Reading Challenge 2024

Year end stats and summary:

Total books read: 35

Primary Tag:
Mystery/Thriller 12
Urban Fantasy 8
Science Fiction 6
Non-Fiction 4
Fantasy 3
Horror 2

Original Language:
English 33
Japanese 1
Spanish 1

Author Gender: (repeats not counted, multiple authors counted separately)
Male 28
Female 4

Ratings (out of 5★):
4★'s 16
3½★'s 13
3★'s 5
Unrated 1

Least favourite book of the year
Tithe by Holly Black – Not a terrible book, just not the intended audience.

Favourite book of the year
No real standouts but plenty of very good books read regardless


Was hoping to reach around the 40 mark so I’m not too far off. Very disappointed in the diversity of my reading though this year with both gender and nationality being far too wide of a gap and I must do better in this respect for next year. In mitigation, I do think that dedicating most of this year to books in series had a lot to do with this.
 
JRockBlues said:
Year end stats and summary:

Total books read: 35

Primary Tag:
Mystery/Thriller 12
Urban Fantasy 8
Science Fiction 6
Non-Fiction 4
Fantasy 3
Horror 2

Original Language:
English 33
Japanese 1
Spanish 1

Author Gender: (repeats not counted, multiple authors counted separately)
Male 28
Female 4

Ratings (out of 5★):
4★'s 16
3½★'s 13
3★'s 5
Unrated 1

Least favourite book of the year
Tithe by Holly Black – Not a terrible book, just not the intended audience.

Favourite book of the year
No real standouts but plenty of very good books read regardless


Was hoping to reach around the 40 mark so I’m not too far off. Very disappointed in the diversity of my reading though this year with both gender and nationality being far too wide of a gap and I must do better in this respect for next year. In mitigation, I do think that dedicating most of this year to books in series had a lot to do with this.
Click to expand...
35 is pretty good going.

I think I spend a lot of time reading but only seem to get through about 20 a year.
 
32/23 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Although finished this book yesterday, I started it in 2023 so I’m counting this as my last read of 2023.

You rarely read a book where you pretty much know the story, but this was the case here.

This was the first Dickens book that I have read for some time; it hasn’t made me a convert (at least not yet) but I may give another one a go later in the year.
 
Got through 40 books last year (am retired and so have more time on my hands). All were non-fiction, so might read a few more novels this year.

Most were related to the subjects that I used to teach. But there are a few, more general titles worth mentioning.

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This was by far the best of the forty. Hayden has inherited the mantle of previous journalists who spoke truth to power, like John Pilger and Robert Fisk. All the standard far-right tropes about asylum seekers (for example that they are mostly jihadists-in-waiting) are shown to be false, as the author demonstrates simply by telling their stories.

Ha Joon Chang - Edible Economics - A Hungry Economist Explains the World (great and frequently amusing book for foodies who may also want some ammunition to use against Tories).

David Aaronovitch - Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History

Rob Brotherton - Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories

Shannon Sullivan - White Privilege (a great little study that contains many counterintuitive insights into this concept e.g. she convincingly challenges the notion that only white people enjoy white privilege).

Lara Marlowe - Love in a Time of War: My Years With Robert Fisk (anyone who thinks that the IDF do not belong in the same moral sewer as Hamas would do well to read Marlowe's accounts of the massacres at Sabra, Chatila and Qana, and the Israeli use of white phosphorus in the Lebanon).

Ralph Blumenthal - The Believer (entertaining biography of the Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who came to believe that accounts of alien abductions were genuine).

Alex Rowell - Vintage Humour: The Islamic Wine Poetry of Abu Nuwas (Nuwas was a wine-guzzling, bisexual hellraiser in the mould of Shane MacGowan. He was and still is warmly regarded by many Muslims in spite of his liking for men, and before the Salafis showed up, his poems - which sometimes read like the lyrics to Pogues songs - testify to the fact that in earlier times, Islam had actually been remarkably tolerant of homosexuality).

Richard Holloway - Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Holloway is the former Bishop of Edinburgh who left the Anglican Church out of disgust for his fellow prelates who opposed female ordination and same-sex marriage. His publications have received very favourable reviews from atheists like Alain de Botton, Mary Warnock, Philip Pullman and John Gray. That's no surprise as he is a sublime prose stylist. All his later writing is superb, and you have to admire the audacity of someone who wrote a book called Godless Morality: Keeping Religion out of Ethics while he was still a bishop).

John Pearson - The Profession of Violence (the classic study of the Kray Twins)

Paul Hanley - Have a Bleedin' Guess: The Story of Hex Enduction Hour (am not overly keen on this album by The Fall but Hanley's account of how it was made is remarkable).
 
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Managed 32 books last year;

Crime / thriller 15
General Fiction 7
Historical Fiction 5
Non-fiction 3
Science Fiction 1
Classic 1

Best books this year (in no particular order)

A Lincoln Highway - Amor Towles
Dead Man’s Creek - Chris Hammer
Notes on an Execution - Danya Kukafka
The Angel’s Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Exile - Jane Harper

I must confess that I'm fairly unadventurous in my choice of reading...I'm a sucker for Aussie noir!
 
stoneblue said:
Best books this year (in no particular order)

The Angel’s Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I must confess that I'm fairly unadventurous in my choice of reading...I'm a sucker for Aussie noir!
Click to expand...
As I see it, most people here read for pleasure and if you've found an area you like then why not stick with it.

I really should get around to reading more Zafon. I read The Shadow of the Wind about a dozen years ago and really liked it a lot. I have had the sequel on my tbr shelves since not long after finishing it but haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe this will be the push I need.
 
JRockBlues said:
As I see it, most people here read for pleasure and if you've found an area you like then why not stick with it.

I really should get around to reading more Zafon. I read The Shadow of the Wind about a dozen years ago and really liked it a lot. I have had the sequel on my tbr shelves since not long after finishing it but haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe this will be the push I need.
Click to expand...
At this point I'm duty bound to point out (not for the first time) that The Shadow of the Wind is one of my top two books of all time (the other being The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I know you've also read).

Anyway, the whole series of 4 books hangs together beautifully, and you should definitely read them all!
 
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