2024 in Books

All readings, ranked.

According to my Goodreads, i’ve read 31.653 pages across 76 books this year, where the average length of the book was 416 pages, with the shortest at 80 and the longest at 1504 pages. The most popular book i’ve read this year was Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, the least popular a philosophical book on planetarism. My average rating seems to be 3.4 with my highest rated book being Percival Everetts James.

Of those 76 books, there were 51 novels, 12 of them Reacher novels (i’m reading the whole series), and 25 nonfiction books.

Jim the slave reads 76 books to Huckleberry Finn on the mississipi / Flux.1

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My five favorite books last year were:

• Shirley Jackson - The Haunting οf Hill House

• Aleida Assmann - Im Dickicht der Zeichen

• Peter Frankopan - The Earth transformed - An untold history

• Herman Melville - Moby Dick: or, the White Wale

• Percival Everett - James

So, here’s all my readings 2024, ranked, from crap to excellent.

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64. Tibor Rode - Der Wald: Er tötet leise (en. The Forest: Silent Killer) ☆☆☆☆☆ “I read pulp for all my life and every stupid John Sinclair story is better structured, more coherent and more entertaining than this shit.” (full review here)

63. Tom Rob Smith - Cold People (dt. Kälte) ★ “Ugh.” (full review here)

62. Max Barry - Die 22 Tode der Madison May (eng. The 22 Murders of Madison May) ★ ”a boring Jennifer Aniston movie with clichéd genre elements” (full review here)

61. Michio Kaku - The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything (dt. Die Gottes-Formel) ★★☆☆☆ “i wanted a shallow, basic understanding of string theory, Michio Kakus field of research since the 60s, but it's not even that, unfortunately.” (full review here)

60. Alaina Urquhart - The Butcher and the Wren (dt. Die Jagd) ★★ “Cheap thriller fodder from a true crime podcaster”. (full review here)

59. Stephen Baxter - The thousand Earths (dt. Die tausend Erden) ★★ “I like to read Baxter novels from time to time when i just want a throwaway scifi story”. (full review here)

58. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - Crooked River (dt. Ocean - Insel des Grauens) ★★ “Likely my first and last Pendergast novel as i don't like Pendergast very much.” (full review here)

57. Anthony Ryan - Red River Seven (dt. Ein Fluss so rot und schwarz) ★★ “It's a somewhat entertaining novel, an amalgam of 28 Days Later and The Girl with all the gifts, but plotholes and inconsistent logic turned me off”. (full review here)

56. Silvia Ferrara - Der Sprung: Eine Reise zu den Anfängen des Denkens in der Steinzeit (eng. The Jump: A trip to the beginnings of thinking in the stone age) ★★ “She's more occupied writing about her whizzy crazy associations and some random memories with cave art than writing a good, structured book on the history of the topic.” (full review here)

55. Lee Child - Without Fail (dt. Tödliche Absicht, Reacher #6) ★★ / Gone Tomorrow (dt. Underground, Reacher #13) ★★★ / Better Off Dead (with Andrew Child, dt. Der Kojote, Reacher #26) ★★ / Past Tense (dt. Der Spezialist, Reacher #23) ★★★ / Night School (dt. Der Ermittler, Reacher #21) ★★★ / Lee Child - Worth Dying For (dt. Wespennest) / A Wanted Man (dt. Der Anhalter) (Jack Reacher #15 / #17) ★★★ / Lee Child - Im Visier (Reacher 19: Personal) ★★★ / Keine Kompromisse (Reacher 20: Make Me) ★★★ / Der Bluthund (Reacher 22: The Midgnight Line) ★★ / Lee Child - Persuader (Reacher #4) (dt. Der Janusmann) ★★★ / Lee Child - 61 Hours (Reacher #14) (dt. 61 Stunden) ★★★ — I’ll lump all 12 Reacher novels i read last year into one: “Reacher is still my fallback if i just want some not-dumb entertaining action without subtexts or messaging”, nothing more, nothing less. (Reviews scattered all over the place)

54. Fabio Stassi - Die Seele aller Zufälle (Vince Corso #2) ★★★ “I think i’m very much done with books about the love of books.” (full review here)

53. Frank Herbert - Dune Messiah (Dune #2) (dt. Der Herr des Wüstenplaneten) ★★★ “The book often feels like an add-on, some explainer making way for the rest of the series.” (full review here)

52. Johan Huizinga - Homo Ludens. A study of the Play-Element in Culture (dt. Homo Ludens. Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel.) ★★★ “At 80 year old, this classic of cultural studies feels a bit dated.” (full review here)

51. Johanna Sebauer - Nincshof ★★★ “I loved reading it, but the book and characters also show the aesthetics of a german TV-movie playing in the alps and it never really tries to escape that.” (full review here)

50. Paul Nurse - What Is Life? (dt. Was ist Leben?) ★★★ “This was helpful as expected and did get it's job done, a good grab if you want a fast overview about what biology thinks is life, but nothing more.” (full review here)

49. Anne Cathrine Bomann - Blue Notes (dt. Blautöne) ★★★ “we only get a story about how human connection is important and the pharma industry is corrupt, which is neither very original nor gripping. A neat story, bordering on being a really good one.” (full review here)

48. Claudia Kemfert, Julien Gupta, Manuel Kronenberg - Unlearn CO2 ★★★ “A useful if (very) incomplete overview of all the aspects of climate change and the activism necessary to (at least try to) turn this ship around.” (full review here)

47. Thomas Metzinger - Bewusstseinskultur: Spiritualität, intellektuelle Redlichkeit und die planetare Krise (eng. Culture of Awareness: Spirituality, intellectual integrity and the planetary crisis) ★★★ “An interesting perspective and one which i haven’t read anywhere else in context of climate change.” (full review here)

46. Ottessa Moshfegh - My Year of Rest and Relaxation (dt. Mein Jahr der Ruhe und Entspannung) ★★★ “If you want to read a well written novel about an annoying, rich, entitled, depressed, young woman, this is your book.” (full review here)

45. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Chain-Gang All-Stars ★★★ “It's like a Madmax ripoff but all characters talk like playing shakespeare, but because ofcourse it wants to be ‘badass’ they also say ‘fuck’ all the time.” (full review here)

44. Heinz Paetzold - Ernst Cassirer zur Einführung (eng. Introduction to the Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer) ★★★ “a short but inaccessible book full of academic jargon that demands a whole set of pre-study, and which never explains its presumptions.” (full review here)

43. Alexander Pechmann - Die Bibliothek der verlorenen Bücher ★★★ “a tad boring and self-indulgent too to be honest”. (full review here)

42. Werner Herzog - Die Zukunft der Wahrheit (eng. The Future of Truth) ★★★ “It's ideosyncratic, weird and quirky, just as you'd expect from Herzog, but it also stays a bit underwhelming.” (full review here)

41. Jonathan Haidt - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (dt. Generation Angst) ★★★ "I think Haidt's book is a timely call to action, i largely agree with his analysis, but wish it was more in depth and i think he misses a big piece of the puzzle." (full review here)

40. Martha Wells - The Murderbot Diaries #1-4 (dt. Tagebuch eines Killerbots) ★★★ “The four stories work well on their own, but as a novel they become very repetitive.” (full review here)

39. Jack Finney - Die Körperfresser kommen (eng. Invasion of the Body Snatchers) ★★★
    ”The digital age is a deeply paranoid age, and all the users might be alien plants in the heads of some conspirational 4chan anons.” (full review here)

38. Naomi Alderman - The Future ★★★ “An entertaining novel let down by an ending that was too simplistic and naive for my taste.” (full review here)

37. Anders Levermann - Die Faltung der Welt (eng. Folding the World) ★★★
    ”I pretty much agree with him on most of his points, but all of this is not very new -- he simply uses mathematics as a metaphor for regulation and writes about how the paradigm of "endless growth" can exist in a limited system.” (full review here)

36. Neal Stephenson - Termination Shock ★★★
    ”Stephenson has surprising little to say about a climate change that is largely induced by economic ideologies, and simply turns dealing with the consequences into an entertaining scifi thriller.” (full review here)

35. Eberhard Rathgeb - Die Entdeckung des Selbst: Wie Schopenhauer, Nietzsche und Kierkegaard die Philosophie revolutionierten (eng. Discovery of the Self: How Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard revolutionised Philosophy) ★★★ “A decent dive into thinking of said philosophers in context of the titular development of individualism in Europe during the romantic era.” (full review here)

34. Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Christo (dt. Der Graf von Monte Christo) ★★★ “Oh god this book, i hated it with a gut.” (full review here)

33. Samuel W. Gailey - Die Schuld (eng. The Guilt We Carry) ★★★
    ”A good little pulp crime novel that could've been more, but stays within the trodden path of it's story, which isn't a bad thing at all.” (full review here)

32. Jack Ketchum - Evil ★★★★ “While reading i was constantly shifting from ‘this is an ugly, terrible, mean story that should not be told that way’ to ‘it’s a punch in the stomach and exactly how it wants to be’.” (full review here)

31. Peter Sloterdijk - Die Reue des Prometheus: Von der Gabe des Feuers zur globalen Brandstiftung (eng. The regrett of Prometheus: From the gift of Fire to global Pyromania) ★★★★ “I'm sucking up some theoretical and philosophical takes on climate change at the moment, and Sloterdijks entry to the "genre" is a good and sometimes great contribution in a field that is just starting to take shape.” (full review here)

30. Herfried Münkler - Welt in Aufruhr: Die Ordnung der Mächte im 21. Jahrhundert (eng. World in Turmoil: World Orders in the 21st Century) ★★★★
    ”A good book to read about geopolitics in the 21st century.” (full review here)

29. Iain M. Banks - Consider Phlebas (Culture #1) (dt. Bedenke Phlebas) ★★★★ “i liked it and loved some of the more weird ideas, but i also don’t get why this is considered such a classic.” (full review here)

28. Michael Köhlmeier - Das Philosophenschiff (eng. The Ship of Philosophers) ★★★★ “A novel about truth and accounts of historical events, about how minds intertwine fiction and reality to form biographies and do so, in best of cases, with a lot of humor and nonchalance.” (full review here)

27. Grégory Salle - Superyachten: Luxus und Stille im Kapitalozän ★★★★ “The best sociological study about the penis enlargement industry i've ever read.” (full review here)

26. Hanno Sauer - Moral: Die Erfindung von Gut und Böse (en. Morals: The Invention of Good and Evil) ★★★★ “Hanno Sauer tries to break down the history of human moral psychology on 350 pages which is not an easy feat. Largely, he succeeds, even when he uses some trickery to get there.” (full review here)

25. N.K. Jemisin - When We Became Cities (dt. Die Wächterinnen von New York) ★★★★☆ If it weren't for the sometimes lazy fantasy shortcuts and the common young adult dynamics, this may have been a masterpiece. (full review here)

24. Friederike Otto - Klimaungerechtigkeit: Was die Klimakatastrophe mit Kapitalismus, Rassismus und Sexismus zu tun hat (eng. Climate Injustice: What the climate crisis has to do with capitalism, racism and sexism) ★★★★
    ”It is clear to me that dire consequences of climate change are already locked in — economic, ecological, not to speak of the disruptions caused by migration and international conflict --, and if that's clear we need a clear analysis of the status quo, to figure how to deal with those consequences in a fair way on a global level. Friederike Ottos short book provides that analysis.” (full review here)

23. Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Memory (Children of Time #3, dt. Die Feinde der Zeit) ★★★★ “Can’t do wrong with Tchaikovsky.” (full review here)

22. Stephen King - You Like It Darker (dt. Ihr wollt es dunkler) ★★★★ “As with all shortstory collection, this is by definition a mixed bag, but you’ll find no bad or boring stories here”. (full review here)

21. Ned Beauman - Venomous Lumpsucker (dt. Der gemeine Lumpfisch) ★★★★ “I’ve grown a bit suspicious about ‘award winning scifi-books’, but this is a good one.” (full review here)

20. Dan Jones - Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (dt. Mächte und Throne: Eine neue Geschichte des Mittelalters) ★★★★ “700 page door stopper (sans appendix) telling the history of the middle ages roughly from Byzantium to Luther and the Printing Press.” (full review here)

19. Liu Cixin - Die Drei Sonnen (eng. The Three-Body Problem) ★★★★
    ”i expected a bit more from it, given the hype” (full review here)

18. Guido Tonelli - Matter: The Magnificent Illusion (dt. Die Illusion der Materie: Was die neue Physik über unsere Welt verrät) ★★★★ “I find this literary perspective on hard science extremely insightful, especially because this more poetic style is perfectly apt for a quantum realm that is first and foremost uncertain.” (full review here)

17. Stanisław Lem - Golem XIV (dt. Also sprach Golem) ★★★★ “The A.I. (…) climbs down from its synthetic ivory tower to lecture us mere humans on their insufficient and futile anthropocentrism.” (full review here)

16. Adrian Tchaikovsky - Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture #2, dt. Die Augen der Galaxis) ★★★★ “Tchaikovskys novels are hands down the most entertaining scifi around, and that’s quite an achievement.” (full review here)

15. Michael Tomassello - The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans (dt. Die Evolution des Handelns) ★★★★ “(Tomassellos) theories about the (cultural) evolution of the human mind is a class of its own”. (full review here)

14. Don Winslow - City on Fire / City of Dreams (Danny Ryan #1&2) ★★★★
    ”You know you read a good thriller when you have the voice of effing Joe Pesci in your head.” (full review here)

13. Lauren Groff - The Vaster Wilds (dt. Die weite Wildniss) ★★★★ “Imagine The Revenant minus a bear plus a little girl running endlessly into snowy landscapes.” (full review here)

12. Armen Avanessian, Daniel Falb - Planeten Denken: Hyper-Antizipation und Biografische Tiefenzeit (eng. Thinking Planets: Hyper-Anticipation and biographical Deeptime) ★★★★ “Pretty good book written in a pretty understandable non-jargon (and even funny) language about a topic that will accompany us for many many decades to come”. (full review here)

11. Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2, dt. Erben der Zeit) ★★★★★ “When you take it's predecessor and add intelligent octopusses plus John Carpenters The Thing, then multiply it with hivemind slime molds, you get this sequel. It's pretty awesome.” (full review here)

10. Carolin Amwinger, Oliver Nachtwey - Gekränkte Freiheit - Aspekte des libertären Autoritarismus (eng. Freedom Insulted - Aspects of a libertarian Authoritarianism) ★★★★★ “The most lucid analysis of contemporary political developments i’ve read in a long time.” (full review here)

9. Salman Rushdie - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (dt. Knife: Gedanken nach einem Mordversuch) ★★★★★ “It's a historical literary document, a tragic story of hardship, and also the diary of a funny guy full of life, and that's all such a book can achive. I have nothing but Respect for Salman Rushdie.” (full review here)

8. Don Winslow - City in Ruins (Danny Ryan #3) ★★★★★ “I love how much of Winslows action stays implicit, with final sentences of chapters creating whole Scorsese-movies in your head, of splosions and gangsters and heroes killing each other in the night.” (full review here)

7. Percival Everett - The Trees (dt. Die Bäume) ★★★★★ “This novel is a fantastic dark ghostly crime-pulp allegory on the Black Lives Matter movement and the prevailing racism in the US, and it's a punch in the guts you don't forget easily.” (full review here)

6. Mary Shelley - Frankenstein ★★★★★ “It's exactly the great classic i expected, and everybody should read Frankenstein at least once.” (full review here)

5. Shirley Jackson - The Haunting οf Hill House (dt. Spuk in Hill House) ★★★★★ “A brillant classic of horror literature, no less.” (full review here)

4. Aleida Assmann - Im Dickicht der Zeichen (eng. Semiotic Thickets) ★★★★★ “If you're into symbols and signs, typography and epistemology and you're interested in theoretical takes, the whole body of work from this scholar-couple is highly recommended, and this book is no exception.” (full review here)

3. Peter Frankopan - The Earth transformed - An untold history (dt. Zwischen Erde und Himmel: Klima - Eine Menschheitsgeschichte) ★★★★★ “A riveting world history retold through the lense of environmental changes and climate which tries to integrate our knowledge about them into history as a foundational layer that was, until now, largely ignored.” (full review here)

2. Herman Melville - Moby Dick: or, the White Wale (dt. Moby-Dick oder Der Wal) ★★★★★ “I was really surprised by how readable this was and how fast i was able to pace through this mid-19th-century prose, all while being highly innovative (not just) for it’s time.” (full review here)

1. Percival Everett - James ★★★★★ “I loved that Everett actually had the guts to turn his James into a vigilante hero towards the end, bordering on a pulpy slave revenge story on the last few pages, giving this great postmodern exercise an edge that elevates it above pure literary nerdism.” (full review here)

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