2024 Bookshelf
Here you’ll find a list of books I’ve read in 2024. This list is comprised of books I’ve finished, and since I only finish books I like, this is a complete list of books I enjoyed and would recommend. For a full list of books dating back to 2019, please click here: Complete Booklist. I tend to be heavy in the non-fiction/personal development genre. That’s what I find most interesting and where I’ve gained the most benefit.
Fiction / Novel / Based on True Events
Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, Asako Yuzuki
The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story
There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?
Inspired by the real case of a convicted con woman and serial killer—the “Konkatsu Killer”—Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance, and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
Non-Fiction / Autobiography / Wildlife / Elephants
Wildlife Wars: My Battle to Save Kenya’s Elephants, Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell
An amazing story about a strong leader’s fight to rid Kenya of elephant poaching, and the struggles he endures personally and professionally, as he battles poachers, corruption, bureaucracy, and life altering events. Through it all he never sacrifices his integrity, and stands up for what he knows is right, even when it’s dangerous to do so. This book is about saving Kenya’s elephants, but the real story is what can be accomplished when good people are in positions of power.
Personal Development
I put off reading this book for a very long time. Partly I think because of the sheer size of it (it looks like a textbook), and partly because of I believe that every book has it’s time in your life. For me, that time was now. This book contains endless amount of digestible nuggets that anyone could use to immediately begin changing their life. With advice on building wealth, wisdom, and achieving health, Tools of Titans covers all the bases. I enjoyed this book so much, and took so much value from it, that after letting it sit on the shelf for five years, I’ve already started going through it a second time.
Personal Development
The Lion Trackers Guide to Life, Boyd Varty
This is now my fourth time through this book (once on audio, three times reading it). And every time I go through it, something different sticks out to me. Here are just two examples from this last time around.
Page 72: “In the moment with no social conditioning, who am I?”
This is such a profound question to ask yourself. Perhaps the single most important question anyone can ask themselves. And while the question is important, the answer is of most importance. And answering it is not easy to do. Especially when you’ve spent your life being conditioned to act a certain way or to be a certain someone. And even still, if you are able to drill down to the core of who am I, living it proved to be the most difficult. Society doesn’t make it easy to be the person you innately know you are. We are surrounded in every direction by alternative suggestions for who we should be, how we should act. And that’s really where the work comes in. In maintaining the persona of the person you innately are, while the whole world tries to convince you otherwise.
Page 82: “IF something is all you have ever known, you mistakenly believe that’s just how it is. Perhaps this is the greatest danger, that we don’t even recognize another way.”
This is what I went through. From a very young age I thought you went to college, got a job, had a family. I don’t want to say that this was drilled into me, but it was the only path I ever considered. It wasn’t until 6 or 7 years into my career that I started contemplating a different way was possible. It started becasue I began reading books about successful people and successful companies. And the more stories I read, the more I realize that these people or ideas were for the most part not extraordinary, other than in their determination to be different.
I realized that their paths were not the straight line I had always thought they were, but rather their path was a collection of peaks and valleys, lefts, and rights. But what struck me again and again was their desire to keep trying, despite setbacks, and the criticism for non-conformity. And I began to realize that the path I thought I had to go down, didn’t in fact need to be my path.
If you are looking for your path, I don’t think there is a better book out their to read. Read it. Underline. Ponder his message. This is an awesome book.
History / Food
Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky
Just fascinating look at history through the lens of salt. Empires were built on salt. Salt was a currency. Salt is the only rock we eat. Salt served as the main means of food preservation for years. The salt industry, like so many other commodities, was built in many places by slavery.
Mark Kurlansky tells the story of salt in such an engaging and seamless way. I never wanted to put this book down. I never wanted it to end.
History
Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World, by Thomas F. Madden
An amazing recounting of history told through the lens of one city, Istanbul. I learned so much from this book, and was consistently blown away by the central role that Istanbul has played throughout much of human history. Thomas Madden somehow weaves together thousands of years of history into an amazing story that is hard to put down. If you want to learn about the history of the world and why we find ourselves still fighting the same wars, this book is a good place to start.
Non-Fiction / Personal Development
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout, by Cal Newport
This was my first Cal Newport book and I look forward to reading more of his work. I discovered Cal Newport on an episode of Tim Ferriss and I immediately fell in love with what he was saying. For the last five year I’ve been “frantically” trying to be productive. After leaving a 70 hour per week job, I was programmed to think busy was productive. And I’ve spent the last five year trying to undo that programming.
Books like this, like Essentialism and Effortless (below), like The Power of Habit, as well as many others, have all played a role in helping give myself permission to take my time and create. This was a great book for anyone looking for inspiration to slow down, and tools to actually accomplish it.
Non-Fiction / Personal Development
Effortless: Make it Easier to do What Matters Most, by Greg McKeown
In the “sequel” to his first book Essentialism, Greg McKeown explains how to make doing what’s essential feel effortless. If nothing else this book served as a reminder that doing the things you love don’t have to be so hard. In fact, they can be enjoyable.
Non-Fiction / Immigration / Foreign Policy
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, by Sonia Shah
It shouldn’t be surprising, but it was, to find out that immigration and our views of migrants are largely based on lies. For years people in power have been publishing lies under the guise of facts to deter us from accepting people from other countries looking for refuge in our own. The reality is that migrants bring with them vast wealth in the form of culture, family, and work ethic. They don’t commit crimes and degrade cities and towns the way media purports them to. Moving, leaving your home country, to seek new opportunities or to flee existential threats or persecution, is as fundamental a human trait as any. Sonia Shah lays all of this out and more.
Non-Fiction / Health / Processed Foods
Include this book in the processed food and food system curriculum along side The Omnivores Dilemma, Food Fix, Animal, Vegetable, Junk, and others. Robert Lustig pulls no punches in his attack on Big Food and the Healthcare Industrial Complex. He also provides a framework to allow anyone to better understand how to navigate the wold of processed food and to take back your health.
Non-Fiction / Personal Development
Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, by Charles Duhigg
Some books teach you something new. Others offer a reminder of what you already know. And some do both. That was the case for Supercommunicators, by Charles Duhigg. We all know the importance of good communication, yet very few of us are ever taught how good communication is facilitated. As George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion it has taken place.”
Charles Duhigg is the author of The Power of Habit, a book I reference and recommend often as it profoundly changed my understanding of habits, their formation, and how to get rid of them. In Supercommicators he takes on our inability to properly communicate with one another. The key to good communication is the ability to connect with the other person. And in order to do that we need to understand what kind of conversation we’re having. In short, do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?
Non-Fiction / Health
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker, PhD
I finally finished Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. The moral of the story, once you understand the power of sleep it is both terrifying and empowering. Terrifying because poor sleep quality or quantity is linked to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke, to loss of memory, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, to low testosterone, and low libido, to a decreased ability to learn and an increased chance of accidents such as car crashes. But it’s empowering because what sleep taketh sleep also giveth. Click here to read more…
Non-Fiction / Politics / Foreign Policy
War Made Invisible: How America Hides The Human Toll of It’s War Machine, Norman Solomon
This is a book that every American should read. Regardless of your political leanings or fundamental beliefs, the fact of the matter is that the U.S. War Machine wreaks havoc around the world costing thousands upon thousands of lives to be taken or ruined. As an American this should concern your for one very important and selfish reason: All of the attention and resources (trillions of tax payer dollars) directed at war is attention and resources that our country is neglected of. Even if you cannot empathize with the lives impacted around the world, look around your own community and think about how much change could be impacted if we stopped fighting the world and gave our attention to our own citizens.
Non-Fiction / Personal Development
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon
How Will You Measure Your Life provides a practical framework to shape your life and achieve the outcomes you desire. Using examples from business and their persona lives, the authors make success a tangible goal that will give anyone the confidence they need to reach it. “The type of person you want to become – what the purpose of your life is – is too important to leave to chance.”
Non-Fiction / Health / Personal Development
The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Healthy, Happy Self, By Michael Easter
They say that the key to life is being happy. But what exactly does that entail? Ask 1,000 people and you might get 1,000 different answers. It’s been my belief recently that happiness boils down to the ability to listen to and follow your intuition. But it’s occurred to me, and Michael Easter points out, that we now live in a society where our natural instincts are muted by all the “comforts” around us.
Non-Fiction / Cognition
The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker
The first dense book I ever read was Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It probably took me 4 years to finish. During that time I read a lot of other books but I just couldn’t sustain Thinking, Fast and Slow for long and I’d always put it down in favor of something easier to read.
The reason I never gave up on it though was because it was gifted to me by a close colleague and mentor. And even though he’d never know if I finished it, I wanted to prove to him through way of the universe that I valued him and his recommendation. It turned out to be one of the most life changing books I’ve ever read.
Non-Fiction / Foreign Policy / Memoir
They Called Me A Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight For Freedom, by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri
A well written and eye opening account of a young Palestinian girl’s struggle to find hope and freedom while living under occupation and constant threat of imprisonment, injury, and even death. Her story will change your perspective about the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel.
Non-Fiction / Agriculture / Food System
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food, by Will Harris
In 2020 the pandemic revealed cracks in our food system and I became interested in learning more about it. In 2021 I leaned in a little more and worked part-time on a farm near Los Angeles. Through my reading and experience I became a believer that fixing the food system was a path to fixing most (if not all) the ailments we face as a nation. November 2022 I listened to Will Harris on the Joe Rogan Experience and the episode provided even more fuel and I started manifesting a trip to visit his farm, White Oak Pastures, to learn more.
Non-Fiction / Agriculture / Culture
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, by Wendell Berry
On a recent podcast Andrew Huberman recommended reading the works of Wendell Berry. I had never heard of him. But I did some research and found this interview, Going Home with Wendell Berry, which prompted me to buy, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Originally published in 1977, it remains today one his most well known and influential pieces of literature. In addition to being an author, Wendell Berry is an environmental activist, and has been a farmer in rural Kentucky since the mid 1960s. These credentials I think give him a unique perspective that’s hard to find.