33 Books

There’s always more (and more) to read…

Nour Sidawi
8 min readJan 3, 2024
“An encouragement, perhaps, for other keen readers to add to their own ‘to read’ pile; and a gentle encouragement to add your recommendations to the #57Books ‘must read’ list; ripples flowing out from a ‘pebble in the pond’. (https://www.feastsandfables.co.uk/)

Thinking Outside the Books

Last year, I read 32 books read in the year of my 32nd birthday, plus a few change. You can read my book reviews here:

Since I find myself in the reading zone, I’m going to keep going. Though not every book proves memorable, I read because it is fun and I get a lot out of the books I read. The thing about being a voracious reader is there are always more books that I want to read than I have time for.

So, in the spirit of reading as many books as is fun for me, I will be reading 33 books over the course of this year (2024) to mark my 33rd birthday. It’s a few a month, with a few extras thrown in for luck.

The List

Here’s my list for 2024 to be guided by, or to lose yourself in. Some old, some new. All important reading, in no particular order.

1 — Nasty Women by Laura Jones (Editor)

2 — Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes

3 — Men Who Hate Women — From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates

4 — Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

5 — Know Your Place by Nathan Connolly (editor)

6 — English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks

7 — The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef

8 — The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

9 — Time’s Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and The Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler

10 — Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression by Alastair Campbell

11 — Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

12 — In a Time of Monsters: Travels Through a Middle East in Revolt by Emma Sky

13 — The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

14 — How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

15 — How to Run a Government: So That Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy by Michael Barber

16 — Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care by Madeleine Bunting

17 — Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping by Patrick Radden Keefe

18 — Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant

19 — Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

20 — A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall

21 — Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

22 — Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil, Joshua L Freeman (Translation)

22 — Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau

23 — The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

24 — Columbine by Dave Cullen

25 — First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety by Sarah Wilson

26 — Damascus Station by David McCloskey

27 — How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt

28 — The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail by Nick Wallis

29 — Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck

30 — A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

31 — The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee

32 — Deadly Quiet City: True Stories from Wuhan by Murong Xuecun

33 — Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance by Azam Ahmed

Beyond ‘The List’

1 — Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown

2 — VIRAL JUSTICE: How We Grow the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin

3— Criminal: How Our Prisons Are Failing Us All by Angela Kirwin

4 — Ghost Signs by Stu Hennigan

5 — Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

6 — We Do This ’til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba

7 — Voices of the Windrush Generation: The real story told by the people themselves by David Matthews

8 — Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

9 — Pesos: The Rise and Fall of a Border Family by Pietro La Greca Jr. and Rebecca Paley (Contributor)

10 — The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain by Kate Bingham and Tim Hames

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Nour Sidawi
Nour Sidawi

Written by Nour Sidawi

Reflecting on the complexity of systems and making change in government @UKCivilService . Part of @OneTeamGov