In 2024, I “read” – mostly listened to – far fewer books than in 2023. (Here’s last year’s list)

Reasons include:

  • Youtube addiction
  • Listened to more podcasts
  • Watched more TV (It’s Apple TV+’s fault for producing too many great shows… “Silo,” “Slow Horses,” “Lessons in Chemistry,” “Mythic Quest,” “Shrinking,” “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” “Masters of the Air,” “Dark Matter,” For All Mankind," “Ted Lasso,” “Prehistoric Planet,” “Foundation,” etc.!)
  • Fewer long, solo outdoor walks
  • Listened to even more jazz

I took fewer long, solo walks outdoors because:

  • I regularly walked while chatting with my wife. (Highly recommended for staying connected while staying healthy together! Also quite relaxing.)
  • I did much more treadmill walking in 2024, which I enjoyed while watching tech videos (e.g., Pluralsight), Youtube, and streaming shows, rather than audiobooks, which are better when walking outdoors.

I also enjoyed more podcasts in 2024. I love podcasts for keeping up with programming/tech industry news, so much of my podcast consumption is technical. Several general interest podcasts I love include national treasure Alan Alda’s “Clear+Vivid”, The Big Dig (brilliant insights into Boston’s Big Dig with profound implications for how we engineer our lived societal experiences; on Youtube, there’s a version linking the audio with historic videos), Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers, and David Senra’s “Founders”.

Still, compared with most Americans, I read quite a few books in 2024. The following – written last year – remains true: “mostly as audiobooks while making coffee, taking long walks, doing laundry, raking leaves, watering the lawn, showering, washing dishes, preparing lunch, brushing my teeth, shoveling snow (ominously little of that these past several winters!), etc. I sometimes even enjoy watching sports – mostly condensed soccer match highlights from around Europe – with the sound off while listening to an audiobook.”

Also like last year, I read quite a few dead tree programming books I won’t bother citing here. I still prefer paper or video for learning technical content.

Finally, I should add that my local library’s “Hoopla” app has been fabulous for finding and listening to audiobooks at no cost. If your library offers such a service, you should definitely seize it!

I track books I finished reading. If a book lands on my list, I chose to start and to finish it. Given the embarrassing number of unread books I own (and the many more available through Hoopla), I can and do stop reading books that don’t hold my interest, so if a book makes my list, I enjoyed it enough to complete it.

Last year, I wrote, “I wish I had read more science books and listened to more science podcasts in 2023 and hope to rectify this in 2024. (I did, though, watch a fair number of science shows on Youtube last year.)” The same happened in 2024. I watched a LOT of science news on Youtube but didn’t listen to many science audiobooks or podcasts. A few Youtube science channels I enjoy include:

Books Read in 2024

After all that rambling to excuse myself for reading so few books this past year, here’s the list of books I actually completed in 2024:

  • Daniel Priestley, Entrepreneur Revolution: How to develop your entrepreneurial mindset and start a business that works
  • Martin Warner, Startup Story: An Entrepreneur’s Journey from Idea to Exit (wild story well told, but I cringe at his overpromise-underdeliver approach)
  • Daniel Goleman, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention (Really loved this!)
  • Peter Sims: Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries
  • David Gardner, The Startup Hats: Master the Many Roles of the Entrepreneur
  • Tilman Fertitta, Shut Up and Listen! Hard Business Truths that Will Help You Succeed (I hate the title)
  • Feng Zhu & Bonnie Yining Cao, Smart Rivals: How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can’t Win
  • Kim Hvidkjaer, How to F-ck up Your Startup: The Science Behind Why 90% of Companies Fail - and How You Can Avoid It
  • Paul Cheek, Disciplined Entrepreneurship - Startup Tactics: 15 Tactics to Turn Your Business Plan into a Business
  • Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
  • Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life
  • Dr. Albert Bourla, Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible
  • Paul Bloom, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind
  • Josh Kaufman, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business
  • Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work
  • Andrew McAfee, The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
  • Horst Schulze, Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise
  • T.J. English, Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld
  • M.J. DeMarco, Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship (loved parts of this and hated other parts)

2025: Less content consumption. More content creation!

One final reason why I didn’t read as much this year is that I’ve been nagged by a vague – and as yet unrealized – desire to consume less content and create more.

My goal/wish/plan for 2025 is to spend much less time learning about the horrific decisions politically and economically powerful human beings are making to free up time to enjoy things I love and create things that – I hope – will inspire and help others.

(My watching the news generally leaves me enraged/sad/fearful/hopeless while not moving the needle in the slightest because the problems are largely systemic and seemingly beyond humanity’s capacity for collective action to save ourselves from ourselves. And most of the people with power, money, and influence to bend humanity toward collaboration to preserve and protect our planet and our future are obsessed with further aggrandizing their wealth, power, and fame, not helping people or protecting the environment.)

I’ve long had visions and plans of what I want to build, but progress has been plodding, with much learning but far less building. I want to accelerate my pace in 2025 and finally get something fun and useful out into the world.

With thanks to Susan Q Yin for her photo on Unsplash