I decided to continue with my tradition of listing the best books I read yearly. Starting by bringing some numbers of my reading habits and talking specifically about what I consider the top books for the past year. Small remainder, some people may disagree, but I considered audiobooks as “reading”.

Summary of the Year

Here are some of my metrics:

• I read 41 books
  • My best month was December, when I read eight books.
  • My worst month was July and October, with one book read each.
• Language: 68.3% of the books that I read were in English, the remainder were in Portuguese
• Formats: 61% in audiobook, 29.3% in physical/paper, and 9.8% in ebook/screen/digital.
• Categories/Tags: my top type of book read was self-help, with 18 books read this year that I added to this category.

Books read per month, first based on the format and the second graph based on language:

Here are the tags that I classified the books:

Some results first on the ratings that I added, in the middle per language in total and format in total again:

By doing a comparison per year since I started to track my reading habits in 2020. Some insights:

• I read three more books than the previous year, which isn’t much, but it is good to have this habit of increasing the quantity over time. Hopefully, this will grow more next year.
• Most books that I read between 2023 and 2024 are related to audiobooks.
• In 2024, I read more physical books and less about ebooks/digital.

Top Books

I listed the books I considered the best I read in 2024. The list has no particular order, and I decided to give a small review to lead you to read it without going into too much detail or bringing unnecessary spoilers. Here is the list:

Project Hail Mary

• Author(s): Andy Weird
• Format Read: Audiobook
• Category: Science Fiction
• Review: I was never a massive adopter of audiobooks precisely because I doubted that they would work in pieces of fiction while I was doing other things. I was wrong in many ways, and this book proved to me that. I loved reading it, the narration in Audible, and how the story was built. I had only read ‘The Martian’ in ebook format and decided to try it via audio. This book is also why I love to get into it without knowing too much about it, so I can be surprised at every new chapter. It is a big recommendation for people who enjoy science fiction.

The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World’s Fastest-Growing Sport

• Author(s): Joshua Robinson, Jonathan Clegg
• Format Read: Audiobook
• Category: Sports
• Review: I decided to follow more about Formula 1 this past year, so this book was a good summary of the sport. The authors spend more pages in the most modern time, from the last 30 years to recent racers and cars, which I think is more interesting to keep track of the people in it. I enjoyed it a lot, and it was an interesting read for anyone who wants to learn more about the sport at an intermediary level.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way Of True Inspiration

• Author(s): Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
• Format Read: Audiobook
• Category: Business, Art
• Review: I love animations overall, and a book that goes into detail about the creation and rise of the principal animation studio in the world is something that I had to read. The narration itself wasn’t perfect, mainly because the author was doing it. Still, I loved the content and the history behind each significant movie and release that Pixar did, and also when Pixar joined Disney later on. I strongly recommend this book for people who want to get more into business and run a large company or who love animation overall.

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power Of Giving People More Than They Expect

• Author(s): Will Guidara
• Format Read: Audiobook
• Category: Business
• Review: I decided to read this book after watching a YouTube video from the author (check here). Since I work in a service company, delivering technical solutions for a consulting company, I decided to read this book and give it a chance. Interestingly, the author quotes several examples of how he built specific experiences for people in the restaurants where he worked. It was a great read and a solid recommendation for service industry professionals.

Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications

• Author(s): Chip Huyen
• Format Read: Ebook/Digital
• Category: Tech, Data Science
• Review: The author discusses the essential elements of machine learning, leading to production environments, specific architectures to feed models with new data, training, and other strategies. I recommend this book to those from the data team who want to support machine learning projects or machine learning engineers who need to be more aware of the operations side (e.g., continuous integration, continuous deployment, observability, monitoring).

For Next Year

It was an excellent year for my reading habits overall, but I do have some things that I want to do differently in 2025:

1. Explore books in a new language, most likely being Spanish. I plan to have around five more books in something beyond Portuguese and English.
2. Keep the reading numbers of audiobooks, but reserve more time to read paper books.
3. Check fiction for audiobooks, and I can change this habit to open the doors for new types of reading experiences.
4. Write a summary of each book that I read. I was inconsistent on that in 2024, and I want to keep it as a habit this new year.

Let me know if you enjoyed my list or if any other books should be interesting for me to read in 2025!