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As one year closes and another begins, I find myself returning to a familiar ritual: reflecting on the books that shaped the past twelve months.
For seven years now, this has become a cornerstone of my annual review – a chance not just to remember what I read, but to revisit the ideas, stories, and lessons that lingered long after I turned the final page.
This year, I read 25 books, each leaving its mark in its own way. As always, I’ve chosen one quote from each – a line that resonated, challenged, or inspired me.
I hope these quotes spark something for you as well, and perhaps even lead you to pick up a book or two from this list.
So without further ado, here are the books – non-fiction and fiction – that shaped my 2024.
Non-Fiction
Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo (Reggie Fils-Aimé)
“There are situations in which you have done all the right things to achieve success, but staying the course is no longer viable. This applies both in a business and a personal context. Be clearheaded in these situations and understand the reality of what you face. At that point, make the best decision, without resentment and without blame.”
Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully (Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett)
“It turns out that what makes an elite athlete excel also makes a nonathlete a more agile, vital, and pain-free human being.”
Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter (R. Dutt)
“A product does not justify itself – it exists only to create your desired change.”
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber)
“If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt – above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.”
Surfing human creativity with AI – A User’s Guide (Nao Tokui)
“Unique human creativity is often unleashed by first contact with new tools, and aberrant and unintentional uses. Glitches ‘in the matrix’ can lead to exciting new places. […] Imitation and failure to replicate, are indispensable creative acts.”
The Motor Racing Book: Volume 1. Car Handling (Suellio Almeida)
“If you don’t push the limits of your car, you won’t push the limits of your skills and they won’t expand. Time spent oversteering or understeering is learning time. Time spent being too careful is wasted. […] Inducing understeer and oversteer can happen several times in a single corner. You’ll basically ‘dance’ with the car through brake pedal inputs. […] If you are not at the limit of grip, you are not only losing time, but you are also not learning.”
Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World (Gaia Vince)
“Wall-building and demonization of migrants results in death, slavery and hate crime. But it does not prevent migration.”
From Start-Up to Grown-Up: Grow Your Leadership to Grow Your Business (Alisa Cohn)
“When you’re an individual contributor you get work done. When you’re a manager you create the conditions for others to get their work done. It’s a big difference.”
The Art of Loving (Erich Fromm)
“Love is an activity, not a passive affect. […] In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.”
Find Your Why: A Practical Guide to Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team (Simon Sinek)
“We all know what we do: the products we sell, the services we offer, the job we do. Some of us know how we do it: the things that we think make us different or stand out from the crowd. But very few can clearly articulate why we do what we do.”
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout (Cal Newport)
“It’s easy to mistake ‘do fewer things’ as a request to ‘accomplish fewer things.’ But this understanding gets things exactly backwards.”
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI (Anil Ananthaswamy)
“What you do is you take the single value of the error, square it, swallow hard, because you are going to tell a lie, [and] you say that’s the mean squared error.”
Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours (noah kagan)
“Don’t be afraid to act. Be afraid of living a life that seems more like a résumé than an adventure.”
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI (Madhumita Murgia)
“It’s the irony of a structure that is wholly dependent on human labor, yet treats its workers like automatons.”
Fiction
Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman)
“There were things Thor did when something went wrong. The first thing he did was ask himself if what had happened was Loki’s fault. Thor pondered. He did not believe that even Loki would have dared to steal his hammer. So he did the next thing he did when something went wrong, and he went to ask Loki for advice.”
Before They Are Hanged (Joe Abercrombie)
“‘They have that most strange and dangerous of qualities’ said Cosca. ‘They think they’re in the right.’”
Last Argument of Kings (Joe Abercrombie)
“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”
The Alloy of Law (Brandon Sanderson)
“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”
Shadows of Self (Brandon Sanderson)
“Every man had to die. He’d always found it odd that so many died when they were old, as logic said that was the point in their lives when they’d had the most practice not dying.”
The Bands of Mourning (Brandon Sanderson)
“The difference between good and evil men is not found in the acts they are willing to commit – but merely in what name they are willing to commit them in.”
The Bear (Andrew Krivak)
“Her father told her once that all animals were creatures of habit and so, too, were they. The difference was she could choose to change her habits. Animals changed when they were afraid. Change before fear has had a chance to overcome you, he said, or after you have overcome it and like a storm it has moved on.”
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)
“Oh lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you’ve brought breakfast in bed you’ll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.”
Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang)
“When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you’re inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can’t we feels the same way about beauty?”
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan)
“I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”
Rhythm of War (Brandon Sanderson)
“Kaladin’s anxiety began to subside, and he pushed through the worst of the darkness. He always emerged on the other side. Why was that so difficult to remember while in the middle of it?”
I hope this collection offered you a glimpse into the stories and ideas that shaped my year, and perhaps even nudged you toward a book or two of your own.
For more inspiration, you can explore my lists from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Here’s to a 2025 filled with meaningful reads, fresh perspectives, and the kind of moments that stay with you long after the last page is turned.