10 Books I Read in 2023 That You Should Read in 2024
By Grant Hiskes
“Anything an environment makes you feel is about you, not the environment … right?”
I heard a lady nervously propose this at a dinner conversation in a movie last year, and the extent to which I believe it is true or not true is something I have wrestled with since. Perhaps my attempts at an answer lie below.
2023 certainly provided me with an adequate sample size of environments to begin developing a thesis: Iowa City, Austin, Houston, New York City, Michigan, many weekends in Wisconsin, Las Vegas, Dallas, Nashville, Florida, New Orleans, and all the way back to Chicago. The hometown crew and I started the year off in Iowa where we learned some lessons the hard way. Nonetheless, Iowa was a needed change of pace from a winter break largely spent cramming to try and test out of an American Literature credit I needed to graduate on time. Preparing for this exam was actually quite stimulating as it provided me with valuable context for some of the books I had already read and also for the many that I then felt drawn to read as a result - one, in particular, being Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957).
Kerouac’s On the Road is regarded as the quintessential text of the “Beat Generation” and literary movement, a subculture characterized by its “rejection of materialism and standards of the day” alongside “experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration”. This movement emerged post-World War II as young men like Kerouac and his other friends at Columbia University sat around in Greenwich Village coffee shops listening to jazz and reading poetry as they grew wary of mindlessly riding the coattails of the economic boom. Having been shaped through the years of World War II, this group did not have faith in where that path led and wondered about other issues still at play having been sculpted through the years of World War II. On the Road is a semi-autobiographical account of Kerouac and his friends’ sporadic, spur-of-the-moment trips across America. The narrator, Sal Paradise, tries to keep up with his friend Dean Moriarty. Though they are almost always distracted by side quests to chase girls, drugs, and old friends, Moriarty is ultimately looking for his father, a hobo who is said to have not been seen since Dean was a child, and the answers he may have.
I was reminded of the book during a session I had with a psychic between Iowa and that literature exam who predicted a year of tumult and warned me about what was coming in March (maybe the Longhorns’ heartbreaking Elite Eight loss?). Sometime before March could get me though, I picked up a copy of Kerouac’s On the Road at BookPeople on Lamar. Whether the psychic lady was calling her shot from the looks of my black eye or this was destined to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess we’ll never know. Regardless, March brought exhilarating trips to the Houston Rodeo and a few days of running around New York. Through all of my 2023 travels though, On the Road stayed tucked away in my backpack. I brought it with me on every trip but it always felt like something new was popping up ahead of it to take its place. Just after the New Year, I took the now-tattered paperback out and read it. I just finished it a few days ago, the longest it has taken me to get through a 300-page book in a while. What may seem like a romantic, adventure novel upon initial description, the book is so chaotic and all over the place (quite literally) at times that it can be depressing.
The Beat Generation had its critics, even magazines like Playboy and Life criticized the Beats for being Nihilist and unintelligent. Others viewed the Beats as aimless. Their title “Beat” certainly carries that denotation. To Kerouac, Beat “means beato, Italian for beatific: to be in a state of beatitude… trying to love all life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance, kindness, cultivating joy of heart”. Skeptical of and unamused by the places the lives and occupations they felt they were being pushed to, Beat characters sought guidance through the answers they found through experimentation, adventures, and the friends they met along the way. Certainly, not everyone is driven by the same search for answers, some have to devote more attention to pressing matters like mouths to feed and bills to pay. And for those who are driven by the search, any conclusion is likely closer to a mere resting point than an absolute truth. Some may even argue that the ability to think about those topics is a luxury in itself. That is not to say there is no wisdom to be gained or joy to be had in this pursuit, though I do believe it gives all the more reason to take a step back to synthesize and process from time to time. To keep some sense of order here, further analysis will have to wait until next year’s edition. The days spent digesting this book have pushed me over the edge to compile the following recommendations.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin
You are probably not imagining things if the name Rick Rubin rings a bell. The renowned music producer has worked with musicians across a plethora of genres. A small part of Rubin’s client list includes the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and The Smashing Pumpkins (had to include Dad’s favorite). If that says anything about the Def Jam founder, the guy excels at harvesting expressive energy from the world’s most talented musicians. For many of the likely readers of this who are anything like me, you would not consider yourself one of the “world’s most talented musicians”. However, we are all constantly managing our energy,
If I have learned anything at my ripe age, it is the power of energy. You could do some of the best things the world’s ever seen with it, but you could also really raise some hell and make quite a mess. As someone who feels they have a decent amount of energy but is hoping to avoid the latter circumstance, finding meaningful and effective ways to release my lingering energy is something I am constantly working on. While some damage cannot be undone, finding healthy ways to release this energy through mediums of expression (take even this little blog for instance) has been fulfilling. Rubin’s book is all about helping to find both the mental and physical spaces that position you to make sense of what you are feeling. More times than not, I’d like to believe this prevents us from letting pent-up, reckless energy boil inside of ourselves.
Better yet, he even breaks it up into a very digestible “78 ideas of thought” that you can peruse in just one weekend! Not only is this a book I have chosen to put at the top of this list but also one of two books I have marked to come back to on an annual basis.
Dopamine Nation - Anna Lembke
Equally as important to finding the right mental and physical spaces and places to release and express our energy I believe is the ability to make sense of what factors are at play within our own bodies. Almost all of what we feel is tied to dopamine. This book gives a great overview of dopamine and a comprehensible explanation of the associated neuroscience for the common man.
My biggest takeaway from the book was that pain and pleasure are processed in overlapping regions of the brain and essentially operate on a scale that works to counter itself. When we are constantly looking for and receiving dopamine hits and pleasure, we shift the scale so far to one side that we grow more vulnerable to pain. On the flip side, when we subject ourselves to some pain (as simple as a cold shower), we are increasing our capacities for pleasure. Maybe living in an age where quick dopamine hits are so readily available in the form of social media scrolling, snacks, booze, drugs, and sex can be attributed to why mental health issues are as prominent as they are today. But hey, as long as you’re aware, I say live a little.
Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order - Ray Dalio
I mentioned at the end of blurb one that The Creative Act was one of two books I had marked to come back to on an annual basis, the other is this one. If you’re not really into art and feely shit and prefer a systematic, mathematical approach to the world, this book is for you!
For the left-brained folks out there, this is seriously the best book I have ever read on monetary/fiscal history. This is not some journalist turned business reporter authoring this either. This is the esteemed hedge fund manager and founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio (Net Worth = $15.4 Billion, so he doesn’t need your money). I know he can be a hot-button topic on Wall Street these days, but the first 80% of this book is very objective.
Regardless, Dalio spends the first part of the book explaining the not-so-obvious fundamentals of macroeconomics. This gives a fantastic, broad landscape for when he tells the stories of the biggest fiscal empires the world has seen, discussing the “Big Cycle Rise and Decline” of the: Dutch Empire and the Guilder, British Empire and the Pound, and the United States and the Dollar. Learning about the dollar’s history allows you to understand why those of us in America are able to enjoy the economic privilege we do today and why the reality is different in other countries. The last part of the book is a bit daunting as he gives his predictions for the evolving relationship between China and the US, but it is certainly worth educating yourself on.
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
I have seen this book over and over again on the bookshelves of my mom, aunts, or friends' parents, and I have always wondered about its allure. When this title was the answer to one of the questions on that American Literature exam I was babbling about earlier, I was even more intrigued.
The novel follows four young Chinese-American women living in San Francisco in the years after World War II and their relationships with their families and mothers. With the older generation having grown up in China, the new cultures their daughters live in and experience serve as a critical source of conflict and frustration. I am not an immigrant, mother, daughter, or sister, so I thought it was really interesting to learn about the dynamics between these roles and what can constitute betrayal, pride, or success between them.
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
Another culture I am not very fluent in is Judaism and the lives of Jews in America. I heard about this book when I came across a passage discussing its TV series adaptation in an HBO biography I read in 2022. Please do not be alarmed by the image on the cover, this book is written by an author who comes from a Jewish family known for his being very autobiographical in his novels. This is a work of historical fiction that depicts the life of a Jewish family in Newark in the alternate reality in which Franklin D Roosevelt is defeated by Charles Lindbergh in the 1940 presidential election.
The So What is that Charles Lindbergh was assumed to be simpatico with Adolf Hitler and a Nazi sympathizer in real life. His popularity at the time though was more his being a proponent of Isolationism and staying out of the war in Europe. I did not know this going into the book, but Isolationism was a very popular view of Americans leading up to their involvement in World War II and really the primary force working against Roosevelt as opposed to outright anti-Semitism. “In January of that year (1940), one poll found that 88% of Americans opposed the idea of declaring war against the Axis powers in Europe. As late as June, only 35% of Americans believed their government should risk war to help the British”. (National WWII Museum) The America Lindbergh creates in the novel is a horror for Jewish Americans. The narrator, a young Philip Roth, feels loyalty to members of his family and the Jewish community but no longer feels safe and does not enjoy being marginalized or persecuted.. He is put in a moral dilemma that is unfathomable for many of us today, and for that reasons I believe it’s worth checking out.
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
A fun, full-circle backstory for this one. My good friend Noah Ragan walked into the office one day this past fall and told me immediately about this book he had read over the weekend and told me I had to read it. At the time I was doing my annual reread of The Catcher in the Rye. The next day I walked into a Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of Krakauer’s book ahead of an upcoming trip. When I brought it up to the cashier, he stopped and preached to me about how much I was going to love this book. Unaware of what I was currently reading, he told me, “This book for your generation is what The Catcher in the Rye is to my generation”.
Krakauer tells the story of Chris McCandless. McCandless was a Georgia Tech grad who, after graduation, donated all of his savings to charity and embarked on a trip across America for a few years in search of a deeper meaning and purpose without telling his family of his whereabouts. Over two years later, his decaying body was found by moose hunters in the middle of Alaska. The book retraces the steps that led up to his last days alongside journal entries and anecdotes from folks he encountered along the way. While the story has an unhappy ending, I think the young McCandless’s search for more is something a lot of guys in my stage of life can relate to and (hopefully) learn from.
The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
The backstory for this novel also involves a colleague who I thought had recommended it to me. When I finished reading it, I told him “Guess what book I just finished?”. He looked at me like I had eight eyes, and when I emphatically told him “The Devil in the White City”, he looked at me like I now had sixteen eyes. I reminded him, “You were the one who told me to read it!”
He said, “No. I told you that book fucking sucks”. Oops, must have misheard! Regardless, plenty of other people I have come across in Chicago have raved about it to me. The book is also one of the most well-known to take place in Chicago, so I was going to read it at some point. The story blends the city’s architectural history arising from hosting the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the story of H.H. Holmes, regarded as America’s first serial killer. If you have Chicago roots or like reading well-written true crime, you definitely should check this one out.
Going Infinite - Michael Lewis
Going Infinite is the other book aside from Rubin’s that was published in 2023 on this list. Written by first favorite author Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, etc.), this addition to his bibliography reverts to his specialty of nonfiction finance to tell the story of Sam Bankman-Fried and the rise and fall of his cryptocurrency ventures, Alameda Research and FTX.
Truthfully, I did not follow the whole story in the news too closely when it happened. That was totally fine heading into this book as Lewis does a brilliant job of setting the scene and painting the picture of what SBF is really like as he spent a lot of time with him for this book from the peak of his empire to his eventual arrest. In my blurb about The Creative Act, I mentioned how you can really do a lot of damage if your energy is not released properly or channeled effectively. This story is a prime example of that. Lewis is such a talented writer as well that readers will also gain some glimpse of what was going on in the mind of potentially the world’s wealthiest person of all time at one point when he was making decisions that would later become subject to great judgment.
How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
During one of my days running around New York, I was able to link up with an old friend Cort McDonough. Not only was Cort a great guide around the city, he also recommended this book for getting my toes wet in the field of psychedelic research, a field of study he is interested in as he pursues his Masters in Public Health at Yale.
In this book, Pollan discusses the origins of the stigmas so many of us associate with psychedelics. Pollan also discusses the promising results of these psychedelic experiments and hopes for where they are going next. This is a great place to begin your inquiry if you are interested in this realm of science. Scientific research shows there is a legitimate opportunity to treat mental health and substance abuse disorders through psychedelics that are far more natural and probably even more effective than current remedies that come from pharmaceutical companies in pills.
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Undoubtedly, this is the most violent book I have ever read. This recommendation came from my buddy Kyle Flick and commemorates the great American writer and author of No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy, who died a couple months after I finished this book at the age of 89 (contrasted with Kerouac who died a pathetic death at the age of 47 from alcoholism).
Blood Meridian tells the story of an adolescent only referred to as “the kid” who winds up in Texas and is recruited by the Glanton gang to hunt the Apaches who have overtaken parts of the land. The gang is compensated for every scalp they turn in. When the gang realizes Apache scalps are too difficult to differentiate from those of other Native groups, the gang inevitably turns greedy and corrupt. This evil nature is best symbolized by the character referred to as “the judge” whose expressions suggest he is acting only out of his primitive nature and does not feel remorse as he believes he is no different from the men he has descended from.
Both Blood Meridian and its alternative title “The Evening Redness in the West” suggest the sun is setting (Meridian, the West) on the period of chaotic violence (Blood, Redness) and primitive behavior. However, (SPOILER) The Judge is the only surviving character at the book’s end.
One other interesting tidbit about McCarthy, especially given the nature of this book, is that he was a Teetotaler. If you also had no idea what that word means at first glance, it’s just a fancy way of saying that he abstains from drinking alcohol. To quote McCarthy, “If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it’s drinking”.
Cheers to getting closer to the bottom of things in 2024.
————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————
“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never a yawn or say a commonplace thing but Burn, Burn, Burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars” - Jack Kerouac, On the Road (p. 5)
