to weave an emotional and engrossing story. It's also an area of the world that I didn't know much about before reading. Verghese's vivid descriptions of nature, food and culture painted a clear picture of what life was like in Kerela during that period.

I also read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese this year, which whilst also a great read.

"Philipose quotes Gandhi: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of food.”"

"The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone."

"To see the miraculous in the ordinary is a more precious gift than prophecy."

"We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill."

The Dark Forest - Liu Cixin (translated by Joel Martinsen)

The Dark Forest is the second book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, which I read pretty much back-to-back this year. It's my new favourite science fiction series, and The Dark Forest is my favourite book of the three. Without spoiling the first book (The Three-Body Problem), it's an incredible story of scientific exploration, cultural development and philosophical exploration of humanity's place in the universe.

I've made a conscious effort this year to avoid books by American authors or set in the USA. Since WW2, the US has had a monumental cultural impact on the UK. We're bombarded with American ideals, both good and bad, through books, television, social media and English-speaking news. Originally written in Chinese, the Remembrance of Earth's Past series offers something profoundly different. An albeit translated insight into modern Chinese literature and a world beyond American-influenced hyper-individualism.

"It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?"

"Never before in history had there been such a moment, in which every single person felt fortunate and proud to be a member of the human race."

"Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years."

Babel - R.F. Kuang

Babel is an academic fantasy set in early 19th-century Oxford. In a (slightly) alternate history, Britain's economic and colonial supremacy is fueled by silver bars inscribed with 'match-pairs', which capture the difference between two translated words and convert the energy lost in translation into magical power. For example, a carriage could race through London much faster and more safely if it was embedded with a silver bar containing the etched word 'speed' along with the Latin word from which it was derived: 'spes' (whose meaning also relates to hope and success).

The story revolves around four trainee translators from different corners of the empire: Canton, Calcutta, Haiti and the daughter of an Admiral. They attend the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation (aka Babel), where translators research and control the silver match pairs throughout the British empire. It's a tale of colonialism, rebellion and cultural identity, told through the fascinating lens of linguistic development and the subtle differences between past and present languages.

"That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands."

"This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it."

"How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’ ‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things."

All the Glimmering Stars - Mark T. Sullivan

All the Glimmering Stars is based on a story of two Ugandan teenagers kidnapped into Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in the 1990s (remember him?). It's a brutal read. Kony embodies the worst of humanity: delusion, violence and a total disregard for human lives. That being said, it's a tale of astounding human resilience and finding love despite horrific circumstances. It's emotional, philosophical and an eye-opening insight into the ongoing fragility of life in Central Africa (I'd also recommend Cobalt Red - Siddarth Kara for more on that).

I'd also recommend another of his books, Beneath a Scarlet Sky.

"I want to be able to look at you and know what a good human you have become, someone who does the right thing, stands up for himself, who knows right from wrong; a human who treats people fairly and expects to be treated fairly, who knows his business and his work, and feels responsible for feeding and sheltering his family; a human who knows how to love and to learn from his wife, and how to teach his children well so they can teach their children well so that the story and skills of a good and decent life go on."

"Like your father always says, ‘Don’t be nervous. Be prepared.’"

"They have names?” “They do. Rush. Violence. Lack. And Fear."

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

The Pillars of the Earth is a story about building cathedrals in 12th-century Europe, complete with full architectural descriptions (most of which went over my head). But don't let that put you off, Follett interweaves a gripping narrative of revenge, betrayal and love around this seemingly innocuous subject. Despite its length, being just shy of 1000 pages, the story is sharp and well-paced. I've not read much set in the Middle Ages, so it was a fascinating account of the harshness (and often shortness) of life before modernity, and an interesting insight into the impact of the Church on European history.

"The most expensive part of building is the mistakes."

"Hunger is the best seasoning."

"Proportion is the heart of beauty."

Honourable mentions:

Games

In 2024, I played several games that had been on my backlog for years, but this was my favourite...

Ghost of Tsushima

I first started Ghost of Tsushima during a hectic period of my life in early 2023. In a fragmented playthrough that lasted more than a year, I played it on the easiest 'story' difficulty and took so long that I never finished it.

In November, I decided to take the plunge again and bought it on Steam. I blitzed through it in a couple of weeks and absolutely loved it. Feudal Japan is a beautiful setting for a game, the combat is challenging but satisfying (I played it on 'normal' difficulty this time!) and the story is excellent. If you want to see what else I've played, I keep track (of course) on Grouvee.

A Final Word

Thanks for reading. Please let me know if you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you thought of them. 2025 will mark 10 years of my reading challenge, so I'm aiming to read a book a week once again. After that, who knows?

Links to the previous yearly round-ups:

Stats

My 9 years on Goodreads:

Book counts year-on-year

Page counts year-on-year

Book counts month-on-month

Page counts month-on-month