The best books I(we) read in 2024

Book recommendations for 2025

This is a collaborative post with a dear friend—Siddharth Khare. Siddharth’s currently in the thick of a PhD at Oxford (YES, THE ONE!) and reads more than anyone I know. He also recently started a Substack called Local Hero, where he plans to discuss global politics.

A Bold Thesis

Anyways, with the year coming to a close, we thought it’d be fun to share some of the best books we read in 2024. I’ll cover non-fiction: books that taught me something new, gave me a fresh perspective, or were just fun to read.

Siddharth is sticking to fiction, and let me just say—he’s a gifted writer. Ignoring my bias for a second, he’s seriously freaking good at it, and so it’s only natural that his fiction recommendations are worth a look.

Fiction recommendations by Siddharth

1. Wind up bird chronicle

Over 600 pages long, this is widely regarded as Japanese literary superstar Haruki Murakami’s magnum opus. And it is. Set against the marital breakdown and the disappearance of a cat, several unlikely friendships, a war veteran, a few women with mystic powers and a power-hungry, unscrupulous politician, it is so structurally audacious, so thematically bewildering, so brimming with characters vulnerable and wicked, that it is really hard to imagine anyone producing this work in a single lifetime.

But alongside Dance Dance Dance, it is also, I think, Murakami’s most philosophically personal. Over an astonishing breadth of scope—Manchukuo, war, politics, corruption, infidelity, abortion, and loss—Murakami presents one of the most biting assessments on the fragility of human life: things end, suffering is eternal, people leave, the past lingers and institutions can only give the illusion of control.

2. Secret History

What can I say about Secret History that hasn’t been said before? Set around a quaint East Coast liberal arts college, against the backdrop of a murder whose perpetrators are revealed on the very first page, the novel is a frightfully delectable tale about hedonism, aesthetics, beauty, weakness and Nietzschean ethics. Tartt, walking in the tradition of Woody Allen, has absolutely no qualms taking shots at bogus systems of moral conduct, and projecting life as a radically open (mis)adventure where meaning and purpose and salvation and codes are constantly up for grabs.

It will of course always be open to debate whether Tartt stands against her characters, each worse and more despicable than the last, or endorses their utter disregard for the norms and demands of modernity. But there is something undoubtedly ethereal, delicate, unapologetically anachronistic and indulgent about her fictional universe with its lush imagery and meticulous attention to detail. Tartt seems averse, fully allergic to most of modernity’s markers, to the civilizational arc of progress. And her work is all the better for it.

3. The Unconsoled

I didn’t exactly finish The Unconsoled. Or maybe I did. Bear with me. Ishiguro began writing The Unconsoled after his previous novel, The Remains of the Day, became something of an instant cult classic. Overnight, his status shifted from a lit-fic author interested in the quaint themes of memory and migration, to a literary giant capable of infusing chilling questions of collective guilt and mid-century fascism into a gentle romance between an English butler and a housekeeper.

A lesser artist would have continued shooting the same shots. But not Ishiguro. For he spent the next five years after the success of The Remains of the Day writing a puzzling tale about a pianist arriving at an unnamed European city for a concert. The novel moves hazily between dreams, illogic, broken scenes, figments really of frenetic anxiety and feverish paralysis over the state of art, artistry and artistic perfection. Nothing really makes sense in The Unconsoled: there is no real plot, no real, fully-formed character, no discernable sense of place or time.

If there is something real it is this dizzying sense of enfeeblement—the fact that you can perhaps never fully achieve everything that you set out to achieve. And something in The Unconsoled sticks. And stickiness is a mark of a great novel, even if it isn’t exactly readable. There are scenes, moments of failure, broken promises, expectations unmet, inheritances of loss that are mind-blowingly heavy, everlasting, reluctant to exit the quiet corner they find in you.

But as I said earlier, The Unconsoled is not an easy read. It is meandering, and infuriating, and stunningly dense, dense to the point of effacing its own would-be relevance. So I stopped reading it somewhere around the 350 page mark (it’s a 500 page novel). However, something tells me that you are not supposed to finish The Unconsoled, that it simply is what is, becoming whatever it needs to be when you decide to abandon it.

4. High Fidelity

High Fidelity is my favorite novel of 2024. It is about men, women, and men without women. It is about love, heartbreak, and the lines that run through. It is about loss, hopelessness, and that rare, funny thing called hope. It is about a peculiar form of masculine loneliness felt at the end of youth, when you’re too old to get drunk on Tuesday evenings but too young to spend them eating truffle fries with your girlfriend’s colleagues. But it is also about the importance of, pardon me, finding love and holding on to love and how we need love’s love to make most things count.

As Rob drifts through his mid-thirties, dealing with the unbearable weight of heartbreak, a failing record store, and days that never really seem to start or end, there is a discernible ennui to his life, this freakish, unholy sensation that life is really just passing him by. And at the moment Rob hits rock bottom, in the throes of profound existential despair, we might catch a glimpse of ourselves from that wretched, cold November where nothing seemed to work out. But Hornby also takes us through Rob’s silly little victories, tiny little joys, the most inane of things that get him to, however reluctantly, wake up in the mornings and go through life again and again, all the while reminding us how even the smallest of lives can be made worthwhile.

Hornby has a remarkable flair for simplicity. He writes with wit and tenderness and sadness about the things that make us, us, all the while speaking in universal idioms. And if you look closely enough, there just might be a theory of everything waiting for you.

Before Dhruv takes you through his non-fiction reads, there is a book that both of us loved, so consider this our shared recommendation.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

There are certain relationships that are somewhat post-love. They aren’t exactly platonic. They aren’t exactly romantic. They seem to linger between Tuesday 2ams, cappuccinos and laughter. And they stand on the presumption that each person brings such context, such meaning to the other’s life that the relationship acquires an entirely different, near-sacred status. I am possibly doing a horrendous job of explaining such a relationship but Gabrielle Zevin has chosen to write the next Great American Novel examining the 20th and 21st century United States through it.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow follows the lives of Sam and Sadie— friends, near-lovers, entrepreneurs— through adolescence, college and beyond as they build their wildly successful video game studio. But Zevin uses their relationship to make sweeping commentaries on American capitalism, sexual mores, gun violence, gender, race, the immigration experience, and what it means to be a nobody and then a somebody across the pond. As Sam and Sadie grow Unfair Games from a half-baked idea into a fully-fledged multi-million dollar business, Zevin expands on the state of dreams, the fragility of relationships and the possibility of love in the cultural and economic moment we presently occupy.

Dhruv took two days (because he couldn’t stop reading) and I took three weeks (because I wanted to savor every last word) but neither of us has ever been this consistently emotional, this in awe, and this singularly amazed reading a novel in 2024.

Non Fiction recommendations by me (Dhruv)

1. Hyperbole and half by Allie Brosh

Allie Brosh has this incredible ability to find humor in life’s most absurd moments, whether she's telling us stories about her childhood misadventures, her quirky pets, or the chaotic mess that is adulthood. Beneath the humor, though, lies a surprising depth. She’s not afraid to dive into topics like mental health and self-doubt, presenting them with this unique mix of honesty, vulnerability, and humor that makes you think, “Wow, I didn’t expect to laugh and feel something.”

What sets this book apart!

The book reads like fiction, despite being autobiographical in nature. If you do decide to pick it up (and you totally should), don’t go for the digital version. Get the hard copy. The comics are just too good to be confined to a screen. They deserve to be seen on paper, where you can fully appreciate every doodle.

2.Arriving today by Christopher Mims

Supply chain probably isn’t the most thrilling topic in the world (at least to me), and this book isn’t going to suddenly make it your new obsession. But still, from the long journey across oceans to the remarkable automation in robot-driven warehouses, the book leaves you with a real appreciation for the incredible efficiency behind modern logistics. Even the UPS drivers—who might seem like the last piece of the puzzle—undergo some truly intense training, to ensure peak efficiency.

While appreciating this complexity, the book also highlights how fragile the system is. One small glitch—whether it’s a port delay, a supply chain snag, or a breakdown in automation—can send ripples throughout the entire process.

3.Ten Drugs by Thomas Hager

From opium to smallpox inoculation to Viagra, Ten Drugs by Thomas Hager tells the story of ten life-changing medicines and how they were discovered.

Consider this example: “English dairymaids, the girls who milked the cows every morning, tended to be rosy-cheeked, creamy-skinned, and—most importantly—unscarred by the pox.” It turns out that cows were sometimes spotted with a mild disease called cowpox. It looked a bit like smallpox but posed no real threat. Dairymaids often picked it up on their hands while milking, developing a spotty rash that passed after a few days. After that, they rarely got smallpox.

This anecdote highlights how Ten Drugs dives into the unexpected and sometimes serendipitous paths that lead to major medical breakthroughs.

Along the way, Hager helps us see the bigger picture of how the pharmaceutical world works—its breakthroughs, struggles, and surprising twists. Whether you’re a history buff, a science enthusiast, or simply curious about the stories behind the medicines we often take for granted, Ten Drugs is a must-read. (I’ve written more about it here)

4. Determined by Robert Sapolsky

” We are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”
- Robert Sapolsky

Robert Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. His previous book, Behave, is all about understanding why we do the things we do.

I’ve read and reread Behave and recommend it to almost everyone, so it was obvious that I would pick up Determined the moment it was released. In many ways, it builds on Behave and delves deeper into the idea that we live in a world without free will. It explores how this realization can be a rather unsettling thought and how we might come to terms with it.

I must admit that my financial background doesn’t equip me to fully grasp all the science discussed in Behave and Determined. I’m probably not the person to spot flaws or make claims like, “That’s wrong, Robert!”

Still the book does a great job! Even if you’re not ready to buy into the idea of no free will entirely, it’s hard to escape the unsettling notion that we have far less control over our actions than we like to think. But instead of leaving us feeling defeated, Determined flips the script. It pushes for a kinder, more empathetic world—one where we recognize that people are often shaped by circumstances beyond their control.

If you made it this far, I hope we convinced you to pick up a book or two. Do check out Siddharth's Substack—he really is a wondrous writer.