2024 Reading Year in Review

I started doing a specific "Reading Year in Review" post in 2020. I figured that since I was doing an overall year in review post (which includes some book information anyway), and a blogging year in review post -- and since keeping track of my books is a big thing I normally do on my blog -- my reading life deserved its own year-end wrap-up post too.  :)  

(Note:  I have not linked to all the books mentioned here, but they are all reviewed on this blog.) 

How did I do?  

I increased my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal from 36 books in 2021 to 45 books in 2022, kept (and met) that goal for 2023, and retained it for 2024. Unfortunately, it became apparent by mid-year that it was going to be a stretch to reach it! (largely because I took on a few more book clubs/readalongs, including ones where we were reading & discussing some pretty LONG books!). 

• My Goodreads 2024 Year in Review report tells me I read 37 books with 15,320 pages (versus 48 books with 16.980 pages in 2023 and 50 books with 17,047 pages in 2022). That's 8 books below my goal of 45 or 82%.  (My best result ever: 59 books in 2021.) All the books I read were reviewed on this blog and tagged "2024 books." 
• The shortest book I read was "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy (167 pages); the longest was "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (1,938 pages). 
• Average book length was 414 pages (up from 353 pages in 2023). 
• The most popular book I read ( = most shelved by Goodreads readers) was "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert (2.7 million readers);  the least popular was "No One Talks About This Stuff" edited by Kat Brown (279 readers).   
• The highest-rated book I read was "My Effin' Life" by Geddy Lee (4.68 stars). 
• My average Goodreads rating in 2023 was 4.2 stars (same as the last two years).  
• In 2021, I also started tracking books on The StoryGraph, which provides slightly different stats (and even more, with a paid subscription -- although I don't have one of those!). 
• StoryGraph reports that I read 37 books with 15,658 pages (slightly more than Goodreads recorded). 
• Average time to finish:  2 months (!). (This would be because of the readalongs I take part in...!) 
• Fastest read/least time spent:  "The Cost of Living" by Deborah Levy (3 days).
• Most time spent:  "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (362 days, at one chapter per day, with a few days off along the way). 
• The top "moods" of my books were overwhelmingly "emotional" (value: 17) and "reflective" (10), followed by "lighthearted" (9), "mysterious" (5), and "informative," "funny," "dark" and "challenging" (4).    
• The vast majority of my books were medium-paced (66%). 26% were slow and 9% fast. 
• 64% of my 2024 books were 300-499 pages;  19% were less than 300 pages and 17% were over 500 pages. 
• 81% of my 2024 books were fiction;  19% non-fiction. This is a big change from recent years! (I credit the many book clubs I take part in, which mostly focus on fiction.)
• My most-read genre in 2024 was historical, followed by literary, then contemporary and romance.     
• StoryGraph also tracks the format of your books, but selects print as the default. 68% of my reads this year were recorded as digital, 32% print.  Note that some books do not have a "digital" option, in which case I choose print. 
• Most-read authors in 2024:  D.E. Stevenson (6 books), followed by L.M. Montgomery (4 books) and Hilary Mantel (3 books).  
• Average rating 4.06 stars. (Unlike Goodreads, The StoryGraph allows fractional star ratings.) 
• Most shelved book:  "Persuasion" by Jane Austen (161,000+ users). Least shelved: "Queen High" by C.J. Carey (just 16 users). 
• Highest rated:  "No One Talks About This Stuff" edited by Kat Brown (4.56 stars;  my rating was 5 stars). 
• I explored the work of 14 new authors, read 15 books that were part of a series, and revisited/re-read 11 books. 
• Once again this year, fiction choices outnumbered non-fiction (many of them re-reads, but still...!):  24 fiction, 13 non-fiction.
• Re-reads -- which I started counting as books read in 2020 -- accounted for a good chunk of my 2024 total (11 according to StoryGraph -- see above). Some were books that I read on my own and then immediately afterward as part of a group readalong/discussion, while others were books that I've read in the past and revisited this year.  
• Online, the Childless Collective Nomo book club (I'm one of the hosts!), D.E. Stevenson fan group, L.M. Montgomery Readathon on Facebook, and slow readalongs with Footnotes & Tangents on Substack helped boost my 2024 reading totals and provided me with a lot of reading/discussion pleasure. 
• My book groups were responsible for 19 of the 37 books I read in 2024 -- almost half!  I read 12? books as part of the Childless Collective book club or in preparation for other book-related discussions (including finishing Jody Day's "Living the Life Unexpected"), 6 for DES (3 different books, each counted twice as re-reads), and 4 for the L.M. Montgomery Readathon (2 different books, both counted twice as re-reads). 

Goals for 2025: 

• As noted above, I ended the year with 37 books read. I did not reach my Goodreads Reading Challenge Goal of 45 books (nor did I come anywhere near equalling my 2021/best-recorded total of 59 books, when my goal was 36).  Nevertheless, I've decided to maintain my goal of 45 books in 2025 ( = 3.75 books per month on average)(and hope to do better...!). I may be repeating one or both of my slow readalongs of "War & Peace" and the Cromwell Trilogy, which took up a lot of my reading time this year -- but I think this is still a realistic & reachable goal for me right now (albeit a bit of a stretch one!). 
• I've read more than 45 books in four of the past six years (2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023), and almost 45 (i.e., 43) in 2020 -- so 45 books still seems very do-able.  But I'd be thrilled to be able to improve on that goal, too!  
• While I'm grateful for my book groups and the boost they give to my reading totals, and while I intend to keep up with them in 2025, I'm hoping to be able to read more of my own choices this coming year too.  :)   

2024 Highlights:  

• Like so many people, I tried reading "War & Peace" by Leo Tolstoy... once. It was 40+ years ago, and I think I got about 60 pages in before abandoning ship. But I always thought I should give it another try... someday. When I first heard about the Footnotes & Tangents slow read in late 2023, I was deep in other book club/readalong obligations and figured I needed another one like a hole in the head... but it was an irresistible opportunity, and I took the plunge. As 2024 draws to a close, I am so glad I did. One chapter per day is entirely do-able, and the character wiki, daily chat threads with other readers and Simon's weekly context posts all contributed to an enormously enjoyable (and -- dare I say? -- fun!) experience. I'll very likely be back for another round in 2025! Thanks, Simon, and thanks to the other W&P-ers for what's turned out to be one of the highlights of my year. ❤
• Likewise, "Wolf Crawl" -- Footnotes & Tangents' "slow readalong" of the three books in Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Trilogy -- was an amazing bookish experience this year. An absolutely stunning feat of writing, storytelling, characterization and historical scholarship (along with a healthy dose of imagination!).  
• It's always very hard for me to pick a single book as "the best" that I read in any given year. I read some really good books this year -- very few disappointments or "meh" choices -- and I gave lots/most of them four and five-star reviews on Goodreads. (4.2 stars was my average Goodreads rating.)  A few of my favourites, in no particular order (I haven't linked to them here, but they're all reviewed on Goodreads, StoryGraph and this blog): 
• "A Death in Diamonds" by S.J. Bennett 
• "My Effin' Life" by Geddy Lee 
• "Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies/The Mirror and the Light" by Hilary Mantel 
• "Widowland/Queen High" by C.J. Carey (both re-reads) 
• "You Are Here" by David Nicholls 
• "Code Name Helene" by Ariel Lawhon 

Did you meet your reading goals for 2024 (if you set any)? What great books did you read this past year?