And so the year is coming to an end. The vague ambition I initially had – to read a non-fiction book per week – proved to be unfeasible, much as I suspected.

A lofty goal is still useful, because even though I didn’t reach that number, I did get a lot further than last year, when I set a target of 25 books (and managed exactly that). With the last two titles, the total is 45 for 2023. I haven’t kept track of the number of pages, but with a conservative average of 250 per book, that would mean 11,250 pages read, which is plenty in my book 😋*.

So which were the last tomes of the year?

The Song of the Cell (Mukherjee) – a long and learned exposé of our cellular knowledge, and how increased understanding has changed medicine, ethics, and quite literally how we view the world. (4.5/5)

The Future of Geography (Marshall) – another title by a favorite author; a history of space as the next arena of human conquest, exploration and conflict. (5/5)

And that’s it. Hope some of the reviews have inspired you to pick up a title or two. The entire list is below. Well met in 2024!

Kvinnor jag tänker på om natten (kankimäki)

The magic of thinking big (Schwartz)

Zero to One (Thiel)

Jewels – a secret history (Finlay)

Gathering moss ((Wall Kimmerer)

The Democracy of Species (Wall Kimmerer)

What we owe the future (Macaskill)

Colors (Finlay)

Mountains of the mind (Macfarlane)

Creativity (Cleese)

80,000 hours (Todd)

Deep Work (Newport)

The startup of you (Hoffman)

Learning how to learn (Oakley)

Doing Good Better (Macaskill)

Poltava (Englund)

Under the skin (Villarosa)

A Thousand Brains (Hawkins)

Learning in the zone (Magana)

Bad Science (Goldacre)

Dollars and Sense (Ariely)

The Art of Learning (Waitzkin)

Pathogenesis (Kennedy)

The Richest Man in Babylon (Clason)

A message from Ukraine (Zelensky)

Ultra Processed people (van Tisseker)

Born in blackness (French)

Beyond Order (Petersen)

Renegades (Obama/Springsteen)

Factfulness (Rosling)

La Tapisserie de Bayeux (Lemagnen)

Trésors d’Océans (Mourot et al)

Servants (Lethbridge)

Ordinary Men (Browning)

Antwerp – the Glory Years (Pye)

More Than You Know (Mauboussin)

Democracy Awakening (Cox Richardson)

Gut (Enders)

Invention and Innovation (Smil)

Choose FI (Mamula)

The simple path to wealth (Collins)

Divided (Marshall)

Daring Greatly (Brown)

The Song of the Cell (Mukherjee)

The Future of Geography (Marshall)

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*It could have been more, too, but I made the deliberate choice not to count any book I didn’t finish, and there have probably been close to a dozen of those.