Well, 2024 is gone and with it came reflections on what we did this year. This year was pretty hard for me, to be honest: I started the year with saying goodbye to a job that I gave my all to but they never appreciated me (why I haven’t touched graphic design since) and shortly after, my cat Felix Felicis died. I moved to Massachusetts a couple weeks after that, leaving a city that made me unhappy, yes, but also a number of friends who had become my found family. And I’m happy with that decision every day, but that still doesn’t mean it’s been easy; I’ve been working hard at making this space mine, and I love it, but it’s been a lot of work and money. My favorite aunt revealed to me in April that she was dying of cancer
and passed in September, but I’m glad we got the summer together. I’ve been underemployed at a library that doesn’t appreciate me (a recurring theme in jobs as a millennial) and hired an unqualified idiot over me for the full time position (she literally asked me how alphabetical order works, and she doesn’t know how to copy and paste on a computer. “How did she get hired?” you may ask. Oh, local politics, that’s how.). I’ve gone on countless interviews for full time library positions that would be amazing, and gotten so close only to come runner-up every time. I finally have a new position at a different library that I start next week, but it’s still not full time or what I ultimately want to do, but it’s a better place for me and pays much better while I finish my MLIS.
So, with the ups and downs of this tumultuous year (and we’re not even getting into politics), it’s no wonder that I sought solace in books. I re-read some old favorites and found some new ones. I tried my hand at books outside of my comfort zone with decent results. I started this blog, joined a local book club, and participated in an online fantasy book club as well. I started using the StoryGraph regularly this year after having an account for a couple years, and became a StoryGraph Librarian to help maintain book data (something I had done on Goodreads long before Amazon bought it). I’m becoming a regular at my local bookstore (which is just minutes from my new job!), and feel like I’ve finally rebuilt my book collection from when I was homeless ten years ago. I didn’t get my YouTube channel revived to accompany this blog (that’s a goal for this year now that other things are settling), but I did finally get a NetGalley account set up and write my first review (even if it’s really difficult to get approved for a lot of titles when you’re first starting out).
So, with all that said… let’s look at some of my goals and wrap-up graphics!
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| A to Z challenge |
One of the things I set for myself this year was an A to Z challenge as a way to get through some of my backlog and also explore new titles I otherwise wouldn’t have picked up. And it worked great! …for the first half of the year, and then I completely forgot about it until three days before New Year’s. Oops! But I set a couple rules for myself for this: mainly that I wouldn’t count re-reads, and I would only count the first in a series. (I forgot to switch out the graphic for B on here, but “Book Lovers” by Emily Henry would’ve fit too.) I made one three-days-before-2025 exception: I had absolutely nothing for X, so I counted it by the series name. Which also doesn’t even start with an X (Ixian Chronicles)! And it was a re-read aside from the third one! But whatever, I make my own rules with the difficult letters (by which I mean many people who do this challenge make exceptions for X). After Z, the four remaining squares are: one word title, title with a color in it, title with a number in it, and title with a name in it.
I did enjoy this, though, because as I had planned, it got me to finally sit down and read a bunch that had been on my tbr list for 10+ years. (Aristotle and Dante, I’m looking at you.) And then end-of-year panic at remembering this challenge suddenly spurred me to read three graphic novels I otherwise would’ve passed over (Just Another Story, Yvain: the Knight of the Lion, and Zahra’s Paradise), all three good books but graphic novels aren’t my usual fare. Yes, I completely forgot about reading a book that started with R, but I think I didn’t do too bad for forgetting about this for half the year and just filling in what I read after the fact.
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| StoryGraph Wrap-Up |
Overall, I read 69 books this year (nice), not counting picture books that I read for the library. (I’m considering making a separate StoryGraph profile for picture books and library reads specifically? I don’t want them screwing up my general stats but I want to keep track of them, especially the great ones.) My average rating was 4.13, but I decided not to finish some books rather than struggle through to rate them low. My top genre, to nobody’s surprise, was fantasy by a long shot (almost 50 of the 69 books).
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| my 5 star reads |
My “5 star reads” graphic showed me some pleasant surprises—while some favorite re-reads were on there (Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey always!), this showed me that I had encountered a lot of new, or new-to-me, authors that I loved! TJ Klune and Jenny L. Howe are now “always reads” for me, and I can’t wait for Sarah Beth Durst’s next novel coming out in the summer! Honestly, I feel Alix E. Harrow should be on here too—I must’ve been feeling persnickety when I rated them, but Starling House and The Once and Future Witches were both amazing reads for me. And there are even a couple graphic novels on here, further proof that I did branch out and read beyond my primary genres (honestly, both Heartstopper and The Prince and the Dressmaker are wonderful!), although they wouldn’t have come across my radar normally.
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| 2024 reads complete graphic |
Finally for this wrap-up, here’s a hastily put together graphic of all the books I read this year. The square ones are audiobooks; I listened to a lot while I worked on the house this spring and delivered orders this summer. It’s still not my main form of consumption (and I’m super picky about narrators), but it’s nice to have something to listen to while you’re doing other stuff. But I fell short of some other goals: I had planned on re-reading all of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books this year but only made it through one series; I wanted to finally read Jane Austen’s works (not pictured, but I’m about 100 pages into Emma… and have been since January); and I had wanted to read more Discworld novels that I hadn’t before (but unfortunately, I started reading The Colour of Magic while Felix was at the emergency vet, and I… just didn’t want to pick it back up after that). Maybe this year.
With that, let’s look at what I want to do book-wise in 2025 in the next post…
