10 Books I Read in 2024 That You Should Read in 2025
By Grant Hiskes
I started last year’s list rambling on tangents regarding my thoughts after reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Kerouac and his “Beat Generation” contemporaries spent their time in Greenwich Village coffee shops ruminating on topics like spirituality and non-conformity. 29 books and mere pages into Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim later, I found myself in a Greenwich Village coffee shop, killing time between apartment tours, and I started organizing my thoughts.
Kerouac already received ample attention last year, and I am a little unsettled by even the thought I may be romanticizing his life too much. The reality is I have not touched any of his work since covering him in that introduction. Though finding myself in the same part of town as Kerouac all these years later did rekindle an ongoing deliberation of mine this year on fate versus free will, a topic I could use as a basis for this year’s list.
But then I thought, who cares? While a fun discussion topic over coffee or beer, people do not go about the course of their every day wondering if their life is being governed by one side of a metaphysical debate or the other. The way we think, feel, and act is largely impacted by our perceptions of our environments. Our perceptions become the realities we live in. However, our perceptions and the lenses through which we see the world are constantly changing, even throughout the course of one day. Therefore, I am more interested in examining how the ways in which we view the world oscillate and the catalysts that drive and shape those changing perceptions. I feel the books listed below have been provocative in that regard.
What I Ate in One Year - Stanley Tucci
You may be asking right now (or if you saw a thumbnail of this post), “Grant, why should I care about what the guy that I think may have been in The Devil Wears Prada ate over the course of a year?” To that I would say, first of all, recording everything you eat in a year sounds like a pretty neat experiment. After all, we quite literally are what we eat. There is no doubt that the food we eat influences not only our physical well-being but our mental well-being as well. And for many of us, I’d say, our eating habits are actually determined by how we are feeling. Worn out from a long day? Stop for something on the way home and cook that piece of meat up tomorrow. Wickedly hungover? Go house that bacon cheeseburger and fries and wash it down with a Coke. Out to dinner with a girl you’re into? Order that bottle of wine that will pair well with the main and then order one more.
The funny thing is I am not so sure Stanley Tucci was thinking about any of that when he wrote this book. He may have just written this book to flex his refined palette, the celebrities he rubs shoulders with, and the exquisite restaurants he dines at across the world - good material nonetheless.
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays - David Foster Wallace
I promise not all of these are about food, and the essays are not either. Blending extreme levels of humor and intelligence, David Foster Wallace could very well be the most entertaining writer I have ever read. (So much so that I spent a Friday afternoon before a Longhorns football game this past fall at the Harry Ransom Center on the University of Texas campus perusing his old notebooks, correspondences, and manuscripts.)
Above all, DFW is a keen observer. A professional journalist and creative writing professor, his essays in this book almost read like essays about writing essays, so self-aware to a fault that profound, original thought is inevitably expressed. Whether recounting the events of the morning of 9/11 in downstate Illinois from his old lady neighbors’ living room, being part of the traveling party for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, or attending the AVN Awards (essentially the Academy Awards of adult films), DFW finds a way to pose a stimulating dilemma to the reader. For instance, the eponymous essay “Consider the Lobster” details the author’s visit to the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival with his family and the ethics of boiling a lobster alive for the incremental utility it provides to the consumer.
LatinoLand - Marie Arana
An interesting statistic I heard a while ago was that, according to the US Census Bureau, whites will no longer make up more than 50% of the United States population by 2050. And by 2060, Latinos are expected to represent 1 out of every 4 people in the US. One afternoon this autumn I was walking in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Dallas’s Bishop Arts District and stopped at a bookstore/coffee shop/bar. Having just walked through the neighborhood (quite the walk as a daydream on the Dallas public bus took me deeper into southwest Dallas than I had intended), I was drawn to this book on the shelf by Marie Arana.
If Latinos are going to be an increasingly larger part of the place I live, I figured I may as well learn more about their cultural origins. There were some interesting and counterintuitive political science trends regarding Latinos I was curious about as well, like why a lot more Cubans love Trump and the Republicans than other Latino groups. In this book, Marie Arana dives into how broad the term “Latino” is before diving into some of the cultures that the term encompasses and their respective complexities. Attempting to use a blanket term to explain their politics is perhaps why so many of these social and political anomalies are observed. What I appreciate about Arana, the author of a separate biography on the great South American liberator Simon Bolivar, is that she takes a more objective, academic approach that has become a novelty with some of these types of books.
Winning Fixes Everything - Evan Drellich
Growing up a huge Chicago Cubs fan, I remember the days of the six-team NL Central. I remember the couple of years where the Cubs were the fifth-best team in the division with only the Houston Astros keeping them from the very bottom. That was short-lived as the Astros then moved divisions to the AL West, and they have given me no reason to respect them since. The sign-stealing scandal was pretty low, and the players' refusal to genuinely apologize was all the more reason to hate them. Then, spending four years at the University of Texas, all of these Astros fans were seemingly coming out of the woodwork, and the team was always finding its way to success in the postseason. With my beloved Cubs having missed the playoffs every year since 2020, my animosity has only grown.
Before last baseball season, I decided to read Evan Drellich’s book on the broader story of the Astros’ scandal and give them a fair trial. The Astros were 100% guilty and cheating, but I am also aware now that they were certainly not the team that started this trend, nor were they by any means the only club engaging in such tactics. The book does a good job of painting the picture of the front office and management as well, a group led by an ex-McKinsey consultant, and one can see the trickle-down effect. This is the best baseball book I have read in a while, probably since Moneyball. With spring training in motion and fantasy baseball drafts just around the corner, give this one a read to get in the mood for baseball season.
The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins
Thank you to Nicholas Egea for this recommendation. The CIA was formed in 1947, two years after World War II left the United States and the Soviet Union as the surviving world powers. By the 1950s, the US government started to realize the power of the CIA. American operatives in Iran and Guatemala realized they could influence other countries politically without risking the lives of American soldiers (or getting the approval to use them). This influence could open up more of the world to economic interests favorable to America and American businessmen. Many of the CIA’s early members had ties to Ivy League institutions, and the CIA was in turn a way for American businessmen to influence world politics more effectively and discreetly.
One way for America to curb the Soviet’s power was by creating an ideological conflict surrounding communism. With the CIA still testing the limits of its power, the organization started getting involved with anti-communist crusades. This book covers the United States’ government awareness and complicity in the mass extermination program carried out in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966 that left more than a million purported communist sympathizers dead. Of course, the US government’s influence has not stopped there, the book is titled “The Jakarta Method” because that “method” was used throughout Operation Condor, the US backing of South American governments in killing leftist sympathizers, staging coups, and installing right-wing leaders who were more favorable to American economic and political interests.
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
One more book related to food here, why not? Kitchen Confidential was published in 2000 and written as a memoir by Bourdain. The memoirs cover his discovery of a passion for food and his rise through the ranks of the kitchen. Not until this book garnered the reception it did that Bourdain cemented himself as a celebrity chef. Bourdain also uses these memoirs to give bits of culinary advice, like when not to order fish, for example. While the real demons got a lot louder later in his career, it is evident the angst and edge had been there since his trips to France as a kid. That makes him one hell of a writer and also the grit to make it as a celebrated chef.
Bourdain’s memoirs are wildly entertaining and eye-opening, the book’s subtitle is in “Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” after all. Many of the folks working in the kitchens with Bourdain were living on the fringes of society: drug addicts, felons, and those bouncing from bedroom to bedroom or job to job. Aside from the kitchen staff, there are the seafood merchants, suppliers, and financiers, many of whom with mob ties. Wrangling the shitshow of all of these folks (who probably show up in employers’ nightmares) is a responsibility that ultimately falls on the head chef. Meanwhile, the patrons on the other side of the curtain are enjoying an elegant dining experience, completely oblivious to the ongoing mayhem. One might find that an allegory to most of our everyday lives.
A big thank you to my great friend, Noah Ragan, for this recommendation. Keep an eye out for Noah’s reading list in the coming days.
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
In a small town in Kansas in November 1959, the Clutters, a very well-respected family in the community, is found murdered inside their home. A true story, writer Truman Capote was fascinated by the event and traveled to Kansas to dig deeper as the manhunt unfolded. Capote interviews several members of the townspeople and immerses himself in the community. While in the town of Holcomb, Kansas, Capote strikes up a very close relationship with one of the killers. Capote exerts himself in trying to understand the killers, more in understanding who they are as opposed to their motives.
Fans of true crime must check this out, but I believe anyone who reads this will enjoy it. Sometimes you feel like you have to like a classic because it is regarded as such, but Capote is truly a brilliant writer. You cannot put his books down once you start reading them. I did something I rarely do after reading this book, read another from the same author right away. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is another terrific story that you could read on a Sunday afternoon if you want to get a taste of Capote.
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
I cannot spoil the magic of The Alchemist, you just have to read it. Many people have told me over the years to read it, but I did not get around to it until this year. The book is a very easy read, and its themes revolve around setting off on your mission to deliver your gift to the world and fulfilling your “personal legend”. The most applicable principle for me from this book was maintaining focus on what you feel called to do by taking all of the turns in the road in stride. You cannot let someone else’s malice, hopelessness, or discouragement prevent you from what you ultimately feel called to do.
M Train - Patti Smith
I do not really do audiobooks, but when I heard this book narrated by Patti Smith was nominated for the Grammy for “Best Spoken Word Album”, I thought I’d press play for some chapters. Noah had recommended Patti Smith’s Just Kids, but I opted for this one from her instead. I’ll get around to Just Kids at some point. In this book, the author recounts select memories from the time she was about my age and beyond. She takes you through her travels to Equatorial Guinea with an old lover, times spent in Greenwich Village coffee shops, canceling her delayed flight in London, and staying holed up in an apartment watching crime dramas.
Now later in her life, I found it very interesting to hear what it is she remembers from her life at my age and the decades that followed. Hearing her perspective from that stage of life was interesting to me, Smith describes that age and the crossing of “some line” near the book’s end:
“But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child, I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology.” (p. 249 -251)
What shocked me the most after finishing this book was that I did not know until afterward that the author is quite literally a rockstar. Smith was very influential in the punk rock movement, I listened to her album Horses after the book. Despite all of the fame though, she never alludes to any part of her celebrity in this book. None of that matters to her at the point in life she is at now, her fondest memories are that of the mundane. I think that can be a people message for those of us younger than Miss Smith.
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Of course, no meditation discussing fate versus free will can scratch the surface of being exhaustive without discussing John Steinbeck’s magnum opus. A tale that takes place in the Salinas Valley of south-central California, the novel follows the lives and upbringing of the Trask boys and their father after their mother and wife left them at childbirth.
Dan Jensen, a colleague of mine in Chicago and now New York neighbor, is to thank for this recommendation. My favorite part of this novel’s context was that Steinbeck wrote it for his sons. Steinbeck published East of Eden shortly after marrying his third wife, while his two sons (from his second wife) were quite young, about 5 and 7. His second wife had custody of the boys. Steinbeck moved to the other side of the country to New York. He wrote the book for his boys to read when they grew up to tell them about their family history in the Salinas Valley of California and tell a story that he hoped would provide them lessons for life if he could not be there.
Timshel.
——————
