My Favorite Books and Audiobooks of 2024 (Premium)

I was never an honor student, and like many with ADHD, I simply sailed through life, giving little thought or effort to those topics that didn’t interest me. But as an avid reader from a young age, I took part in an accelerated English program in the sixth grade that met once a week before the school day started. It was organized and led by Jean Roberts, the first of several teachers who influenced me greatly, and over the course of the school year, we read, in turn, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Odyssey by Homer, and Beowulf.

And with that, I was off to the races. Or, at least, off to the library and, as I got older, the bookstore. I have so many memories of books and other content I’ve read, and I’ve told some of those stories–including this past year in Re-readable (Premium)–here on Thurrott.com and elsewhere. But there is always more. Reading, in many ways, has been a life-long obsession. Almost every night, I try to squeeze in more time for reading before going to bed, only to succumb to sleep mid-sentence. And then I wake up, make coffee, and begin reading again. Reading literally bookends my days.

Reading is both easier and harder than it was when I was in the sixth grade.

I started reading the newspaper very early in life, starting with the comics but quickly graduating to the sports and news, and if I had nothing to read, I would slum it out with the side of a cereal box or whatever else was at hand. But thanks to technology, I now have a library of almost 1,000 books in Kindle, plus over 300 audiobooks in Audible, and a nearly infinite collection of content to read online thanks to various apps, feeds, and other services. I rarely have nothing to read, thanks to my phones, tablets, computers, and other devices. But I also worry deeply about the mind-altering dumbness that seems to accompany the rapid-fire content explosion we’ve experienced during this era. I sometimes have to force myself to read longer works–big books like the aforementioned The Lord of the Rings or Stephen King’s The Stand, perhaps–as a sort of mental workout. Technology giveth and technology taketh away, it seems.

Reading is also both the same as and different from it was when I was younger. I still read a mix of non-fiction and fiction, for example, though that mix is skewed much more heavily toward non-fiction now. I was always fascinated with history, and I recall that recent history would unroll in stages, where news would occur in real-time on the TV–locally and then via CNN and other cable networks–before getting a more in-depth treatment in the newspaper the next morning and in magazines in the following days or weeks. If a story was important enough, it might later be told in even greater detail in a book. Today, everything seems to happen almost in real-time, and what we used to call the fog of war has devolved into misinformation, sometimes inadvertently but more recently, and tragically, purposefully.

I still read the news each morning, and I even read one or two newspapers, though they are of course delivered electronically through app updates on my iPad. I still read longer pieces of what I’ll call journalism, though more often than not these come from websites and blogs, not periodicals. I read many non-fiction books, some biographical, some historical, many related to personal technology, including many reference books. And I kind of cherry-pick with fiction, sticking largely to authors I still love for whatever reasons–most notably Stephen King, still a delight all these decades later–but I struggle to rediscover my interest in the classic science fiction that delighted me in my younger years. Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Pournelle, and so on. Ditto for fantasy: There was a time when I read anything that was Tolkien adjacent, so to speak, but by the time the Harry Potter books arrived, I wasn’t interested.

I can’t fully explain what changed, I guess. But I care enough about reading, and spend so much time reading, that I think about it a lot. And as alluded to above, I sometimes try to get back into topics or even specific books that I loved when I was younger. Perhaps there are just too many distractions, too many ways to read, too many things to read, to even focus. It’s not clear. But there’s a lot of content vying for my attention, and books–which, today, are pretty much e-books and audiobooks to me, I will never understand the hipster affectation for paper books in this digital age–are just one of the ways I read now. They are certainly not the primary way.

So here we are. Another year around the sun. Another chance to revisit the books I read. Here’s how I view this past year.

?Books

?Best non-fiction title of 2024

Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution ⭐
By: Steven Sinofsky

I avoided this book for a few years, but I finally read it in early 2024 and now, I can’t stop reading it. Literally. I’ve read this book fully, front-to-back, at least six times, and I have read select chapters even more than that. I am re-reading it again as I write this. Yes, really. As I noted in my review, Hardcore Software tells the inside story of Microsoft from the very late 1980s through 2012, inarguably the most crucial period of the company’s history. And it deals specifically with the client-side software I care about the most and have built my career around, especially Windows and Office. That Sinofsky was a member of the latter, and then led both teams for several years each, makes this book indispensable. I recently purchased the audiobook version from Audible, too, so I can cherry-pick from key chapters in audio form, as I’ve done with the Steve Jobs biography. This is an important book if you care about this company or these products at all.

?Best fiction title of 2024

Desperation ⭐
By: Stephen King

I’ve been catching up on King books I’d not read–or, in some cases, finished–in the past, and it’s weird to me that the sister books Desperation and The Regulators were among them. (Both have basically the same set of characters, but the stories are completely different and mostly unrelated.) I’m still working on the second of those, so I can’t say yet which I like better. But I started reading Desperation at some point, but never finished it. And that surprises me now, as it has all the usual King elements–average people thrust into incredible events, sprinkled with a bit of science fiction/fantasy–and is a great story. It’s better than It, for example, and much easier to get through, despite some surface similarities.

?Audiobooks

I am an Audible Premium Plus subscriber, which costs $14.95 and gives me one audiobook credit each month, plus access to the Audible Plus catalog of audiobooks and podcasts. Audible also has occasional sales, so I stock up on wish list books at that time too. Between the subscription and other purchases, I acquired 20 audiobooks this past year, though I’ve only completely listened to a little under half of them so far.

?Best non-fiction audiobook of 2024

Brothers ⭐
By: Alex van Halen, narrated by Alex van Halen

This one wasn’t even close. I was deeply saddened by the death of Eddie Van Halen in 2020, but I was also troubled by the deep dysfunction I saw there, especially in his relationships with his bandmates over the years. And so his brother’s biography was highly anticipated, and better than expected. I bought the audiobook version for two reasons: It’s read by the author, who has a gruff, personal style that I like, as it’s real and believable, and it includes a song he and Eddie were working on before the latter passed away. Brothers only tells part of the story, it’s basically a biography up through the successes of 1984. And so I hope there will be a follow-up. Related to this, I’ve read and watched several Alex van Halen interviews online, the most notable of which is about an hour long and worth watching if you were also a fan of Van Halen.

?Best fiction audiobook of 2024

You Like It Darker: Stories ⭐
By: Stephen King, narrated by Will Patton and Stephen King

Stephen King’s short story collections are among my most memorable reading experiences–I discovered King thanks to the book Night Shift while babysitting and would say I couldn’t put it down, except that it scared me so much, I was continually putting it down–and his latest is terrific. I have all of King’s short (and longer) story collections in audiobook form now because they’re ideal for the format, especially given how I listen. If you’re a fan of King, you’re familiar with the literary universe he’s created, and the cross-references to his stories throughout. And this one includes a delightfully unexpected sequel, of sorts, to Cujo that’s excellent. (I am similarly a big fan of Doctor Sleep, which is a longer but similar sequel to The Shining that also deals with the life-long ramifications of the horrors that happened in the earlier story. Oddly, the movie version is even better than the book, mostly because of it addressing the changes between the book and movie versions of The Shining.)

?Non-fiction: Industry books

Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System
By: Chet Haase, narrated by Chet Haase
Format: Audible

I read this book years ago, but when I saw that the author had left Google after nearly 14 years at the company, I looked it up again and decided to get it in audiobook form.

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference
By: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
Format: Kindle

Essential reading for anyone interested in AI, and that’s true whether you’re a fan or a hater.

Chips for Tomorrow: The AI Revolution Unveiled: Inside the Battle for Superiority Between Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, and the Future They’re Shaping
By: Rick A. Kruger
Format: Kindle

This is a very short book, almost a long pamphlet, and it’s quickly getting out of date, but it’s a decent primer on where the three biggest AI chipmakers are/were.

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer 3rd Edition
By: Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger
Format: Kindle

This book is a classic, and I of course owned it in paper form back in the 1990s. But I grabbed the latest edition belatedly when I saw the authors had added some additional content in the wake of the death of Steve Jobs. That sad single chapter is a waste of time, but the rest of the book remains an important read.

In the Beginning…Was the Command Line
By: Neal Stephenson
Format: Kindle

Another classic I had in paper form in the 1990s, and one I’ve re-read several times. It’s so dated now, but I love it. (BeOS was an ongoing concern at the time, for example.)

Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems (and Future Proof Modern Ones)
By: Marianne Bellotti
Format: Kindle

A dry but interesting look at a decidedly modern problem: How to handle legacy computer systems while the rest of the world moves forward to new platforms and technologies.

Life Under the Sun: My 20-Year Journey at Sun Microsystems
By: David Yen
Format: Kindle

I love tech industry biographies, and this one is mostly notable because the author was at Sun for so long, but as an engineer, not the public face of the company. It’s self-published, so it’s a bit rough.

Starflight: How the PC and DOS Exploded Computer Gaming 1987-1994
By: Jamie Lendino
Format: Kindle

I keep intending to continue the history part of my Tech Nostalgia series, and will, and when I do, this will be one of the works I reference.

Space Battle: The Mattel Intellivision and the First Console War
By: Jamie Lendino
Format: Kindle

I was an Intellivision enthusiast, so I had to read this. But I didn’t do so until a year after my Intellivision story, speaking of the Tech Nostalgia series.

?Non-fiction: Biography and History

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
By: Patrick Hutchison, narrated by Patrick Hutchison
Format: Audible

I discovered this book via a review in The New York Times, and though I’ve only just started reading it, I feel good enough about it to include it here. I’m fascinated by this kind of thing.

Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever
By: L. Jon Wertheim
Format: Kindle

I came of age in the 1980s, so that decade will always be interesting to me, and this book hits on topics like sports and music that I care about–especially from the 80s–quite a bit.

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
By: Mark Bowden
Format: Kindle

Mark Bowden is terrific, and while I had read some of his earlier books–like Killing Pablo and Blackhawk Down–in paper form originally, this was new to me. Vietnam is a topic I return to again and again.

When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town
By: John E. Douglas with Mark Olshaker, narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright
Format: Audible

I’ve always been interested in true crime, but the Netflix series Manhunter renewed my interest in John Douglas, the original FBI serial killer hunter, and I’ve been catching up with his books to fill the hole left by the show.

?More fiction

Interestingly, these are all audiobooks. I often stick with familiar material so I don’t have to worry about zoning out while listening and missing some important. But two of these are books I’d not read before.

Different Seasons
By: Stephen King, narrated by Frank Muller
Format: Audible

A King classic: Four long-form stories (novellas), three of which spawned major Hollywood movies, two of which are award-winning.

Dreamcatcher
By: Stephen King, narrated by Jeffrey DeMunn
Format: Audible

This is one of my favorite Stephen King stories, though the movie version left me a bit flat.

Dune
By: Frank Herbert, narrated by Scott Brick, Orlagh Cassidy, Euan Morton, Simon Vance, Ilyana Kadushin, Byron Jennings, David R. Gordon, Jason Culp, Kent Broadhurst, Oliver Wyman, Patricia Kilgarriff, and Scott Sowers
Format: Audible

I can’t explain this, but I’ve tried to read Dune multiple times, including during my science fiction apex in the 1980s, and have never found it interesting in any way. So when I saw that Scott Brick had been involved in a fairly recent audiobook version, I had to try again. I’ve still not finished it.

Eruption
By: Michael Crichton and James Patterson, narrated by Scott Brick
Format: Audible

Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors, and while James Patterson has perhaps over-promoted himself, I like him as well, and so this one seemed like a no-brainer: An unfinished Crichton thriller that was finished by Patterson and read by Scott Brick. And … I’ve only gone in and out of it and need to buckle down and get through it.

Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
By: Stephen King, narrated by Becky Ann Baker, John Cullum, Boyd Gaines, Peter Gerety, Josh Hamilton, Arliss Howard, Judith Ivey, Stephen King, and Justin Long
Format: Audible

I’d read this before, multiple times, but as per earlier, this was part of a push to get all of King’s short stories in audiobook form so I can dive in and out as needed.

Starship Troopers
By: Robert A. Heinlein, narrated by R.C. Bray
Format: Audible

Oddly I had never read this book, but inspired by the movie–which is terrific and greatly expands on the original–I finally did so in the late 1990s. And was mostly struck by how short it was. But I had to get this new audiobook version, as it’s ready by R.C. Bray, arguably my favorite audiobook narrator of all time. He makes all the difference.

?Comic books/graphic novels

I still read comic books and graphic novels fairly often, usually on my iPad in the Kindle app, though I also experimented with doing so using the new Kindle Colorsoft I purchased recently. This year’s entrees will disappoint just about anyone, as they’re all Star Wars extended universe titles (sorry), and none are particularly good. They include:

• Star Wars: Dark Empire (1991, 6 issues)
• Star Wars: Dark Force Rising (1997, 6 issues)
• Star Wars: Heir to the Empire (1995-1996, 6 issues)
• Star Wars: The Last Command (1997-1998, 6 issues)
• Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1995-1996, 4 issues)

Oddly, I have seen in multiple reviews that the so-called Thrawn trilogy books, which were the source material for the first three of those (out of order) titles, are well-regarded and even semi-canon. These are not good stories. But two are interesting to me on some level.

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is based on the book of the same name that appeared in 1978, a year after the original movie, and I was quite excited to read it when it first came out. In fact, I finished it in one day. But re-reading it this year in comic book form … eh. It’s borderline terrible.

Secondly, I’m semi-fascinated by the Star Wars sequel movie trilogy, which tracked opposite that of the movies in the prequel trilogy, meaning that each in turn was worse than the one before it. And the third one was an abomination. So it is fascinating to me that two of the dumbest aspects of that movie came from these books. The came-out-of-left-field “the emperor is back, thanks to cloning” plot line was lifted directly from Dark Empire. And the just-as-improbable fleet of ships the emperor commanded in the movie was lifted from Dark Force Rising. Stupid.

?Previous book overviews

You can find my most recent previous book/audiobook overviews here: 2023, 2022, and 2021.