My Year in Reading - 2024

2024 is now in the books and it is time for me to look back on my reading and my reading goals for the year. I'm not one to set reading goals based on a projected number of books I want to read. Who knows how many books it will be possible to read?  That depends on my schedule and the length of the books I choose. I usually have goals about the types of books I want to read.  

Goals and Statistics

I decided at the beginning of the year that my goals would be: (1) to read more classic novels, (2) to re-read more books that I had previously enjoyed, (3) to be more selective in the mystery novels I read (in other words to read fewer mysteries leaving me time for other types of books), and (4) to read more non-fiction. As I moved into January, I also decided I would try to read some poetry in 2024. 

In all, this year I read an even 100 books. This total is more than last year's total of 73 but I was retired this full year and had more time to read. Breaking down this year's total into categories, 86 books were fiction, 9 books were non-fiction and 5 books were poetry. Of the fiction books, 44 books were non-mystery fiction and 42 were mysteries.  I borrowed 34 books from the library (almost all digitally) and the remainder were purchased either in tangible form or on my NOOK app or occasionally digitally through Apple books (although a number of them were not purchased this year but were books I had owned for years and had never yet read). I also read two short stories this year which I did not include in my totals. (I'm not really a short story reader and almost never read short stories.)

Did I meet my goals and how did this year compare to last year? I met my goals in poetry and non-fiction, definitely topping my numbers from 2023 when I read only 2 non-fiction books (both were memoirs) and no poetry. I read 11 Classics this year (I read no Classics last year) and 6 of them were re-reads.  Last year, in 2023, I read 44 mysteries and this year I read 42 mysteries, so I didn't really reduce the number of mysteries that much but, as a percentage of my reading. last year 60% of the books I read were mysteries, and I got that down this year to 42%. I don't think I will get those numbers much lower; mysteries are my comfort read.  

I continue to love historical fiction, 34 of my 86 fiction books were historical (and that didn't count the Classics I read that were set in their own time period).  I continue to read more fiction written by women. 26 of the 44 non-mystery fiction books were written by women and 18 were written by men. 

Summary of Reading

Before we start, I refer you to my previous post in which I list my 10 favorite books in 2024. 8 of them were fiction and 2 were non-fiction.  I will not be describing the fiction favorites in this post, you will need to go back to that post.  

Ok, buckle in because this is a long one. Click the links if you want to read the mini-reviews the wrote at the time. 

Poetry

In order to read more poetry I decided that if I found a book of poetry I wanted to read, I would read it in short spurts:  an average of 10 pages a day for epic poems, about 2 poems a day for collections of poetry. I thought that if I read 6 works of poetry this year, that would be great. I ended up reading 5- but I only fell short because I decided to forego a separate poetry selection when I read Judi Dench's memoir about performing Shakespeare (described below in Non-Fiction). Shakespeare is poetic enough.

I began the year with epic poems starting with Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad. I had read The Iliad multiple times before but this was the translation that I enjoyed the most. I don't think I will ever need to read another version of The Iliad.

I followed that up with a modern translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. Like The Iliad, I had read Beowulf before but Headley's translation was nothing like any other translation; it was very modern as if a modern day rapper decided to translate it, focusing on alliteration and not internal rhymes. I loved it.  

Although neither The Iliad nor Beowulf made my "favorites" list for 2024, I truly enjoyed both and highly recommend them. I also count both of them as contributing to my goals to read more Classics and to re-read books I read long ago. 

In addition to those two epic poems, I also read a few collections of poetry:  The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, which I liked;  The Best American Poetry 2023, which I did not like at all; and Call us What we Carry by Amanda Gorman, to which I had mixed reactions. 

All of my poetry books were either translated by, written by or edited by a woman. All in all, I thought 2024 was a success in terms of poetry and I think I will keep the same goal for next year to continue to find poetry books to read slowly.

Classics and Re-Reads

I read a surprising number of Classics this year mainly because I joined in with read-along groups on the BlueSky social media site. We usually read the books in short increments so it was manageable to participate and still read other books. All the books we read were Classics but many of them I had read before, long ago, so that helped with my goal of re-reading books that I've read before.  In fact, all of of my re-reads in 2024 were Classics (I count The Iliad and Beowulf as Classics). 

The first group-read was Middlemarch, by George Eliot, which was new to me. I'm glad I  finally read it  but I didn't love it the way other people love it. This was followed by a group-read of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which I had read before but enjoyed reading again. Next we read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which I had also read before, but very long ago. I truly enjoyed re-reading it and I think I got so much more out of it by reading it very slowly. Next we read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, which was new to me. I'm glad I read it but did not like it at all. In November we read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a classic of African literature that was new to me. We finished out the year in December reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.  Other than Gravity's Rainbow, I can recommend all of the above novels if you are interested in reading Classics (although I only recommend Cat's Cradle with reservations, some of it didn't age well). 

In addition to the BlueSky read-alongs, on my own I read The Real Charlotte by E. CE. Somerville & Martin Ross, which made my "favorites" list.  I also read Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I listened to it on audio because working through the dialect in prior attempts to read it had defeated me. I also re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Again, I listened to it on audio because I didn't want to work through all the dialect. I recommend both of them in audio. I also re-read a classic mystery which I describe below. So, all in all, except for Gravity's Rainbow, there were no big fails in my Classics reading. 

Six of my Classics (counting the mystery classic below) were written by women and five were written by men (one by an African man). 

Non-Fiction

When I set my goal to read more non-fiction, I was particularly thinking of two long books that had been on my shelves for a few years. I decided that if I set a goal of reading an average of  20-25 pages a day it would take me about two months each to read them. If I stayed on that type of schedule I could read six non-fiction books in 2024. In the end, I read eight non-fiction books.

I started with Grant, Ron Chernow's very long biography of Ulysses S. Grant. I was familiar with much of Grant's early married life because I live in St. Louis and spent my younger years going to Grant's Farm every summer. I also knew quite a bit about his war years but I knew next to nothing about his years as President and after. I found the parts about Reconstruction fascinating. It took me almost two months to finish this book and it was well worth the time. 

The other book that had been on my shelves for years was She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potentials of Heredity by Carl Zimmer. Zimmer, a science writer for the New York Times, is able to make complicated subjects accessible. I learned so much from this book and I highly recommend it. It made my list of "favorites" for the year. 

After such long books on such complicated subjects, I gravitated to memoirs. First was The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop.  Bishop started her career as a dancer on Broadway where she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Sheila in the original production of A Chorus Line.  Those parts of her memoir were fascinating, especially her relationship with choreographers. Then her career moved on to movies and television. I enjoyed those parts of the book but felt she held back a bit (perhaps because the people she worked with are still alive). 

The other two memoirs I listened to on audiobook. Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench was specifically a memoir about the various Shakespearean roles she had played in her career. I'd rather listen to Shakespeare than read him so audio was a good choice for me. Her analysis of the roles and the plays was fascinating and this book made my list of "favorites" for the year.   

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand was the mega-memoir released in 2023 by Babs. I heard that the audio book had "extras" that weren't in the hard copy book (snippets of songs she was talking about and some commentary by her) and that, plus it's length, made me decide to go the audio book route. It is definitely a commitment at over 48 hours! It took me about a month to listen to all of it while I was cooking and cleaning. Streisand seems to remember every piece of clothing she ever wore and, more important, she wants to set the record straight on every untruth ever (according to her) told about her. But she tells it all in a fascinating way.   

Two other  non-fiction books I read were specific to my area of interest in North American French Colonial Studies (An Infinity of Nations by Michael Witgen and French St. Louis:  Landscape, Contexts, and Legacy.)  I also read The Ride of Her Life, the story of a woman who rode a horse across the United States. The final non-fiction book was a history of baseball that I didn't particularly enjoy: How Baseball Happened:  The True Story Revealed by Thomas W. Gilbert. 

So, all in all, my non-fiction reading was successful.  Two books made my "favorites" of 2024 list and only one was a fail.  Five of my non-fiction books were written, or edited, by men.  Three were written (or co-written) by women (all memoirs). 

Fiction - Non-Mystery/Non-Classics

As I said above, I previously published a post about my 10 favorite books of 2024 and 8 of them were novels. So please go back and read that post to see what I thought were the best of the best in 2024.  

I also read a number of novels that didn't make my "favorites" list for one reason or another but that I enjoyed. In no particular order they are the following: 

• Menewood by Nicola Griffith is the sequel to her previous novel Hild.  Set during medieval times it tells the story of the real St. Hilda in her early years. In general, I enjoyed this very long novel but only AFTER the first third of the novel which I found somewhat hard going. 

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, otherwise known in reading circles as "The Octopus Book". I was doubtful that I would enjoy a novel told partly from the point of view of an octopus but it ended up being a delightful read. 

• The Second Sleep by Robert Harris. An odd book that is hard to describe without spoilers. It seems to be a historical mystery, but it's not. The title refers to the habit that medieval people had of sleeping for part of the night, then waking and doing constructive things, and then sleeping again for the rest of the night. It is in fact a metaphor for what happens in the novel.  This is not a novel all people will enjoy but I did. 

• Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford.  I really hoped this would make my "favorites" list this year but it fell short by a slight amount. Set in an alternative America with an alternative Cahokia, this is a noir thriller that also examines the issues of race in America.  

• In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas.  Historical fiction set in the 1800's in Canada where a town of free black persons live and help those in America trying to escape their enslavers. This came very close to making my list of "favorites". It is Thomas' first novel and I look forward to reading his next novel. 

• Help Wanted by Adele Waldman.  A novel set in a big box store similar to Target involving characters who work in the stock rooms. They arrive at work at 4 in the morning, unload the trucks and put the new merchandise out, leaving when the customers arrive. Very good on describing corporate politics and the frustration of being a low level worker in America. 

• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.  A trained scientist, the female heroine ends up starring in a cooking show based on chemistry. This novel really captures how difficult life was for educated, working women in the 1960's and it is sad that some of the issues remain to this day.  

• The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson.  If you are looking for a quick, relatively easy read, this delightful book will suit you. It is set in a British seaside resort town immediately after WWI when women who had worked as motorcycle messengers during the war wanted to keep driving and supporting themselves. The plot is not all sweetness and light, but it is an enjoyable read.

• You are Here by David Nicholls.  The story of a post-pandemic hike across Northumberland by two persons who have been traumatized in their personal lives, this is actually a very funny book.

• Enlightenment by Sarah Perry. Three characters (a ghost, an older man and a young woman) co-exist in a town, each of them dealing with unrequited love. The meditations on the meaning of love are interspersed with information about astronomy, particularly comets.  

• Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel.  This one also almost made my list of "favorites", it is the story of girls competing in a youth boxing tournament. I know that description doesn't sound interesting, but I truly enjoyed it. 

• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon.  A novel set in ancient Syracuse, it explores the power (and the limits) of theater when two out of work laborers decide to stage Medea and The Trojan Women in a prisoner of war camp. 

• Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  The winner of this year's Booker Prize, this exquisitely written novel describes a day in the life of astronauts on the international space station. 

• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. Beautifully written, it explores life after World War II in Holland.  This is a first novel and I look forward to reading her next.    

• Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein.  Set in Trinidad in the 1940's, this is a story set among the minority Hindu population. Hosein's characterizations are suberb. This novel won the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. 

• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich.  This novel just missed being on my "favorites" of 2024, probably because the main characters are teenagers and I just wasn't in the mood for teenage angst. However this is a beautiful novel (as are all Louise Erdrich novels) about life in a small farming community along the Red River trying to deal with the financial crisis of 2008, the use of pesticides on their crops and teenage trauma. 

In general, I really liked many of my general fiction reading in 2024.  I won't go into the ones that didn't work for me. You can check my monthly blogs for 2024 to see those. 

Mysteries

Mysteries (especially historical mysteries) are my comfort read and at certain times I can simply immerse myself in mystery after mystery, some of which are not really great, at the expense of reading better literature. I was better this year about not doing that, but I still read a lot of mysteries partly because a number of mystery series that I enjoy had new books released in 2024 or late 2023. 

The following are some of my favorite series all of which I recommend (and all of which you've probably seen in other year-end blogs):  

• C.S. Harris writes the Sebastien St. Cyr mystery series set in England (mainly) during the Regency. This year I read What Cannot be Said and I was relieved to find the protagonists back from France and in their familiar setting of London . 

• Elly Griffiths finished her popular Ruth Galloway series last year but she continues to write the Harbinder Kaur series (although she continues to insist isn't a series but each are stand alone novels).  The series is set during the current times and some of the sleuths are local people in Brighton including an elderly man living in a retirement home. It's nice to see writers include characters of all ages in their novels. This year's installment was The Last Word which mostly focused on the investigations by the amateur sleuths and not Harbinder.  

• Jacqueline Winspear also finished her popular Maisie Dobbs series this year with The Comfort of Ghosts and I thought she stuck the landing. I will miss this series but it probably was time to end.

• William Kent Krueger continued his Cork O'Connor mystery series (which is now up to 20 books) with Spirit Crossing. This series is set in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters area. I also read the stand-alone mystery he released in 2023, The River We Remember. 

• Anne Cleeves is a perennial favorite and this year I read the next book in her Matthew Venn series, The Raging Storm, and her next Vera Stanhope mystery, The Dark Wives. 

• I wondered if Ian Rankin could write a mystery using his detective Rebus with Rebus in prison - but  in Midnight and Blue he did it quite well. 

Besides the above, there are a number of other series that I enjoy but don't think are quite as good as the above:

• Although I find the plots of CJ Box's Joe Pickett mystery series sometimes eye-rollingly far-fetched I continue to read them.  (I mean, c'mon, in real life Joe would have died in each novel.)  This year I read the latest:  Three-Inch Teeth involving a grizzly bear on the loose - or maybe not? If you like Joe Pickett you will like it. 

• Kerry Greenwood writes the Phryne Fisher mysteries set in Australia (and made into a television series). Murder in Williamstown was the latest..

• Paula Munier writes a series of mysteries in which the main character, Mercy Carr, solves mysteries with her dog Elvis. The latest, which I enjoyed, was The Night Woods.

• Alison Montclair writes the Sparks and Bainbridge series set in London following WWII in which two women set up an agency to help single people meet each other. Mysteries ensue. I am not caught up with this series but read A Royal Affair, the second. I enjoyed it although I found the plot completely unbelievable (involving Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth).

• Andrea Penrose writes the Wrexford and Sloane series set in Regency England in many ways similar to the St. Cyr series written by C.S. Harris.  The main characters are aristocracy but the wife has an alter ego as an anonymous political cartoonist.  I read the latest, Murder at King's Crossing.

• Sujata Massey writes the Perveen Mistry series set in Bombay in the 1920's.  I read the latest:  The Mistress of Bhatia House. This series is interesting because the main character is a woman solicitor and she is Farsi.  

• A.M. Stuart writes the Harriet Gordon series set in Singapore and Malaysia in the 1920s.  I read the latest,  Terror in Topaz, which may be the last in the series (we'll see). 

This year I also re-read one classic mystery - Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers, the first in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. I may continue to re-read these in 2025. I counted this toward my Classics and my re-reads.

When my mom passed away I took her set of British Library Crime Classic mystery novels so I tried to read one each month.  In general I didn't like most of them - they were very dated.  I did find that I liked the novelist John Bude including his The Sussex Downs Murder. I also liked Death of an Airman by Christopher St. John Sprigg and The Death of Mr. Dodsley by John Ferguson.   I still have a few left to finish in 2025.

For those of you who have enjoyed Magpie Murders on PBS and its sequel, I can recommend the Hawthorne and Horowitz series of novels by Anthony Horowitz, of which I read three this year:  A Line to Kill, The Twist of a Knife, and Close to Death.  I enjoyed all of them.  But be warned, a friend of mine who worked as an editor for years, thinks that his depiction of editors and editing is unrealistic (sort of the way I feel about courtroom drama novels). 

A new author(s) that I read this year was (were) John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan who, together, wrote The Murder of Mr. Ma.  Set in London in 1924 it involves the ex-patriot Chinese community.  I hope they write more. 

Other

I generally don't read a lot of science fiction and fantasy.  This year I did read Gravity's Rainbow and Cat's Cradle as part of my Classics read.  And maybe you can count Frankenstein as science fiction?  Some people are counting Orbital as science fiction, but I didn't think of it that way. 

I generally like Jasper Fforde's books, although I never know how to classify them.  This year he finally (FINALLY!) released the sequel to Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron, which I re-read in anticipation.  The sequel was Red Side Story which I also read.  This is supposed to be a trilogy and I hope it doesn't take him 15 years to write the last book.  But at least he didn't leave us with another complete cliff hanger.