Maximizing Joy: 2024 in Books

Note: For years, I’ve enjoyed tracking the books I read and the themes I notice. Previous years’ lists are located here.

As always, books were my constant companions last year. 2024 involved a lot of thinking and reading about maximization:

• How do I get the most out of any given day?
• How might I better savor time with the people I love?
• How can I make the most of every learning opportunity or resource?

Even my daily habits and routines reflected this theme. For the past few years, I’ve woken up at 5 am to read and sip coffee in my favorite spot. Quiet time to myself at the start of the day helps me maximize my energy and focus.

I dug into the idea of maximization on both the fiction and non-fiction side, albeit in different ways. Many of the fiction books touched on the brevity of life and maximizing one’s pleasure in small joys. I’m trying to cultivate my own ability to notice and appreciate small opportunities. This theme permeated many of the non-fiction books I enjoyed this year. What does the data say about how to get the most out of one’s resources and opportunities?

And, of course, I continue to chip away at the list of the 100 Best Novels. This year I only managed to complete one book from the list: “Nostromo”, by Joseph Conrad. If you want more context on the 100 Best Novels list (and why I’m forcing myself through Conrad,) you can read about it here.

Fiction: Maximizing Enjoyment of Beloved People and Places

Many of this year’s books conveyed a strong sense of place. “Fellowship Point”, for example, captured the wild beauty of coastal Maine. “Sandwich” reflected the sunbaked, lazy feeling of a Cape Cod summer. Though “Seating Arrangements” wasn’t explicitly set on Nantucket, the vibe and characters captured the Nantucket culture and demographic perfectly. In each of these cases, the author communicated love for the places they were writing about and simultaneously fostered the same love in me.

I particularly enjoyed “Fellowship Point”’s exploration into the theme of friendship and the role that place can have in a relationship. The book spans decades of friendship between the two main characters, and some of their most important memories take place on the same peninsula in Maine. The author describes the joy the protagonists derive from being in Maine together:

“The days beaded a smooth chain of fine feeling.”

What more can any of us ask for than a series of days of “fine feeling”? (Classic Mainer description, by the way; in my experience Mainers are pretty understated, so “fine feeling” reads as “love and joy” to me.) The protagonists’ love for one another is intrinsically tied to their love of the peninsula. Being there together and engaging in the routines that they enjoy helps them construct a life of meaning and happiness.

A number of other books helped me better connect with a place I was visiting myself. I’ve always enjoyed reading about the places I travel, in part because it helps me maximize my enjoyment of those adventures. (Apparently, this is called “Destination Reading”; I love it when there’s specific terminology to describe something complex.) Two examples of destination reading stood out in 2024: “Snowblind” and “The Lioness of Boston.”

“Snowblind” takes place in Siglufjordur, a small fishing town in northern Iceland. My husband and I listened to this together while driving Iceland’s ~1,000 mile Ring Road. Inspired by the book, we took a side excursion from the Ring Road to one of the Northern fjords to visit Siglufjordur. This remains one of my best memories from our Iceland adventure. Were it not for “Snowblind”, we would have missed out on a special experience. We might not have found ourselves watching the Olympics with a bunch of Icelandic families at a small brewery, overlooking the Arctic Ocean.

Meanwhile, “The Lioness of Boston” describes the life and art collection of Isabella Stewart Gardner. This work of historical fiction heightened my own experience, visiting the Gardner Museum in Boston. I could better envision what the museum (and the city at large) was like when the space was first constructed. And as a Bostonian, I wanted to learn more about this woman who had been such a trailblazer here in her day.

This year’s fiction books oriented around friendship, fulfillment, and meaning. They touched on what it means to be a good friend, spouse, parent, and human. They prompted me to think more about the impact I want to have on others and on the world.

Non-Fiction: Maximizing Focus on What Matters + the Power of Compounding

My non-fiction reads also touched on impact. I’m increasingly convinced that we all have more control than we realize about the experience we have. Echoing the themes from “Fellowship Point”, above, I enjoyed considering how I might squeeze every last drop out of any given day. I’ve realized that this is really a two-pronged challenge:

1. How can I influence each day to be as filled as possible with joy (and/or satisfaction, peace, or meaning)?
2. How can I maximize what I get from a day, even when it’s not so great?

Maximizing my enjoyment of any given day seems to boil down to focusing on the right things. The non-fiction books I’ve read recently underscore the fact that attention is our most precious resource. I want to better understand how to focus my attention on what matters most. As Catherine Newman points out in “Catastrophic Happiness”:

“Life isn’t about avoiding trouble, is it? It’s about being present, even through the hard stuff, so you don’t miss the very thing you’re trying so hard not to lose.”

Managing my own attention increases the chances of having a good day and decreases the frustrations of a challenging day. This practice of focus fosters feelings of connection to those I care about most. Furthermore, I’ve found that this habit compounds over time, making it easier to bring the right energy to each day.

Compounding has the power to influence so much more than I’d realized. And being intentional here matters, since the results of compounding aren’t always intuitive. “The Coming Wave,” for example, touches on the compounding risks of AI. The author, Mustafa Suleyman, shares his perspective on why containment becomes more important — and more challenging — over time.

Even the act of reading itself creates opportunity for compounding. In “Same as Ever”, Morgan Housel digs into his own reading habits, explaining why he leans in on permanent information vs expiring information. Housel explains that celebrity gossip, sports, or the news all fall into the “expiring” camp, since we likely won’t care about this info in a few years (or even a few weeks or months). Permanent information, on the other hand, remains useful over time. This category might include perspectives on human nature, decision making, or philosophy. Housel underscores variousbenefits of consuming permanent information:

“It’s not just that permanent information never expires…it also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened; permanent information tells you why something happened and is likely to happen again. That why can translate and interact with stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in.”

In our society, we usually talk about the effects of compounding on money and resources. Indeed, the effects of compounding are powerful in this domain. To this day, I remember my own shock at a lesson in financial compounding when I was a teenager. I recall my surprise at a spreadsheet demonstrating how a small amount of money, (invested early and allowed to compound without disruption,) yields a more impressive result than large sums of money, invested later.

This is a major theme in Morgan Housel’s book, “The Psychology of Money”. Time and again, he reminds his reader to never interrupt the compounding process where possible. Housel’s book also digs into related themes like one’s stance on risk and reward or what financial freedom means. It helped me come to a new understanding that — for me — financial freedom doesn’t mean luxury, but rather, the ability to focus on what matters most, ie time with my loved ones and opportunities to grow and learn. Though I don’t often read books about finance, I raced through this book, and I continue to recommend it to others; give it a read if you haven’t already!

A Lifetime of Learning, Connection, and Joy

The older I get, the more intently I think about what I value and how to better prioritize those values. Few activities bring me greater joy than learning, and books are my go-to path to learning about new topics and perspectives. I also continue to find that books create greater connection in my life, whether through my book club, book recs from friends, or reading with my children. Last, reading is a truly joyful part of my life. I carve out time to read each morning over coffee because it helps me start my day with more excitement and joy. If there’s a book that has taught you something new or brought you joy recently, I’d love to hear about it!

My 2024 Reading List

1. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
3. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
4. March by Geraldine Brooks
5. The Guest by Emma Cline
6. The Girls by Emma Cline
7. The Foundling by Ann Leary
8. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
9. Beyond that, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash
10. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
11. Trust by Herman Diaz
12. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
13. The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
14. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
15. The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
16. Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
17. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
18. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
19. The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
20. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
21. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
22. The Fury by Alex Michaelides
23. The Women by Kristin Hannah
24. Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark
25. The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
26. Babel by R.F. Kuang
27. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
28. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
29. Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
30. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
31. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
32. Sandwich by Catherine Newman
33. North Woods by Daniel Mason
34. The Trees by Percival Everett
35. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
36. Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson
37. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
38. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
39. The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin
40. The Fish that Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen
41. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
42. We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
43. The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan
44. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
45. The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird
46. The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
47. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
48. Same as Ever by Morgan Housel
49. Same as It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo
50. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
51. The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
52. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
53. Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
54. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
55. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
56. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
57. Catastrophic Happiness by Catherine Newman
58. This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth
59. The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg
60. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
61. All Fours by Miranda July

Books I read with the kids

1. Nightfall by Shannon Messenger
2. Endling the Last by Katherine Applegate
3. Deadlands: Hunted by Skye Melki-Wegner
4. Flashback by Shannon Messenger
5. Legacy by Shannon Messenger
6. Unlocked by Shannon Messenger