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Best and Worst Books, 2024

I read another 50 or so books in 2024, and these are the ones that stood out--the good and the not so good. Each link below will take you to my review and discussion notes.

If you'd like to support my work here, you can feel free to use this Amazon link to do your shopping, I'll be paid a modest affiliate fee at no extra cost to you.

Thank you for reading, and all the best for 2025!

See also!

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Best (5/5 stars or close):
The Odds Against Me by John Scarne
The Art of Contrary Thinking by Humphrey Bancroft Neill
The Shipping Man by Matthew McCleery
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Story of Silver by William L. Silber


Worst (1/5 stars or close):
How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter
Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont (trans. Alexis Lykiard)
End Times by Peter Turchin

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The Prophet of Edan by Philip Chase [The Edan Trilogy #2]

We all have our part to play and our duty to perform. This is a beautiful novel about performing your duty with honor, even in the face of almost certain failure. Author Philip Chase has an unusual gift for telling a compelling story, and The Prophet of Edan works on two levels: on the individual level, with characters we care about and root for, and on the grand, civilizational level, where entire nations  hurl themselves at each other in a desperate war of survival. And the geopolitical dramas in Philip's world of Eormenlond are downright Kissingerian --with betrayal, realpolitik and honor, all in equal measure. Now, any story with a large cast and a lot of moving parts presents the author with a structural challenge: how do you help the reader keep everybody and everything straight, but yet do it in a way that's organic to the story? After all, this is the second part of a trilogy,  and a lot happened in Book I . So I'll share an example here of what this author does,...
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Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

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Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger by Philip Marchand [biography]

"Instead of scurrying into a corner and wailing about what media are doing to us, one should charge straight ahead and kick them in the electrodes. They respond beautifully to such resolute treatment and soon become servants rather than masters." Plenty of insights throughout this capably-written biography of Marshall McLuhan. And the book really develops some genuine heft as it documents McLuhan's intellectual gestation as he turns away from the predictable life of an English lit professor to study modern media. McLuhan would grow into one of the more idiosyncratic and controversial minds of the 20th century. You'd never guess, but McLuhan was revolted by television, and utterly sickened by advertising. But he also believed that careful study of these domains enabled him to understand, and more importantly resist, their influence. As the author puts it, McLuhan "was one of those men who, without any prompting, find observation of the world an excellent strategy ...
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