Like listening to music, reading is an activity that recharges the spirit. It offers a chance to unplug for an hour to fill your soul and slow down. I like reading after a long day in the city or on a slow weekend morning.
This is my fifth year in a row creating this book list for L.A. TACO, and similar to years before, as Los Angeles-centric as it is, it is also all-California and centered on building bridges in a time where we need all the interconnections we can get.
Below are 38 books, most of which were published in 2024. A few came out in late 2023, and three more were second editions of earlier books with a new foreword for the updated version.
I collect books in a kindred fashion with the bookshelves to prove it. Though I am partial to Los Angeles history, poetry, geography, and crime fiction, I dabble in books about architecture, basketball, creative writing, food, hip hop, jazz, urban studies, social psychology, and comparative religion.
Let’s dive in to the best books of 2024.