With the year 2024 coming to an end it is time to look back. Today I am talking about one of my favorite things to do. Reading and books. Books are my escapism. My way to travel the world, to find like minded people, to be inspired by stories and adventures, to venture outside of my comfort zone and a favorite way to acquire new knowledge. My favorite books 2024 have been picked. Grab yourself a drink and some of the remaining Christmas cookies and start reading.
As always I started 2024 with a reading goal in mind. I wanted to read a total of 75 books or 20,000 pages. My reading goal in 2024 included a list of books 31 books I wanted to read. I managed to read only 12 books of that list. Which is a bit underwhelming to be honest. I also hoped to read more books from my shelves. Instead I put more books on the shelves – again. Even through I spent a lot less money on books this year. While I managed the 75 books (I ended up reading 92 including audio books) I fell short of the 20,000 pages. Bummer. I did not foresee that one.
All that said, let’s dive into my favorite books of 2024.
Best rated books this year: I have fifteen books that received a 4.5, 4.75 or 5 star rating. They are:
MIA – Die neue Welt by Katie Duchess ● Starling House by Alix E. Harrow ● Wir sind Wölfe | We are Wolves by Katrina Nannestad ● The Frozen River | Der gefrorene Fluss by Ariel Lawhorn ● When we believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal ● The Cartographers by Peng Shepard ● The Girl who fell beneath the Sea by Axie Oh ● The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave ● Forever Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid ● Happy Place by Emily Henry ● The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman ● Woman on Fire by Sheila de Liz ● I am a Nurse by Franziska Böhler ● Zeichnen in der Natur by Albrecht Rissler ● The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Most Favorite of them All: This book is just so wonderful. It comes as no surprise that an Asian folklore is always a winner and on top of my reviews. This one just made me feel wonderful while reading. And it was a gift from the husband.
→ Read my review.
Best cover: I couldn’t decide between “The Cartographers” and “The Girl who Fell Beneath the Sea”. But since one has already seen the spotlight I nominate this blue beauty.
→ Read my review
Longest book: My longest book this year ” To Sleep Among the Stars” with 880 pages. It took me eleven days to read. It dragged a bit and I think there were days in-between I didn’t even pick it up. Overall my longest book in 2024 was 218 pages longer than last year’s book.
→ Read my review.
Disappointment of the year: You know I love a good winter book – doesn’t really matter what it’s about. But this (hyped) book from Tove Jansson fell so flat for me. I hated her writing style. I was not aware it was only parts of her stories curated in a new book. I don’t like that. And overall I didn’t find any wisdom in it. Since I bought this book with a gift voucher it feels like a double disappointment.
→ Read my review.
Struggle of the year: Again my struggle of the year book is one I have not yet finished. I will though. One day.
this one started out so very promising. I had to put it down multiple times a page to scribble down amazing quotes, bath in wonderful sayings and to compile a song list of the songs listed in the book. But it’s over 500 pages long and while it is a slow book and I knew it when going in I can not really tell what is happening. It is all over the place so much so, that it is hard to know who is talking and what time line we are in.
Oldest Book (written): This book is well known and I finally picked it up and read it. While it was fine its wasn’t all to great. Wasn’t able to see all the humor it supposedly has to be honest. It was written in 1887.
→ Read my review.
Under the Radar: I found this book recommendation on Instagram and when I heard it was from a Peruvian author I put it down for my Read Around the World book. This is a beautiful story about unregistered immigrants to the US. It really made me think and feel for the situations.
→ Read my review.
Surprise of the year: I was anxious reading this book by my book club friend. What if I didn’t like it? Well, all worries were unnecessary because her book is really something special. Unfortunately it is only in German.
→ Read my review.
The worst book: Was Truth or Beard by Penny Reid. It is amazing that these kind of toxic books are being hyped that much. I stopped at 21 % because I could just not handle the overly protective (read controlling) MC and the weak stupid FM. Wow…
The best non fiction: Just like last year I read a couple of great non-fiction books this year but these two stand out – “Woman on Fire” by Sheila de Liz and “I am a nurse” by Franziska Böhler. I can only recommend. So many facts and interesting things to learn.
→ Read my review & → Read my review.
The best audiobook: This was just such a fun story and I really went out of my way to listen to this book, took a longer time to walk home and tried to finish it before the library hold was expiring (missing it by mere 10 minutes and waiting for weeks to re-borrow). Loved it.
The best kids/middle grade book: I read the books I gift to my god children for Christmas to a) know if the book is any good and b) have a chance of a conversation starter. I read three. The original one I wanted to gift didn’t make the cut because I found it “problematic”. I loved “We are Wolves” the best – historic fiction about survival of children in WWII.
→ Review to come
Best book club book: We had only three heybooklovers book club books and my favorite one was Frozen River. Which I had already on my kindle when we picked it but never managed to have a discussion about.
Book related shenanigans
Favorite books are just one part of my book review for 2024. I love me some statistics and numbers. Here are a few fun facts when it comes to books that represent my year of reading.
- Best reading month: Was January with 14 books. Probably because I was down with Covid for three weeks and bound to stay in two rooms of the apartment – bedroom and my office. The month I read the most pages though was April with 2,381 pages which is 1,321pages lower than last year’s best month.
- Slowest reading month: was August with only three books – one more than last year’s slowest month.
- Pages read overall: As of today I am at 19,431 pages read according to Storygraph (Goodreads says 25,575 pages which is funny since I didn’t log 10 books here as they are not in the catalogue. Makes me wonder how correct previous stats are) . My overall goal of reading was to read 20,000 pages. I didn’t manage that and read 10,559 pages less than last year.
- Average book length: 308 pages. Slight increase (last year was 288 pages)
- Average time per book: 9 days – which seems a bit high but not surprising struggling the last years and this years struggle books for month on end.
- Average book rating: For storygraph it is 3.73 stars – here I can rate more granular. Goodreads it is 3.8 stars. I am tough when it comes to rating – but I am happy to say it has increased by 0.2 points.
- Top three genres: Romance, Contemporary, Fantasy while I am nit 100 percent agreeing with what is filed in each category it does tell me something. I want to spend my time with less romance next year – they are never the great books.
- Number of books read for my Read around the World project: Seven and another 148 to go. I am a little disappointed with myself here.
- Audio book vs physical copy vs ebook: A third of my books have been audiobooks. 68 percent have been read. eBooks are my go to book of choice. It is just so convenient to have it available at all times and anywhere. I had to make an effort to pick up physical books this year – mainly because I know once read they will be put into a free little library.
- German books read: 26 German book which is 28 percent (last year it was 43.3 percent)
- English books read: 66 German book which is 72 percent (last year it was 56.7 percent)
- Books I didn’t finish: I started thirteen books/audiobooks that I quit at some point because it was just not for me.
- Author split: I read and listened to 71 books by female authors. That is 77 percent of books and the same amount as last year. 20 percent have been by male authors and 3 percent written by multiple authors.
- Number of books bought: 14 books – 8 – kindle books | 6 – physical books
- Number of books gifted to me in 2024: 8 books
- Number of book freebies snatched: 7 kindle freebies
- Number of books borrowed: currently five books from my parents
- Books swapped: One – not read
- Books found in Little Free Library: Three – none read
- Books from publishers/authors: Three. Two need to be read.
- Total of new books in 2024: 36 books – includes bought, freebies, gifted and swapped books
- Number of unread books on my shelves: 92 books – includes borrowed books. The TBR are is growing (last year 79 books) – my plan to be at 20 by May 2025 seems immpossible.
- Number of unread books on my kindle: 625 book – please don’t judge…
- Available book budget: I started out with the book budget of 119.88€ (based on the monthly kindle unlimited fee of 9.99€ x 12) However I quickly decided to only spent the maximum amount of money on books from books I’ve sold.
With that my book budget this year was: 53,65€. - Budget spent on books: I spent 31,08€ in total. This includes all the bought ebooks and paperbacks as well as postage for swapped books. I saved the library fee of 10 € since it ran out sometime in December and I decided to renew the card in January 2025 instead. I am proud to be leaving this year with money in the bank (22,57€) For the second year in a row.
And this is the reading review – my favorite books 2024 and everything else I came up with. Did you have a favorite book this year? How was your reading year in general? Which of my favorite books will make it to your TBR?
If you are interested in my previous book round ups you can have a look here: favorite books of 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019, favorite books of 2018 part I and part II, favorite books of 2017 part I and part II and favorite books of 2016. Also let’s be friends on Goodreads.
8 comments
I had a pretty good reading year, but I’ll be honest, my stats were skewed because I reread a lot of books and that probably increased my average rating because I don’t reread books unless I really like them!
I’ve been influenced by you to try and increase the diversity of my books in terms of where authors are from, so I might put Everyone You Know Goes Home on my TRB. I’m not sure I’m ready to take on books around the world, but it’s sort of in the back of my mind as I am choosing books.
I feel honored that you think about reading from other authors. Hope you will enjoy them. The read around the world project is not an easy one but I love looking at different stories.
I think doing some rereads is not a bad thing and who cares about the stats if reading is fun. Every minute and every book counts.
Tobia recently posted…Shaping Happiness In December 2024 And a Farewell to 2024
I love book stats even though I don’t really keep track of anything besides which books I read. You had a great reading year! I also enjoyed The Cartographers and First Lie Wins. This year I read more books than ever before because I listen to so many audiobooks in the car. I love being able to get through more books, but I do think it dampens my memory of what I read. Like, I am pretty sure I read the Laura Dave book you mentioned but I can’t remember it at all!
I totally understand what you mean. I also think that audiobooks are not as memorable as if I would read the book. That is why I mainly listen to romance novels because I don’t care if I forget that one in an instant.
Glad you enjoyed the cartographers too. It’s in the tops for me.
So fun – I loved reading this! I’ll have my reading stats/favorite reads post up next week. I read 110 books, which is the lowest # of books I’ve read in a few years but it’s still a very good number. Anything over 100 makes me happy!
I was reading those Penny Reid books for a while, until she really started going off the deep end with her plots/characters. Such a bummer!
haha your lowest would be my highest ever.
Yes, some books just don’t age well.
Tobia recently posted…Shaping Happiness In December 2024 And a Farewell to 2024
I had already put “The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea” on my TBR because of your review. I loved The Cartographers, too. I read 41 books this year—mainly physical books with some Ebooks. I’ve never got into audiobooks. 15,112 pages. My longest book was “The Ink Black Heart” which was 1,391 pages. My favourite book was probably Breath by Tim Winton
Oh another cartographer lover. Yeah. I hope you enjoy “The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea”.
Your books almost make up the amount of pages I read. Which is so great.
I am looking forward to reading more longer novels this year. Not always doing the easy read – which is fine too specially inaccurate stressful year but I am ready for more.
Both your books you mentioned I am not familiar with but I will look them up. Thank you. Happy Reading year to you.