2024 Reading Roundup

I read a lot in 2024 (41 books as of writing, which may be more than I ever have). Here is a roundup of my year’s reading, not including most of the papers I read for teaching and research. Most items are followed by a rating mirroring my Goodreads. Some, but not all, are followed by some commentary.

Fiction

Life is cruel: there isn’t enough time for most mortals to read all the great novels.

Novels

Émile Zola, Nana (3.5/5)

• Late 19th-century Paris was both splendid and ugly. Zola specialized in minutely describing decadence, squalor, vice, and misery. That he did it beautifully remains contentious. The only other Zola novel I had read, L’assommoir, is bleaker, closer to pure misery, a genuine piece of naturalisme. Nana is often amusing. However, under the pretense of scientific observation, Zola’s judgment pervades the novel.

Honoré de Balzac, Illusions perdues (5/5)

Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot (5/5)

• I read both in a row, and both had been unforgivable omissions. I very much prefer Balzac’s Comédie Humaine to Zola’s Rougon-Macquart genealogy. Illusions perdues may be a tad too long, Père Goriot is almost too short, but they are both delightful.

Jane Austen, Emma (5/5)

• I’m cheating writing because I haven’t finished it, but I have no reason to think the remaining pages will change my judgment. I read and loved Sense and Sensibility, my first Austen novel, in 2023. Emma is lots of fun. Next year: Persuasion.

George Orwell, 1984 (4/5)

• Another one of those unforgivable omissions. I read it alongside Scott (see below), which was a great pairing. It’s incredible how many neologisms and ideas from the novel have entered popular culture (e.g. newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime, and memory hole). The characters lack depth, and Orwell’s style is very (and, if I understand, purposefully) plain and transparent. This is outweighed by insightful, prescient analysis and invention.

Elizabeth Taylor, The Soul of Kindness (5/5)

Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincote’s (4/5)

• Not the actress but the English novelist I only learned about a couple of years ago. Extremely subtle and perceptive, tender and incisive. Most of her novels are fairly short, but those two are deceptively simple.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3) (5/5)

• The final part of the Border Trilogy, where Billy Parham’s and John Grady Cole’s paths converge. I read the first two parts, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, in 2023, both of which were incredible. It takes a while to get into this one, but it ends up packed with action, awesome dialogues, and McCarthy’s unique way of mixing the sublime and the bleak to tell you the truth, which of course is terrible.

• In the spring, a student is doing an independent study on McCarthy with me. I very much look forward to it and will read his last two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, and re-read Blood Meridian, some thirteen years later. Oh, and yes, I am aware of the Vanity Fair bombshell. People contain multitudes; life is complicated; McCarthy was no saint. If anything, this should make you want to read more McCarthy, but to each their own.

Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World (5/5)

• Read during my physics/nuclear weapons phase. Fictionalized pieces on scientists and mathematicians including Heisenberg, Haber, Schwartzchild, and Groethendiek, on war, destruction, and madness. Magnificent. The author is Chilean. Adrian Nathan West’s translation is excellent (as far as I can judge). I may pick up The Maniac, a sort of fictionalized biography of another one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, John von Neumann.

Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds (5/5)

• I’m a fan of Groff. I’ve loved her collections of short stories, Delicate Edible Birds and especially Florida, and two of her previous novels, Fates and Furies and The Monsters of Templeton. This one, about a girl escaping into the wilderness from the starving Jamestown colony in 1609-1610, is raw, gripping, and poetic.

Aki Shimazaki, Tsubaki (Le poids des secrets, #1) (3/5)

• Seduced by the atomic bomb pitch, I was disappointed with the hackneyed plot and bland style. Thankfully brief.

Short stories

Jorge Luis Borges, “Death and the compass” and “The circular ruins”

• Borges is fantastic. Obligatory companion podcast for these two: Very Bad Wizards, episodes 282 and 293.

Octavia E. Butler, “Bloodchild”, “The evening and the morning and the night”

• Failed to complete the Bloodchild and other stories collection. I should try her again with a novel.

Nonfiction

Russ Roberts, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions that Define Us (3/5)

Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (4/5)

Katie Arnold, Running Home (3/5)

Norman Lebrecht, Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World (1/5)

In 2024, I wanted to read more about physics, physicists, and nuclear weapons. I also watched Nolan’s Interstellar and Oppenheimer and a few documentaries and listened to a bunch of podcasts. Apart from the Jacobsen, all of the following were illuminating and enjoyable.

Janna Levin, Black Hole Survival Guide (5/5)

Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (5/5)

Sean Carroll, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion (5/5)

Claudia de Rham, The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity (4/5)

Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (5/5)

Annie Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario (2/5)

• I’m including this one in its intended category, but really, it’s a work of fiction, no matter what people, including the author, say. This 80,000 Hours interview was the cherry on top. Very frustrating. I wish the interviewer had done her homework.

William Egginton, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Nature of Reality (4/5)

James C. Scott, Seeing Life a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (5/5)

James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (5/5)

• I learned about James C. Scott in 2017. Someone recommended I read Seeing Like a State (and/or maybe Against the Grain, which had just been published). For some reason, I put it off for too long. Scott died last summer, which prompted me to finally read those books. It doesn’t get any better than this. As mentioned, they paired well with 1984. They strengthened my distaste for bureaucracies, surveillance, and top-down control over people’s lives, and gave me some ideas for writing. Seeing Like a State is the true masterpiece, but Against the Grain was pretty great too.

James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play (4/5)

• This one is lighter, more hastily written, and rehashes some material from previous books, but it’s still enjoyable and illuminating. Don’t read it to learn more about anarchism per se!

Academic

Includes some books I haven’t finished but read big enough chunks of.

Philosophy

Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners (4.5/5)

• More philosophers are runners than you would suspect. Sabrina is the only professional runner who is also a professional philosopher that I know of. An accomplished ultrarunner, Sabrina has written a rare book-length treatment of the role of virtues and vices, both moral and intellectual, in running. Engaging, witty, and accessible, this should be enjoyable for runners and philosophers alike.

Toby Ord, The Precipice (4/5)

Theron Pummer, The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance, and Effective Altruism (4/5)

Larry Temkin, Being Good in a World in Need (4/5)

• The most compelling philosophical critique of the international aid side of effective altruism, by an early adopter and advocate of the movement. Empirically informed and carefully written, it is in some way heart-wrenching because it is written by an insider, unlike most of the (usually pretty bad) critiques of EA. The movement still has to wrestle with this one. Note that I do not think it undermines EA’s mission or tools.

Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (5/5)

• Another great mind lost in 2024 and another blond spot of mine. Originally published in 1984, it has aged remarkably well. I lean toward free will skepticism, but this is more than you could ask for by way of assuaging your practical concerns.

Matt King, Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder (4/5)

• A mixed collection. Some weaker pieces. Overall pretty interesting and informative. I especially liked Clarke-Doane and Tabb on addiction and Shoemaker on the moral costs of exemption from accountability.

Michael Bratman, Structures of Agency: Essays (4/5)

• You could say Bratman is repetitive. The theme works, though, and lends itself to fecund variations. I have found his work quite helpful in thinking about animal agency.

Jenann Ismael, How Physics Makes Us Free (3/5)

Erich Hatala Matthes, What to Save and Why: Identity, Authenticity, and the Ethics of Conservation (4/5)

Clare Mac Cumhall and Rachel Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (3/5)

The following I read for class.

Jake Monaghan, Just Policing (5/5)

• Monaghan is remarkable. A concise yet powerful non-ideal theory of just policing, dealing intelligently with issues of legitimacy, risk, discretion, and separation of powers, among others.

Tommie Shelby, The Idea of Prison Abolition (5/5)

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (3.5/5)

Brandon del Pozo, The Police and the State (4/5)

Carissa Véliz, The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance (4/5)

Animals

Rebecca Giggs, Fathoms: The World in the Whale (4/5)

Peter S. Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (5/5)

Michael Tomasello, The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans (4/5)

Brandon Keim, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World (3.5/5)

Bethany Brookshire, Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains (4/5)

Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (3/5)

Graphic novels, comic books

Jim Ottaviani, Leland Myrick, Feynman (4/5)

Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal), Why my Cat is More Impressive than your Baby (4/5)

Clément Baloup, J’aurais pu devenir millionaire, j’ai choisi d’être vagabond (4/5)

Some highlights from spring 2024 teaching

PHIL 101

• Plato, Theatetetus

• Plato, The Ring of Gyges (from Republic)

• Zhuangzi, “Happiness of fish” and “Butterfly dream”

• Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes

• Daniel Dennett, “Where am I?”

• Mary Midgley, “Philosophical plumbing”

• Elizabeth Anscombe, “Mr Truman’s Degree”

• L.A. Paul on becoming a vampire (from Transformative Experience)

Seminar on police, prisons, privacy, and speech

• Renée Jorgensen, “Algorithms and the individual in criminal law”

• Jake Monaghan, Just Policing

• Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani, "The injustice of under-policing in America

• Hi-Phi Nation, seasons 3 and 4

• Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment (excerpts)

• Discussions of privacy and surveillance (Andrei Marmor, Anita Allen, Carissa Véliz, Luke William Hunt)

• J.S. Mill, On Liberty

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Overall, a pretty good year. Happy New Year and happy reading!