Comfortable new yr, everybody. As has turn out to be an annual custom for thus many people within the e-book running a blog world, let’s have a look again at 2024 in studying stats! (Hopefully you’ve already noticed my favorite reads of the yr.) As ever, I’ll be evaluating to my earlier yr’s stats submit – 2023 stats are right here.
Variety of books learn
I learn 189 books final yr, which is 9 up on 2023. Not an enormous improve, and 12 fewer than 2022, but it surely helped that my eyes weren’t too unhealthy all year long. I believe my days of studying voraciously with out serious about my eyes are over, however a military of eyedrops are making issues very doable.
Variety of audiobooks
One way or the other this continues to extend – I believe in all probability attributable to Spotify providing their 15 hours of audiobooks per 30 days, which began in direction of the top of 2023. I listened to 71 audiobooks (in comparison with 67 in 2023) – which means I learn 118 print books (in comparison with 113 in 2023).
Male/feminine writers
It wasn’t till some time after I completed my high 10 checklist that I realised they have been all written by ladies. And, as ever, ladies dominated my studying: 118 books by ladies, 65 by males, and 6 by women and men collectively or authors whose gender I didn’t know. Having stated all that, my 64% feminine studying is the bottom for a very long time – down from 69% final yr.
Fiction/non-fiction
I learn 138 works of fiction and 51 works of non-fiction. It’s a barely decrease ratio of non-fiction, but it surely appears to normally hover across the 25% mark. After one yr of anomaly in 2023, I’m again to my inadvertent trick of studying extra non-fiction by males than by ladies (although solely 26 vs 24, and one by a person and a lady).
Books in translation
Matching the overall of 2023, with 10 books in translation. They have been from Japanese x2, Italian x2, Spanish x2, French x2, Czech and Swedish.
Re-reads
I believe that is my largest yr for re-reads ever, at 18 titles (it was 14 in 2023). That features three books – Passing by Nella Larsen, Woman Dwelling Alone by Norah Lofts, and The Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning – that I learn twice in 2024.
New-to-me authors
I used to be happy to see that eight of my high 10 books have been by new-to-me authors, however did that signify a pattern for the yr? Nicely, 78 of the 189 books have been new authors to me, making it 41% – final yr it was 38%, so it’s a small improve.
Most disapppointing e-book
As ever, it’s the books you’ve the best hopes for that find yourself being essentially the most disappointing. I used to be unhappy that Mollie Panter-Downes’ At The Pines wasn’t extra fascinating, and was shocked by how unhealthy I discovered George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter, given his regular reliability. Maybe essentially the most disappointing, given how lengthy it had been on my shelf and the way a lot I anticipated to adore it, was the uninteresting Spinster by Sylvia Ashton-Warner.
Most surprisingly good e-book
After having a spread of responses to Margaret Kennedy’s novels, from DNF to liking, I used to be shocked by how a lot I liked The Oracles. And, for e-book membership, I didn’t anticipate finding Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang such a enjoyable, thought-provoking page-turner.
Quick tales
It appears like a yr the place I learn lots of brief story collections… however, trying again, it was solely seven. Isn’t it humorous how one thing can really feel like a theme of the yr, till you look again. Nonetheless, greater than regular!
Seeing myself in books
I very seldom learn to see myself mirrored – more likely to empathise with a Thirties housewife than with somebody like me. However a handful of non-fiction books this yr actually spoke to my coronary heart – notably Caroline Crampton’s A Physique Fabricated from Glass about well being nervousness and How To Be A number of by Helene de Bres in regards to the philosophy of an identical twins.
Authors who died this yr
Two authors I like died this yr – I learn a few Lynne Reid Banks’ books after she died, partly in tribute, however once I learn Trespasses by Paul Bailey I marvelled that he was nonetheless with us – till that was sadly not the case just a few months later.
E book by 2024’s Booker winner (however not that e-book)
After Samantha Harvey’s e-book appeared on A Good Learn, I hastened to the audiobook and located it fascinating – however this was earlier than she received the Booker, and it wasn’t Orbital – it was The Shapeless Unease, her non-fiction work about insomnia.
Animals in e-book titles
Pricey Mrs Hen by A.J. Pearce, The Grasshoppers Come by David Garnett, The XYZ of Cats by Beverley Nichols – and that was it this yr. What to make of the drop from 14 to three? Most likely… nothing a lot.
Shortest Title
A re-read of Day by Michael Cunningham, with Again by Henry Inexperienced and 2084 by John Lennox shut behind.
Persephones
I all the time intend to learn lots of them, and I all the time appear to fail – simply two this yr, A Lady’s Place by Ruth Adam and a re-read of They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple. Nicely, I suppose Diary of a Provincial Woman can also be a Persephone, however I didn’t learn the Persephone version.
Unusual issues that occurred in books this yr
A person meets his useless mother and father, a lady’s doppelganger commits homicide, a lady’s doppelganger will get radicalised, two males declare to be Lord Lucan, a duchess disappears, a baron lives fully within the timber, a pair inform devastating truths in an influence reduce, a lady follows her shape-shifting lover all over the world by clues in periodicals, a violent dystopia takes over Britain, useless individuals dance on a Scottish island, individuals consider they’re manufactured from glass, a mirror is a portal to the previous, a lady on a psychiatric ward travels to the distant future, and a woman can’t depart a Norwich theatre with out dying.