2024 Reading Challenge

Mr Moore said:
Yeah, similar really. We're a bit lucky over here though in that you can build a mammoth library of really great books, classics and contemporary, on 99p monthly and daily deals. I've got more than I'll ever get through and still find myself buying them but it has to be something really special to me to convince me not to wait and see if it pops up on a price drop.
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Sadly in Canada, the cheap Kindle titles are all last years James Patterson books.
 
ayayrawn said:
My horror Halloween month reading was kind of a dud.

33. The Fisherman by John Langan - an audiobook I DNFed. Liked the cosmic horror idea that it was going for, but never once vibed with the pacing or writing style of it.

34. Poems by Emily Bronte - Y'all already know. Despairing stuff perfect for the season.

35. Berserk vols 1-5 by Kentaro Miura - A classic manga I've never really dived into and holy shit does it slap. Kind of oppressively bleak tho, so going to take a decent break before I continue on but will be doing so.

36. The Cipher by Kathe Koja - Incredibly bleak and gross early 90s body/psych horror. Drags on and on and makes you miserable by design, and was relieved when I finally finished it. Didn't hate it, vibes are unique but did not love and will not read again.

37. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - A blind spot for me. Read for a buddy's book club. Yep, it's depressing.

The last couple weeks I've been reading Say Nothing, a book by Patrick Radden Keefe on The Troubles, which is incredible (and apparently has a miniseries coming out soon, which i had no idea until 10 min ago). I'm thinking of having a nonfiction November, but I'm getting to the point where I really think I need to read something happy lol
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38. Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe - I've said plenty about this book on the Troubles. Loved it, will definitely be one of my favorite books of the year, highly recommend to everybody.

39. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen - Memoirs of a Danish poet that just recently found acclaim as it was translated in full into English a few years ago. Incredibly lyrical and gorgeous writing that becomes increasingly harrowing as it goes along. This woman had a pretty tortured life.

40. The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay - Met this writer because he was in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib a couple months ago. This is a collection of mini essays he wrote over the course of a year about things that delighted him. Very pleasant read!

41. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - Heard about this because it was recently adapted into a movie with Cillian Murphy. It's a breezy novella, only 100 pages. But it packs a wallop. I won't spoil too much but it's about a man trying to do good in a (shockingly recent) dark moment of Irish history I didn't know about (really went all in on Irish history the last month).

Since I've read almost exclusively sad and bleak books the last several months, I'm closing out the year with some contemporary romance and comic strips. Have a big on in store for January.
 
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Next batch of 3
#32 - Manel Loureiro - Apocalypse Z - A fun Spanish zombie book to finish off October. Not totally original but also not totally derivative either. I think this is a movie on Prime now as well, but haven't watched it yet.
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#33 - Nick Harkaway - Karla's Choice - Picks up his father's famous spy master character, Smiley. Felt very true to the spirit of Le Carres writing and characters. Sadly no one will be Le Carre.
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#34 - Neal Stephenson - Polostan - This felt like a 300 page prologue to one of Stephenson's doorstop books. Also feels like I have read this book from him a hundred times. Not sure if I will actually bother to read the next in the series.
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Book 33: Lady Joker Volume 2 by Kaoru Takamura (Baskerville, 2023)

Volume 1 of Lady Joker was one of the first books that I read this year and I finally picked up the second to read. As with the first, I found the story to be great but spread incredibly thin over a staggering 608 pages. It could have easily been half or even a third in length whilst still capturing the same story. There were a few times when I found it to be dragging a bit but I was also really intrigued by the Japanese cultural elements.

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Book 34: The Boys Omnibus Volume 1 by Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson (Dynamite Entertainment, 2019)

I've had this on my phone for the past year and got through a couple of pages per day inbetween tube stops on my way to work. It's a fun read that fleshes out some of the characters more than the TV show. I think I will end up getting the next volume to work through next year.

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Book 35: Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka (Harvill Secker)

My local charity shop sells 3 books for £1 which is unreal value so I typically just take a chance on any that catches my eye. I pulled this off the shelf without realising it was the book that the film starring Brad Pitt was part of. It was a really fun read that doesn't take itself seriously at all. Well worth the 33.3p

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mdmost said:
This was so good. A really compelling story that would make a great Netflix or HBO documentary. Next is one I've been putting off but it keeps coming up on Best Of lists.

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Finished this tonight after putting it down for another book about 100 pages in. I just had a mental block to get through but I'm so glad I did. I'll have to pick up some other Larson books in 2025. I know my wife really enjoyed Devil in the White City.

I was excited to read about a new Ron Chernow biography coming in March 2025. I tore through his Hamilton and Washington biographies. The one on Grant was too much of a trudge and I never finished it. I am very much looking forward to this one.

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So I finished 23 books this year, not too shabby for me.
I decided to rank them in tiers.

Epic
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

Fantastic
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Wager - David Grann
In a Lonely Place - Dorothy B Hughes

Great Reads
Frankenstein: The 1812 Text - Mary Shelley
Winter - Karl Ove Knausgaard
Spring - Karl Ove Knausgaard
Summer - Karl Ove Knausgaard
(I read Autumn in 2023, it's the first of the tetralogy)
33 1/3: J Dilla's Donuts - Jordan Ferguson
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami
Surely You Can't Be Serious - David Zucker
Hitchcock/Truffaut - Francois Truffaut

Readable
World Within a Song - Jeff Tweedy
The Sun Also Rises - Hemmingway
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
Stoner - John Williams
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
Chairman at the Board - Bill Schnee

Can't Recommend
Murder Your Employer - Rupert Holmes
Beethoven: The Music and the Life - Lewis Lockwood
Your Song Changed My Life - Bob Boilen
 
Interesting idea. I read 15 books this year, 3 more than the resolution I set to read one a month.

Epic
Nuclear War: A Scenario- Annie Jacobsen
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped THem- Timothy Egan

Fantastic
The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook- Hampton Sides
The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis - George Stephanopoulos
Empire of the Summer Moon - S.C. Gwynne

Great Reads
The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age - Michael Wolraich
A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime - Casey Sherman
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession - Michael Finkel
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing
Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War - S.C. Gwynne
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation - Imani Perry
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth

Readable
The Nineties - Chuck Klosterman
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles - Gary Krist

Book of 2024: Nuclear War: A Scenario - Annie Jacobsen. I've never encountered a book that I could absolutely not put down. I finished this in under 2 days. Simply riveting and utterly terrifying. Reminded me of the 1980s nuclear holocaust movies that scared me growing up.
 
Book 34

Star Wars: The High Republic - Beware The Nameless by Zoraida Cordova
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Wow. First post since mid-August—my reading really fell off. This book was incredibly enjoyable, despite my taking three months to read it (it was only 4 sittings to read the whole thing!) but between scary movies and life being quite lifey it just didn't get the attention it deserved. The younger reader books in this series have all been quite fantastic, and the build-up toward the final act has been quite exciting in all streams.
 
ayayrawn said:
38. Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe - I've said plenty about this book on the Troubles. Loved it, will definitely be one of my favorite books of the year, highly recommend to everybody.

39. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen - Memoirs of a Danish poet that just recently found acclaim as it was translated in full into English a few years ago. Incredibly lyrical and gorgeous writing that becomes increasingly harrowing as it goes along. This woman had a pretty tortured life.

40. The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay - Met this writer because he was in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib a couple months ago. This is a collection of mini essays he wrote over the course of a year about things that delighted him. Very pleasant read!

41. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - Heard about this because it was recently adapted into a movie with Cillian Murphy. It's a breezy novella, only 100 pages. But it packs a wallop. I won't spoil too much but it's about a man trying to do good in a (shockingly recent) dark moment of Irish history I didn't know about (really went all in on Irish history the last month).

Since I've read almost exclusively sad and bleak books the last several months, I'm closing out the year with some contemporary romance and comic strips. Have a big on in store for January.
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Had a very productive last month of the year.

42. Funny Story by Emily Henry - my foray into contemporary romance. Thought this was very sweet! Exactly what I was looking for.

43. Normal People by Sally Rooney - An audiobook I'd been working on for a minute and finally finished. Appreciate what it was doing, but kind of a miserable and frustrating time.

44. The Far Side Gallery by Gary Larson - If y'all haven't checked these out in a while, I recommend. Many of these comics are still laugh out loud funny.

45. Book Lovers by Emily Henry - This one wasn't as good, but still a nice read.

46. A Good Cry by Nikki Giovanni - A book I got signed by her years ago, and finally decided to read through after her passing. Really lovely stuff.

These next three I haven't finished yet but anticipate that I will before the year is out.

47 & 48. One Piece 106 & 107 by Eichiro Oda - Self-explanatory

49. The Flame by Leonard Cohen - A collection of poems, lyrics and notebook entries from the last 20 or so years of his life. As enigmatic and engaging as you'd expect.

50. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Listening to this on audiobook and have the James audiobook queued up for after. A really fun old school adventure so far!

Realizing as I type this all out that it puts me at exactly 50 which is cool! A really great year of reads for me. Lots of variety.

A friend and I are starting out the year with Infinite Jest, so I imagine that will be all I'm reading for a bit. Pray 4 me
 
Ended up reading 15 books (14 novels and 1 graphic novel) which puts me 3 above the goal I set for myself!!! I’m going to rank all 15 of them but first I want to go over the books I dropped this year

1. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
I really enjoyed this book in theory. The music snob/audiophile satire was funny and the central mystery was super intriguing but something about the writing style just left me wanting more

2. Let’s Not Do That Again by Grant Ginder
I was really itching for something political and funny like veep and that lead me to this book. Within the first few chapters the main character started to complain that college kids are too easily offended which made my eyes roll out of my head and I immediately dropped it lol

3. The Sky Blue by Robbie Couch
2 of Robbie’s other books will be placing very high when I rank everything I read. This is his first one and it shows sadly. Just super cringy, couldn’t make it past chapter 3 where the main character is literally stalking the love interest

4. All That’s Left in the World by Erik J Brown
Post apocalyptic gay book. The first few chapters building the main relationship were really good but as soon as danger showed up I got too stressed out and stopped reading

5. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I really thought I would love this, and a lot of it I did love. But a lot of it just didn’t land as well as I hoped. I’m going to hold my tongue because I bet a lot of people here really like this one
 
December 2024

Book 74: Charles Dickens - Nicholas Nickleby
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Man alive, this was a tough read. Really long, really bloated, premised on a character who decides to shit on his nephew, niece and sister-in-law following his brother's death for no apparent reason other than to be a prick. The ensuing adventures of the titular nephew were just about entertaining enough to keep me reading through to the end but that possibly says as much about my reluctance to give up on a book as anything else.

Book 75: Susanna Moore - In the Cut
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Wow, I loved this. I remember the mild controversy surrounding the movie release but always associated it with clean-cut Sally getting a bit dirty. The book is a really smart thriller and yes, definitely dripping in sexuality, violence and indeed sexual violence. Incredibly well written, it captivated me from start to the somewhat shocking ending that grew more inevitable with the realisation there were fewer and fewer pages left in the book. Really quite haunting conclusion.

Book 76: Paul Auster - Travels in the Scriptorium
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Back to Auster's metafiction world as a man, Mr Blank, awakens in a room seemingly having memory loss. All objects around him are labelled. On a desk, photographs depict people he vaguely recognizes and a manuscript details a fantasy land and scenario. He receives visits from people who appear in the photographs and happen to be characters from Auster's previous novels. A little bit pretentious, very self-aware, possibly limiting itself to readers familiar with previous works but, ultimately quite enjoyable and an interesting look at a writer possibly feeling tortured by his past creations and somewhat blocked from creating a new ones?

2024 wrapped up...
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Some belters. No real stinkers although Dickens was a bit of a trial. Contemporary won out over classics just in general. 76 books, all 365 days, Lord knows how many pages and actual hours. It's been lovely sharing my thoughts with you all and having your ideas to bounce off too. Here's to 2025. 🥳📚
 
Last 2 books of the year. I am a little more than half way through another but I won't make it by midnight.

#35 - RJ Wheaton - Trip-Hop. Unlike the Math Rock book, this one had me going for the computer looking up lots of artists that I was unfamiliar with. Created a massive playlist and added several titles to my wantlist (as they are not streaming). Great overview of the genre and its influences, I just wished it also had a bit more detail on Trip-Hop's American counterpart, illbient.
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#36 - William and Jim Reid - Never Understood. A fun oral history of the band from both brother's perspective (often remembering events differently). They really come across as thoughtful artists, not the mindless yobs they are often portrayed as. I just wish it dug I little neater into the studio nerdiness.
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Both books are fairly quick reads, but in both cases I was often having to put the book down to go listen to a track or 3.
 
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