After exceeding my goal of twelve books last year, I went in completely the other direction in 2024 with only five books completed.

I did, however, read an unusual mix by my standards. Only two of the books were non-fiction. So, even with the smaller number, I still managed to read more novels than I normally do. And the standard was high, too. I don’t think any of them were classics but I enjoyed them all. Not bad result!

You can’t say this book [affiliate link] lacks ambition. Jon Alexander describes the next phase of organising a society.

The challenge is that some of the definitions are quite subtle. They’re well argued in the text, but if you asked me to relay that information, I’m not sure I could. Or at least, it wouldn’t be concise or easy to digest.

He starts by defining what a Citizen is. It’s not about the country you live in, or voting or paying taxes. Rather, it’s what comes after the Subject Story (ruled by monarchs) and the Consumer Society (ruled by choice).

For a while, this book [affiliate link] was everywhere. It was recommended on podcasts. Every second person on the Tube was reading it. Friends suggested I take a look.

In the end, I added it to my queue at the library but its popularity meant that I had to wait six months for it to become available!

For various reasons, I wasn’t able to read it in the three weeks loan period. I could have waited another six months to read the end, but I was invested enough to buy a copy.

Those with extraordinarily good memories will recall that I read a couple of John Scalzi book a few years ago and enjoyed them (“Redshirts” and “Fuzzy Nation”). In fact, it took me longer to pick up another one of his books than I expected, though, to be fair, when I did it, I did it in style: I bought a “Humble Bundle” of them. “The Kaiju Preservation Society” is the first of that bundle that I’ve read.

“Make Something Wonderful,” a collection of Steve Jobs writing and photos is… well, it’s a good thing that I write these notes for myself. You’ll already know if you’re interested.

I’m not sure there’s much new and undiscovered here, but it’s nicely collated and fascinating reading.

One highlight is the script from his Stanford commencement speech. But what I enjoyed most were the notes. The speech was almost perfect, but the notes allow you to see the process that led there. The common perception of the lone genius having a eureka moment is a lie. Jobs worked and practiced and iterated and sought feedback. Much of his work he attempted to make everything look simple and obvious, but the reality is that ‘effortless’ takes a lot of hard preparatory work. Some might argue that this detracts from his achievements, but I’d say that the exact opposite is true.

William Boyd is one of my favourite authors. He specialises in doorstop novels that document the entire life of an interesting individual. His most famous is probably “Any Human Heart” and “The Romantic” [affiliate link] follows in its footsteps.

The story crosses the globe, starting in Ireland, moving to England, Belgium, the US, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Italy, Austrian and others I’m probably forgetting. And it begins in 1899, so covers an interesting time in history. (I did some quick Wikipedia fact checking and it stands up!)