A year of reading in review
Plus the December 2024 reviews at the bottom 😉
by Alana
It’s nearly two weeks into January, and I’m only now finding a moment to breath and reflect on the year left behind. After a flurry of short books (thanks for the recs!) and speed-reading, I did in fact hit my Goodreads goal of 130 books in 2024. Whew. I’m aware there’s some irony that two of the books I read this month were about the important art of doing nothing.
2024 reading trends
For me, reading is the most powerful way to gain understanding of another person’s perspective. History, differing ethnicities, gender identities, cultural norms – these come to life for me through books in more lasting ways than when depicted in movies, television, or music.
I experience books both as a journey in and a journey out. As a mixed-race person, reading is a means for me to inhabit the cultures my families come from – cultures that I have trouble claiming as my own since I was raised a second (and a half?) generation Canadian.
But books are also a tool for reaching into times and worlds starkly different from my own. New viewpoints make for novel stories, and as someone who dislikes a predictable plot, seeking out difference in my reading also keeps me engaged.
For that reason, in 2024 I tried to challenge my reading defaults. To escape the Eurocentric canon I was raised under (and then chose to study in university :P), I set a goal of reading twenty books from twenty different countries. Determining where a book is ‘from’ was a harder task than anticipated. Will blog more on this quandary in the future.
Gathering reading data
You can’t understand trends without baseline data. What appeared in Goodreads – title, author, page length, publication date – wasn’t granular enough for my purpose. Early in 2024, I stumbled on this Youtube video where Noveltea shares her awesome spreadsheet for tracking reads. I used her template, added categories for setting, and edited the statistics options to reflect my reading habits.
I’m still reflecting on the data I’ve collected. I hope to use it to set mindful reading goals for 2025. But I’m not diving into goalsetting just because it’s the start of the new year. Going to spend some time learning from all this info I’ve collected. Will share my updated goals when I make them.
Until then, here are some visualizations from my data.
Books by setting
2024 fiction reads mapped by their setting:
The most commonly occurring country and city settings in my 2024 reads:
Books by type
An overview of formats and genres I read in 2024.
Author demographics
I’m not entirely confident that AI tools can hold large amounts of information in context and then assess that data. But Gemini politely told me that it could, so I tried; I fed Gemini the titles of books and authors I read this year and asked it to analyze trends. The math didn’t quite add up, but it did say it was drawing from publicly available information shared by the author on websites, in interviews, and on social media.
Here are some loosey-goosey estimates courtesy of Gemini:
Gender breakdown: Roughly 60% of the books I read were by female identifying authors and about 40% by male identifying. Next year I hope to read books by non-binary authors. If you have any recs, send them my way!
Ethnicity breakdown, based on publicly available information about the authors: 60% white, 40% BIPOC
Here are my most read authors of 2025:
R.F. Kuang (read her if you hate colonialism)
Kate Quinn (tied for my favourite historical fiction writer with Tracy Chevalier)
Sarah J. Maas (read her if you want hot faeries having hot sex and never dying despite the plot repeatedly trying to kill them because apparently actions do not have consequences)
Ariel Lawhon (read her if you want historical fiction that is always inspired by real people and events)
T. Kingfisher (the queen of genre-hopping and my favourite horror writer)
T.J. Klune (read him if you want queer, bittersweet stories about found family)
December Fiction reviews
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint- Exupéry
Ten-year-old Alana hated this classic, but reading it as an adult, I gained an appreciation for it. The Little Prince’s catalogue of his journey to earth showed me all the versions of ‘adult’ I don’t want to be. His relationships with flowers and foxes made me consider about my own responsibilities to ‘that which I have tamed’. And then ending solidified the importance of self-examination given the finality of our one wild and precious life (to quote another author on this review list 😉).
Recommended by Anne, sorta, since she brought me a Little Prince postcard from Paris
Walk the Blue Fields - Claire Keegan
This collection reminded me of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood in that Keegan uses her short stories to bring a County Claire, Ireland, to life from multiple perspectives. These concentric circles of narrators show us how a town can sink its claws into you, how ‘escape’ or ‘better’ can feel unattainable, or how a land where you have roots can become the only home you’ll ever crave. Relationship to place is the anchoring theme, and as always, Keegan’s characters are equal parts flawed and good, deep feelers who make messy, human mistakes.
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
This award-winning novel spans decades and continents, following three generations of a family from Kerala, India. Rahel and Estha are twins, born to a mother who ignored social convention and disciplined by a blind grandmother who suffered abuse at the hands of a frustrated husband. A tragedy lurks beneath the fractured relationships between siblings, but Roy patiently draws out the story at the heart of this novel’s heavy grief. Rooted in the sandy shores, heat, and lush greenery of India’s southern coast, Roy’s novel exposes the injustice of the caste system and taught me about the Marxist movements at work throughout the 1960s-70s in this part of the country.
TW: rape, child abuse
Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles - Jeanette Winterson
Winterson is an auto-read author for me. This novella reinterprets the myth of Atlas, the Greek titan charged with holding up the world after he and his siblings are overthrown by the major Olympians. Told with the poetic lyricism, fluidity, and incisiveness that I love about Winterson’s writing. In between Atlas and Heracles’ darkly comedic banter, Winterson weaves memoir-esque reflections on the burdens she’s carried as a queer, adopted woman growing up in an English Christian community.
It’s clear that the novel’s recurrent question “why don’t I just put it down?” is about more than the physical burden Atlas carries.
TW: rape
Orbital - Samantha Harvey
Solipsistic and beautifully told, this plotless book charts the days and thoughts of six astronauts circling earth on the ISS. The kind of book I would’ve studied in a Formalist Lit class – rife with metaphor, personification, and repetition for emphasis. Not for everyone, but if you enjoy pondering the insignificance of human existence, the fragile perfection of the natural world, and the complexities of love, you’ll probably enjoy Orbital. Some sentences I wrote down while reading:
“These humans who polish the ever larger lenses of our telescopes that tell us how ever smaller we are. These beings who insist on flying flags in a windless world.”
How to End a Love Story - Yulin Kuang
First time I’ve read a romance novel with a non-white protagonist! I loved this tropey, sexy little debut which follows Helen and Grant, two writers working in Hollywood to adapt Helen’s bestselling YA novels into a TV show. They are, of course, linked by a Tragedy from the Past that they must make peace with while navigating growing attraction. Fun setting. Thoughtful exploration of Chinese culture and familial piety. I especially enjoyed that Kuang alternates between narrators, allowing you to watch this trainwreck of emotional repression from both sides. A binge-read for a cold winter day.
TW: suicide
Dog Songs: Poems - Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is currently my favourite poet. Accessible, deceptively complex, and all too human, this collection of poetry starts with dozens of odes to the flavours of joy and heartache dogs bring into our lives. Following that are thoughtful poems on purpose (or the fruitlessness of searching for it), and, as always in her work, on the lessons learned from nature.
One of my favourite snippets:
“Emerson, I am trying to live,
as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish
there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How
would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.”
Recommended (obliquely) by Sophie who motivated me to buy a Mary Oliver box set
What Feasts at Night - T. Kingfisher
A spooky sequel to Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, this book follows Alex Easten, nonbinary knight of arms, back to their country estate where things have most definitely been going bump in the night. This remote, medieval setting evokes the mist-shrouded moors of Wuthering Heights with the same heightened sense of unease you get from an Edgar Allan Poe story. Recurring characters and quicker pacing (this time we follow Alex taking up arms against a local legend that kills in dreams) made me enjoy this sequel more than the first book in the series.
Recommended by Milana
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Another reread of a book I didn’t like as a kid. Zusak’s classic follows Lisa, a little girl who steals books, loves her adoptive family and best friend, and shelters a Jew in her basement during the Nazi party’s rise to power. Set in a small town outside of Munich and narrated by Death. Both a bildungsroman with all the sweet foibles of childhood and a philosophical meditation on the senselessness of intolerance. I think visiting Berlin in 2024 has given me a new appreciation for stories about how hate can rise to power if left unchecked by people like the ones in this book.
Elsewhere - Gabrielle Zevin
A whimsical story of a fifteen-year-old girl’s trip to the underworld after she dies in a car accident. The underworld, it turns out, is not too different from the above-world of the living. People need jobs, fall in love, have big feelings, and have trouble letting go. An enjoyable YA jaunt with a more positive take on death and growth.
December non-fiction reviews
Vita Contemplativa - Byung-Chul Han
A tiny book that took me forever to read because philosopher Byung-Chul Han packs so much into each sentence. An ode to the lost art of inactivity, Vita Contemplativa got me thinking about what differentiates humans from machines – hesitation, contemplation (particularly of nature), and reflection are uniquely human characteristics that we in fact try to eradicate from efficient technology. The push for constant productivity and efficiency in human workplaces deprives us of the space for creative reflection or the skill of being fully in a moment, Han argues. And it’s in those moments between stimulus and response that humans are capable of innovation, meaningful connection, and art.
Recommended by Markus
Reconciling History: A Story of Canada - Jody Wilson-Raybould
A powerful, evidence-rich primer on Canadian history and the thousand-plus ways our government has strategically sought to eradicate and oppress Indigenous culture. Numerous contributors share Indigenous, Metis, and Inuit perspectives, and Wilson-Raybould and her collaborators draw widely from historical legal documents, treaties, and quotations from past prime ministers and their cabinets. But alongside this history of oppression, the authors also share the history of Indigenous resistance, from both major movements like Louis Riel and the Red River Resistance, to smaller acts both historical and present. A must-read for all Canadians.
Recommended by Deb
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell
Nonfiction essays that explore our inability to put down our phones and connect. Odell’s wide-ranging book traces the corporate competition for the commodity of human attention and suggests ways we might resist giving our focus away without thought. Lots to ponder in this read. I particularly liked the chapter on ‘context collapse’ or how algorithms reduce people and ideas to their most sellable, succinct selves. The result of context collapse is that we become increasingly incensed, unable to disagree respectfully or to have safe conversations about navigating difference. Evoked Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’, updated for a twenty-first century context.
The Magical Age of Overthinking – Amanda Montell
Half memoir, half urgent treatise to chill out and consult the damn evidence, Amanda Montell’s nonfiction essay collection is a deep dive into the cognitive biases that dominate the internet these days. Montell interrogates terms like ‘manifesting,’ and explains psych concepts like the sunk cost fallacy, frequency bias, and the halo effect, drawing from her life or social media for examples. Pop psychology meets social critique; a superficial, engaging read.
