2024 reading wrap-up
exploring my year of reading, stats + favourite and least favourite books
Hi all! Long time no see!
So Iβve been overseas again (New Zealand this time) for Christmas, but Iβve been really excited to get back here and do a little recap of my reading year.
This year was an interesting reading year for me. I definitely had one of the βhardestβ readings years, in terms of just enjoying my reading and being able to really βget intoβ my books. This is something I used to find so effortless and now struggle with a bit, which I think is down to a few factors.
One of them is definitely that damn phone. Iβve found myself more and more distracted by it which cuts into my reading time and also ability to concentrate.
Another factor is just general adulting - having less time and feeling less βsettledβ when I read because I can think of other things I βshouldβ be doing. I probably need some strategies to mitigate this but Iβm not sure what yet, so we ball.
I also think I set myself way, way too many reading challenges last year. Ultimately, Iβm a mood reader and having these big TBRs and challenges I had set myself didnβt really do anything except stress me out and make me feel bad for not reading what I was βsupposed toβ. If I only read 52 books in a year and 44-ish of them are pre-determined that just isnβt going to work for me. I love making TBR lists but they ultimately arenβt that realistic in practice.
That said, I definitely still read some great books and had a lot of fun with my reading year. This one was pretty diverse with lots of books across genres, from different parts of the world which is really cool. I also read some great 2024 releases and made progress on quite a few reading goals, which is super exciting.
Letβs dive into it, shall we?
the best β¦ and the worst
3 favourites:
If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin
Another fantastic book by one of my favourite authors. Reading Baldwinβs prose takes me to a beautiful place, I canβt describe it I just love it. I love the characters he writes and the stories, they feel so real and raw to me.
Blue Sisters, Coco Mellors
By far my favourite 2024 release. The characters in this felt so real to me, I loved every single one of them and the exploration of grief, addiction and love in this book. I still find myself thinking about this book and these characters a lot.
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
I didnβt have that much familiarity with Orwell before reading this - having only read Animal Farm of his works in high school, but this absolutely blew me away. The writing was impeccable and the way the city is drawn out in this, as itβs own living breathing character, absolutely thrilled me. The experiences are pulled from his own life and as a result, I found a lot of the descriptions of hunger, poverty and being βdown and outβ to be very vivid.
3 least favourite:
Bruny, Heather Rose
This was so unbelievably badβ¦ essentially just xenophobic nonsense. Technically I DNFβed this but I did read the end chapter to finish it to see where it went and Iβm so glad I didnβt read the whole thing because wowβ¦. so bad. Some Australianβs need to put down the pen for real.
Mile High, Liz Tomforde
This was bad but an even worse crime to me was that it was boring. A 600 page romance novel has no business being BORING. It was really just the same issues rehashed over and over. Again, this author needed to put the pen down. Also, the writing was BAD bad. I donβt just mean βnot to my tasteβ, but actively bad. It so clearly needed an editor because the author would use half a page to describe someone walking through a door, which also contributed to the long and boring page count.
Beartown, Fredrik Backman
Now this is probably not actually the worst BUT it made the list because of how much it let me down. I genuinely thought this would be a 5 star read for me but I found it such a slog and almost DNFβed it. I think I just need to accept I do not like this authors writing - I really hate saccharine writing and that is literally his bread and butter. I also just didnβt find this books exploration on any of the themes to be particularly interesting, enlightening or nuanced. I really donβt get the hype with this book/author, and I donβt think Iβll read any other books of his.
and some books that were just forgettableβ¦
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
Despite this being a sort of modern classic, it really went in one ear and out the other for me. I can sort of remember the bare bones of this story if I really try but it truly just left no lasting impact on me. I also sort of get it confused with Youth by Tove Ditlevsen which is the same concept but executed better in my opinion? All the brain space that Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit may have occupied is taken up by Youth already.
Relay, Layla Reyne
Gun to my head, you could ask me to name one thing that happened in this book and I could not tell you. Literally forgot I even read this until I scrolled down my Goodreads challenge. Forgettable in the most literal sense. Sorry to this book, but I wouldnβt know a thing.
The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo
Like Beartown, this is here for how much it let me down. While itβs not THE most forgettable, itβs pretty forgettable for a LEIGH BARDUGO book. I absolutely love her, and can remember minute details in all her other books because I like them all so much but this did nothing for me. Sometimes I forget she even realised a 2024 book which is insane considering I expected this to be on my best of end of year lists.
goal wrap-up
goal 1: read down my physical tbr
In total, I read 14 books on my physical TBR, ten of which were books that were on my owned TBR before the beginning of the year. The other four were books I bought and read this year. This means I overall reduced my TBR by about half.
Even though some end of year book purchases + Christmas and birthday present books bumped my TBR back up again, Iβm overall happy with the progress I made reducing books on my TBR which had been there for some time. Iβm particularly happy about the amount of classics I was able to get through.
My main goal with this challenge was really to get books which have been languishing on the TBR a long time and I do feel I made good progress toward this goal. Though Iβll probably need to do it again in 2025 because I really would like to reduce those numbers a little more and βfreshen upβ my owned TBR.
Goal 2: read 10 translated and 10 Australian books
I finished the year with six translated books and seven Australian books. I would say even though I didnβt finish this challenge, Iβm okay with the progress I made. I didnβt end up reading as many books overall this year, so it wasnβt as βeasyβ to meet all my goals because I hadnβt read enough books to have twenty of them be this specific, amongst all the other things I wanted to read.
I also think this challenge suffered a little with how many more owned books I ended up reading than I thought, but that is okay since that is more of a priority goal than this one.
Goal 3: continue my monthly random pick
Every month I like to randomise my Goodreads TBR and read the first book that comes up. The purpose is to get to some backlist books which have fallen out of my brain a bit and itβs just a little fun and exciting. I definitely read some books I probably wouldnβt have picked up for a long time with this method which I love!
I think this was semi-successful, I did it some months and not others, but I also joined a bookclub mid way through this year so some months that book became the random pick. I do think this is something Iβd like to keep going next year but I may just do it more sporadically or possibly pick one every 1-2 months.
These were the random selections for 2024. My favourite was Lady Joker, and my least favourite was Allβs Well which I DNFβd.
These are the books I read with my book club this year. My favourite was The Pisces (LOVED that book) and my least favourite was Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.
Goal 4: finish 24 in 24
I finished 14 of the 24 books Iβd marked out to read. Though I did start Sword Catcher at one point and light dnfβed it (Iβll probably come back to it at some point, but I wasnβt in the mood at the time) for 15, and I also read A Room With a View instead of Howardβs End, which works since I really just wanted to read one of the Forster books I owned.
Some of the books I didnβt read, Iβll admit I just lost interest in. Though I do wish I had read The Savage Detective because itβs been on my TBR for so long, as well as When We Were Orphans and Eva Luna because I own those.
Even though I didnβt technically finish this goal, I do feel happy with the progress I made overall. I struggle with set TBRβs like this but I found I actually enjoyed having it to refer back to through the year when I wasnβt sure what I was in the mood to read.
Some stats:
Iβve pulled out some stats from my reading tracker to finish my wrap-up!
That is my 2024 wrap-up! Of course there is probably more I could discuss, but the thing is Iβm so excited to have this year wrapped so I can move into 2025. I felt this year was bordering on a dud one for reading so Iβm hoping 2025 is much more productive and fruitful!
Would love to hear how everyone else is feeling about their 2024 reading and some stats from your reading year!