2024 reading round-up

Round-ups from previous years: 2021, 2022, 2023

This year I kept a media-tracking spreadsheet in Google Docs, and also a paper reading journal. Which sounds extremely wanky, because it is, but I enjoyed the tactile aspect of creating layouts, pasting print-outs of covers, and keeping track of things in handwriting. Also I got to use stickers. Here are a couple of sample pages:

I've already started a fresh journal for 2025, this time in a small ring binder to avoid certain annoying problems, ie, the build-up of thickness from pasting the covers into the same spot over and over again.

Okay, the stats.

Total books logged: 138 (the secret to my success: sprained ankle, broken ankle, covid, ongoing ankle problems and plantar fasciitis have made it more likely that I will stay in the office and read at lunch instead of taking a walk)
DNFs: I didn't keep close track, but a standout is a YA quartet I abandoned 20% into the third book

By target audience (age)

 

• Adult - 86
• Children - 1
• Young Adult - 42
• Middle Grade - 9

And my favourite category, by genre and audience

 

• Contemporary (adult): 7
• Contemporary (YA): 10
• Contemporary (middle grade): 2

What's great about "contemporary" is that it's really a setting, not a genre -- so these 19 books encompassed everything from Māori literary fiction to two books which are arguably thrillers and now I'm wondering if I hit the wrong option in the dropdown menu.

 

• Fantasy: (adult): 8
• Fantasy (YA): 11
• Fantasy (middle grade): 4

Other than Christelle Dabos, I only read three YA fantasy novels from authors who were new to me -- and two were the quartet I wound up DNFing in book 3. (Respectfully, I think that if you are writing for young adults, you should not have more graphic on-page rape than George R. R. Martin.) It feels like the bubble has truly burst.

Contemporary mystery and thriller

• Adult: 17
• YA: 10

It feels like exciting things are happening in the contemp mystery genre right now, especially YA. Especially if, like me, you don't draw too much of a distinction between a "mystery" and a "thriller".

Science fiction

• Adult: 6
• YA: 6

Again, I feel like the YA SF bubble has burst, largely under the weight of too many Hunger Games imitations. Or maybe it just seems that way because I reread the Hunger Games novels.

Adult SF is where I found most of my DNFs this year, as I tried and failed to read more indie SF.

Non-fiction: 35

History was the winner here in terms of numbers, but for quality, I read a bunch of books about organisational and corporate shenanigans at Boeing, NASA, Twitter and Qantas, and those were the standouts.

Author stats

Australian authors: 18% - this is much lower than in previous years, but I made up for it by reading more widely throughout the world, with more books by New Zealanders and Nigerians, and what I think must be the first YA novel I've read by an Argentinian
Authors of colour: 26% - down from last year's 29%, and doing even worse in terms of "30% feels like equality if you're not marginalised"
Women: 67%, I do NOT need to make a deliberate effort to read books by women. Also three were books by trans women, and I need a better way of tracking that than putting an asterisk in the gender box in my reading journal
Trans and non-binary authors: 4%

The really nerdy stats

Library loans: 73% - I tracked spending for the first time this year, and spent a total of $479 on books, plus US$50 for my Queens Library membership.
Ebooks: 76% of my reading was ebooks, plus I read one (1) audiobook. Which is a format I do not care for, but it was the only way to get Black Against Empire from the library. (A stranger on Bsky tried to neg me by saying it's weird that I would have preferred to skim the chapters on Marxist theory, and I'm sorry, I think finding Marxist theory boring is a pretty common position.)

TV stats

For the first time, I tracked TV watching via spreadsheet. I can't tell you down to the minute how many hours of TV I watched, but I watched 69 different series (nice), most in English and most made in the United States.

( Every book I read in 2024 )

( Every TV series watched in 2024 )