đŸ’ȘThe 16 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2024

Your Books & Biceps Annual Reading List. Enjoy...

Author

Jon Finkel
December 13, 2024

Boom! This is Books & Biceps #330!

We begin with MONSTER NEWS:

Our Books & Biceps crew crossed the 20K subscriber mark this week! Yes, we’re over 20,000 readers strong! In fact, this issue is going to 20,188 of us!

Thank you to everyone who reads every week and who has shared this with someone to help us grow. On that note: Did an awesome B&B reader share this with you? Add your e-mail with the subscribe button below:

Before we get to our favorite issue of the year, The 16 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2024, here’s a word from this week’s sponsor: Nike. Yeah, Books & Biceps is big time now.

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THE 16 MOST MEMORABLE BOOKS I READ IN 2024

First, the question most new readers ask me: Why most memorable?

Because “best” and “top” in my opinion aren’t helpful when it comes to book recommendations. Your best and my top will be completely different for different reasons: mood, taste, interests, etc


But memorable is more universal. ‘Memorable’ means a book made an impact on me and if you’re reading this, it will likely make an impact on you, too.

One quick note:

As you’ll see, some of these books were not published this year. A few were holdovers from last year that I never got to and a bunch more were books that I’ve always wanted to read that I finally made time for.

And remember, I’m not a book critic. I’m a book champion. I know how hard it is to put books into the world so you won’t see me knocking other authors. If I love a book and it sticks with me, you’ll hear about it. That’s always been my rule of thumb for Books & Biceps.

The following books, as the title reads, are memorable. If you’re interested in reading 2022’s list you can check it out here. And you can read 2023’s list right here.

Let’s begin:

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant

This book is about a near 700-pound, 10-foot long tiger in Russia’s Far East (the remotest, coldest woods of Siberia), who attacks humans for sport and the men assigned with stopping it.

It’s a true story, meticulously researched and chronicled by author John Vaillant, who gives us a writing master class along the way. Just read how he describes the tiger at the heart of the story:

“
 picture the grotesquely muscled head of a pit bull and then imagine how it might look if the pit bull weighed a quarter of a ton. Add to this fangs the length of a finger backed up by rows of slicing teeth capable of cutting through the heaviest bone. Consider then the claws: a hybrid of meat hook and stilettos that can attain four inches along the outer curve, a length comparable to the talons on a velociraptor. Now, imagine the vehicle for all this: nine feet or more from nose to tail, and three and a half feet tall at the shoulder
 the tiger possesses the brute strength to drag a thousand pound carcass for a hundred yards before consuming it
”

Amazing, right? Check it out here.

Back in the day Bobby Gunn was a cruiserweight who had a few title shots but never won a belt. I vaguely remembered hearing that he was a bare knuckle fighter, but I had no idea he was a legend: an undefeated bare knuckle champion whose dad made him start beating people up when he was eleven years old. Yeah. Eleven.

This began an adolescence far different from the average teen. Instead of homework and science projects, Gunn fought grown men outside of biker bars, at motels, in Tijuana and on the streets of Vegas. His fights were gambled on by mobsters and criminals. He was a legitimate tough guy by age 13 and making thousands a night in underground street fights by his twenties


And I love Stayton Bonner’s writing:


Gunn seems relaxed. He throws fewer punches — sharp jabs, mostly to the body — but his land. After just 90 seconds, he shoots a quick left hook to the stomach, a right hook to the kidney, and a devastating deep left hook straight to the heart. As his opponent doubles over, Gunn delivers a final jab, to the chin.”

If that got you pumped to read the book, buy it here. 

I love unique, awesome book ideas executed to perfection - especially when they’re about fascinating topics.

In this case, author Rafi Kohan does a brilliant job fleshing out the origins, traditions, stories, masters and uses of one of the best parts of sports and competition: trash talk.

Here’s a little inside baseball: writing a book like this is HARD. You’ve got a sprawling topic that covers everything, then you have to come up with a structure, do your research, interview a ton of people and weave everything around the main spine of your subject while hitting it at all angles with interesting stories and differing perspectives. I’m telling you, this one is impressive.

So impressive, in fact, that I wanted to talk to Rafi for us about some of my favorite parts of the book, how he pulled it off and, of course, trash talking. You should definitely buy the book here and then check out our Q&A here.

One Second After: A Novel by William Forstchen

One Second After will stick with you because the fictional events in it seem so possible, so plausible, even, that you can’t ignore them.

Imagine you’re having your normal day. You work, you lift, you read Books & Biceps, you coach, you come home and then the electricity goes out. At first you think it’s just a normal outage, but nothing works: every piece of machinery with any electrical components stop working

Cars stop. Planes fall. Elevators stall. Everything everywhere with electricity is fried. And all communication everywhere is down. For good.

One Second After begins one second after an EMP attack (3 nukes detonated in the atmosphere) on the United States that wipes out our entire power grid and destroys everything with solid state electronics.

Then the book chronicles what one man does to protect his family and community when there is a shortage of
 well
 everything. The book resonates because it’s so easy to put yourself in the main character’s shoes and think, “What the hell would I do?”

Let me begin with this: just about everything I thought I knew about Einstein was wrong. The most glaring of which was his complete and abject failure at landing a coveted job as an assistant science professor after finishing school.

There are dozens and dozens of professors and schools throughout Europe in 1900 who rejected the great Albert Einstein for their faculty. It’s remarkable to read knowing what we know now


In fact, his famous job as a Swiss Patent Clerk wasn’t some menial job he fell into. He NEEDED that job and it took a friend of his with connections to make sure he landed it. THEN, in perhaps the most creative, earth-changing, double dipping side hustle in history, Einstein figured out how to do most of the work for his job in just a few hours a week
 Leaving him time to tinker, study, write and develop a little thing called The Theory of Relativity among a slew of papers that would turn the scientific world upside down.

If you’ve ever been even remotely interested in Einstein, this book is worth a read. Buy it here.

This is the agonizing, astonishing true story about a North Pole expedition in 1879 that plummets into hell - if hell was 1,000 miles north of Siberia stuck in a ship with no supplies and only the scantest chance at survival.

The descriptions of snow blindness will leave you squinting. The levels of desperation will keep you up at night. Plus, you’ll learn about George De Long, a 200 pound Naval Academy graduate who became what Arctic scientists called a “pagophile” - a creature that is happiest in the ice. His early description of the trip:

“We have taken on twelve dogs for sleds and we are now really worth looking at. The ship is black with dirt and coal dust, dogs packed away among the coal, sheep tied up forward and beef hanging right and left with fish here and there. We are really in a good state to go anywhere.”

The Six Pack: On the Open Road in Search of WrestleMania, is a road trip/memoir where the author, my buddy Brad, goes in search of his heroes from WrestleMania I, beginning with the Iron Sheik.

I personally loved Brad’s book and what many readers have said is that our books really complement each other, with Six Pack telling the tale of WrestleMania I and Macho Man’s rise after WrestleMania III bringing us into the Attitude Era.

I agree with this take and after reading The Six Pack, I sent Brad a bunch of questions that he was kind enough to answer for an exclusive Books & Biceps Q&A. You’re really going to enjoy this one! Read the interview here and buy The Six Pack here!

First Blood by David Morrell

I saw the movie First Blood and the sequels First Blood: Parts II & III a dozen times each before I learned they were based on a bestselling novel by David Morrell, which came out in 1972, a decade before Sylvester Stallone brought John Rambo to the big screen in 1982.

I admit that for years I wasn’t interested in the book because I loved the movies so much
 But I stumbled across a post by the author last year where he talked about all the differences between his book and the films
 and there were so many and they were so intriguing that I instantly bought the book.

What differences? I’ll share a few:

1) The novel takes places in rural Kentucky instead of the mountains and forest of Washington, which changes things action-wise.

2) Rambo is WAY more deadly and kills WAY MORE PEOPLE in the novel. I mean, SO many more.

3) No spoilers, but the ending is completely different and far more powerful in the book.

4) The writing is phenomenal, with some of the best, most compelling action scenes I’ve ever seen in print. Period. Some more thrilling than the scenes in the movie.

Makes you want to read the book, right?

Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman

I love big books that read like blockbuster action movies where the premise is so simple, yet compelling, that you’ve got to read it.

How’s this for a plot: An airplane crashes into a nuclear power plant that could meltdown and destroy the world. You in? You all the way in??? I was.

And I love the official log line for the book, too:

“The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now.”

You could easily see those words on a movie poster. And you can hear them from the famed movie trailer voice guy in your head
. “In a world that has seven levels of nuclear disasters
”

Now, of course, you have to deliver, and I’d say at this point Newman is a master at pacing, plotting and creating unique characters who you root for.

The Demon of Unrest is a historical masterpiece that takes us on a trip down the tragic road that led the United States to Civil War in the 1860s.

Using Fort Sumter as the focal point of the story, we’re introduced to an array of important historical figures via their surviving letters and journals, giving the story an accuracy and realness that is one of Larson’s calling cards. It also drops you directly into the tumultuous moments between Abraham Lincoln’s election and his taking office that proved to be disastrous for our country.

And you have to keep in mind that the Lincoln of 1859 and 1860 was an unproven, unheralded figure who many politicians and then-media members thought would be a colossal failure of a president. Add to that James Buchanan’s total incompetence and cowardice and you’ve got a nation teetering on the brink of war, with states seceding left and right, while in limbo between an inept leader and an uncertain one.

This is an intense, tremendous read that I can’t recommend enough. Grab your copy here.

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

This book, Mickey7, is my favorite kind of sci-fi because the main character isn’t some geeky science genius or odd alien or a ‘being’ from another dimension. He’s just a dude in the future who racked up an insane gambling debt and had to take perhaps the shittiest job in the universe on a space exploration vessel to a new planet.

In the far off future society of this book, humanity has figured out how to “grow” new versions of you in a tank. What happens is you constantly upload your thoughts and if you die, they simply download everything up to the moment you die into this new genetically identical body of yours


When the book opens, Mickey is on his 7th iteration as a front-line explorer/worst jobs ever guy, meaning, he’s expected to get hurt or die regularly. He is given the most dangerous tasks exploring a new planet because he’s the only Expendable they’ve got.

Fascinating, right?

I’ve recommended two of Montville’s books here in B&B: Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero and The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth


This Evel biography, though, was entirely different.

Instead of a straightforward, chronological biography, Montville took a biography/scattershot approach, mixing the trajectory of Evel’s life with side stories about Evel that illustrate a part of his personality from that time period.

The book reads like a great storyteller at a bar is telling you about the life of Evel Knievel, from his insane-but-true childhood in one of the craziest towns and places we’ve ever had: Butte, Montana in the 1940s and 50s
 to his time as a thief, drill operator, salesman, ski jumper, cowboy, grifter, drifter and ultimately daredevil.

Montville doesn’t miss. Grab your copy here.

This book by my buddy Pomp should be a must-own for every parent. It is composed of 65 letters that Pomp wrote to his kids on how to live an extraordinary life.

In the intro, Pomp writes: “I am proud of everything I have accomplished in my professional life, but the most important thing to me is ensuring that my children are prepared to be happy, productive citizens in the world.”

If you’re a parent reading this, you likely feel the same way.

This book is a compilation of things Pomp has learned across a variety of fields throughout his life: love, discipline, maturity, business, work ethic, friendship and on and on. Most importantly, this isn’t a book of answers. It’s a book of ideas. Of lessons. Of thoughts you can take with you and adapt to your own experiences.

I’m confident if you buy this book, it’ll do the most important thing a book can do: it’ll make you think. Grab your copy here.

Here is my official blurb for one of the coolest books of the year:

"Billy the Kid is an action-packed, fascinating look at the famous outlaw that is a more compelling and exciting prequel to Young Guns II than the actual first Young Guns film. Regulator readers. Mount up."

So, yeah. I loved it. I’ve been fascinated with Billy the Kid since I watched Young Guns II as an eleven-year-old. This is why I was so pumped to hear about Ryan Coleman’s new novel, Billy the Kid: it fleshes out his childhood and his early years and explores how small, young, anonymous Henry Antrim step-by-step became the most famous outlaw of his era.

We’ve also got great characters, exceptional dialogue and great set-pieces for key scenes in Kidd’s life. After reading, I instantly reached out to Ryan for an exclusive Books & Biceps interview. You’re gonna love this one. . Read our behind-the-book interview here and then buy the book here.

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield

I bought this book a few years ago and after catching a couple scenes from the movie 300 the other night I finally pulled it out of the coveted “to read” pile and dove in.

This Steven Pressfield book is a more detailed, more expansive, more historical version than the film, but is by no means a softer or more tame version of the story. If anything, it’s more naked in its ferocity in the description of the horrors of war and the battle itself and the towns being ransacked and taken over along the way.

There are disemboweled warriors, blood-soaked battles, spears and javelins tearing through flesh and agony from pain and loss. There are also feats of bravery, leadership, selflessness and brotherhood, which is why it’s so great.

This is a different kind of book, but one you’ll enjoy. Also, there’s plenty of biceps, which is a win for our crew. Check it out here.

If you were an NBA fan in the 80s and 90s you first knew Hakeem (then Akeem) as a member of the Phi Slamma Jamma hoops team at the University of Houston and then as the #1 overall NBA Draft Pick in 1984, the year Michael Jordan went #3. You also know him as the game’s dominant center for a decade, winning two NBA Finals and embarrassing a young Shaq, sweeping his Orlando Magic in 1995.

Whoever he was up against: Ewing, Shaq, David Robinson, Dikembe Mutombo
 Didn’t matter. His team usually came out on top.

Fader does a terrific job walking us through the characters in his life, his commitment to basketball, to winning, to his teammates, to Islam and to his community. This is a sprawling biography with nitty gritty details about some great NBA playoff battles in the 80s and 90s while shedding light on what made Olajuwon the man he became. Check it out here.

BOOKS FROM THE BOOKS & BICEPS CREW:

We have a bunch of up-and-coming and veteran authors who read this newsletter and I wanted to give them a chance to put their books in front of you as well.

Here are some books that your fellow sophisticated meatheads wrote this year and why they think you’ll enjoy them:

Pipeline to the Pros by Ben Kaplan

"The four teams most likely to win an NBA championship - according to current gambling odds -  are the Celtics, Thunder, Knicks, and Cavaliers. What do those organizations have in common? They're all run by a former Division III college basketball player. Pipeline to the Pros: How D3, Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA, by Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins, tells the story of the surprising number of big name general managers and head coaches who played D3 ball. Come for the stories about college-aged Jeff Van Gundy and Brad Stevens, stay for the insights on leadership, networking, and how coaching and management jobs have evolved throughout NBA history."

Larry Plumb Is Still Here is a poignant and humorous story about a man wrestling with relevance in a rapidly changing world. Larry Plumb, a fifty-six-year-old suburban Highway Commissioner in Western New York, faces challenges at home and work as his once-unquestioned authority is tested. Through daily routines like caring for his egg hens, navigating family dynamics with his wife and daughter, and dealing with municipal politics, Larry confronts questions of masculinity, identity, and belonging. With support from lifelong friends Mac and Burbs and moments of insight from the cosmic Dr. Johnson, he begins to understand what it means to stay relevant—not just to others, but to himself. Equal parts comedic and introspective, the novel offers a heartfelt exploration of middle age, resilience, and the quest to matter in a world that often feels indifferent.

Unconquered Walk-On is more than a sports memoir; it’s a testament to the power of faith in God, resilience, and an unbreakable will to succeed. Javien’s story encourages anyone facing long odds to believe in what’s possible and to pursue their dreams relentlessly. Through his journey, he shows that with faith, grit, and perseverance, anything is achievable.

Perfect for athletes, dreamers, and anyone looking for inspiration to overcome their own challenges, Unconquered Walk-On is a powerful reminder that the road to success is rarely smooth but always worth it.

Don’t Forget to Order Generation Griffey Today!

If you still wear your hat backward like Griffey, think all the Prime flavors are dumb because Gatorade Citrus Cooler is the greatest sports drink ever, miss Blockbuster and Tower Records, destroyed your friends in Street Fighter, GoldenEye, and NBA Jam, can quote Tommy Boy and Billy Madison, and never missed Stu Scott on SportsCenter —this book, Generation Griffey, is for you.

PS: You still reading Gus and Mallory? Thanks for getting through the whole thing! No skimming!

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