2024 Reading List

I read 187 books last year. True, most of them were audiobooks that I listened to and people have told me that audio books “don’t count as reading”, but no matter how you want to scrutinize the statistics I calculate my consumption of titles annually, both audio and ebooks, and review a list of publications that I enjoyed more than endured.

I started tracking the books that I read back in 2005 along with a few notes about each title. During the lull of a global pandemic with extra time on my hands I decided to write out a review of my favorite books in 2020. Since then I’ve not set a goal for my annual reading tally and I don’t try to rack up a large list, but I do spend an inordinate amount of time traveling solo which is conducive to reading, or most often, listening to books.

2024 Reading List Totals

• 187 Books Total
• 175 Audiobooks
• 12 Kindle Books
• 0 Paper Books

Favorite Book(s) of 2024

While I enjoyed many titles in 2024 my favorite book by far was The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant. I’m not sure how I came across this book, but once I dove in I was hooked. The Tiger is a fascinating true story about a man-eating tiger in Russia’s Far East. Vaillant does a great job telling the story of the people who were tracking the tiger, and those who were tracked by the tiger, and its also an interesting peek into a wild, rugged, and remote corner of the world. I didn’t want the book to end, so as soon as it did I immediately downloaded John’s other titles.

The next two books on my list were John’s other publications. Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World is his most recent book that recounts the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada. He does a fantastic job describing the geography and timeline of the fire while intricately weaving together personal stories from the disaster.

Then I read The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, John’s first book which tells the story of Kiidk’yaas, a Sitka Spruce tree sacred to the Haida people in British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. In 1997 it was cut down by a lone individual and John’s book dives deep into the natural and spiritual meanings of the tree and the troubled personalty that led to its felling.

Author Deep Dives

The next writer that I read deeply last year was Robert D. Kaplan. Kaplan is a prolific author of many books focused on foreign affairs. I first read Balkan Ghosts in 2023 and was drawn in by the way he melds together natural and political history, cultures and customs, and explains how specific places interact with the wider world. Throughout the year I devoured in no particular order:

• Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
• The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, And The Burden Of Power
• The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
• In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania, Beyond
• Monsoon: The Indian Ocean And The Future Of American Power
• Earning The Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World.

Another author who I’ve read before and always look forward to new stories from is Hampton Sides. Last year I read three of his works and I highly recommend anything by Sides, especially the Captain Cook book below.

• On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War’s Greatest Battle
• Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission
• The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

Travel & Adventure

What I call “Travel & Adventure” are always my favorite genre of books. Even better if they combine a bit of history, humor, current events, and natural beauty.

The first writer on this list should probably be Graham Field because he’s been on previous lists, even making my author deep dives last year. The oft irreverent muser of misadventures released The Back Story trilogy of titles and two of them made it into my library’s audiobook collection in 2024. I Should Have Left the Whiskey and I Could Have Been a Dreamer draft off his overland motorcycle chronicles and were fun to read.

Dan Grec is another around-the-world overlander who I’ve been following for awhile and I throughly enjoyed both The Road Chose Me Volume 1: Two years and 40,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina and The Road Chose Me Volume 2: Three years and 54,000 miles around Africa.

When I read Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure from Barbara Savage I was surprised that I hadn’t found it sooner. The book is a bicycle touring classic published in 1983 and I loved following along as the couple pedal their way around the world.

Another classic that I finally stumbled into is The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. Written in the 1970s it chronicles a two month adventure on the Tibetan Plateau that reminded me a lot of my time in the Kingdom of Bhutan.

In a new take on a classic American journey Rink Buck’s Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure was a lighthearted read. I don’t think I liked it quite as much as his book The Oregon Trail, but it was still an insightful experience.

Michael Engelhard wrote two fantastic books about places that I really love, the Grand Canyon and Alaska. His adventures, perspectives, history, and accounts of current events in No Walk In The Park: Seeking Thrills, Eco-Wisdom, and Legacies in the Grand Canyon and Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks Range were inspiring and made me want to revisit both places.

Speaking of Alaska, Andy Hall’s book Denali’s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak tells the ill fated tale of an alpine disaster in 1967 and Michael Wejchert follows the story of a more recent mishap in Alaska’s wilderness in Hidden Mountains: Survival and Reckoning After a Climb Gone Wrong. Both were tragic but outstanding mountaineering reads.

Moving to another mountain range, Harley Rustad’s book Lost In The Valley Of Death: A Story Of Obsession And Danger In The Himalayas was painfully interesting. In 2016 a young solo traveler disappeared in the mountains of India. While the story is about the search I appreciated the personal introspections from excerpts in his journals and his attempt to balance a life of travel while searching for a feeling of home and belonging.

Sticking with disappearing, Yossi Ghinsberg’s book Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival in the Amazon is quite popular and was made into a Hollywood movie in 2017. I’ve not watched the film but Yossi’s story is incredible and kept me riveted to the end.

After Yossi’s book I read Holly Fitzgerald’s Ruthless River: Love and Survival by Raft on the Amazon’s Relentless Madre de Dios. Holly and Fitz find themselves in a string of wild events that turn an Amazonian adventure into a harrowing fight for survival. A seriously unbelievable story.

Tommy Caldwell’s book The Push: A Climber’s Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits includes accounts about his own survival, but also insights into how he became one of the world’s premiere climbing athletes and the personal challenges he’s overcome.

Wrapping up this year’s list of Travel & Adventure titles on a more positive note is J. Maarten Troost’s very funny Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid. I was laughing so hard that this book almost made my number one spot. Troost is deft at combining a travelogue with deep history and current events, topped off by a dry sense humor. I feel like I learned something while cracking up.

History

Almost any book by Erik Larson makes my list. He is skilled at interlacing historical events and personal stories into deep reads and I found The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War to be both interesting and enjoyable.

I also like Timothy Egan’s writing style and Lasso The Wind: Away To The New West brought together various places and stories from across the American West into a historical travelogue and an explorative read.

Hell’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier by Susan Jonusas takes a bit of a darker spin on frontier life in the American West. Captivating, and a bit creepy, Susan tells a dark local history of an odd family.

Not exactly old history, Tim Reiterman’s Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People was fascinating. A few years ago I read a short piece about the Jonestown Massacre and have had Raven on my radar ever since. In his deep research for this nearly 30 hour audiobook Reiterman revisited Jones’ upbringing in his boyhood home in Indiana, which is very near my own hometown. As the story progresses it becomes agonizing to learn about the manipulation and personal stories, but it’s a fascinating read.

Hailing from Indiana it’s slightly ironic that I really don’t like basketball, but reading The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph by Scott Ellsworth almost made me want to lace up my sneakers and hit the court.

I have fond memories of going to the circus and Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus by Les Standiford shed a lot of light into the historical business of the American circus including the big names, the logistics, and how they became so popular.

Another book chronicling Americana history was The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America by Christian Wolmar. Very well researched and written, if you’re interested in railroads and American history this book has it all.

A story that completely surprised me was The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eye of World War I by Douglas Brunt. I never knew how the Diesel engine was invented, why it is named diesel, or the inventor’s subsequent disappearance under dubious circumstances. This was a great read.

My favorite titles combine History with Travel & Adventure tales and Candice Millard’s book The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey was just that. Millard followed Teddy down an unmapped river in the Amazon in 1913 and 1914, an adventure that he almost didn’t survive.

The United States and the Armenian Genocide: History, Memory, Politics by Julian Zarifian spanned a century from World War I to contemporary politics and was a mix of historical accounts along with geopolitical maneuvering around truly terrible events.

Last year I read three books by Patrick Radden Keefe, starting with Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland which was a very interesting, powerful, and at times hard to read story of recent history. Next I read The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream and followed that up with his recent book Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. He is very skilled at melding history, culture, and true crime tales into absorbing reads.

And finally, going back a few more centuries, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes by Anthony Bale was a well written book about the history of travel, long-lost landmarks, and perspectives of how and why humans began hitting the road.

Science & Technology

I read Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters by Cary J. Griffith right after John Valliant’s book about the massive Fort McMurray fire. Griffith’s account of a wildfire in Minnesota was just as gripping with personal stories, climate science, and a tragic mystery. It’s a very well written account of a recent true event.

I thought that Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World by Henry Grabar was quite similar to Ben Goldfarb’s book about roads. Grabar dives deep into the science behind, and the impact of, parking lots from LA to NYC and how our need for parking spaces is affecting the world around us.

It’s become somewhat of a party trick that I can tell people that I read an entire book about hedges in Great Britain, but in reality Christopher Hart’s Hedgelands: A Wild Wander Around Britain’s Greatest Habitat is a well written and researched look at history, nature, culture and how all are intertwined into oft-overlooked boundary lines packed with biodiversity.

When I read Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas it reminded me a lot of Nassim Taleb’s writing and I found Brian’s ideas thought provoking and fresh. I enjoyed it so much I read his other book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us and I appreciate his philosophy and storytelling.

On Call: A Doctor’s Journey In Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D. is a memoir of a medical career that spans my own lifetime written by someone who over the decades seems to have been able to anger people from all persuasions. I personally think he’s been a good public servant and I’m glad I read his book.

Accessibility is a huge topic in my work building websites and Andrew Leland’s book The Country Of The Blind: A Memoir At The End Of Sight tells the story of losing his sight, helping me think about my work in a new and empathetic way. I highly recommend this publication for anyone wanting to learn more about life without sight.

And finally, The Untold Story of the Talking Book by Matthew Rubery was a fun historical dive into the medium that is my favorite, audiobooks. A mix of history, current events, and the story of how talking books were created for readers who couldn’t see and grew into a massive industry that I very much benefit from today.

General & Humorous

First, returning to Indiana and my midwest roots Charlie Berens’ The Midwest Survival Guide: How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink, and Eat . . . Everything with Ranch is a fantastic audiobook. It’s probably a good paper book as well but being a comedian I think it’s better to hear Charlie read his own lines. You probably won’t really learn anything about the midwest, but if you’re from there it might be fun!

Another go-to midwest read is Keith O’Brien’s Charlie Hustle: The Rise And Fall Of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball. While I was never a Reds fan, I was a HUGE baseball fan growing up. Rose played a bit before my time but I enjoyed hearing about his life and career, the controversy that kicked him out of baseball, and I actually got the book from my library waiting list just a week after Pete Rose passed away. If you’re a fan of baseball, you’ll be a fan of this book.

Aaron Goldfarb’s Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits is not only a lighthearted adventure in collecting old liquor spirits, he combines well researched history, business, culture, and funny personal stories that make it an intoxicating read, especially in a comfy chair with a nice whiskey on the rocks.

And finally, I’m rounding out this category with a book that could have nearly topped this entire list. I love watching Colin Jost on Saturday Night Live and his book A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir was a laugh out loud memoir that I really didn’t want to end. Luckily he’s still on SNL, so I can get my weekly chuckles via YouTube. Also, this is another title I highly recommend in audio format as Colin reads his own lines.

Business

I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards was a unique look into the early days of Google. Published in 2011 the book is a bit dated as far as the technology goes, but working in websites and SEO I appreciated learning about early innovations and the birth of the industry.

Similarly, The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli shed light on Amazon’s massive growth, although it wasn’t always a positive light.

Michael Lewis’ book Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon was extraordinary. I love pretty much anything by Lewis, but in this story he had an unprecedented first row seat to the rise and atomic crash of Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX crypto trading exchange. This is an awesome book and I definitely recommend it.

Following the topic of tech companies going bad, Zoe Schiffer’s Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter was a really good read, although not in a typical business leadership education book. The way things are going now in early 2025 the topic of Musk could also have been moved down to the next genre of books, but for now I’ll leave him in Business instead of Politics.

Covering another hot topic Chris Miller’s book Chip War: The Fight For The World’s Most Critical Technology is a fantastic and timely look at the world of microchips. Miller covers the history, key players, technology advances, and global politics into a educational read that I really enjoyed.

And finally, a book recommendation from my last full-time boss Mark Godley was Skip Yowell’s The Hippie Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder and Other Mountains: How JanSport Makes it Happen. Skip co-founded JanSport as more of a hippie outdoorsman than a businessman, and this was a fun, light read about his story. I especially enjoyed the chapters on traveling in the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Politics

And finally, my least favorite genre is Politics. I try to challenge myself by reading viewpoints from various sides and persuasions but this year it looks like left leaning titles topped my list, so if you’re not really into that go ahead and skip this section.

Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: American Evangelicals In A Age Of Extremism hit home as it made me think deeply about how I was raised and how I think I’m different today having left my small hometown and experienced various cultures and people around the world.

Like I said, if you lean more conservative than liberal you’ll probably want to skip these, but I also really liked reading Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. I personally think that what the GOP did to her is outrageous, but I’m fully aware that lots of people think otherwise.

Both of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s books How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point aligned well with my own thoughts.

In Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World, Peter Zeihan lays out some interesting arguments about the future of the United States and the world.

And finally, a deep dive into a huge current topic, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer explores illegal immigration, the actual causes, what governments are doing about it, and what the future of immigration looks like. It echos my own thoughts that the issue and solutions are more complex than simply building a wall.

Conclusion

Wow, that was an exhaustive list of nearly 70 books! I actually made a note on my spreadsheet to be a bit more discerning about my “favorite” books for 2025 as this was quite an effort to compile. I have several solo trips lined up over the next year so I’m guessing I’ll devour many more audiobooks as well as hopefully at least one Kindle book per month. I don’t often read printed paper books anymore, not because I don’t want to, it’s just difficult to travel with them.

Most of my books come from the Adams Public Library system in my hometown Geneva, Indiana. Through their digital shelves I’m able to check out titles via Libby, Hoopla, and Kindle from anywhere in the world. I also use Audible, but the Indiana digital library is so vast that I pretty much only use the paid service of Audible to listen to hard to find titles. If you’re not using your public libraries for physical and digital loans I highly recommend stopping by and picking up a library card. In addition to their lending services our public libraries are bedrocks of our communities and I always love visiting them as I travel.

That wraps up my 2024 reading list. If you have any titles, authors, or stories that you think I might like, learn from, or challenge my opinions with send them over. I’m always adding new books to my wish list!

Annual Reading List Totals

2020 = 158 books
2021 = 161 books
2022 = 114 books
2023 = 153 books
2024 = 187 books