So here we are, the last week of 2024, and as promised, I have the very last book recommendation for you. This time around, I’m going to talk about my top five reads of 2024. I have to say, it wasn’t an easy task trying to distill the 50+ books I read this year into just five. Some of these books are classics, while others are more contemporary, but most of them were new reads for me.

The clock is ticking, and there are about two weeks left until the end of the year—or in other words, two more book recommendations before the end of 2024. This week, I am bringing something completely new. It’s a new experience for me personally because, for the first time ever, I’ve read a book on a subject that I can’t say I was very interested in before. That’s not to say the topic isn’t interesting or that I don’t care about it, but I never saw myself going out of my way to purchase a book about it.

As we get closer to the end of the year, people usually start reflecting—or at least I do—on what they’ve accomplished over the past 12 months. I start remembering my sometimes long-forgotten New Year’s resolutions from January 1st and begin piecing together a retrospective of the year. Was it a productive year? Did I accomplish the things I set out to do? Did unexpected events take place? How close did I stick to the original plans?

During the pandemic of 2021, after spending so many months worried about what was going on in the world and all the sad news about the many lives that were lost, being stuck at home, and trying to comfort family and friends, I felt that I needed something to help keep my sanity. I needed something to ground me a little and give me a sense of hope. Reading was definitely one of the things that helped.

Last week I recommended the book "Bewilderment" by Richard Powers, and if you saw it, you'll remember that I was actually halfway through it when I recommended it and that I had promised to come back and tell you a little more about the book. Well, it turns out that right after I posted that recommendation, I went on a 9-days vacation. I took some paid time off from work, and since we weren’t traveling anywhere, I took advantage of the downtime to get ready for Thanksgiving with my family—and to finish that book.

Hey everyone, this is Og Maciel from Bellwether with another book recommendation for you. Bellwether was this crazy idea I had when my wife and I booked an Airbnb place here in North Carolina. We wanted to celebrate our upcoming wedding anniversary in advance. My wife surprised me with this place in the middle of nowhere. As we spent three days there, we started talking about some of the things we wanted to achieve in 2024.

Hey everyone, this is Og Maciel with another book recommendation for Bellwether. Last week, I had the opportunity to give a presentation on career development for the team of an old teammate, who is now a software engineering manager himself. His team had just grown, and he happened to be doing what’s called a face-to-face meeting here in Raleigh. He asked me if I would come over to talk about career development.

Hey everyone, this is Og Maciel from Bellwether, and today I have a very different experience for you. I’m going to share a book that is peculiar because I’m still in the process of reading it. The book is called Hamilton: The Revolution and it contains all the lyrics and behind-the-scenes details of the play Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Even though I haven’t completed the book, I am very familiar with the content from watching the play multiple times on TV.