Last year, I wrapped up 2023 with my recommendations for 2024. I’m excited to do the same now, based on content I consumed this past year and on recommendations from other Z-Axis readers.
Books
2024 was my year of reading. I finished reading more books this past year than in any other year before it. I keep a running list, and I just hit 30 (and the year’s not over yet!), not including books that I started and didn’t finish (of which there were a few).
Here are my favorites (in no particular order):
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
I believe this is one of the most important books written in the past few years (and have previously explored some of the reasons why in another article). It’s a must-read for any parent, and also, more generally, any 21st century human.
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
Probably my favorite satire I’ve ever read. This book is short and incredibly witty. I won’t spoil the premise beyond saying this: A detective infiltrates a group of anarchists by pretending to be Thursday, one of their members. What he discovers next is wildly unexpected.
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
I flew through this book. It’s a great combination of things I love: beautiful writing, an unsettling atmosphere, and an unreliable narrator. Shout out to my reading buddy Gretchen Rubin, who was the first to recommend Iris Murdoch to me. See the reader section below for Gretchen’s recommendation of the year, which coincidentally is also one of my all-time favorite books.
Knife by Salman Rushdie
This book tells the harrowing account of the knife attack on Rushdie, as well as his recovery. It’s a tough but very important read. I’ve written about it more in depth here.
Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
This lesser known novel by Nabokov is a perfectly plotted tale of an illicit affair. In classic Nabokov fashion, it has you rooting for a pretty detestable character. Taylor Swift had it right: It is exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.
Life As No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker
This science book exposes how incapable our current physics is at answering the question: What is life? Walker provides her own answer by exploring a new science called Assembly Theory (which I’ll explore in depth in an upcoming article).
HHhH by Laurent Binet
A (sort-of) historical (non-)fiction account of a captivating and forgotten WW2 story. Alongside the Rushdie book, Knife, I also explored HHhH in my article about subjective retellings of historical events.
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
Don’t be fooled by the title of this book. This is not the crude romance series with a similar name. It is a surreal page-turner, with one of the most creative premises I’ve seen: In a world in which human beings have lost the ability to see the full spectrum of color, social standing is determined by which hues a person can see.
Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
I’d never before read Vonnegut’s non-fiction, and boy, was this book hilarious and thought-provoking. In it, he writes one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes, which inspired my pre-election article from a few weeks ago:
I apologize because of the terrible mess the planet is in. But it has always been a mess… And as I say to my grandchildren, “Don’t look at me. I just got here myself.”
Podcasts
One podcast monopolized all of my podcast consumption this past year. I started listening to Acquired and, honestly, couldn’t stop. All of my podcast recommendations for 2025 are episodes of that show. Here are my favorites:
Microsoft (Volumes I and II)
You don’t have to be a tech enthusiast to be captivated by the 9+ cumulative hours of content here. The story of Microsoft’s founding and the decades that followed are fascinating, told (as always) in an equally fascinating way by Ben and David. Microsoft may be the company that has had the most impact on our lives in the 20th century, and this episode tells all the reasons why.
Did you know that Nintendo was founded in the 80s? The 1880s that is. And its first big break was selling playing cards to the yakuza (the Japanese mafia). This episode offers equal parts of incredible history and powerful nostalgia.
This episode convinced me to sign up for a Costco membership. I can’t think of better proof of how compelling it is.
Your Recommendations
The following are selections of recommendations submitted by Z-Axis readers. Thank you to everyone who sent in a recommendation!
On the topic of books, I love Rushdie, and would recommend out of his more recent novels Fury. In the vein of magical realism, I also recently re-read The Golem and the Jinni, and it was even better than I had remembered. It's not quite a love story, more a story of a very unusual friendship that plays with what it means to be human, and inhuman -- all current topics.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Imagine a mash-up of C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and your favorite mystery-with-a-twist. This short novel is so surprising, so elegant, so suspenseful—with such an extraordinarily original and beautiful atmosphere—that I’ve read it multiple times since it was published in 2020.
I'd recommend the original trilogy of Dragonriders of Pern (Dragonflight, Dragonquest and The White Dragon), by Anne McCaffrey. The cleverness with which the planet's leaders organise and plan in everyday situations is amazing, and you always want to know how the planet is going to be affected by the plot. I learnt a lot about leadership and social life through these books.
I've been re-reading Slaughterhouse-Five through a very strange, but strangely fascinating, book: Curtis Smith's Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a well-written extended meditation by Curtis Smith on Vonnegut's book that is part of the Bookmarked series. Great stuff all around.
Babes: I just had my second kid and this movie was exactly what I needed to snap out of some mild postpartum depression. A hilarious and accurate portrayal of both what it’s like to become a parent of two, and what it’s like to watch a friend become a parent themselves.
Bad Sisters: I don’t know how everyone isn’t talking about this show. Sharon Hogan is (as always) delightful and hilarious, and this is the most interesting and multi dimensional cast of characters I’ve seen in a while. I love how the mystery plays out and was genuinely shocked by the reveal. Apple TV+.
Books:
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman - This book really opens your eyes about how things around work (or should work).
- Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future by Mike Maples Jr
Music:
- Rainbow Kitten Surprise
Podcasts:
- Acquired, the episodes about Porsche & Nike are fascinating
Shows:
- I enjoyed Yellowstone
The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776.
I first read it in the 1990's when a popular radio talk show host claimed the current health care debates were -- with a slight modernization & Americanization of language -- virtually identical to what was in the daily papers. I read it, in its entirety, that weekend. The section discussing health care was almost verbatim one of the newspaper articles I read the previous week.
With the sole exception of the parts discussing the relative values of different nations' currency, everything in it discussed "modern" economic debates that have cycled in, out, and back in again in our nation's news --- only now those news articles made more sense.
The last book I finished is My Voice Will Go With You: The book is about Milton Erickson, one of the founding fathers of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP), and the father of modern hypnotherapy. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in human psychology, the power of the subconscious mind, language, and how to connect deeply with others.
Happy new year to everyone, and thanks for reading!