— Arthur H. Manners — Author of science fiction

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Books Read in 2024

I had hoped to write some kind of end of year post in December 2024. Maybe even a brief newsletter. But neither of those things happened. I don’t know how people get around to it. Oh well, better late than never.

Continuing on from reports in 2022 and 2023 (inspired by a similar analysis from Kate McKean’s excellent newsletter), here’s the breakdown for the books I read in 2024. The list includes things I finished, but also DNFs if I finished an appreciable portion of the book before putting it down.

I read 66 books in 2024. I can immediately report that I read a lot of short fiction on my e-reader, and listened to a lot of podcasts. But beyond that, I need to dig into the numbers.

Genres

Slightly more fiction this year, but it seems like I naturally gravitate to a 50/50 split on fiction/non-fiction. More sci-fi than last year, but much less fantasy. Surprising—I hadn’t noticed the lack of fantasy.

A closer look at non-fiction

Overall this more closely resembles 2022 than 2023. Apparently I got a taste for books on writing craft this year—interesting, given I wouldn’t have guessed that. Memoir was still big but tied with science—again, surprising, as I would have said I read much more science. I picked up a lot of other interesting things this year in non-fiction, and it’s nice to see that reflected here.

Book formats

As usual, mostly paperback. My audiobook listening was almost nonexistent. I was aware that I picked up a lot of hardbacks this year, which was a real joy. However, I hadn’t really appreciated just how few ebooks I read this year. I have been reading a lot of short fiction on my e-reader, which probably accounts for my lack of awareness.

Minority voices

Still on an upward trend here (60/40 in 2022, 52/48 in 2023). I recall putting in a lot of effort on this in 2022, and somewhat in 2023, but I hadn’t really paid any attention to this in 2024 beyond noticing that my bookshelf looks more diverse than it used to. It’s nice to see that this has become more of a sustained habit that I don’t have to consciously maintain.

Completed vs partial reads

I count books as ‘read’ on my log even if I don’t read them cover to cover. As a rule of thumb, if I get more than halfway, I’ll count it. I DNFed 8 books this year, roughly the same percentage as last year. Looking at the books in question, they were mostly longer works that, for me, seemed to fizzle out.

For reference, here’s the list (see the Book Log for previous years):

  1. Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
  2. The Fran Leibowitz Reader by Fran Leibowitz
  3. Drown by Junot Dîaz
  4. Payback by Margaret Atwood
  5. Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like Christmas by Maya Angelou
  6. Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
  7. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
  8. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
  9. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
  10. Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison
  11. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
  12. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
  13. Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton
  14. Two Cures for Love by Wendy Cope
  15. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
  16. And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
  17. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
  18. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
  19. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
  20. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  21. The Fire of Joy by Clive James
  22. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
  23. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
  24. Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
  25. When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris
  26. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
  27. Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho
  28. All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
  29. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  30. Poems of Thomas Hardy by Thomas Hardy
  31. Upstream by Mary Oliver
  32. Essays in Love by Alain de Botton
  33. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  34. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
  35. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  36. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
  37. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
  38. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
  39. Oathbringer, Part 1 by Brandon Sanderson
  40. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  41. The Time Hunter by Italo Calvino
  42. The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
  43. Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings
  44. Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope
  45. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
  46. One Day by David Nicholls
  47. Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
  48. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
  49. Selected Poems by W. H. Auden
  50. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
  51. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
  52. Quiet by Susan Cain
  53. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  54. Collected Poems by Simon Armitage
  55. How to Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
  56. Ascension by Nicholas Binge
  57. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
  58. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
  59. Think by Simon Blackburn
  60. Wool by Hugh Howey
  61. Grit by Angela Duckworth
  62. A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  63. Sentience by Thomas Humphrey
  64. There Is No Antimemetics Division by Qntm
  65. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
  66. Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Office Redecoration: Orange, Orange, Orange!

I’ve wanted a vibrant office for a long time. Something that wakes me up in the morning.

We moved into our house around a year and half ago, and most of the walls had been painted a pale bluish off-white. It was the kind of colour I’d pick if I was trying to depress somebody, but to each their own.

It didn’t work for me. My office is an extension on the ground floor at the back of the house. It has a lovely view of the garden and some French doors to the side, but it doesn’t get much direction sunlight except very early in the morning.

I put up with it for over a year, especially given that my office had become a sort of dumping ground for all the things we hadn’t found a home for yet. But my partner encouraged me to push all the crap into the loft, and start working on making the office my own.

I picked a colour called ‘orange fizz’. Exactly what I needed.

It still needs some curtains and other finishing touches, but it’s miles apart from where it started.

It’s too early to tell whether it’s made me more creative, but I feel far more comfortable in the space. It’s mine, and it certainly isn’t boring.

Books Read 2023

Continuing in the line of a similar post from last year (inspired by a similar analysis from Kate McKean’s excellent newsletter), here’s the breakdown for the books I read in 2023. The list includes things I finished, but also DNFs if I finished an appreciable portion of the book before putting it down.

I read 52 books in 2023. Reading was a mixed bag for me last year. I went through spells of reading voraciously and not reading at all. I also had a surprising number of DNFs or things I didn’t particularly enjoy—at least, it felt that way.

Genres

The 50/50 split between fiction and non-fiction was incidental. Not much change in other areas, except sci-fi for less sci-fi and more fantasy.

A closer look at non-fiction

A mixed bag for non-fiction. Memoir came out on top, probably egged on by how much I enjoyed Tara Westover’s Educated. Craft/Creativity dropped off a bit, but it’s still joint-second with science.

Book formats

Audiobook and hardback traded places since 2022. I revived Audible and hardbacks were a bit too expensive on the year’s budget. I also listened to a lot of podcasts—even more than usual.

Minority voices

I did a bit better this year (60/40 -> 52/48). I’m pleased about that, given the effort I put into diversifying my book purchases. With any luck, that won’t be a statistical fluke but a new normal.

Completed vs partial reads

I count books as ‘read’ on my log even if I don’t read them cover to cover. As a rule of thumb, if I get more than halfway, I’ll count it. Surprisingly, I finished more books in 2023 than in 2022 (90/10 vs 84/16). It definitely didn’t feel that way. But that’s 47 finished, 5 DNFed).

For reference, here’s the list (see the Book Log for previous years):

  1. Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
  2. Money: The True Story of a Made Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein
  3. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  4. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
  5. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
  6. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
  7. The White Album by Joan Didion
  8. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
  9. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
  10. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
  11. My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
  12. The Outsider by Albert Camus
  13. Temeraire by Naomi Novik
  14. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doughty
  15. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
  16. Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
  17. Toast by Nigel Slater
  18. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  19. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
  20. Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou
  21. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  22. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
  23. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
  24. Introducing Quantum Theory by J.P. McEvoy
  25. Educated by Tara Westover
  26. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
  27. Words of Radiance, Part 2 by Brandon Sanderson
  28. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  29. The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy by Arik Kershenbaum
  30. The Alchemy of Architecture by Ken Tate
  31. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
  32. Chaos by James Gleick
  33. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
  34. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  35. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
  36. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
  37. Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit
  38. World War Z by Max Brooks
  39. Heligoland by Carlo Rovelli
  40. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
  41. Gotta Read It! by Libbie Hawker
  42. On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
  43. The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss
  44. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  45. The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
  46. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (re-read)
  47. At Home by Bill Bryson (re-read)
  48. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  49. One Summer by Bill Bryson (re-read)
  50. Redshirts by John Scalzi
  51. A Poet for Every Day of the Year by Allie Esiri
  52. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Ask for playlists for your birthday

This post is about Kevin Kelly, whom I came across lately after reading somebody’s newsletter. Despite my best efforts, I can’t remember whose newsletter it was. My apologies to the ether for not giving due credit.

Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, has curated a lot of cool odds and ends, hosted on a part of his website called The Technium. When he turned 68, he celebrated by publishing a list of 68 pieces of advice.

He then did 99 pieces of advice another year. The latest is a list of 103 pieces of advice.

Kelly talked about these lists recently, especially his latest, on the Freakonomics podcast. Something he said on the podcast leaped out at me. Paraphrasing, he sums his efforts to avoid getting stuck in a rut as:

Don’t sit in the same chair every day. Avoid getting in a rut. For my birthday, I ask my kids for playlists of what music they’ve been listening to lately.

I love this idea. What could be a better birthday gift than lists of the best music, films, books etc. that the people you love have found lately?

I’m 30 now, that age where people start to become more set in their ways. Is this the way to stay fresh?

Music playlists would be especially good for me. I listen to a lot of music, but I’m one of those people who puts on the radio or auto-compiled Spotify lists, and has no idea which artists they’re listening to.

Books are the obvious ask, but I usually ask for specific books that are on my list. That runs the risk missing out on a lot of stuff I’ve never heard of. Maybe it’d be better to ask people for books they love.

When Post-Its Go Bad

I have a post-it note on my desk that says RADIANT GENIUS. All-caps, no explanation. Just RADIANT GENIUS. It’s been on my desk for a while now. I have no idea what it means, so it’s useless, the product of a less refined moment.

But I can’t bear to throw it away. Adorable that I thought that note would be useful later. How could anyone forget the entire phantasmagorical world of ideas unlocked by those infamous words of power: RADIANT GENIUS.

There’s another note on my desk. It says Robots and Dragons. And there is a little smiley face on it, to emphasize the calm confidence I had in those words at the time. Clearly it was a genius idea — though I’m not sure I’d call it radiant genius.

I’ve written a bit about notetaking and systems for developing creative ideas. But the above are evidence that there’s another side to scribbling everything down: some proportion isn’t useful and is at best clutter, and at worst is confusing.

A few might be comedy gold, fodder for the pinboard. But the whole effort at keeping notes falls flat if it isn’t searchable to some extent. The whole system has to be purged periodically for it to be of any use.

For me, that just means reading over everything, collating things into a blog post or my .inbox file on Evernote (inbox sorting in Evernote is explained here), or a list of quotations that I keep on Notion (twinned with things that sync from my Kindle using ReadWise). Occasionally things go into Obsidian, where I’m building a sort of personal Wiki (they call it a Second Brain, but that sounds a bit grand for what I’ve got going on).

Keeping things running smoothly does mean throwing things away, which I find difficult, especially when I feel like the note is just on the cusp of reminding me of something good. But if it doesn’t serve as a decent trigger for your memory, the note has failed, so it has to go.

I wrote a few weeks ago about my generally scattered mindset at the moment, and how that’s been refelcted in a messy workspace. So my focus for the next little while is keeping clutter to a minimum. Though I’m going to keep RADIANT GENIUS a while longer.