David Ogilvy said he preferred hiring people with “richly furnished minds.” I read because I am endlessly curious about all sorts of things and want to furnish my mind richly.
I read lots of books in 2024, but a few stand out from the rest. Here is my list of the five books I thought were the best for me and why they might be worth your time.
The Five Best Books
I love Bill Bryson’s writing. This book uses his home as the center of a history of domestic life. I learned all kinds of fascinating things.
The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson
The subtitle is “A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective.” Johnson weaves the stories together and keeps you turning the pages.
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
I read the “Restored Edition,” edited by Noel Polk. “Restored” means that Polk went back to Warren’s original manuscript. I think this version is better than the one I read in college.
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
I’ve read a lot about the Civil War. My brother-in-law has read even more. We both learned a lot.
Andrew Roberts’ biography of Napoleon
This is the first biography and book by Andrew Roberts I’ve read. It was fascinating, with an insight or interesting fact on just about every one of 800 pages.
Discoveries – Two Poets
I love poetry. Every year, I discover a poet who is new to me but well-known to others. This year, I discovered Seamus Heaney and Stephen Dunn.
Discoveries – Tools for Writing
For most of 2024, I worked to improve my writing workflow and results using AI tools. In the process, I discovered two that are particularly powerful for me.
Perplexity describes itself as an “AI search engine designed to revolutionize the way you discover information. Ask any question, and it searches the internet to give you an accessible, conversational, and verifiable answer.”
NotebookLM is “a research and note-taking online tool developed by Google Labs that uses artificial intelligence (AI), specifically Google Gemini, to assist users in interacting with their documents.” Author Steven Johnson helped develop it.
That’s it for me for now. What have you read or discovered in 2024?
