2024 in books
Life doesn’t get many turning points, but 2024 was one. After being tossed from the OpenAI rollercoaster, I’ve expanded work on our family office. Both kids are now in school, and my day to day is an axis between the local coffee shop for me and the BMX park for my son, with much less idle time available for reading. I also focused more on Chinese, which means I read about half as many (54 v. 120) books this year as last year.
The butterfly effect of committing to teach our kids Ren and Theo Chinese continues to have cascading consequences. We exhausted the SF Library system of good Chinese books, and over the summer went on a shopping spree for modern kids’ books at Page One in Beijing. At checkout, we were mistaken for representing a library we were purchasing so many. But the cost is worth it, Chinese children’s non-fiction books are often better than their English counterparts, and it’s hard to find other ways to keep up with modern Chinese culture. Across English and Chinese, top children’s books of this year include:
庞然大物之书 (The Book of Giants)
超级土豆 (Super Potato)
百问百答 (Hundred Questions and Answers)
魔法立体书 (Magic Pop-Up Book)
沙丘 (Dune)
红楼梦 (Dream of the Red Chamber)
花木兰 (Mulan)
Princess Black
神奇校车 (Magic School Bus)
佩奇 (Peppa Pig)
了解起的中国航天 (Understanding China’s Space Exploration)
At this point, when people ask me how I learned Chinese, the answer is less that I lived there and more that my kids taught me. Just yesterday they were both making fun of me for mispronouncing 驼鹿 (reindeer). Thankfully, between advances in AI text to speech and the growing popularity of Chinese audiobooks, I finally started to take a stab at long-form listening. Unfortunately my listening comprehension is still limited. This led to the goal of getting more words into my brain - and Harry Potter is my tried and true Rosetta Stone to get that done. At the start of the year, I would read Chinese at about 1/10th the speed I could read in English, and so even getting to conversational pace is a challenge. After 3104 pages worth of listening, I can listen for content at 1/3rd the speed I would listen in English (i.e., 1x vs. 3.5x speed), a dramatic improvement.
On the 4th readthrough (although only the 2nd time finishing book 7), I found myself with stronger opinions about the strength of Order of the Phoenix compared to the others, as it deals with defeat, frustration, and the breakdown of allies, a theme that remains woefully under-explored when compared to the standard hero’s journey. The rest of the books are pure escapism, yet OOTP has something real to say about the situations that most of us find ourselves in for day-to-day lives. So out of the seven, these are my top three reads:
哈利波特与凤凰社 (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
哈利波特与阿兹卡班的囚徒 (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
哈利波特与魔法石 (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)
With most sit-down reading time with the kids and most audio time spent on Harry Potter, I didn’t make it through nearly as much nonfiction. The notable exception was Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, which is a single-volume masterclass in power, people, and biography. Robert Moses starts the book as an obvious hero, and ends it a villain as he collects power, uses it towards aims that are no longer celebrated, and locks New York into a concrete wasteland that will remain a centuries long scar upon the available use of land. The ways in which he accomplished it and the slow but inexorable accumulation of non-capitalist, non-elected power is also incredibly interesting. I’ll read anything Caro puts out. Other top nonfiction reads this year:
The Power Broker (see above)
Decameron - Surprisingly entertaining and light, despite the brooding setting. One of the classics I’m sad I didn’t read earlier.
Anthology of Japanese Haiku - A great distraction for stressful times, made better by reading a falling apart edition from the 1920’s.
War - Bob Woodward continues excellent reporting on the Biden administration. A cursory overview of both administrations, but his books remain the best way to understand how Washington is actually operating. I hope his successor keeps it up!
And finally, there is pure escape. I didn’t find many new authors, but appreciated new books from previous favorites:
Mercy of the Gods- Seems like a better setting than basing their stories off of The Stars My Destination, I enjoyed the first novel and am excited to see where this one goes.
The Tainted Cup - What great characters! Bennet has the makings of a good serial and this is another new series I’m excited to follow.
Will of the Many - Much better so far than the Licanius Trilogy, interesting locals and worldbuilding.
Wind and Truth - Not as good as the three above, but better than Rhythm of War, and perfect book for when when you have appendicitis without enough morphine.
Next year I hope to keep up reading easy content in Chinese, mostly rereads, to keep my word count high enough to maintain a conversational vocabulary and listening skills. With more work on the family office, I hope to explore topics and first principles around businesses I haven’t been able to explore before. Onward to ‘25!