Hard to believe we’ve arrived at yet another installment of the Biblioracle Book Awards in which I reflect back on my 12 months of reading and invent awards for books published in the 2024 calendar year.
As a reminder, my awards are both completely definitive and entirely meaningless. (This is true of all awards.)
This week we’re looking at nonfiction, with fiction spread over the next two weeks after that.
In general, I cover much less nonfiction in this space than fiction because my nonfiction reading is fit to purpose. Rather than ranging freely, as I do with fiction, I tend to seek out books that will help me better make sense of the world I’m living in. My nonfiction reading clusters around the year’s obsessions.
In that spirit, the nonfiction Biblioracle Book Awards for 2024 are themed by the categories where I was doing my most searching for wisdom. If you’re searching like me, these may be good books for you.
Best Books to Help Me Understand Our Algorithm-Driven World
Because I was writing a book of my own on the impact of generative AI on our reading and writing lives (“More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI” coming Feb. 5, 2025) I read many books in this category. Two stood out.
“Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture” by Kyle Chayka explores how, without us being fully aware of the shift, the sorting of the media and even experiences we’re exposed to happens through aggregated, non-human calculations. Chayka questions if these processes are good for human flourishing and the answer seems to be: no.
“AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t and How to Tell the Difference” by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor is a highly accessible book by two experts that I recommend to anyone who has to make an informed decision about how to (or not) integrate this technology into their lives or organizations.
Best Books for Perspective on Our Political World
“Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs” by Benjamin Herold is a close portrait of how the American Dream died, turning our schools, our streets and our society into a zero-sum game. Written with depth and compassion for the lived experiences of the people navigating what it means to do everything “right” and still find the doors of opportunity closed in your face.
“When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s” by John Ganz is a work of historical analysis from a delightfully sharp interrogator. Read it for yourself and you’ll see some definite links to the present.
“Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment” by Mary Anne Franks has a provocative title and is indeed a provocative book from a scholar and law professor at George Washington University Law School. It opened my eyes to the deep importance of making sure everyone has a right to be heard, and how the First Amendment by itself may not be sufficient.
Best Book to Maintain Some Semblance of Faith in the Possibility for Goodness and Beauty in the World
At its heart, Lydia Millet’s “We Loved it All: A Memory of Life” is a book about the way humans are a threat to the natural world around us: plants, animals and even our fellow humans. In a way, it’s an elegy for what we’ve lost with more losses yet to come. And yet, because of the reverence with which Millet holds the world’s wonders, and the love that courses through these essays, you cannot help but feel as though hope lives and great things are always possible, as long as we draw breath.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “War” by Bob Woodward
2. “Confronting the Presidents” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
3. “How the World Ran out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain” by Peter S. Goodman
4. “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s” by John Ganz
5. “John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People” by Randall Woods
— Jerry N., Naperville
Jerry says he reads history, so I’m going to give him a book that takes on the full history of the United States of America, Jill Lepore’s “These Truths.”
1. “The Giver of Stars” by Jojo Moyes
2. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
3. “The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O’Farrell
4. “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell
5. “The Briar Club” by Kate Quinn
— Marie C., Chicago
These books are mostly recent, so I’m going back for one that endures and definitely fits Marie’s reading habits, “Possession” by A.S. Byatt.
1. “Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code” by Jason Bell
2. “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” by Erik Larson
3. “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
4. “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann
5. “The House of Secrets” by Brad Meltzer and Tod Goldberg
— Terry P., Elmhurst
For Terry, I’m going to recommend a one-of-a-kind World War II novel, “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.