I used My Year in Books and Goodreads Year in Review as a way to look back at how much and what I read in 2024. Here’s a recap.
How I Read in 2024
# of books read: 63, which includes 14 novellas. My goals this year were to read more horror, which I did, and more novellas, in particular all the 2024 Nebula Award nominees. I don’t focus too much on how many books I read each year, other than seeing how many I can cross off my My #20BooksofSummer and #BigBookSummer 2024 Reading List.
Genres: My most read genres this year was fantasy, largely because most of the novellas I read were in this genre. This was followed by mystery/thriller and horror. I read very little in other genres this year so next year I do want to read more novellas in other genres (less fantasy). I need to branch out! Send me your favorites.
Number of new vs old books: 17 books (27%) of the books I read were new releases (compared to 13 last year), and that’s probably due to the fact that I started using NetGalley to request advanced reader copies of books. Another 23 were published in 2023 (37%) – which means that more than 50% of the books I read were published in the last 2 years.
Reading Formats: It’s should be no surprise as I’ve mentioned that most of my reading is consumed via audiobooks. This year though, I intentionally added in more eBooks & physical books – 18/62 – so approximately 30%.
My Stars ★: The average star rating for the books I read in 2024 is 4.0 (out of 5). I’m usually generous with my ratings because I’m relatively easy to please. I had 20 5-star reads this year and 22 4-stars. So 70% of the books I read were 4 or 5 stars. I only had 4 2-star reads – that rating goes to the books I disliked but finished. I give a 1-star rating to books that I couldn’t finish – and only 1 of those this year – X’s for Eyes, Laird Barron. I stopped reading about 60% of the way through. This novella is weird – which I normally like – but it jumps around from like scene to scene making everything confusing.
Other Things of Note: I used to track if I was reading books by people of color, but I don’t track that anymore. I intentionally reach for at least 1 book a month by a POC, but I could still stand to incorporate a lot more.
Annual Reading Challenges
Earlier this year, I shared a look at My 2024 Reading Challenges – the 4 annual challenges I participated in this year. Here’s how I did.
The 2024 Key Word Reading Challenge
The Key Word Reading Challenge is one of my favorite reading challenges because there’s 8 words to choose from each month, making it broad enough for any taste, yet it can still be challenging to find a book and it’s almost as much fun finding what works, as it is reading the book.
Completed: 12/12 – reading a key word for each month of the challenge.
Favorite Books Read: The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo in April for the Key Word: Familiar – and – Murder Road, Simone St. James in June. Key World: Road. Both of those books were by authors I’ve read before, and loved previous books by them so it was no surprise.
2024 Motif Reading Challenge
Completed: 12/12 – reading a book for each monthly theme.
Reflection: My most creative interpretation of a challenge prompt was in May – read a book with a face on it. I chose Maeve Fly, CJ Leede which has about half a face on it – licking an eyeball and a bunch of teeth in a zipper like pattern. A creepy chaotic cover, and book.
- Favorite books: For February: Dynamic Duos: Read a book with a couple of characters that make the perfect pair – I loved my choice Razorblade Tears, S.A. Crosby, and then I saw that another book by that author would work for the next month’s challenge – March: Thrill Me – Read a thriller. For that I read All the Sinners Bleed, which was just as fantastic.
A to Z Book Titles
The A to Z Book Titles 2024 Edition was the first challenge I completed (in November). I read a book for every letter of the alphabet – getting creative with “X” which was included in a word in the title.
Favorite Book: It’s much harder to pick a favorite book from this list, so I’ll mention one that I haven’t mentioned yet – The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna. I picked it up because of the creative title and had zero expectations, and I ended up loving it, and it has one of my Favorite Book Covers of 2024.
The Scavenger Hunt TBR Challenge
The Scavenger Hunt TBR Book Challenge was the most challenging! I didn’t get to the last 2 clues, so did 9/11.
Hardest Prompts: #4 Go to the acknowledgements of the last book. What name did you first see? Find a book written by an author with that name. That name was Harriett! I had never read a book by a Harriett, and it was hard to find a book that I thought I would like. I ended up choosing Blood Orange, Harriett Tyce, and it was really good. The next prompt that gave me a challenge was #7. Find a book with the same amount of pages as the last book and read it. It was hard to find a book that I thought I would like with 400-430 pages. I ended up reading The Teacher, Freida McMahon and I really enjoyed it – and plan to read more from her.
I’m not one to make reading goals for the year, so for next year, all I’ll say is that I plan to continue being an avid reader. I’m still figuring out which reading challenges I want to participate in, so I’ll share that another time. What about you – how many books did you read in 2024? Did you participate in any reading challenges? Are you participating in any in 2025?
