My Top Five Books from 2024
In 2021, I wrote an article on My Top Five Books from 2021, without acknowledging that I read 54 books that year. The other 49 books were equally enjoyable and intellectually stimulating nonetheless, and are worth writing about.
So, to include them and carry on the lessons and knowledge I have learned from the books I read in a year, I wrote one-line summaries of all the books I read in 2022 and 2023.
While it was a good exercise for me, I realised that it was probably too much information for readers to absorb in one go, especially because there were 55 and 61 books respectively.
So in 2024, after having read 101 books (I know, I was on fire this year but it’s not something I’m proud of), I’m going back to pick the top five books this year that resonate with me the most and that I think will benefit others as well.
As I’ve written previously, the key to reading more is to not treat it like a shore but doing research about a topic that you’re curious about.
I find that these five are universally relevant and applicable regardless of your interest, as they will help you live more mindfully, peacefully and purposefully.
Here they are:
1. Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
Going up alongside Hans Rosling’s Factfulness and Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World, this book will convince you that the world is not as bad as you might have thought.
As someone who has worked in Media, Advertising and Marketing, I must confess that the industry benefits from bad news, because bad news builds more emotion, gets more attention, and therefore, makes more money.
Consequently, bad news activates our survival mechanism. And in order to avoid danger and survive, we tend to first see the worst that could happen, and assume the worst of people.
This pessimism then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We hear what we want to hear, and see what we want to see.
“when modern economists assumed that people are innately selfish, they advocated policies that fostered self-serving behaviour. When politicians convinced themselves that politics is a cynical game, that’s exactly what it became.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. People are inherently nicer than most might have assumed. That’s because we are wired to help and need each other.
While our ancestor (Homo Neanderthalensis) is found to have bigger organs, including their skull and brain, they did not survive, we (Homo Sapiens) did, thanks to our ultrasocial learning mechanism. We pass on knowledge and help each other advance the world and survive. They weren’t the ones to first land on the moon, we did.
This book demystifies everything that may have helped turn us against each other, mainly thanks to our leaders who are hungry for power, will give you facts and hope, to see the good in people and hopefully inspire you to bring kindness out of everyone and more to the world.
2. Entrepreneurs That Change Lives: And How to be One by Aaron Tait and Kaitlin Tait
This book is one of the first that showed me a better way of doing business. That business exists to solve problems, problems that the world has too many of.
It’s also much more of a workbook with exercises to help find your purpose, pushing you to go deep to your core and find your reason for existing. What are the problems in the world that break your heart? Is it really a problem? What are the root causes? Can you do anything about it?
“Profit is like oxygen. You need it to survive, but if you think that oxygen is the purpose of your life then you’re missing something.”
If you believe in being the change you want to see in the world, this one is for you.
3. Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better by Tim Duggan
Burnout and work-life balance have always been a topic of discussion lately, but I particularly like Tim Duggan’s approach to life-work balance, by flipping it around: figuring out the lifestyle that we want to live and work backwards from there to see how much work we have to do or fit into our lives to get there.
Most people spend the majority of their lives working, 40 hours a week, which is 23% of our weekly hours. But then there are other things that we’ll have to fit in: sleep, eat, travel and relationships.
He also argued that we don’t need to always love our job and follow our passion to find that dream job, sometimes a job is just a job. And I agree with him.
When I try to monetise my passion, I lose it, because the pressure and primary goal have changed it from intrinsic (fulfilment and enjoyment) to extrinsic (make money) motivation.
“People who tell you to follow your passion are already rich. And most of them got rich doing boring & difficult jobs, like law, medicine, or iron ore smelting.”
— Prof Scott Galloway.
In fact, Cal Newport also suggested in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You to not follow your passion but develop rare and valuable skills that you are good at, following the craftmanship mindset rather than the passion mindset, which is more likely to lead to success and fulfilment.
In saying that, life is also too short to be on a job that you don’t enjoy.
After all, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
4. May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases — And What We Can Do About It by Alex Edmans
There has never been a more important book on the age of misinformation. While the internet allows us to access any knowledge in an instant, speed comes at a cost of credibility.
Having made my top 5 previously with Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, Alex Edmans is back again with May Contain Lies, a book that gives us frameworks to investigate information and discuss the two major biases that are more prevalent than ever in our world: confirmation bias and black and white thinking.
As mentioned previously, people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and sometimes search, consciously and subconsciously for information to confirm that point of view, because we want to be right.
And as digital algorithms also keep serving us personalised content that hooks us and confirms our point of view, some parts of the world have become more polarised than ever.
While we may have built stronger bonds among those who are similar to us and share the same worldview, we may end up alienating others outside our circle more. It doesn’t have to be that way. After all, we all have at least one or two things in common, being on the same planet and being a human.
This book will teach you to think critically.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”
— Aristotle.
5. Right Thing Right Now: Justice in an Unjust World by Ryan Holiday
Another important book that has never been more relevant than ever.
Continuing his stoic virtue series, Ryan Holidays gave us a book of justice Right Thing Right Now, which he claimed that he wouldn’t have been able to write if he was younger. After all, we can only take care of others after we have taken care of ourselves. Growing up, we first discover our ambitions and goals, but they are only about us. Justice is about serving others.
Do we ever pause to think if and how much our goal pursuit may have affected others? At what cost? Some people don’t, they get stuck in their bubble. They pass on the responsibility.
When you walk past a trash on the street, do you pick it up? Or do you leave it to other people? When you see someone being treated unfairly, do you call it out?
Doing the right thing is not always easy, that’s why it builds character. It demands you to be a better version of yourself. This book will share with you the habits and mindset to give justice to yourself and others.
Because we need it now more than ever.
Thank you 2024 for giving us the time to read and grow.
