Recap of 2024 Reads
Sharing about my top reads of 2024
It is no secret that I love reading. As my main hobby, reading occupies a prominent place in my life and I spend a lot of time doing it. In college, I struggled to read for fun because I was an English major and spent much time reading for class. However, once I graduated in 2017, I fell back in love with reading and have made it a consistent part of my life for the last 7 years.
Over the years my reading philosophy has shifted as I have more clearly identified how I like to read (format, time I read), what I like to read (genre, book words, plot vs character driven books), and where I like to read (location, time of day). Out of college, my focus became to read more and I pursued my Goodreads goal with gusto which sometimes led to me not wanting to read larger books because I worried if they would derail me from my goal. Then I focused on reading a variety of books as my love for fantasy was drawing me away from being a well-rounded reader. At this same time, I learned how well I do reading multiple books at a time (~5-6) as long as they are different genres. This practice allows me to process through a lot of material while keeping the ideas/characters separate in my head. While I still have a reading goal every year, it is more of a loose goal to ensure I keep reading versus a challenge. I do still read a lot and I have previously written about how to read more.
How to read more
I am a reader through and through. Growing up my Mum and Dad would both read to me and they mutually encouraged my love and obsession with reading (though I was once grounded from reading!). I have been a consistent reader since I was five, though during college, pleasure reading occurred much less as I was required to read extensively in class. In grad…
At the end of every year, I like to do a #readswrapped (which I lifted from #SpotifyWrapped) which basically is a method I use to look at my reading life from the past year and reflect on the best books I read. My soft reading goal for 2024 was to read 75 books and I exceeded my goal and read 109 books at an average of 345 pages/book. Interestingly, this was the first year that I read an almost equal amount of fiction (54) and nonfiction (55) books. I do like to reread books and 9 of the 109 books I read were rereads. Books about grief were definitely a theme and I think led to my number of nonfiction books being so high.
I am very stingy with five star ratings and I only rated five books as five stars which says a lot! My top books do reflect the theme of grief as two were books about grief/miscarriage (Held by Abbey Wedgeworth and Just Be Honest by Clint Watkins ). Other nonfiction books that made the top list were The Plan by Kendra Adachi and of course The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. My one five-star fiction book was Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro, which I reread from 2022 ahead of the release of the sequel, Bringer of Dust, this past year. Below I have a little more detail for each of my five star reads in the order I read them and why they made it into my top books of 2024.
Top books of 2024
In an earlier Substack, I shared an article I wrote about processing miscarriage as a working woman. Needless to say, a lot of the first quarter of 2024 was spent reading books on grief and miscarriage. Two books that were incredible for my processing were Held by Abbey Wedgeworth and Just Be Honest by Clint Watkins.
Held - Abbey Wedgeworth
Wedgeworth does an incredible job of sharing her pain and empathizing with the reader while at the same time ending each devotional pointing back to God and reorienting on Him. Throughout the book, Wedgeworth incorporated stories of other women who dealt with pregnancy loss and it was encouraging to see them all trust the Lord through their unique miscarriage circumstances. Additionally, this book is setup like a journal and each entry has questions and space for reflection. My dark thoughts during this time felt very normalized/validated but also challenged by this book.
Just Be Honest - Clint Watkins
Watkins digs into what grief looks like for a Christian and really highlights how Jesus wept and wrestled through grief and we can/should too. Grief as a Christian can be complicated as we know that God is sovereign even though we do not understand why things happen the way they do. This often leads to a putting on of a face during grief: "We tend to equate strong faith with confidence and composure... Some of the most steadfast believers look at the world through tears and walk with a limp" and "Strong faith involves honest struggle."As someone who struggles with emotions, this book really helped me recognize that working through grief is a good and worthy thing to pursue - though it will take time. Ultimately, this book helped give me the permission to wrestle with my grief.
Another theme of my year was realizing how my time on my phone/social media really took away from my life. I had a lot of these realizations in March/April which led to the creation of this Substack. This emphasis on less phone/social media usage was further enhanced by my reading of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I probably recommended and talked about this book the most this year and ideas from the book have made their way into many of my prior Substacks.
The Anxious Generation - Jonathan Haidt
Social Psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, makes the case in this book that the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression in Gen Z is due to the increased usage of smartphones and social media over the past 10 years. He argues that to stop this we need to radically reconsider our usage of smartphones and social media and reorient our society to be more play-focused. As parents have become more focused on protecting their children in the real world, they let them run free in the digital world.
His discussion of how social media affects girls specifically really hit home for me. I went into reading this book thinking it was more for Gen Z, but in reading it I have realized much of it applies to the year I was born as I am right in between Gen Z and Millennial.
I love planning and productivity and when I saw Kendra Adachi, the Lazy Genius, was coming out with a time management book specifically for women, I was pumped. Kendra’s books and podcasts about ‘being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t’ have hugely resonated with me and my type A, enneagram 1 self.
The Plan - Kendra Adachi
Almost all time management books are written for men and have the underlying recommendation that in order to focus on your future you have to hustle now. As Adachi puts it: "Most time management authors and experts are men who do not have a boss, a home to run, or a menstrual cycle - all of three of which are notoriously unwieldy.' This book is chock full of kind and helpful ways to plan whether that's for today, tomorrow, or next week. Instead of focusing on what you are doing Adachi encourages readers to take a step back and ask why you are doing it and how it integrates into your life.
I am a longtime listener/reader of Kendra Adachi and this book takes some of her best life approaches and packages them into a very accessible time management environment. The undercurrent of this book is kindness and meeting yourself where you are, which I believe makes you more efficient in the long run. I will definitely be returning to this book for bigger seasons of planning for my life!
Even though half of the books I read this past year were fiction, only one rose to the five star rating and it is one I have read before! Fiction truly has to blow me out of the water for it to receive a five star rating and when a fiction re-read manages to still blow me out of the water, you know it is good. C.S. Lewis says as much when he discusses re-reading books: “An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only…We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness.”
Ordinary Monsters - J.M. Miro
The best way to describe this book is that it's a horror-esquse mashup of X-men, Harry Potter, and Stranger Things written in a Dickensian voice. In this 1882 London world there are Talents - kids who have special talents in the world and are considered monsters by others. What ensues is coming of age stories for two of the characters as they work to save the world against an evil talent Jacob Marber. I do not want to share too much more, but highly recommend you give it a read if the description above interests you!
Reading Goals for 2025
My reading goal for next year is also 75 books and I think that should be doable, however, I anticipate some large changes to my reading life in 2025 with a baby on the way. I expect I will be listening to a lot more audiobooks and reading more books on my Kindle since that it is easy to do one-handed. Recently, I discovered that there are audiobooks available on Spotify if you are a Premium user (though they limit listening time to 12 hours/month), so I have been enjoying listening to some of the books available on there. My library also has a plethora of audiobooks available through Libby/Overdrive.
Even though my reading life will likely shift after April, I am excited to try and devise a new system to ensure I still read and prioritize doing so even with new life changes. Reading and weightlifting are the two hobbies I want to continue when I have a child so I will make a concerted effort to figure out how to prioritize them in my life.
Another pseudo-goal I have for 2025 is to consider at what ‘level’ I want to read each book. In his book, How to Read a Book: Advice for Christian Readers, Andrew David Naselli describes that we all read books at different levels. ‘Survey level’ is where we quickly evaluate/skim to get the main ideas and determine if a book is worth reading. ‘Macro level’ is where we read to get most of the ideas and the big picture of the book. ‘Micro level’ is where we read very closely to ensure we understand all the arguments and really process the book. As I have been thinking about books through this lens, it has helped me be more intentional with how I am reading and not feel bad when I recognize that a book may be more of a survey read versus a macro/micro read. Additionally, recognizing when I do not need to read something at a micro level can help me use my reading time more efficiently.
Reading is my absolute favorite. I find immense value in taking the time to reflect on my previous reading year to inform the next as it helps me zoom out and see the big picture. I truly look forward to what 2025 holds for my reading life!
Do you have a favorite book or books that you have read this past year?