Editor’s Note: Every year as we enter the holiday season, we take a moment to pause and look back on the best books we encountered (not a “best books of 2024″ list, but a list of the best books the Chefs read during 2024 — the books might be classics, a few years old, or brand new). In recent years we expanded our list to include any sort of cultural creation or experience our Chefs wanted to share. 

Here’s Part 2 of our list, Part 1 can be found here and Part 3 is here.

Jasmine Wallace

Disclaimer: If I say “reading,” I really mean “listening on Audible.” It’s 2024, after all, and carving out time to sit and read feels like a luxury. This year, reconfiguring my work and life meant leaning into audiobooks, and I discovered three incredible reads (or listens): Digital Body Language, Never Not Working, and the life changing Just As I Am.

Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance by Erica Dhawan

I picked up Digital Body Language in an airport on my way to SSP the year before last and have been reading it off and on (don’t judge me). Drawn by its bright orange cover and the subtitle: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. This book spoke directly to my struggle of communicating effectively over Zoom, where there’s no actual body to read for cues. Traditional body language cues are often absent or filtered in the digital environment, which has caused me, and likely many of us, to wonder how best to express ourselves.

This book provides tested strategies for doing just that, without reinventing the wheel. Instead, it offers a guide to adapting communication methods — taking concepts we’re used to from face-to-face conversations and translating them into emails, video calls, and texts in a way that fosters real understanding. The author emphasizes that we don’t have to replicate traditional interactions but rather use “digital body language” to bridge gaps in a remote world. One of my favorite examples illustrated just how we misuse digital interactions in place of water cooler chats and how, with slight adjustments, we can build rapport even from miles away.

To top it off, this book was written before the pandemic, which, for me, shows how forward-thinking and relevant these insights are. Please note that after purchasing the book, I still shifted to an Audible download.

Never Not Working: Breaking Free from the Culture of Overwork by Malissa Clark

For those of us inclined to overwork — myself included — Never Not Working feels like a lifeline. After recently recovering from burnout, I’ve been searching for ways to create a healthier life-work balance. Recommended as an antidote to overcommitment and rewarding workaholism, this book dives into the cultural reasons we glorify workaholism and how detrimental that has become.

The author clarifies that true workaholism is not simply “working a lot,” but a condition with deeper roots and more harmful effects. Through a mix of history and personal insights, she demystifies how we got to this overworked state and gives practical advice on undoing unhealthy habits. Her guidance on shifting away from toxic productivity, while reinforcing that it’s okay to have downtime, really hit home for me. If, like me, you’ve felt the pull of endless to-do lists, Never Not Working is worth your time.

Just As I Am: A Memoir by Cicely Tyson

Lastly, Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson was the book I didn’t know I needed. As she writes, “Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain, unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside.” I thought I knew Tyson’s story, but this memoir illuminated how little I actually understood of her journey, her struggles, and her triumphs.

Tyson didn’t write this book until age 92, explaining that she waited until she had something meaningful to say. And meaningful it was. Her reflections moved me deeply, inspiring me to lean into resilience and trust the purpose in each stage of life. I recommend this book to anyone who feels they don’t have a story worth telling; Cicely Tyson’s wisdom shows that each of us has an impact that can reach beyond our understanding.

Whether you’re managing digital relationships, striving for balance, or seeking inspiration to tell your own story, these books offer profound insights. And if you’re listening on Audible like me, I promise these stories will resonate just as deeply.

Rick Anderson

As usual, because my reading tends strongly to book review journals and crime novels, I’m going to recommend some of the best albums that have crossed my desk this year in my role as a music reviewer.

First on the list is an utterly gorgeous and entrancing album by the small choral ensemble VOCES8. It’s a pretty unusual one, in that it consists primarily of pieces that are choral arrangements of music by composers well outside the mainstream of contemporary classical music: Max Richter, video game music composer Koji Kondo, Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, etc. (along with more conventional selections by the likes of Max Reger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw). The album is titled Nightfall and, unsurprisingly, its unifying theme is nighttime. The music is modern but highly accessible, some of it drawing on sacred and some on secular texts, and the singing is both warm and uncannily precise. I review hundreds of albums every year, and this one is easily in the top five releases I’ve heard in 2024.

For jazz fans, this past year has yielded something exceptionally exciting: a trove of previously undiscovered recordings by Charlie Parker, the saxophonist who (along with trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, drummer Kenny Clarke, pianist Thelonious Monk, and a handful of others) is credited as one of the primary architects of bebop – a jazz style that emerged in the early 1940s, reacting to the big band swing sounds of the 1930s with stripped-down ensemble sizes, frenetic tempos, and knotty melodic lines (over chord changes that, ironically enough, were often taken from the same jazz standards the swing bands had been playing). Parker and his crew effectively turned jazz from dance music to concert music, and on Bird in Kansas City you’ll hear him both with his old mentor Jay McShann and in the home of his friend Phil Baxter, accompanied only by an unidentified bassist and drummer. As a pure listening experience, this album will be of primary interest to jazz specialists – but as a historical document it’s priceless.

A few months ago, the Uganda-born, Austin-based singer/songwriter Jon Muq released what I think is one of the most perfect R&B albums of the past ten years. And really, I’m not sure you can even call it an R&B album, though elements of R&B are there. The thing is, it’s basically just a perfect pop album, with superb singing, sharp arrangements, and hooks that will stay with you for days. In addition to the subtle soul inflections, you’ll also catch a hint of the Ugandan pop music known as kadongo kamuin some of the guitar work – but really, there’s no good genre designation for this album, which of course just makes it that much more fun. It’s titled Flying Away, and it’s magnificent.

Robert Harington

My grandparents were born at the turn of the 20^th century. They lived in and experienced Vienna at the height of its cultural and creative peak; as intellectual Viennese Jews, they lived through two world wars and the personal and global horrors that followed the Anschluss. Eventually, they were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

I have been meaning to read Stefan Zweig’s book, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European, for ages, yet somehow never got around to it. But as our world appears to tilt towards extremism, and the value of culture, intellectual thought, and decency subsides, I felt now was the time to read this book. It is in turns beautiful, sad, eloquent and horrific – a book I needed to have read.

Born in 1881 in Vienna, Zweig and his wife tragically took their own lives in 1942 in exile in Petrópolis, Brazil (near Rio de Janeiro). He was one of the most important and eloquent writers of his time, who witnessed the loss of his cultural Europe – a Europe he loved. In his suicide note he wrote, “I prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness.” He mailed the manuscript for The World of Yesterday to his publisher the day before he took his own life.

The book is remarkable. I read it in translation of course, and it is beautifully and absorbingly written. The translation was by Anthea Bell, who is also the English translator of a favorite book of mine, Austerlitz by W.G Sebald. Bell also translated Władysław Szpilman’s autobiographical account of how he survived the German occupation of Warsaw, which was turned into an incredible movie called The Pianist, starring Adrien Brody as Szpilman.

Zweig portrays Vienna as the century turned – an intellectual and cultural haven. He said, “You were not truly Viennese without a love for culture, a bent for both enjoying and assessing the prodigality of life as something sacred”.

Jews were drawn to this life in Vienna. Zweig, at the beginning of the book, sums up his life before World War I by calling this time “The Golden Age of Security”.

“For Jews, adaptation to the human or national environment in which they lived was not only a measure taken for their own protection, but also a deeply felt private need. Their desire for a homeland, peace, peace repose and security, a place where they would not be strangers, impelled them to form a passionate attachment to the world around them”.

The years before the First World War were enchanted. “Everything conveyed a sense of growth and the wider distribution of wealth…there was progress everywhere.” “Everyone was proud of youth. Suddenly beards disappeared, first in the younger men, then shaved off by their elders, imitating them so as not to be thought of as old.” So many artists emerged from this time — from art to music to literature. Zweig idolized the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. When Zweig published his first book of poems, Rilke took notice, much to Zweig’s astonishment. The composer Max Reger also asked Zweig’s permission to set six of his poems to music. Much of art, from philosophy to science to literature across the world, appears to have its foundation in Vienna during this time period. In fact, a very recent book entitled Vienna: how the City of Ideas Created the Modern World, written by Richard Cockett, a senior editor at The Economist, tackles this premise in detail – it is next on my list of books to read.

Of course, as we know, this cultural life of Vienna was temporary. With European expansionism, the rise of Serbian nationalism and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the world, uncomprehending of what may follow, tumbled into World War I. Zweig eloquently describes his “…battle against the betrayal of reason to the current mass passion.” You walk away from this book with a deep sense of horror, as well as worry about our current state of affairs.

Of course, what happens as Hitler rises to power is covered by Zweig. He admits to not seeing it coming. “In 1933 we did not imagine that one percent of these events could be possible, but they came about within weeks”. Zweig was exiled to England, the USA and then Brazil, and died in ignorance of the true nature of the Holocaust. But clearly, the shadow of horror loomed over Zweig as he wrote this book and then, tragically, ended his life.

This is an amazing book, one that feels personal. Today, it seems clear to me that we have an obligation to remember how quickly and easily we can descend into horror – we can’t go there again.

Roohi Ghosh

As a parent to a 9 year old , I am grappling with new challenges and constantly thinking of ways to open his mind to the world beyond the obvious. I found this book of life lessons Just Because by actor and author Matthew McConaughey very insightful in so many ways, not just for my son but for me too. It made me stop, think, and reflect about my own life. On the surface, it may seem like a book for children alone, but there are lessons to be learnt about polarity.

Our discussions last year in academia too have revolved around polarity, i.e., dualities or complementary opposites — quality control versus speed to publication, open access versus revenue sustainability, traditional processes versus technological innovation. And I feel this book is a ready reminder to accept these dualities and move away from zero-sum thinking. Here are some excerpts from the book that led to some interesting conversations with my son and made me stop and think:

“Just because I’m at the top, doesn’t mean I cannot fall”

“Just because I let go, doesn’t mean I stopped climbing”

“Just because I finished, doesn’t mean that I’m done”

“Just because you got the gold, doesn’t mean you won”

“Just because I did it again, doesn’t mean I don’t regret it”

“Just because you failed, doesn’t mean that you blew it”

“Just because they shut me down, doesn’t mean I have not won”

“Just because they don’t hear you, doesn’t mean you have no choice”

“Just because I’m sitting still, doesn’t mean I’m not busy”

“There’s what you do, there’s what I do, And yours is not my must”

“Just because I’m in the race, doesn’t mean I’m fully ready”

“Just because you follow, doesn’t mean you’re not a leader”

“Just because we disagree, doesn’t mean you’re not right”

These lines have led to some meaningful discussions as I help my son navigate life in a new country and new school and get him to accept cultural differences, make friends, stay open, and accept.

More recommendations in Part 3 tomorrow.