Hello! It’s time for my yearly reading post that no one asked for! Being a dutiful Enneagram Type 1, I log all my reading in a spreadsheet (#cool). And at the end of the year, I feel compelled to share my reading log lest my careful documentation go to waste. ANYWAY!
The basic numbers for this year: I finished 48 books in 2024. I started but did not finish seven. Of all the books I read/started, 51% were print, 31% were digital and, surprise, 11% were on audio. That’s right, this year I finally dabbled in audiobooks. I’m a big podcast gal but for whatever reason, I’d been holding out on audiobooks. But I had so many big solo drives this year (to and from North Carolina for school, to and from VCCA, to and from Delaware) that it seemed like the right time to try audio. After listening to eleven audiobooks, I have decided that audio is particularly well-suited for 1) fun accents; 2) an author reading their own work; and/or 3) polyphonic narratives. Not so great for extremely literary, low-plot, or single-voice novels, unless that voice is very compelling. For example, while driving up to Delaware, I had to turn off the Booker Prize winning novel Orbital because it was literally putting me to sleep.
Of the books I read, 80% were fiction; 20% were nonfiction. I read less nonfiction this year because of — you guessed it — school. In fact, a lot of my reading habits this year can be chalked up to school. For my program, I’m obligated to read about a book a week. You’d maybe think that this would result in higher numbers of books read per year, but it actually has the opposite effect, because I spend so much more time with each book for school than I would with a fun book. For school, I have to critically analyze much of what I read, which means reading and re-reading a given book, or reading slowly to take notes, etc. So the number of books this year is lower than in previous, non-school years, but that’s okay. I also read some truly massive doorstoppers this year. I kinda feel like if a book is over 600 pages, it should count as two books, but that’s just me.
Now, onto the superlatives! As always, I want to note that not all of these books were written in 2024. For example, one of the best books I read this year was Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers, which came out a couple of years ago and which I somehow missed. But I tried to focus my list on books that came out within the last year.
Best memoir
Knife, Salman Rushdie
Most surprising memoir
Sociopath, Patric Gagne
Best memoir/journalism hybrid
The Best Minds, Jonathan Rosen; Magic Pill, Johann Hari
Nonfiction thriller
There Is No Ethan, Anna Akbari
Book I can’t stop telling people about/best short fiction collection
Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte
Best novel
The Bee Sting, Paul Murray; The School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan
Best book in translation
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk
Most overhyped
The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff
Best short novel
Western Lane, Chetna Maroo
Best mystery
The God of the Woods, Liz Moore
Book that I should have read a long, long time ago
Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
To see my whole spreadsheet (and my notes on my reading), go here! And let me know what the best thing you read this year was.