2024 Reading list

2024 Reading list

2024 was definitely lighter on reading than 2023, just 18* this year, compared to closer to 50 in my non-working year of 2023. New job/work definitely crimped my reading ability, my brain is just too overloaded at the end of a long day of context switching and my angry squirrel ADHD brain.

(*there might be one other that I read on holiday and left behind that I can’t remember.)

The main theme this year seems to have inadvertently been “post-apocalyptic gloom”.

Most books were read on holiday or longer periods off work.

I still read more women than men, but male authors crept back in far more than is my preference.

  1. Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow: All the Little Bird-Hearts. Set in Scotland and the water runs out everywhere.
  2. The Department of Truth, volumes 2-4.
  3. John Scalzi: Redshirts. Light, funny tales of why you don’t want to be in the red shirt in science fiction. A good way to get back to reading.
  4. Kate Atkinson: Case Histories. The first of the Jackson Brodie novels, three interconnected stories, set in Cambridge.
  5. What’s the Furthest Place From Here? Volume 1
  6. Naomi Alderman: The Future. One of the big books of the year, but I didn’t like it as much as The Power.
  7. Kate Atkinson: One Good Turn. Even more adventures of Jackson Brodie, this time in Scotland.
  8. Heather Corinna: What Fresh Hell is This? The only non-fiction I read this year which is 1 more than usual. All about peri/menopause and the indignities suffered on us as we age. A theme of 2024 for me.
  9. Yomi Adegoke: The List. Very 2024, cancel culture meets Me Too meets London media.
  10. Eliza Clark: Boy Parts. Very good but very dark. I do like her writing.
  11. Jasper Fforde: The Constant Rabbit. About rabbits that have anthropomorphised. And racism (rabbitism?) set in the Herefordshire borders.
  12. Paul Lynch: Prophet Song. My standout read of the year. Incredibly powerful, sticks with you. I’d hope it would make many think again about living in a state of rising oppression in a Western country, what it would take for you to leave and what you lose. Incredibly relevant. Shouldn’t have finished this in a public place, sobbed at the end.
  13. Ben Aaronovitch: The Masquerades of Spring. I love the Rivers of London series and this with the central story focusing on The Nightingale was delicious.
  14. Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time. I know everyone raved about this book, but I found it a bit flat and uneven in the science fiction department.
  15. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Chain Gang All Stars. This is probably the 2nd best book I read this year. It also felt incredibly prescient. Private and state/federal prisons meets the ultimate in reality television. Hard to put down.
  16. Samantha Harvey: Orbital. The second Booker Prize winning book I read this year. It was a delight, a wonderful way to end the year. I wonder if a trip to space to see our planet should be mandatory for political leaders and others who would rule us. The perspective and the beauty. There was a lot of meandering thinking my brain did while reading this, in a good way. Highly recommend it, and it’s a short read at just 129 pages.

I started Sandra Newman’s Julia after the holiday run of post-apocalyptic gloom and just couldn’t. It was too much gloom, very slow and just wasn’t giving me anything. It’s back on my to-read pile.

I got a few pages into Bernadette Evaristo’s Mr Loverman and I have no idea why I didn’t continue with it.

For 2025, re-focus on women’s voices. More science fiction. Less gloom.