It's been an incredible, whirlwind year. I blame big life events (like getting married!) for why I didn't read as much as I wanted, but I still got through 18 books this year. As with the past few years, I took a moment to reflect on these books and share one insight or quote from each.
My 2024 fiction reads mainly focused on stories or authors from the Middle East, and non-fiction primarily centered around creativity and Christianity. ChatGPT identified these common themes from this year's books: identity and self-discovery, societal and power structures, technology and modernity, philosophy and spiritual worldviews, historical and cultural conflicts, and futurism and change. Spot on!
My favorite book this year was All Our Wrong Todays - it's been on my shelf for awhile, but I finally got to it and I loved the creativity and ingenuity behind the story. Hoping for a movie or series soon!
Hope one of these books sparks interest - what was your favorite book this year?
- When you're focused on the stars, you can miss looking in and around to those closest to you (Digging Stars)
- A greater understanding of how the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" perspectives of world communicate is needed to advance the science of consciousness, which is currently downplayed in neuroscience (The World Behind The World)
- "Generative looking" is an approach to viewing art through embodiment (looking with our whole selves), love (not making ourselves the center of the artwork), and transformation (expecting to be changed) (Redeeming Vision)
- When we think "truth" is dangerous or suspicious, we move toward an intolerant culture and one that is independent of the truth (What Is Christianity? The Last Writings)
- It's incredibly hard to direct the path of a river and change its destination (Empire Falls)
- The "six hats" approach - looking at a problem from six different vantage points - is a great way to come up with more ideas and foster creativity during problem-solving (The Unsold Mindset)
- Yemen has a storied history with coffee, and the coffee you're drinking could also have its own storied past (The Monk of Mokha)
- Modeling Jesus in "recognition without preconception" can be a powerful point of orientation to view the world (What Would Jesus See)
- The more you learn about math, the less magical it gets - but then you realize there are parts you will never understand, and it becomes magical again (Stella Maris)
- Social media platforms have become one of the most important tools we use to understand ourselves, not to seek information or entertain ourselves (Breaking The Social Media Prism)
- We've deluded ourselves into thinking we can control the world, but this belief that better technology means better control for humans was mistaken (All Our Wrong Todays)
- Ideation, large-frame pattern recognition, and complex forms of communication are human advantages in the "second machine age" (The Second Machine Age)
- In Egypt and many places around the world, people inherit their circumstances and a person's destiny is more or less determined at birth (The Republic Of False Truths)
- There are two strategies for dealing with risk - anticipation and resilience - and we tend to prioritize anticipating to avoid risk over resilience to respond to it (The Conservative Futurist)
- "Pay for success" partnerships can incentivize creative solutions in the market and allow buyers to scrap ineffective experiments quickly (The Solution Revolution)
- Day-to-day lives can become surprisingly entwined with sweeping political movements (The Day The Leader Was Killed)
- The aftermath of conflict and terror can be alarmingly disorienting and nightmarishly foreign (City Gates)
- Life's trials call for authentic lamentations, and nothing can change your situation faster than praising God in the midst of it (Herod And Mary)
