2024 in Books

I’m back with my annual summary of my reading from the past 12 months!

Overall, 2024 was a good reading year. Being on Sabbatical for 3 months definitely helped – at one point, I realized that I had 3 books on the go at the same time, something that hasn’t happened in a couple of decades. I’ve always been a reader, but this year my identity as a Reader has felt stronger than it has been in a while.

Starting with the fun stuff – my favourite reads of 2024 (in the order I read them, not in order of preference)!

Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)

I listened to this book in February when I went to visit Dad in Ontario – airplane and train listening, as well as hanging out at Dad’s house. This is a book that has won a number of awards, so I probably don’t need to say too much about it – it is a David Copperfield re-telling set in Appalachia in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. The narrator made the story come alive for me. It’s a “big” book in several senses of the word, but listening to it made it very accessible. I’ve recommended this book (especially the audio version) to a number of people since!

A Rip Through Time (Kelley Armstrong)

Another audiobook – this one I listened to while driving home from a ski vacation in Québec in March.  It is a “time slip” murder mystery where a 21^st century Canadian detective ends up in the body of a Victorian housemaid in Edinburgh. With all of the details of Victorian Edinburgh, the author has definitely done her research, the characters are all 3-dimensional, and the book is funny (as in laugh-out-loud funny at times when listening) as well as gripping.  (Honourable mention to the subsequent books in the series which I have also listened to. Another one is coming out in May, so I’ll be getting my name on the waiting list at the library as soon as it is available!)


Butter Honey Pig Bread (francesca ekwuyasi)

This was a “gym read” for me (I read e-books from the library on the Elliptical), but with a bit more substance than my usual gym reads. And the characters and story have haunted me since I read it back in July. It is a multi-generational story that moves between a mother and her twin daughters. It moves between Nigeria, the UK, and Canada.  There is an element of “magical realism” but it is the characters and their relationships that I loved most of all.



The Secret Chord (Geraldine Brooks)

We have a weekly bible study at the church and are meandering our way through the Old Testament.  Through the later fall months, we began the King David story cycle, and I remembered that an author I had enjoyed previously had written a fictionalized account of the life of King David, so I borrowed this book from the library.  While some of it is a bit gory (I had started to read this book several years ago, and didn’t get past the first couple of pages which are filled with a very vivid battle scene), this time around I stuck with it, and by skipping over the gory sections, it made the stories of King David come alive.


Hymnal (Julia Bell)

This is one of the books of poetry I read this year – it is a memoir in poetry of growing up, faith, and queerness in southern Wales.  I bought this book in Wales in April, and having spent the past couple of years learning Welsh (I finished the Duolingo Cymraeg course in July!), I loved seeing the Welsh words scattered throughout (and being able to understand them without needing to turn to the glossary. The author’s ability to paint a vivid picture with few words grabbed me and didn’t let me put the book down until I came to the last page.


Now moving on to the geeky-fun part of the post – statistics from my reading spreadsheet! Some “big picture” numbers:

Number of books read:  57
Best reading month:  A 3-way tie between February, March, and August (7 books completed in each of those months)

Moving on to some of the other data that I like to track:

Paper Books:  25
E-Books:  24
Audiobooks:  8

Purchased Books:  18
Library Books:  37
Borrowed Books:  1
Gifted Books:  1

Fiction:  47
Non-Fiction:  5
Poetry:  4
Graphic Novel:  1

Re-Reads:  7
First-Time Reads:  50

Canadian Authors:  25
Non-Canadian Authors:  32

Non-White Authors:  8
White Authors:  49

Books with Racial Diversity:  38
Books in an All-White World:  19

Queer Authors:  8
Non-Queer Authors:  49

Books with Explicitly Queer Characters:  29
Books with no Explicitly Queer Characters:  28

Female Authors:  51
Male Authors:  7
(Yes, I know that the numbers here don’t add up – one book I read was an anthology with both male and female authors! I probably could have also increased the number of female authors to 52, as one book was co-written by two women.)

I said last year that I don’t set reading goals, but I did set some reading aspirations for the year.  They were:
1) Read 52 books (1/week) – achieved!
2) Read more queer authors – achieved, but barely (4/37 or 11% in 2023; 8/57 or 14% in 2024)
3) Get through some of the books I’ve already purchased, and continue to support the library, rather than purchasing new books – achieved! I shifted from 54% of my books from the library in 2023 to 65% of my books from the library in 2024; and the majority of the “purchased” books I read in 2024 were previously purchased rather than purchased this year. (My book-buying habits have shifted enough that I discontinued the “paid” level of Chapters/Indigo Plum Rewards this year as I’m no longer buying enough books to make it worthwhile.)

In terms of reading intentions for 2025:
- Even though I won’t be on Sabbatical this year, I’d love to read 52 books again this year, and to hold on to that identity as a Reader
- Read even more queer authors. (11% to 14% wasn’t enough of an improvement for me!)
- Read more non-white authors. (This number slipped from 19% in 2023 to 14% in 2024.)

Wishing all of you happy reading in 2025! (And also – if you have any book recommendations, please throw them into the comments!)