I mentioned a couple years that I never do the ’52 books in a year’ challenge. I love reading, so I don’t set a number – I just read. It’s difficult sometimes to make reading books a priority when my job is to read stack after stack of student writing. Most of my books tend to be read over breaks (summer/winter). For fun, I started tracking a couple years ago – I read 42 books (or 12,886 pages) in 2023 and 44 (or 17,413 pages) in 2024.
This year, I read 51 books (or 15,277 pages). For the first time, I did indeed get pretty close to that one-book-a-week pace. And unlike past years, my books were more spread out – I usually get a bell curve with the highest point in the summer.
While I did read quite a few more books than last year, I actually read fewer pages – 2,136 fewer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Due to a couple missed book club meetings (a couple canceled, a couple I couldn’t make – one I just couldn’t get my hands on the book in time), I was able to read more books for myself than I normally do.
One thing I really like about tracking apps is the ability to easily look back at what I read the previous year. My favorite from nonfiction (27/51) was The Sing Sing Files by Dan Slepian. This should be required reading – especially for anyone in public office. My favorite fiction (24/51) novels were Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and rereading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (I listened to it this time, and the audio book was well done – which is saying something, because I don’t do well with audio books at all). The most surprising loved book was 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark. I honestly went into it dreading having to read it – but I LOVED IT. Hoping to read the next in the series sometime soon.
What did your year of reading look like?
*If you’re on Goodre@ds but looking for a non-@m@zon alternative, check out StoryGraph. You can even transfer your Goodre@ds records over to StoryGraph – so no lost information and no wasted time trying to add every book you’ve ever read.
Ami Maxine 