Annual Reading List (2024)

Hello friends! Another year, another reading list.

I hope you find something interesting below. Please let me know if you do, I would love to talk about it.

As always, please text me with any of your recent favorite books, articles, reports, and podcasts.

And for those of you who have made recommendations in years past but don’t see it on here, do not fret! It might still be in my reading queue somewhere. In fact one of the books I finally got to this year was recommended to me possibly three years ago now.

Thank you for reading.

Books

Fiction

Rendezvous with Rama | Arthur C. Clarke | 1973

Solid sci-fi book by the legendary author Arthur C. Clarke. I like his style of rigorously applying physics to his imagined worlds and scenarios. In this book there is a gigantic cylindrical spacecraft, essentially the size of a small planet, and he plays around with the experience one would have stepping foot in such an environment. It would impact gravity, observed light, and even create weird weather patterns. It was good but not my favorite by him. I still think 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Childhood’s End (1953) had better plots.

The Bonfire of the Vanities | Tom Wolfe | 1987

Very interesting book and one that I felt I needed to explore as I moved to New York. The single world that comes to mind is “cheeky”. It is funny, punchy, provocative, and satirical. It explores 1980’s New York City and the intersection of various social classes and ethnic groups. As a reader you often see the terrible, nasty, and often times funny, things that characters think about each other. It is an iconic 80’s book and I would highly suggest. I would not suggest the 1990 movie which apparently was a huge flop. (Thanks for the rec Jacob and Elliot).

Nonfiction: Energy, Resources and Technology

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations | Daniel Yergin | 2020

Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization | Ed Conway | 2023

Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology | Chris Miller | 2022

These three books all fit into a similar mold – “Catchy Title: How X Is Wildly Important and Will Shape Our Future”. But they are quite good.

The New Map goes through the various regions of the world (dubbed “maps”) and explains their energy needs, current sources, and future outlooks. In particular it covers: America, Russia, China, the Middle East, technological change that will impact energy demand, and the energy transition. Daniel Yergin is the best writer of the three and has written other acclaimed energy books like The Prize (1990) and The Quest (2011).

Material World is similar yet focuses on six different materials instead of geographies: sand (which includes glass, silicon, concrete), salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. This book lays out many roadblocks that serve on our energy transition journey ahead, yet he is mostly optimistic. It also covers the sprawling, global supply chains needed to extract and refine materials that we don’t think about on a daily basis. I think it serves as a great reminder that civilization depends on the harnessing and manipulating of our planets resources and that scale is only increasing.

Chip War is organized chronologically, highlighting the rise of semi-conductors and the embrace of silicon hardware. It paints the story of explosive growth within computing and recent consolidation to now just a few major companies that control global semi-conductor design and production. It then concludes with discussion around national security and the future of Taiwan. I think it does a good job of touching on technical topics like chip design, fabrication, lithography, telecommunication systems, and more. You should absolutely read this book if you own stock, or are interested in Intel, Texas Instruments, Sony, Samsung, Apple, TSMC, ASML, Nvidia, or Huawei. And what would a global minded book be without an entire section dedicated to China? (Thanks for the rec Ray).

Nonfiction: Science

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher | Richard Feynman | 1994

“Easy” is subjective here. I picked it up to refresh on the conservation of energy. The other “easy pieces” are: Atoms In Motion, Basic Physics, The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences , The Theory of Gravitation. and Quantum Behavior. It is a short book.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us | Ed Yong | 2022

Ed Yong is a great science writer. Here he dives into the different senses of the animal kingdom and shows that humans have a very biased perception of the world around us. Topics include how birds and bees see colors we cannot imagine, bats and whales use sonar, snakes use heat “vision”, elephants feel deep vibrations in the earth, and ants lay down pheromones to create complicated communications. I was blown away at how interesting this book was and just how narrow the human experience might be on our amazing planet.

Nonfiction: Business

The Trusted Advisor | David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford | 2001

As I started in consulting this year I figured I would check out the quintessential book. Nothing earth shattering, but was nice to see various pieces of advice laid out in easy to read lists.

Memoir and Biography

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger | Charlie Munger and Pete Kaufman | 2005

Charlie Munger died late last year and I have been a fan of he and Warren Buffet for a while. Through other books and interviews I had already encountered many mungerisms but it is refreshing to hear it straight from his mouth. This book is mostly transcripts of various talks he gave, which is not my favorite format, but he is quite funny which still makes it a fine read.

Leonardo Da Vinci | Walter Isaacson | 2017

I gave up over halfway through. I like Walter Isaacson as a biographer, but he transformed himself into an art critic for this book and would spend 10 pages at a time talking about shadows and rocks in Leonardo’s paintings. Perhaps I should have thought about that going in, but I am much more interested in the things Da Vinci did outside the paint canvas – designing war machines, dissecting animals to sketch muscles and organs, or becoming obsessed with the geometry of squares and circles. The book covers a lot of that too, but not at a pace that I was happy with and wasn’t exciting enough to put up with the endless art history. No shade to Leonardo though, I still find him to be an inspiring character.

Politics

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky | Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel, and Peter Mitchell | 2002

I am unsure what drew me to Chomsky, but I am glad I dove in. He is critical of the media, politics, U.S. foreign policy, and the notion of true dissent in America. He spends a lot of time talking about the sneaky things the U.S. has done to retain and project power, such as propping up dictators, supporting terrorist regimes, hiring Nazi spies for Cold War efforts against the U.S.S.R., squashing domestic labor movements, and more. We all assume the government does these things (the merits and aims of which are for a different discussion), but it is quite enlightening to see Chomsky pull the information requests and show the details behind it all. This book is structured like Poor Charlie’s Almanack through a series of Q&A transcripts organized around various topics.

Life and Philosophy

Meditations | Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays translation | 180 CE (translated 2003)

People always rave about Meditations so I finally decided to take a look. The Hays translation was easy to read and I took a few notes. The stoic philosophy he talks about is fine, but I personally found it more interesting to see the thoughts of an emperor as he was ruling.

When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi | 2016

This is a short memoir from a neurosurgeon who is about to complete ten years of rigorous training when he finds out he has stage four cancer. He decides to write this book as a farewell and to document the challenging thoughts and decisions he must face. He wonders whether to have a child with his wife before he dies and also ponders the big question: “what makes a life worth living”? A sad book, very raw, but powerful. (Thanks for the rec Dan).