2024: A Year of Reading

It’s been a few years since I’ve posted, but I can promise this year, I’m back! I’m locked in. My first returning blog is in reflection. This is the fourth year I have tracked my reading, so it feels like the best place to start.

2024 proved to be an eventful year, between months of home renovations and my first year teaching at the college level again. I’ve had the great opportunity to teach creative writing in particular, designing an introductory class nearly from scratch. It was tough, since I still worked my full time role, but fulfilling. I will teach that class again this upcoming spring—it’s third (but nowhere near final) iteration. I’m proud to say that everything my students are given, including the lists of additional examples in a variety of forms in our online course shell, has all been read by me beforehand.

What did this mean for my reading this year, though?

Because I had more than one job taking my time this year—one that required extensive course planning, reading, and grading—I intentionally lowered my reading goal from 100 books to 52 books. I also wanted to begin to intentionally diversify my reading list more, since I tend to mostly read romances at the book-level. Romance doesn’t always appear in the shorter pieces I read, or the shows/films I watch. 

While reading mostly romance was still the case in 2024, I think I began to read more beyond my genre. This list, of course, does not include the hundreds of poems, short stories, scripts (plays, shows, or film), and more that I read in preparation for teaching. The reading list I compiled throughout 2024 includes longer pieces or collections of work. Historically, reading 10,000 words has been my cut-off point, so I will also mention the books I did not finish (DNF).

That’s right - DNF. This year, I finally gave myself the permission to stop reading pieces that I did not enjoy. A slow process of permission, yes, but it’s a new development that I feel good about for my personal reading. That time, after all, is ultimately mine. I’d like to spend it where my heart is, when I can.

So after checking the final tally on December 29th, my total read came to a whopping 74 pieces. If you count the 7 books I DNF’d (between 25%-65% read), the total jumps to 81. As of that date, I also had 6 books in progress (between 33%-63% read based on physical page count or Kindle Unlimited percentages). 

But what did I end up ultimately reading?

Genre or Subgenre	Amount Read
Romance	55
Fantasy Romance	35
Contemporary Romance	​     20
Nonfiction	8
Writing / Craft Books	6
Action/Thriller	2
Horror	1
Poetry Collection	1
Short Story Collection	1
Intentionally Did Not Finish (DNF)      Not included in total	7
Total	74

My main takeaways:

• A respectable amount of nonfiction and writing-related books, combined amounting to almost 19% of my reading in 2024.
• ​Romance takes the lead at 74% of my overall list—no surprise—but the distribution of that genre has also mirrored recent years. It’s my favorite overall genre, so it’s sometimes hard to stray.
• The ratio continues to tip, just so, to fantasy romance over contemporary romance. In fact, in 2021, 24/52 of the books I read were contemporary romance, with fantasy romance coming in at 20 just behind! Going further back to my childhood, I read mostly contemporary romance. 
  • As a writer... I wonder about the ratio of my writing ideas—has that scale tipped, too?
• I began to dip my toes in other subgenres of fiction—namely, horror and action/thriller—but my TBR list and bookshelf is ripe with possibilities. My October experiment to read anything but romance failed, so I’ll experiment with a more balanced approach in 2025 instead! 

I started tracking what I read in 2021, about a year after completing graduate school. I was burnt out, as many are at the end of graduate programs. I’m not sure how much COVID compounded the experience, but in hindsight, I’m glad to have been swept away by everyone’s renewed love of reading at that time. Because I was so intensely focused on school and my own writing for six years, I left little time for one of my most sincere passions. I’ve chosen to prioritize reading ever since.

In 2021, I read 52 books. In 2022, my reading more than doubled to 109 books. I think that was the first full year I felt settled into a job after graduation and COVID, so I was able to sink into my passions more fully again. I remember writing again in earnest that year, and then again, in 2023. As for my reading in 2023, however, I read less, totalling 65 books. Reading 74 books in 2024 took me by surprise, in all honesty. I hadn’t realized I read so much with everything else going on! 

2024 has also been a year of firsts. It’s the year I gave myself permission to begin not finishing books that didn’t resonate (only 7 total) rather than pushing through another 200-300+ pages. It’s also the first year I started listening to audiobooks in earnest. I enjoy conversational podcasts, and with commuting more, I’d like to maximize that time beyond music and French language learning. 

With audiobooks, I hit wall after wall, almost like I was programmed to. I would start an audiobook—always nonfiction—and the actual writing didn’t seem to like up with the hook-driven description. It was a strange experience, wondering if what I was listening to is what I really picked out. I stopped listening to a lot of books quickly that way. These partial reads weren’t counted in this list if I didn’t experience a certain amount of the piece first. For one of the books that didn’t make the overall count, I remember not being able to even get through the introduction. The book was what I expected, but it boiled down to the writing itself. In hindsight, it underscores one piece of advice I discuss in my creative writing course: the importance of reading what you write aloud, because of what you will realize or catch.

All things considered, I’m happy to have read so many books this year. Some, I remember more clearly than others. The ones that clicked, and the ones that didn’t. Beyond reading being a passion, it’s also an activity that encourages gratitude in me. This long list recognizes how others have shown up on the page and in my life. It’s also a testament to how I have shown up for myself. Reading recharges and resets me in an essential way, like the oil needed for an engine to not only function but also succeed. 

Post-grad, COVID-conscious me from 2020 couldn’t have predicted that I would have read 300 books in the past 4 years. Exactly 300, it turns out. What a milestone I didn’t know I had reached. To paraphrase author and radio host Garrison Keillor: what a gift I have given myself, over and over again.

As for 2025, my goal will be 50 books. It’s realistic for me between two jobs and anything else life might throw at me. I hope to choose better books as audiobooks (recommendations, anyone?) and continue to diversify the genres on my list even further. Perhaps in the coming year, I’ll begin to tally all of the shorter pieces I read, along with their genres. Diversifying my reading list overall will be a slow process, but one I fervently believe is worth the effort. 

With a lower reading goal, I also plan to increase my time writing. I will post or draft:

• ​12 blogs
• 24 poems
• 1 book
• 1 script

That’s the goal, and I’m sticking to it! Going forward, expect more blogs related to both my reading and my writing as I work on goals for both. My next blog will cover my top 10 recommendations from my 2024 reading list. 

This time next year, I hope the numbers speak for themselves!