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.

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.

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.

Hi everyone, this is Og Maciel from Bellwether, here with your weekly book recommendation, which comes out every Tuesday. I hope you enjoyed last week’s episode. This week, I’m super excited to recommend a new book: "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray1. The book was published in 2010, but it wasn’t until this summer that I actually got my hands on a copy and started reading it. If you’re a fan of movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Superbad, or any movie about schools where a bunch of kids get together and get into mischief, I think you’re going to really like this book.

My journey with "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz began with a recommendation from my wife, who had been exploring a series of books written by authors from Spanish-speaking countries. I started reading it with some reluctance, as my past experiences with books where characters mix languages—using words from their mother tongue and the language of their adopted country—had often made me cringe. These narratives felt exaggerated and fake, much like Sofía Vergara’s accent in Modern Family.

Every now and then, my wife and I inadvertently catch ourselves reminiscing about the time when we first met and started dating, our decision to get married, and the choice to have a daughter “right away.” These and many other decisions from our past have shaped our destiny and influenced our growth as partners, parents, professionals, and decent human beings. We often find ourselves grappling with the quintessential question: given the chance to go back in time, would either one of us change any of those decisions?

"Cockfight" by the Equatorian writer, Maria Fernanda Ampuero, is not for the faint of heart. For an author to write good horror, they have to dare to be transgressive and name those things society is too afraid to look in the eye. Ampuero opens her short story collection with the story of a woman who is kidnapped by a taxi to be auctioned like cattle. In order to escape she defecates in front of a crowd to remind them she is not merchandise, but a human being.