The books I read in 2024

Only 13 total this year, although one of them was a biggie.

• The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
• American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis, by Adam Hochschild
• Everything and More: A Compact History of ∞, by David Foster Wallace
• How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, by Deb Chachra
• Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton
• The Late Americans, by Brandon Taylor
• The Maniac, by Benjamín Labatut
• Middlemarch, by George Eliot
• Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler
• Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler
• Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, by Katherine Rundell
• Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy, by Martin Paul Eve
• The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War, by Chad L. Williams

Notes

• Middlemarch was the major project for this year and it was a delightful surprise. I went in knowing basically nothing about it and it took some time to acclimate to the Victorian prose, but it's beautifully funny, wise, and humane. I admit I glazed over at some of the political specifics, but the social dynamics are so finely observed that they’re perfectly legible to a modern reader.
• Warez was a learning experience in more ways than one, since I read it in the process of converting it from PDF to EPUB format (ironically, for a book about piracy, with the permission of the author).
• An unexpected theme of American Midnight, but one that resonated this year, was how much the New York Times sucks, and always has. Whether it's peddling braindead jingoism in the leadup to the USA’s entry into the First World War, laundering hysterical Red-baiting in its aftermath, or simply being an easy mark for manipulative ghouls like J. Edgar Hoover, the Times has a long and inglorious history of witless bootlicking.
• Originally published in 1993 and structured as a series of diary entries, Parable of the Sower begins on July 20, 2024 — coincidentally around when I picked it up. Reading it today, its grim predictions about climate collapse, social breakdown, and political dysfunction feel eerily on the nose.
• Finally picked up and finished two books that I’d stalled out on in prior years: Everything and More, and Hyperobjects. Both dense and demanding, but ultimately rewarding, and with some surprising intersections.