My Favorite Books of 2024
Another year on and still, no one asked for this list
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Some books I read in 2024 that stuck out:
Affiliate links:
Non-fiction:
Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson -“I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?”
The Fund, Rob Copeland - Truth is stranger than fiction at Bridgewater Associates, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
Dusty Booze, Aaron Goldfarb - Why do certain types of liquor become popular and hard to find? Part history lesson, part Indiana Jones style quest for hidden Hollywood mogul bourbon stashes. Super interesting.
Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Ray Fisman - Insurance markets, how they work, and why it’s a difficult business.
Night of the Grizzlies, Jack Olsen - An account of two separate grizzly attacks on the same night in 1967 in Glacier National Park. Recommended by Ryan Holiday who has great book recs (owns a bookstore in Austin) and has written several books including a favorite of mine- The Obstacle is the Way
Fiction:
Most Gifted in 2024:
There is no Antimemetics Division, Qntm - I’m not sure how to describe this book , but one of the smartest, twistiest, have-to-re-read-it books I’ve read. The fiction book I gave away most in 2024
“An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.
No, this is not your first day.”
Book whose characters have stayed with me:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin - Two friends start a video game company. Loved it.
Biggest Welcome Surprise:
Slow Horses, Mick Herron - I know. I know. I’m late to the game with this series. Read it with zero expectations. Love Mick Herron’s writing style. So smart. Great cast of characters-about a team of MI5 rejects. Hat tip Ko’T for the rec.
A Short Story:
Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In the future, talented people are (literally) held down.
More:
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes - I last read this book in 7th or 8th grade and having reread it now - holy smokes it’s probably not appropriate for a 7th or 8th grader. Parts of this book reflect anachronisms of a former period and have aged badly. Other aspects, like the power dynamics of how people treat each other, remain timely as ever.
Train Dreams, Denis Johnson - Tells the life of a railroad laborer in the pacific northwest at the start of the 20th century. If I were a book reviewer, now is when I would use the terms “beautiful, haunting, and melodic”.
The Light Pirate, Lily Brooks-Dalton - Set in the very near future, Florida is left ravaged and mostly uninhabitable by hurricanes and tropical storms. How does a girl born during one of those hurricanes find her way? Reminded me a bit of a book I absolutely loved, Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:
I have a wonky qualitative metric that I use for a lot of the non-fiction I read, but especially for the harder tech stuff which is: “amount of useful facts or interesting things per page.”
These all scored very high on that metric for me:
Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch), Sebastian Raschka - If you want to learn the thing, you have to build the thing…from scratch. I’ve mentioned before I buy everything that Raschka puts out. I’ve learned a ton from him.
LLM Engineer's Handbook: Master the art of engineering large language models from concept to production, Paul Iusztin, Maxime Labonne- Create your “digital twin” with LLMs. A very interesting approach/angle to learn the practical application of all this “Gen AI stuff”.
Building LLMs for Production, Louis-François Bouchard , Louie Peters- So much good, practical stuff in this one. So good I bought a hard copy after reading the free (with kindle unlimited) version
Machine learning Q and AI, Sebastian Raschka - I’ve yet to read a non-value add Sebastian Raschka book, and this is no exception. Answers to some very cleverly curated tricky machine learning questions
Dear Otakar, thank you for this selection.
I also read "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" and can say the same thing. The characters stick with you, capturing the essence of friendship, and some of the writing, especially the last part, was innovative in a way that I haven’t experienced in a book for a long time.