2024 Wrap Up: 334 books read

Summary: Celebrate the end of 2024 with my reading wrap-up! Life transitions, bookish highlights, and lessons from a memorable year.

Overview

And just like that, 2024 has come to a close. At this point, I have to be honest with myself and admit that wrap-ups are my Achilles heel. I typically have so many thoughts and so many books to cover in such a brief post that I never really know where to start. Hence, it’s taken me until the very end of January to begin writing my wrap-up for 2024.

Looking back on the past year, I went through a lot of changes that dramatically impacted my reading. I graduated from my grad program in the spring (hence the high volume of books read at the start of the year – my stress reading was at its peak), then went travelling, which led to a significant drop in the number of books I’m reading, then had a good break before starting work in the fall.

Transitioning from school to working full-time has been an adjustment, and nothing has captured that more than my change in reading. I went from reading, on average, 30 books a month to barely 20 (more often 15). It’s been a bit rough since being “A Reader” has been a cornerstone of my identity for more than a decade at this point. But I’m slowly coming to terms with my change in priorities (and genuinely being too tired to read words on a page).

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• 2024 Reading Goals Reflection
• Goodreads Wrap Up
• My 2024 Favourites
• Books I Didn’t Get To
• Goodbye 2024 and Into 2025

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2024 Reading Goals Reflection

I fell 31 books short of achieving my Goodreads Challenge in 2024. My goal was to read 365 books last year, but I hit a massive slump when I started work in the fall. While I didn’t achieve any of my other reading goals, I’m still proud of everything I achieved.

1. Read 300 books over 300 pages. This is my second year with this goal, and its purpose was to encourage me to move away from the novellas that I wasn’t enjoying but were easy reads. In 2024, I read 237 books over 300 pages, and I’m proud to see that the average book length in 2024 increased from 2023 to 347 pages (up by 13 pages)!

2. Read 130,000 pages. Unfortunately, this goal is just ambitious enough that it requires me to read a lot of long books. And I just didn’t have that in me once I started work. I ended up reading 115,939 pages in 2024, and a big reason why this wasn’t lower is because I got into high fantasy in October and November. So, while I wasn’t reading much towards the end of the year, I was still reading chunkers.

3. Read 24 nonfiction books. I own so many nonfiction books – I love learning about new topics and history, and this year, I discovered essay collections. But I’m so bad at committing to reading them because I take so long to read them; hence, I only read seven nonfiction books in 2024. Every year, I have this goal, and I have yet to achieve it, but I think two nonfiction books a month is a decent objective (especially if I want to actually get through my backlist).

4. Read 24 books over 500 pages. This goal ties in with goal #1 but is also meant to encourage me to read the intimidating books on my backlist. I did a really good job this year prioritizing my chunkier reads – I read 23 books over 500 pages, and only four of them were re-reads!

5. Read 60% of books purchased in 2024. I didn’t even come close to achieving this goal – I read 31% of the 90 books I bought in 2024. This was my first full year as a Book of the Month book box subscriber, and while I love it, it’s also very dangerous if you’re not reading the books in the month you purchase them (which obviously I didn’t).

Every year, part of what motivates me to read is the reading challenges I join. In 2024, I participated in five challenges. While I made a decent dent, I didn’t complete any of them. But, honestly, their main draw is organizing my backlist into prompts.

• TBR Knockout Challenge hosted by @CompletelyMelanie
• Buzzword Reading Challenge hosted by @BooksAndLala
• Alphabet Challenge
• The StoryGraph Reads the World, hosted by The StoryGraph
• Beat the Backlist, hosted by Austine Decker

Goodreads Wrap Up

Book Spotlight

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien ❃ Add on Goodreads
This book was the most popular one I read on Goodreads; unsurprisingly, The Hobbit has been shelved by 6,032,059 people!

A December to Remember by Catherine Cowles et al. ❃ Add on Goodreads
My least popular read on Goodreads was the holiday romance short story collection, A December to Remember. I’m shocked (and lowkey think it’s an error) that zero people also shelved this book.

The Avatar’s Flight by Kristin Banet ❃ Add on Goodreads
I was looking at my past yearly wrap-ups, and apparently, I’ve not only read The Avatar’s Flight every year since 2021, but it’s also been my highest-rated book on Goodreads for four consecutive years now. This year, its average rating is a whopping 4.66 stars.

My Shortest and Longest Reads of 2024

The Annoyed Eminence by K.M. Shea ❃ Add on Goodreads
5 pages • It’s kind of a joke that The Annoyed Eminence counts as a book towards my Goodreads challenge, but here we are! It’s the shortest of short stories providing insight into our grumpy love interest in K.M. Shea’s urban fantasy romance series Magic on Main Street. It was hilarious, and remembering it makes me want to reread it soon.

Ruin by John Gwynne ❃ Add on Goodreads
768 pages • The third book in The Faithful and the Fallen series, Ruin, was my longest read of 2024. I was influenced by BookTuber Sydney to pick up this series, which was a no-brainer after loving John Gwynne’s Bloodsworn Saga. Ruin also ended up being my favourite book in this hero’s journey high fantasy series.

My Favourites

My Favourite Book Each Month

Every month, I pick a favourite read with a caveat; it can’t be a re-read! Looking at these books in six-month chunks, it makes evident the high fantasy kick I went on in the last half of the year (with a splash of romantasy). Comparatively, the start of the year had a lot more introspective reads, and while there was more diversity in genre, they all have elements of suspense.

My Favourites in Quick Stats

Unlike previous years, I’ve decided to pare back my data-centric wrap-up to select a few stats that capture some of the other favourites I had during my 2024 reading year.

My most-read author in 2024 was Catherine Cowles. I read 19 books by her this year, 12 of which were re-reads. She’s my go-to author for romantic suspense and small-town romances!

Most of my books were actually read on Kindle Unlimited, 179 of them in fact. At this point, my KU subscription pays for itself based on how much money I’m saving. Also, I’ve discovered so many great indie authors through KU – one of which was the author of my favourite book in December: A Queen This Fierce and Deadly by Stacia Stark.

2024 was the year of reverse harem romances (my most-read genre at 64 books) and the single-parent trope with 21 books. I was actually surprised I read so many reverse harem romances, showing that the year really does creep up on you.

Of course, I have to conclude with a fun fact! A quirky thing about me is I very rarely read books written by men. I tend to prefer female protagonists, and I’ve found it’s a rare male author who can believably write from a female perspective. In 2024, 95% of the 164 authors whose books I read were women.

Books I Didn’t Get To

There were a few books that I wanted to read and never got around to in 2024. Check out my End of Year Book Tag to see what books I’ll prioritize in 2025!

The End of Year Book Tag: 2024

Goodbye 2024 and Into 2025

Looking back on 2024, I read so many great books and series! I even got back into high fantasy, which has been a goal of mine over the past three years. While my reading slowed down dramatically towards the end of the year, I find it serendipitous that the new year also coincides with this significant shift in my reading habits. While reading less isn’t a goal I’d strive for (reading is my happy place), I’m excited by the possibility that it will inspire me to be more intentional around my reading in 2025.

Stay tuned for a post about the challenges I’m participating in this new year and my 2025 TBR.

Happy New Year, everyone!