What I Read in 2024
Beyond the Expected: Surprising Stories and Insights
Confession: I barely read business or technical books anymore. In my 20s, during two stints in business school and my early corporate career, I devoured them. But here’s the problem: after you’ve read enough, they all start to blur together—a point a friend recently reminded me of. Technical books, on the other hand, have become reference tools. I don’t read them cover to cover; I just flip through for answers when I need them.
When I transitioned into management and leadership roles, I realized something surprising: understanding people and navigating workplace dynamics mattered far more than the frameworks and formulas in business books. Building and leading high-performing teams required an entirely different skill set.
Initially, I turned to non-fiction books like The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle1, but I soon shifted from overly methodical texts2 to fiction and history, where the nuances of leading and humanity come alive. These genres don’t lecture you on leadership, politics, or human complexity—they immerse you in them and study them from every angle. Through novels and historical narratives, I’ve gained my deepest insights into leading with compassion, handling difficult personalities, and navigating high-stakes challenges.
I’ve come to believe that the refusal to read fiction stifles us. By dismissing it, we limit our ability to lead boldly, dream big, and grasp the grit required to achieve greatness. Fiction doesn’t just entertain—it enriches our perspective on humanity and prepares us for the complexities of leadership.
With that out of the way, here are the highlights of the best and interesting books I read3 this year. For a full list of the books I read you can go to my Goodreads4.
The Aeneid by Virgil
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
One of the tricks I use for picking books is to use time as a filter. If it survives 100+ years it is likely to be better, or at least has more proof of quality, than something written last year.
They are not the easiest to read, but the lack of accessibility is an advantage if you can push through it. Most people are going to go for the modern, easy to read, shallow read. For the last few years I have picked one or two really old books to read to keep it manageable.
The Aeneid is Virgil’s attempt to consolidate the origins stories of Rome and legitimize the Caesars ruling it. If starts in the burning rubble of Troy, after the Trojan Horse, and follows Aeneid as he travels the Mediterranean with a group of survivors, eventually settling in Italy around the future site of Rome. If you love Roman history, you will love all the glances and references into the Roman Republic’s future. It is a book worth reading, but I would recommend read The Odyssey first. It is overall a better story and sets the stage for so much literature since then.
Macbeth is William Shakespeare, so it is tough. The best advice I can give is to read a side by side “translation” with modern English. The version I used lost some of the nuance of the original, coming off as over simple, but was vital to understanding many of the references and allusions. Macbeth itself is a story of a good man going bad because of a prophesy given to him about becoming King. You watch Macbeth and his wife descend into madness as the weight of their actions and guilt crush them. It also has the quality of a Greek tragedy where their actions to try to prevent a prophesy ends up causing it.
If your only memory of Shakespeare is being forced to read it in high school (and having no idea what is going on), give it a second chance with the modern “translation.” Forget everything they tried to teach you in high school, just focus on the plot.
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
This was one of the more practical books I read this year and one of the most impactful. I don’t remember why I added this book to my list of library books to test, it was probably something about trying to improve my social hosting (still a struggle, but continuing to work on), but it ended up being so much more. Parker takes the view that any time groups of people come together it is a gathering and eschews the traditional practical advice on logistics for how to make an impactful gather: party, conference, meeting, dinner, weekly standup, team offsite, etc.
If you are a leader of people in an aspect in your life you should read this book. It will help you think about how to transform everything from your weekly status meeting to your new employee on-boarding (hint it starts long before they show up on day 1).
One of the biggest takeaways I have from it is the need for the leader of a gathering to come to grips with the fact they have authority in that role AND they need to use it for the betterment of the group. What Parker calls Generous Authority.
Otherwise you are leave your gathering to the mercy of whoever decides to fill the power vacuum you create. It is not always appreciated by the individuals that would like to highjack your gathering but the group as a whole will be thankful.
I have been thinking about it ever since I read it and making me think harder all the gatherings I am a part of.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Continuing on the theme of using time as a filter, these books are not as old, but older than most books people read nowadays.
I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man mostly as a warm up for taking on Ulysses by James Joyce. But the story is a touching one in many ways and a window into Joyces childhood and inspirations. From his time in a Jesuit boarding school at age 6(!) through making the decision to not become a priest and leaving for Europe. The writing style changes in different parts of the book, there are a lot of sudden time jumps, and you do have to work your way through an over 20 page Catholic fire and brimstone sermon, but, like many great books, you learn about the people, the time, and the location of the story.
I read Flannery O’Connor’s short stories over the summer because a friend of mine was reading it…and hated it. She so forcible disliked the stories I had to give it a read to see what my take would be and I love them. One of the original southern gothic authors, the stories are weird, at times over the top, and violent (like really violent at times). O’Connor is exploring a lot of different topics. She is looking at the tension between blacks and whites in the South, the older and younger generation, and the push for the modern vs the pull of the past. As O’Connor got older her stories got more religiously explicit, but once you see it, you can see it throughout all her stories (just in very subtle and often violent ways).
My one warning is that when I say it can be violent, I mean disturbingly violent at times. People are attack, murdered, and the main characters’ story often end tragically. It took me about 2/3 of the way through her stories to get what she was trying to do with all the violence, but once it clicked the stories became powerful and complex. It is definitely something I will come back to and reread.
The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night by Bill Carter
The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy by Bill Carter
It is funny how important late night talk shows use to be to American culture. Both of these fights over hosting The Tonight Show were comically large in retrospect. But I found myself pulling out lessons beyond fighting over millions of dollars to tell joke and interview guests.
David Letterman and Conan O’Brien are in a way infected by the same problem, a love of an institution that does not love them back (and isn’t what they idolize it to be), and it held them back for years.
NBC went through a very painful process that hurt the network, the executives, and participants trying to keep Leno and Letterman with NBC (out of fear of competition causing their cash cow to be diminished), only to lose Letterman in the end. Then less then 20 years later…did the exact same thing. Part ego/arrogance, part short term thinking and loss aversion, and part refusing to face the reality in front of them.
In the end I think we do this in the business world also. We create the idea that a company is the goal (all of the “My dream of working at Apple/Google/Meta/Tesla/Whatever came true” like there is something about the building, computers, and the name of the company that will magically make our work life and ourselves better and greater. But there is no “thing” there. It is not the company you work for but the people that make up that company that affect your life. Your bad benefits is not a company problems but a CEO and HR leaders problem. You can have the worst experience at the “best company” or the best experience at the worst.
You work for people.
Your experience at Google is the collection of people that make it up and impact you and that is changing as the people in the company change.
Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2) by Isaac Asimov
I am a classic sci-fi fan (once again, old books). Foundation is one of my favorite series and this year I took the time to reread the second book in the series. The theme that the first Foundation book is that society has a predictable bend and flow to it, if you can precisely calculate it, and therefore individuals and individual decisions are irrelevant. It is the movement of societies, not individuals, that move history. This book, divided into two parts, takes that theme farther and then breaks it totally. The first part is a story of the futility of individuals to make grand change in the world, the next how one person (The Mule) breaks the universe single handedly and bends it to his will. The scale is grand and it is the turning book in the Foundation series.
The first three books are highly influenced by Edward Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. So if you love Rome you will love those themes and parallels. The first part of this book includes a stand in for Belisarius as the last great general of the galactic empire.
But I only recommend the first three books that were written in the 1950’s. Asimov wrote 4 more books in the series in the 1980’s and 90’s, I barely got through the first one. After 30 years, Asimov’s views on the world had changed dramatically and it reflects in the books5. They feel like the movie version of book where the director says “I love the books, I just want to change everything.”
River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard
I love Candice Millard’s books and have read all four of them. Her storytelling is incredible, and she masterfully weaves each story into the historical context, leaving you with a deep and enriched understanding of the era.
This book looks at the campaign to discover the source of the Nile River in Africa and the enduring conflict between the two main leaders. It is amazing to think that for thousands of years no one knew exactly where the Nile started. Richard Burton and John Hemming Speke traveled together to find the source, but in the end came to different conclusions on which lake was the source of the Nile. That disagreement lasted a life time and lead, in different ways, to the destruction of their lives.
It is a good book, but not my favorite of Millards. Destiny of the Republic, about the assassination of President James Garfield, is my favorite, but all of her books are great: River of Doubt, about Teddy Rosevelt traveling the Nile river to map an unknown branch and Hero of the Empire, about Winston Churchill’s capture and escape during the Boar War.
The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians by Carlos Lozada
Lozada reads political biographies so you don’t have to. This books goes into what you can learn from all of those overly processed campaign biographies and how all of them end up leaking something about the subject no matter how hard they try to hide. While I think his is far too forgiving to people of his political bent and too harsh of those he disagrees with, it is an insightful book of how to look between the lines, and especially at what is not said, to see what is true about our politicians.
The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis
This is collection of essays/speeches that CS Lewis gave during his lifetime ranging on a variety of subjects. Lewis is always thoughtful and thought provoking. The essay I want to end with is “The Inner Ring.” In life you will see there are circles and, especially in business, that there is an inner circle that your ambition will yearn for, not because they are exciting but because they mean you are a person that matters.
It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons, but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.
Inner circles are inevitable and not inherently bad, but you have to keep in check the inner circles that you pursue. With that, as we enter a new year, I leave you with Lewis’s words:
The quest for the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your ends, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your professional life that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and the other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know…But it will be do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long tun be responsible for all respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.
Which is still a book I would recommend a new leader read
Basically books that try to be analytical and use scientific reasoning (usually poorly). We all have seen them and read them. The book about the scientifically “proven” ways to captivate/inspire/lead/whatever.
Or listened to
Note: I read to my kids a lot and I count those books when they are legit chapter books. I read over 2,000 pages of Harry Potter books to my oldest this year and I am make no apologies for counting them towards my read goals.
He also infested Gene Roddenberry with his utopian humanist views that made the first 2 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation unwatchable