I've been continuing my "reading in my lunch time" aim from last year. It's been helpful to get my mind off of my PhD for a small amount of time, and is particularly great when I could not put a book down - see below.

My favourite books this year included three 2024 releases and one from last year.


I was totally obsessed with Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by CNN correspondent Elle Reeve (Washington Post review / Internet Archive) and Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (The Telegraph review + an interview with The Guardian). I couldn't put either of them down! Both for different reasons. Elle's book is an expose of the dark Internet groups that the Internet amplifies, and Sally's is a work of fiction about two brothers who have just lost their father. They are both exceptionally written.

I also adored two books written in the first-person by academics who spoke of their research and how this related to their lives and those within it. The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendships at the Center by Rhaina Cohen was released this year. I heard about it in the Marginalian newsletter + read The Guardian interview. Unmasking AI by Joy Buolamwini came out in 2023 (fireside chat with Joy from All Tech Is Human). They both helped remind me of my skill set of narrative writing that academia tries to drain out of you. I want to write a book about my PhD research (autonomous vehicles in Australia), and they were both great inspirations to me.

Rhaina's book is on the importance of friendships. The overall message is this quote: "we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them". It's a great book for someone like me who devotes a lot of time and energy to my friendships. Joy's book is a timely account of how AI might work for the people who design it, e.g., white men of a certain age, but will not work in the same way for those outside this narrow lens (e.g., black and brown people).

Here are all the books I read this year (in alphabetical order), including my favourites above:


They include:

• A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul by Leo Tolstoy. (A great start to the morning with my The Daily Stoic and Humanistic Buddhism books, but this was a bit too religious for me - no wonder it was banned in Russia!)
• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. (Easy to read book sharing the things Ross found delightful each day for a year).
• Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher. (Kara had access to a lot of tech people and shares some of her stories).
• Divisible By Itself and One by Kae Tempest. (One of my favourite artists, it’s always a great year when they have a release).
• Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet by Taylor Lorenz. (A good intro to situations online that if you are “extremely online” you probably would have heard about. This would be a good book for those who are not as seriously online). Excerpt + Interview
• The Magic Border: Poetry and fragments from My Soft Machine by Arlo Parks. (I loved Arlo’s album with the lyrics included in this book). Watch video
• Master of Change: How to Excel when Everything is Changing - Including You by Brad Stulberg. (A great read about remembering that the only constancy is change, and the sooner we admit this to ourselves the less stressful change will be). Podcast interview
• The Real Work by The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. (Various musings on learning how the writer learned to work at achieving goals, whether driving, drawing, or magic).
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. (This book is a reminder to live more in line with the seasons. Sometimes, we need to rest and recuperate. The book helped me to decide to - finally - have a break after seven years of full-time study and almost four years on my PhD!

And here are some more suggested books for your Summer (or Winter, depending on where you are) reading.
These are the books I am still in the middle of that will take me into 2025.


They include (in alphabetical order):

• All the Ghosts in the Machine: The Digital Afterlife of your Personal Data by Elaine Kasket
• Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy by Bill Adair
• Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant
• Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow
• End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food by Jenny Taitz
• The Indi Way: How a Rural Australian Community Sparked a Social and Political Movement by various people involved with Voices for Indi
• Independents’ Day: The Inside Story of the Community Independents Who Changed Australian Politics Forever by Brook Turner
• Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renee Diresta
• Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
• The Twittering Machine: How Capitalism Stole Our Social Life by Richard Seymour

What have you been reading this year? Did you have a particular obsession with a book or more?