Happy New Year Gentle Unravelers!
As promised, this week is all about my reading last year. It was a good year… sort of. As I explained earlier as I was doing my year-end review of 2024… I discovered that I did not remember much about a lot of the books I read so I am not going to focus on the number of books I read last year… the number does not really matter because I honestly don’t remember much about most of them!
I think this is partially driven by my “Goodread” challenge, so you will note that I have not done that this year. I don’t need encouragement to read… and I most certainly don’t need to worry “will I hit my goal” either! This year my plan is to give myself some space between books… digestion space, as it were. I want more thinking time post-read so I am giving myself some space. So, no book goal… no race to the next book… and a more leisurely reading pace, I hope!
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I also have a nifty planner, thanks MDK and Felix Ford for the inspiration. This planner is going to provide a work space for several things this year… one of which will be for Book Notes! This also might help me write better book reviews which, imo, I am not the best at.
But what about last year? How did I end the year… what percolated to the top each month (and surprise, surprise… each month did have at least one book that lingered (and is lingering still!) So let’s get started:
January: the book that lingers still is Yangsze Choo’s The Fox Wife and I really loved it! I still think about it… I love it when a book lingers like that!
February: I have Read With Us to thank for this month’s best and very memorable book! Yes, it is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.
March: had two outstanding books, Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time & Water and Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! On Time & Water really struck a chord with me. I began to think about time in a completely different way. It is a book that I want to read again… and yes it has lingered! Martyr! was just magnificent… the writing that Akbar used is something I still think about. And dear Cyrus… dear, dear Cyrus. I love it when a character takes up residence in your heart!
April: sometimes a retelling of a story changes everything and Percival Everett’s James changed everthing for me. It is surprising how much I needed an alternative to The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin.
May: found Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest as the best book of the month. This book absolutely has lingered and yes, it feels very relevant today!
June: the reading hit a sweet spot this month with Leo Vardiashvili’s Hard by a Great Forest, which is one of the books that ties for the Best of the Best of my reading. I love every bit of this beautiful story. Saba is another character who has found space in my heart.
July: sometimes a book is so fantastic it needs an immediate rereading! Carys Davies Clear was that book for me. Only 196 pages long, but those pages are just full of brilliance. The writing was sparse but the story is so deep. The other thing that was a win for me this month was my reread of Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow. Rereading a book does not always create the same feelings I had when I first read the book but, if anything, this reread was better than the first time I read it!
August: the best of reading apex entered this month with a whopping five books! Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, Simon Van Booy’s Sipsworth, Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Mark S. Burrows, and my reread of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (this time read by Meryl Streep!) This is absolutely my best reading month!! Summer reading for the freaking win!
September: the reading was still so very good with Susanna Kwan’s Awake in a Floating City (which is my runner up to best of the best!) and Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, the book that shares Best of the Best with Hard By a Great Forest.
October: I returned to familiar author’s this month with Ali Smith’s Gliff and John Boyne’s All the Broken Places. Two of my favorite authors with two magnificent, compelling stories.
November: Reading was a challenge this month… or perhaps it is better to say that my focus was challenged. Puppy training and interrupted sleep made focusing a challenge but I found two books that held my focus (and made me think!) Ta-Nehisi Coates The Message, which I have not stopped thinking about and I will be doing a reread of it early this year. And Jane Cooper’s The Lost Flock…if you love sheep, wool, and Scotland this book hits all those points and more! (And I have added some yarns to my “knit before I can’t knit” list.)
December: found lots of best of books. I reread Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows this year… slowly… a week at a time and I loved it even more than the first time I read it. I also read a poem or two a day from Poetry of Presence II – I did not make it to the finish line though, so I will continue on where I left off! I really loved the expanded version of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry (she read the first iteration of The Serviceberry here.) The expanded version is so good (and if you listen to it, Robin reads it to you!) I also had an opportunity to read an advance copy of Billy Collins Water, Water: Poems. I finished it and immediately read it again… and then again… and I am now on my fourth reading!
There you have my Best of Reading for 2024. I highly recommend every book mentioned here!
Now, for a spot of New Year’s Day housekeeping! You will note that I also am not making any resolutions… nor am I setting any intentions this year. I will share my new word with you all on Friday (not making resolutions, setting intentions, or setting a book goal will make more sense then, I promise!) PLUS I will be including some information that I am hopeful that will inspire you to join me with your own word journey!
Now, what I am hoping you will do is share a book or two that you loved last year!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
I like your idea of not setting a goodreads challenge. I’ve been thinking about the same thing, and like you, I feel like it doesn’t encourage close and careful reading, the kind you take your time with. I always say the number of books i read doesn’t matter, and it really doesn’t. I think I’m finally going to read James this year and I look forward to seeing if it changes things for me, too. I may need to try The Fox Wife if you’re still thinking about it a year later, and I certainly agree with you about Clear. A book I really loved last year was The Poisonwood Bible. That was a big surprise to me as I didn’t like it at all the first time I read it. Enjoy your 2025 reading!
I just set my Goodreads challenge, but I really don’t care one way or another how many books I read — I just want to read good books! I love how you picked out a book or two for each month; seems like that would be a good thing to do at the end of each month, and perhaps I’ll follow your lead this year.
This is such a fun and good review Kat! I loved James, Clear and The Poisonwood Bible (again). Water, Water is on my nightstand (Christmas gift from Fletch!!) and I am still in the queue for Serviceberry. So many books and not enough time! I never set a goal of how many books to read…I just want to read and not feel pressured. I always keep a list of what I’ve read (and how I rate it). This past year I started doing that on the computer, but have decided I much prefer a written out list/summary. I have a number of blank books/journals that I can choose from and I’m looking forward to doing that again.
I think quite a few of us have given up on the resolution (goal setting, intention,…) thing. I think it will make room to make changes when and IF we want to instead of some arbitrary day.
Hope you have a great 2025
Reflecting on our reading can be just as important as the reading itself and I am happy to hear you say you want to make more time for that. I do set a reading goal but I don’t pay much attention to it, it’s really just for fine. I write reviews carefully for everything I read and I find that helps me remember much more about each book. Stand outs for me this year were James, Intermezzo, Leonard and Hungry Paul, Tell Me Everything, Frozen River, and The Berry Pickers.
Reflecting on books from each month is a great strategy. We have some books in common from this year’s reading: Clear, Sipsworth, The Comfort of Crows, The Lion Women of Tehran. As I said to Sarah, I love that combination of overlap and titles not shared. It makes this community so enriching. The books that made the top of my list include: There Are Rivers in the Sky, Clear, Held, The Lives of the Heart, and One of Ours. Happy New Year.
I have started just setting my challenge at 52 as I figure I can average a book a week but I don’t care if I complete the challenge. I did have one year where I didn’t finish and I wish I could remember what was going on that year.
I kept a notebook of books last year where I added notes to the Book Club books (I’m in 2 bookclubs) so I could remember at the meetings and I plan to do that again this year but I want to add more info so I bought book journal that has a few prompts which may help me. I will have to find it as I will be finishing Intermezzo tonight or tomorrow.
I love how you’ve reviewed your year of reading! And how awesome that your August reading was so fabulous.
I’m setting a page goal on StoryGraph because I want to make sure reading is my foundation in 2025. And of course, I built a bit of a TBR that I want to focus on throughout the year.
Can’t wait to see your new word on Friday!
Like I said to Juliann regarding her 1/1 post…what abundance! Overflowing with goodness here. Your reflections at the start of this post resonate with me…I stopped setting reading goals (read: numbers) a few years ago. And this year, I want to make a few more shifts. (In part, because of that whole “remembering what I read” thing….)
Happy New Year to you, Steve, and Franklin!
I set a lowball book challenge so I know I will make it. It works for me and it’s not stressful (so far) I love your planner!! I would love to read the books I own and then get rid of them. However, I thought I would do that last year!! Happy New Year!
No Goodreads challenge for me this year either. I just don’t care how many books I read or how many pages I read . . . and I don’t think reading MORE or FASTER is helpful for me. I just want to read. So . . . I totally get it! Several years ago, I made a pact with myself that I would give myself some time and space around the books I read (rather than “chain-reading” . . . ). That’s when I started jotting down notes about each the books I read (except poetry) – and writing reviews for each. I do find that I remember more about the books I read now. (And if I don’t, I can always look back at my notes!)