Books to Read in 2024

New essentials and some classics worth revisiting

As we find ourselves standing upon a precipice¹ gazing into 2024, it is as good a time as any to consider what books we aspire to engage with in the coming year. Indeed, it seems that given the freakish spectacle that already encompasses the US presidential campaign, we are in for quite a ride.

That said, I thought I would take a moment to share some books I read this year that I thought may be of interest to the readers of our humble little abode in Substackistan. Some are quite recent, and several are a bit more of the vintage variety. The order implies no ranking, only my whims! Please add anything you read and liked in 2023 in the comments.

New(ish) Nonfiction

1) Adapt! On a New Political Imperative by Barbara Stiegler [translated by Adam Hocker]

There’s a lot I would like to say about this fascinating study in philosophy and intellectual history by French philosopher, Barbara Stiegler. However, in keeping in step with ‘list protocols’ I shall attempt to keep it short and snappy. This book was originally published in French in 2019 but due to the good offices of one A. Hocker we can now read it in English.

In short, the book invites us to critically examine the implications of the Darwinian revolution. Darwin’s work had wide-ranging impacts that reached far beyond the biological sciences as it became the handmaiden of a host of (often grotesque) social idea(l)s. Certainly, ‘scientific’ racism and eugenics fall squarely within those categories.

However, Stiegler revisits the competing doctrines of two key early twentieth century figures, Walter Lippman & John Dewey, to explore how Darwin’s findings made their way into, far less pernicious, but equally impactful visions of how to construct a ‘modern’ society. Stiegler nicely captures their diverging views on the intersection of evolutionism and modern social life in this passage:

Instead of fixing in advance the telos of evolution, as Lippman ultimately does…in a global division of Labor where all human activities would be supposed to mechanically adjust themselves to each other while obeying the uniform and gradual cadence of industrial rhythms, Dewey draws from the Darwinian revolution three rigorously opposite consequences. Branching, evolution does not follow in advance any telos, but explores entirely on the contrary a multiplicity of directions that are at the same time coherent, cumulative, and divergent. Heterogeneous, incompatible with the uniform rhythm demanded by industrial cadences, and unable to be reduced to a simple gradual and procedural reform of the rules, it will never overcome the heterochrony of evolutionary rhythms.

Again, there is a lot more I wish to add, but for now it is sufficient to say that I found this brilliant work thoroughly engrossing and a primer for a host of innovative ways to approach so many of the profound social, political, and economic questions that we confront at present.

2) Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

The ‘cloud’ (or cloud computing) is one of those terms that invokes a mental imagery far distant from the reality that it purports to signify. Ditto artificial intelligence. In this exceptional, and essential, book Kate Crawford takes on a (literal and metaphoric) geographic exploration of modern technology.

When I uploaded something to the ‘cloud’, I tended not to think of dusty lithium mining operations in the remote corners of Nevada. When I read about AI, it rarely conjured an image of a tightly packed room full of paid watchers and clickers in a poverty-stricken country. But after reading this book as a fairly non-tech person, I found myself far more richly informed about the very terrestrial underpinnings of these domains, among many others. As Crawford puts it:

Artificial intelligence…is an idea, an infrastructure, an industry, a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing; it’s also a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet.

Further, the book really zeros in on the way in which AI ‘training’ and development is far from a ‘neutral’ vacuuming in of ‘stuff out there’ but rather reflective of a formative process that has profound implications as

This colonizing impulse centralizes power in the AI field: it determines how the world is measured and defined while simultaneously denying that this is an inherently political activity.

In sum, this book is absolutely essential reading for those who find their lives ever more wrapped up in these technological ‘innovations’. Which is pretty much everyone!

3) BERNOULLI’S FALLACY: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science by Aubrey Clayton

This book really hit me hard, in the best sense of the expression. I have been working in the social sciences for over two decades and going all the way back to my first years in grad school I always had a sense that something wasn’t quite right with how a lot of quantitative work was being done and presented. I even studied moderately advanced statistics trying to bore a little bit further beyond the intellectual edifice that supports work in this vein. Clayton’s book lays out the serious shortcomings and outright errors that have set us on a wrong path in terms of how statistical models are constructed and interpreted in the social sciences.

Parts of the book are a touch dense but the overall message rings clear throughout. I was particularly fascinated with the intellectual history of the development modern statistical tools and its deep ties to ‘scientific’ racism and eugenics. There is just so much I didn’t know—nor, I would assume, even those who are partitioners of statistical modeling and inference know.

To be clear, Clayton is not saying statistics, or statisticians, are racist. But he does make the case the standard mode for statistical analysis which grows out of a set of principles, or philosophical commitments, known as frequentism are easily harnessed to give the veneer of ‘objective’ truth to one’s firmly held personal beliefs. Interestingly, of course, statistical modeling in the frequentist fashion purports to do just the opposite. As he notes, one of the early pioneers of current statistical methods, Francis Galton:

in addition to being a statistical pioneer, famously coined the term eugenics and was an early advocate of using evolution to shape humanity’s future by encouraging breeding among the “right” people. Pearson and Fisher [also major figures in the development of statistical methods used today] were also devotees to the cause of eugenics and used their newly minted statistical tools with great success to support the eugenics agenda. For these early statisticians, the proper function of statistics was often to detect significant differences between races, like a supposed difference in intelligence or moral character. “Objective” assessments of this kind were used to support discriminatory immigration policies, forced sterilization laws…

Further, as Clayton is an accomplished statistician in his own right, this is not someone merely chucking grenades from the sidelines. In the book he advocates not for getting rid of statistical analysis but for adopting the increasingly commonly known approach of Bayesians. To be honest, I am not sure if I sign onto this (genuinely agonistic, not my battlefield), but to me at least that did not lessen the profound experience of reading this book. I promise you will never read a statistic the same, and that alone is worth the work it takes to digest this fascinating book.

New(ish) Fiction

1) The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

This book is certainly much more well-known than those mentioned above. It was selected for Oprah’s Book Club, etc. That said, if you are not familiar, or have not read it, I cannot recommend it enough. Set in primarily in early/mid twentieth century in the southern reaches of British ruled India this is a sweeping book.

A bit in the mode of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, this book tells the story of how the angels and demons of ‘modernity’ slowly began to encroach upon an isolated town. It tells an intergenerational story of a family as they sought to situate themselves within this rapidly changing environment. It also provides a fascinating account of the interaction between the native population and those attached to the colonial regime in varying capacities.

Verghese is an M.D.² by trade so there is a great deal of medical facets to the story and in many ways medicine and its practice represents one of modernity’s most impactful legacies. However, beyond taking us into the village life of a small southern Indian town during this critical moment of social and political upheaval, it is simply an engrossing story with an endless array of compelling characters, major and minor. I devoured this nearly thousand-page tome in several days as I just kept wanting to read more. Perhaps that is the best endorsement I can give a book, so I will leave it there.

Old(ish) Fiction

1) Middlemarch by George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]

I love literature, but I am not a ‘Lit person’. I need provide no more proof than the fact that I had no idea that George Eliot was indeed a pen name for a woman named Mary Ann Evans until after I finished the book! Indeed, this work is considered a major classic, and rightfully so. To be honest, I read this at the very dawn of 2023, so my recollection of the more minute details have faded a bit.

But it is one of those books that sits with me—and will sit with me for some time. I am quite sure I will read it again someday, it is simply that good. What I can say is that, as with The Covenant of Water, it is a fascinating exploration of the intricate social mores in a small-town world (in this case mid-nineteenth century England) amid a wider world where rapid change was rapidly afoot. Suffice to say, I find it hard to believe you will regret going on the literary journey that is this masterful work of fiction. Along the way, you will be treated to numerous beautiful passages such as this:

For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shaped after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the vibrations from a woman’s glance.

2) The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

I came to know Iris Murdoch through her work as a philosopher and this was the first of her novels that I read. I can say that my admiration for her philosophical work easily spilled over into the exquisite prose that adorns this strange (in the best sense of the term) novel. This post is already too long so I will just say this this:

The book is a deep exploration of the age-old question of what art is, but more interestingly it takes on this question through the lens of the distinction between ‘someone who writes’ and ‘a writer’. Though we may have some intuitive notion of what distinguishes them, the precise difference between the two becomes far hazier as we peer in for closer inspection. Further, what kind of art gets rewarded and how does that relate to the question of artistic value? However, these wider matters are filtered through an enticingly bizarre, and somewhat spellbinding, odyssey centered around the relationship between two writers and so much more. One passage among many that stood out to me was this:

One of the many respects, dear friend, in which life is unlike art is this: characters in art can have unassailable dignity, whereas characters in life have none. Yet of course life, in this respect as in others, pathetically and continually aspires to the condition of art. A sheer concern for one’s dignity, a sense of form, a sense of style, inspires more of our baser actions than any conventional analysis of possible sins is likely to bring to light. A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the façade of his appearance.

Well that’s a wrap. These are the books I read in 2023 that moved me deeply and inspired me to think about the world anew. Of course there are so many exceptional books to choose from but these are some that I recommend considering for your reading list in 2024. Happy New Year and best wishes.

Movies?!

Burning (2018) directed by Lee Chang-dong

Okay, just one more to add. Though Parasite introduced the global public to the wonders of Korean film, rightfully garnering numerous awards and plaudits. In my opinion, this masterpiece is its equal if not (I will boldly say) a ‘better’ film. To be sure, Burning did receive a great deal of critical acclaim taking the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Of course, I am not a film critic or expert so who cares what I think in terms of how these movies stack up again one another. Bottomline, Burning is an amazing film that you will not regret watching. Note, it is very dark and depressing so maybe not the best pick for a down day.

Okay now my list is complete, thanks for checking it out!

1. I just learned my belief about the spelling of ‘precipice’ was so wildly incorrect that it could not even trigger the correct suggestion from the spell checker.

2. People who are super talented in many way like Verghese are perhaps best thought of as a necessary annoyance!!