riffing off @brandonsbytes for this (#832653), so paying it forward (backward?) for it
I used to read and write like a motherfucker. In 2019-2021, I published perhaps 110-120 articles a year—quite often book reviews, or at least articles inspired by the contents I had read in some book. My library was exploding: didn't count the number of books read but it was in a respectable double-digit range (50, I would guess).
Last few years I've calmed down, mostly as I've transitioned into editing others' work much more than I write for myself. Still, this year I counted some 25 articles—and another twenty-something MONEY CLASSES if you want to count those.
The reading for 2024 has been slow. I think I'm at 22, plus a few half-finished ones that sit (perennially?) on my desk.
Here's a rough run-down of the author, titles, linked reviews, and some short remarks:
BITCOIN BOOKS:
(I review books for Bitcoin Magazine's Print product so I end up reading a lot of (new) Bitcoin books.
-
Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World (Knut Svanberg and Luke de Wolf), reviewed for Mises here, and shared on SN by @Undisciplined here—before I was on Stacker, so I'll allow it.
-
I Am Not Your Bruh: 21 Keys to Sound Parenting (George Mekhail), a wonderful take on parenting on a Bitcoin standard—or at least with some bitcoin-y elements to it.
-
The Hidden Cost of Money (Seb Bunney): reviewed for the Mises institute and mentioned in a MONEY CLASS here (#811381)
-
Resistance Money (Andrew Bailey, Bradley Rettler, and Craig Warmke): reviewed for both Bitcoin Magazine Print and The Daily Economy, and came up in a @siggy47 post a while back.
-
The Bushido of Bitcoin (Aleksander Svetski), review forthcoming in next issue of Bitcoin Magazine Print, lots to say about that in general.
-
Gradually, Then Suddenly (Parker Lewis), reviewed for Bitcoin Magazine Print earlier in the year, a fantastic collection of essays by Parker, published on their own for Unchained over the years
-
Beef and Bitcoin (Tristan Scott), reviewed for Bitcoin Magazine Print, poorly written (copy edited, really) but with an excellent message: there's an overlap between carnivory and bitcoin, especially the ways in which their detractors attack them (ppsst, @benwehrman)
MONEY BOOKS:
Of course bitcoin is money, so this is a redundant category—but you get the idea.
- Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy (Carola Binder), which I got an ARC from the publisher and wrote a review that I haven't published anywhere (in a unique Stacker post, perhaps??).
- The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (Edward Chancellor), reviewed for The Daily Economy here. I started reading this book in 2022, stopped, forgot about it, was reminded of it last Christmas and finished it early 2024. Shared the article on Stacker a few weeks ago (#824335)
- Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England (Anne Murphy)—an odd occasion in which I haven't publicly written about it, but it's an excellent book from which I learned a ton about the early Bank of England.
- The Natural Order of Money (Roy Sebag), reviewed for Mises.org. I really did not like this short (and irrelevant) book.
LIFE & HEALTH:
- Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams (Matthew Walker), very interesting on the science of sleep. I've seen lots of people hitting on him, "debunking" some of the research in there, so as a non-expert it's hard to make heads and tails of all of this. Nice things to consider; definitely made me more conscious/protective of the quality of my sleep.
- This Is Your Mind on Plants: Opium, Caffeine, Mescaline (Michael Pollan), fucking wonderful first-person story of one journalist's dabbling in three exciting drugs (mescaline, coffee, and poppy).
- Burn: The Misunderstood Science of Metabolism (Herman Pontzer), I really loved this story: easy to read, the scientific conversations digested for us plebs. Pontzer's journeys down various experiments+stories from the Hadza are great.
- Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids (Bryan Caplan), an excellent read for parents and proto-parents that combines personal experiences with the latest research on raising a child, all wrapped in a nice, straight-forward economic lens
OTHERS (Econ, Econ history)
Others:
- On the Edge (Nate Silver), reviewed for The Daily Economy and the associated SN post is here (#735212)
- How Economics Can Save the World (Erik Angner): The Daily Economy here:, nice layman-type book about how to think like an economist—very Freakonomics-like, but for the 2020s.
- Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800 (Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden), reviewed for The Daily Economy, excellent dense af history of the Netherlands. My review title says it all: "The Beginning of the Modern World: It was Always the Dutch"
- Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry Into Economic Principles (Guido Hülsmann), reviewed for The Daily Economy, really freakin loved it. Awesome read, though at times very dense and very, I wanna say, boring. Overall worth it.
- Not the End of the World (Hannah Ritchie), review not yet published, but I'll say medium for this one. Pretty interesting, nice pushback against insane environmentalism but comes with a number of blind spots of her own.
- The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism (John Gray), it was so crap I barely finished it and certainly don't have anything valuable to say in review format. 1/10, don't bother.
- One From the Many: The Global Economy Since 1850 (Christopher Meissner), excellent introductory book to economic history with a great overview of key themes + figures of the last 170 years. I've almost finished the book, and there'll be a review with TDE in a month or so.
That's the twenty-two. I'm sure I missed one or two, and there's a plethora of books that are half-finished in my Kindle/PDF ARC folder, and a dozen or so physical copies on my desks.
That's what I've been up to for 2024. For the next year, I aspire to do more than one book every 2.3 weeks. Lazybones signing off, THANKS, everyone!
Let me know what you think of any of these books and if they're on your radar as well
:)
/J