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I had hoped to write some kind of end of year post in December 2024. Maybe even a brief newsletter. But neither of those things happened. I don’t know how people get around to it. Oh well, better late than never.

Continuing on from reports in 2022 and 2023 (inspired by a similar analysis from Kate McKean’s excellent newsletter), here’s the breakdown for the books I read in 2024. The list includes things I finished, but also DNFs if I finished an appreciable portion of the book before putting it down.

I read 66 books in 2024. I can immediately report that I read a lot of short fiction on my e-reader, and listened to a lot of podcasts. But beyond that, I need to dig into the numbers.

Genres

Slightly more fiction this year, but it seems like I naturally gravitate to a 50/50 split on fiction/non-fiction. More sci-fi than last year, but much less fantasy. Surprising—I hadn’t noticed the lack of fantasy.

A closer look at non-fiction

Overall this more closely resembles 2022 than 2023. Apparently I got a taste for books on writing craft this year—interesting, given I wouldn’t have guessed that. Memoir was still big but tied with science—again, surprising, as I would have said I read much more science. I picked up a lot of other interesting things this year in non-fiction, and it’s nice to see that reflected here.

Book formats

As usual, mostly paperback. My audiobook listening was almost nonexistent. I was aware that I picked up a lot of hardbacks this year, which was a real joy. However, I hadn’t really appreciated just how few ebooks I read this year. I have been reading a lot of short fiction on my e-reader, which probably accounts for my lack of awareness.

Minority voices

Still on an upward trend here (60/40 in 2022, 52/48 in 2023). I recall putting in a lot of effort on this in 2022, and somewhat in 2023, but I hadn’t really paid any attention to this in 2024 beyond noticing that my bookshelf looks more diverse than it used to. It’s nice to see that this has become more of a sustained habit that I don’t have to consciously maintain.

Completed vs partial reads

I count books as ‘read’ on my log even if I don’t read them cover to cover. As a rule of thumb, if I get more than halfway, I’ll count it. I DNFed 8 books this year, roughly the same percentage as last year. Looking at the books in question, they were mostly longer works that, for me, seemed to fizzle out.

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For reference, here’s the list (see the Book Log for previous years):

1. Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
2. The Fran Leibowitz Reader by Fran Leibowitz
3. Drown by Junot Dîaz
4. Payback by Margaret Atwood
5. Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like Christmas by Maya Angelou
6. Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
7. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
8. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
9. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
10. Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison
11. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
12. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
13. Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton
14. Two Cures for Love by Wendy Cope
15. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
16. And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
17. The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
18. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
19. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
20. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
21. The Fire of Joy by Clive James
22. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
23. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
24. Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
25. When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris
26. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
27. Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho
28. All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
29. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
30. Poems of Thomas Hardy by Thomas Hardy
31. Upstream by Mary Oliver
32. Essays in Love by Alain de Botton
33. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
34. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
35. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
36. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
37. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
38. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
39. Oathbringer, Part 1 by Brandon Sanderson
40. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
41. The Time Hunter by Italo Calvino
42. The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
43. Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings
44. Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope
45. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
46. One Day by David Nicholls
47. Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
48. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
49. Selected Poems by W. H. Auden
50. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
51. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
52. Quiet by Susan Cain
53. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
54. Collected Poems by Simon Armitage
55. How to Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
56. Ascension by Nicholas Binge
57. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
58. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
59. Think by Simon Blackburn
60. Wool by Hugh Howey
61. Grit by Angela Duckworth
62. A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
63. Sentience by Thomas Humphrey
64. There Is No Antimemetics Division by Qntm
65. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
66. Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami