2024 Reading in Review – and a look ahead

I am doing my yearly review a bit early, and including my December reading, because after this I’ll be taking a break — scroll down to “Looking Ahead” for some news about that.

But first, what did I read in 2024? It was quite a year!

Nonfiction

I had a lot of fun reading books for the 12 different categories of the Nonfiction Reader Challenge, which inspired me to get out of my usual comfort zone — though I might not have sought out books on transportation, architecture, pets, or true crime, it was so worth it. I would like to keep pushing myself in this way.

• The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang – Health
• Life After Doom by Brian McLaren – The Future
• Circle of Hope by Eliza Griswold – A book published in 2024
• Making It So by Patrick Stewart – Memoir
• American Nations by Colin Woodard – History
• Dewey by Vicki Myron – Pets
• The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge – Science
• Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space by Gordon Strachan – Architecture
• All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley – Culture
• Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More by Fatima Ali – Food
• Falling Upwards by Richard Holmes – Transportation
• The Wicked Boy Kate Summerscale – True Crime

Otherwise, I read books from some of my favorite categories, like relationships and psychology:

• The Emotionally Absent Mother by Jasmin Lee Cori
• I Thought We’d Never Speak Again by Laura Davis
• Break the Cycle by Mariel Buque

Art, books, music, and culture:

• Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire
• The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock by Edward White
• Custodians of Wonder by Eliot Stein
• How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch
• One Year to a Writing Life by Susan Tiberghien
• The Release by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Religion and spirituality:

• The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr
• Paths into the Book of Books by Elspeth Weymann
• Good Soil by Jeff Chu

Lots of memoirs and personal essays:

• Still Writing by Dani Shapiro
• The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel
• Outofshapeworthlessloser by Gracie Gold
• Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
• Moab Is My Washpot by Stephen Fry
• What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate
• The Recovering and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
• Radical Love by Zachary Levi

Science and health:

• Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitacker
• The Wisdom of Your Body by Hilary McBride
• Heal Your Nervous System by Linnea Passaler (Dec)

And several books inspired by my trip to France in July:

• The Golden Age of Chartres by Rene Querido
• I, Labyrinth of Chartres by Jacques Paillot
• The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

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Fiction

I felt drawn to do a lot of light and comforting reading this year in the fiction category,. This included reading or rereading a goodly number of childhood classics, including all the Oz books, a number of others by L. Frank Baum, and a couple of spin-offs. It was a very Ozzy year!

The Oz Series by L. Frank Baum:

• The Marvelous Land of Oz
• Ozma of Oz
• Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
• The Road to Oz
• The Emerald City of Oz
• The Patchwork Girl of Oz
• Tik-Tok of Oz
• The Scarecrow of Oz
• Rinkitink in Oz
• The Lost Princess of Oz
• The Tin Woodman of Oz,
• The Magic of Oz,
• Glinda of Oz

Oz-related reading:

• The Sea Fairies and Sky Island by L. Frank Baum – shares some characters with the Oz books
• Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts – Based on the story of Baum’s wife, Maud Gage
• Wicked by Gregory Maguire – Reread of the Oz-inspired novel, inspiration for the hit musical

I also binged on a bunch of books by Joan Aiken, the subject of this year’s Witch Week celebration:

• Go Saddle the Sea, Bridle the Wind, and The Teeth of the Gale
• Fantastic Fables, Weather Witches and Wise Women, A Ghostly Gallery, and Siren Stories
• The Gift Giving
• The Serial Garden – Witch Week discussion
• The Whispering Mountain and Midnight Is a Place
• The Smile of the Stranger and The Girl from Paris (both Dec)

And I polished off six of the Moomin books, filling in the ones I hadn’t read in honor of Moomin Week

• Moominpappa’s Memoirs, Tales from Moominvalley, Moominland Midwinter, Moominvalley in November, Comet in Moominland, Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson (for translators see post)

More children’s classics (three in German!):

• Skating Shoes and Theater Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
• Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones
• Thursday’s Child and Far To Go (Dec) by Noel Streatfeild
• Emil und die Detektive by Erich Kästner
• Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer by Michael Ende
• The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof by Annie M.G. Schmidt, translated by David Colmer
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor
• Momo by Michael Ende
• The School at the Chalet and The Chalet School in the Oberland by Elinor Brent-Dyer (both Dec)

Plus a couple more fantasy books:

• Buried Deep by Naomi Novik
• The Secret of Splint Hall by Katie Cotton

One of my proudest achievements of the year had to be re-reading Madame Bovary in the original French, a task that defeated me in college. Otherwise, I managed a few more classics:

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I spent time indulging in mysteries and thrillers, including some theatre-themed ones for Reading the Theatre:

• Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
• Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian Farr
• Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham
• The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone and Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (Dec)
• Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead (Dec)

And from time to time I needed a nice romance:

• Musical Chairs, Limelight and The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel
• Well That Was Unexpected and Didn’t See That Coming by Jesse Q. Suntano
• Magic Flutes by Eva Ibbotson
• Love Lettering by Kate Claybourn
• The Lily of Ludgate Hill by Mimi Matthews
• Happiness for Beginners, Hello Stranger, The Rom-Commers, What You Wish For by Katherine Center

Historical fiction swept me into the past:

• The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker – Spiritualism in Victorian London (Dec)
• The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting, translated by Deborah Dawkin – In 19th century Norway, a drama surrounding the dismantling of an ancient stave church and its mysterious bells
• Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning – Colorado in the Gilded Age, through the eyes of a French Canadian miner’s daughter (Dec)
• The Crimson Thread by Kate Forsyth – a riff on the myth of Theseus and Ariadne, set in WWII Crete
• The Cafe with No Name by Robert Seethaler, translated by Kate Derbyshire – Vienna after the war
• Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Carol Brown Janeway – About two very different German scientists of the Enlightenment
• Hawaii by James A. Michener – The title says it!
• The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese – Two medicine-themed epic family sagas, one set in India, the other in Ethiopia and New York City

And finally, a few random works of realistic fiction:

• The Guest Cat by Takashi Haraide, translated by Eric Selland
• Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita, translated by Philip Gabriel (Dec)
• The Marble Staircase by Elizabeth Fair (Dec)
• One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley (Dec)

Looking Ahead

I am doing a caregiving course that is challenging, especially because it’s in German — just understanding the vocabulary is time consuming. I’ll be done with that in February, but at least until then I will be taking a break from the blog.

I certainly plan to return, but I am thinking of some changes — maybe a new WordPress theme, new graphics, a slightly different focus, changing how frequently I post, different kinds of posts (e.g. more discussions, which have lapsed in the last years).

I also feel that I need to take a break from formal reading challenges and events — though I may take part in one or another spontaneously, no year-long challenges or hosting events on my own blog.

As always, thank you for being here — I deeply appreciate my wonderful readers. I wish you the joys of the season (mindful that for many, joy may seem very far away), and the consolations of a good book. I will look forward to reading your year-end summaries, or please comment below with your thoughts and plans.