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The (Very) Best Books I Read In 2024
Another year and what do I have to show for it? A big stack of books read and ruminated on is not a bad answer. I know some people assiduously track how many books they read, but I do not (Do you count books you made halfway through? Re-reads? Books you read to your kids? Favorites you took off the shelf to find a favorite passage?) because I don’t think it’s a contest. Epictetus was right when he said it’s not that you read but what you read. So I do track my favorites. And boy, there were some books I loved this year. Books that I got a ton out of. Books that in some cases, have already changed my life.
Here, at the end of the year, I try to narrow down all the books I read and recommended in this email list to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. You can check out the best of lists from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011… I can’t believe it’s been 14 years of these roundups!
My reading list is now ~315,000 people and between that and meeting folks who come into my bookstore every day, I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you — you can’t go wrong with any of these.
