With 2024 coming to an end, this feels like a great time to share the top-10 books from my reading this year.
My reading goal for the year was 45 books. So I’m really excited to hit an all-time personal best of 50 books. Roughly a 70/30 distribution between nonfiction and fiction.
If I went back in time and could only read 10 of these 50 books, I would read the following 10 books in this order.
1. The Great Divorce- C. S. Lewis
Lewis was an atheist until he was 40 years old.
By the time he died, he was widely known as the greatest intellectual defender of Christianity of the 20th century. The Great Divorce is the story of a man who takes a tour through the afterlife, starting with Hell then going to Heaven. It is the greatest vision of the Christian notion of the afterlife of all time.
I listened to it twice on Audible and couldn’t recommend it any higher.
2. Siddhartha- Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha Gautama was the birth name of the man who came to be known as the Buddha.
Siddhartha is the story of an Indian boy’s journey toward enlightenment. If the Great Divorce is a spiritual epic in the Western tradition, Siddhartha is a spiritual epic in the Eastern tradition.
It is profound, engaging, and surprising.
3. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant- Eric Jorgenson
This was the most mind-expanding business book of the year for me.
A real master class on how to get rich in the age of the internet. I didn’t care as much for the philosophy in the back half of the book, but definitely worth the read if you want to understand how people are getting wealthy online.
4. The Sovereign Individual- J. D. Davidson
It isn’t often I read books written in 1999, especially books about technology.
But this one is different. It predicts A LOT of the global, geo-political machinations we have lived through in the 21st century so far, and it has some major predictions for where we will continue to go. The basic idea is that the internet gave rise to the ‘sovereign individual’ as opposed to the sovereign nation state because any person can garner the kinds of resources that used to only be possible for nations (think Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc).
If you want to understand how the internet will continue to shape the world we live in, highly recommend.
5. The Lessons of History- Will Durant
Will Durant is one of the most influential historians of all-time and considered by many to be the greatest American historian of all-time as well.
This book is a summary of the biggest lessons he learned over a 4+ decade career of studying the primary sources and distilling wisdom from them.
6. The Science of Storytelling- Will Stor
Yuval Harari, the best-selling author and historian, teaches that storytelling is the uniquely human skill that allowed us to conquer the world.
This book is a manual for how to become a next-level storyteller, grounded in science.
7. Made to Stick- Chip Heath
Storytelling is master skill because stories are vehicles for ideas.
The better you are at storytelling, the better you are at planting ideas in other minds. Made to Stick is a look under the hood at why some ideas survive and others die.
8. Drive- Daniel Pink
Where does motivation come from?
How can we motivate ourselves to do more?
How can we motivate others?
This book answers the questions and more.
9. Peak- K. Anders Ericsson
Peak puts to rest the whole notion of “natural talent.”
In story after story, backed by scientific study after scientific study, Ericsson dismantles the idea that people are born with extraordinary skills and proves unequivocally that extraordinary skills in every domain emerge as a consequence of years of intentional, focused skill development.
10. Day Trading Attention- Gary Vaynerchuk
Day Trading Attention is a master class on how to market and sell with the leverage of the internet.
As I write this, I am finalizing a content production system based on the principles in this book. I am planning to go all-in on learning to sell online in the coming year, and this book is going to be a central part of that.
Bonus: Pimsleur Spanish 1
This one is a bonus because it isn’t actually a book but rather an audio program.
One of my big goals has always been to earn fluency in Spanish. I took several Spanish classes in high school, studied Spanish for six weeks in Pamplona, Spain in college, and spent six months diligently working on Duolingo in advance of living in Nicaragua for three months in 2017.
This year, Whitley and I went for a couple of weeks to Colombia.
Since Colombia is primarily a Spanish-speaking country, I knew navigating our time there would fall to me, since Whitley’s Spanish is non-existent.
I started Pimsleur Spanish Level 1 a month before we left for Colombia, after thinking about Spanish roughly zero minutes for the prior five years. By the time we arrived, I was confident in my abilities but nervous. By the time we left, I felt conversationally fluent, at least for those essential interactions like navigating the country and buying things.
The secret behind the system is that it was designed to mirror the way we learn our primary language.
After doing a bunch of studies on language, Dr. Pimsleur realized that the only metric that matters when it comes to determining the speed at which someone learns a language is the number of times a person is exposed to a word.
So, the Pimsleur system is built to help you learn core words and phrases first, then builds on those by expanding vocabulary while periodically revisiting earlier words. I’m not kidding when I say this is BY FAR the most effective method of learning a language I have ever found. Classes don’t work. Duolingo doesn’t work.
The Pimsleur Method works.