// 2024 booklist //

above ~ a few of the books from this year

// 2024 BOOKLIST RECAP //

TOTAL: 50

(half read / half audio)

FIVE STARS:

Small Things Like These / Claire Keegan

Wind, Sand & Stars / St. Exupery

Lonesome Dove / Larry McMurtry

MEMORABLE MEMOIRS:

Angela's Ashes

Mere Motherhood

I'll Show Myself Out

NOTABLE NON-FICTION:

Habits of the Household (good food for thought)

the Worry-Free Parent (a balm for the parental soul)

BEST IN AUDIO:

Joyland

Angela's Ashes

Charlotte's Web

Rules of Civility

I'll Show Myself Out

Little House in the Big Woods

The Holy Bible (NT, read by David Suchet)

DNF's:

I didn't finish a number that I started, most recently Piranesi, which just wasn't doing it for me, & most notrably Middlemarch & the Count of Monte Cristo - both of which I got a decent way in but failed to continue. I would still like to finish both eventually.

NOT FOR ME:

Yellowface

Sharkheart

FAVOURITE CHARACTER:

to reiterate from previous posts, Augustus McCrae from Lonesome Dove won my reading heart this year. "It's hard to have fun in a place like this, but I do my best."

BOOK INFLUENCER:

I've gotten a kick out of @booksaresick this year & have added a couple of his reads to my TBR - looking at you, Stoner. Lonesome Dove was also one of his recommends.

RE-READING:

I've found when I hit a bit of a slump that returning to something I've already enjoyed is just as enjoyable & maybe more so? I had a couple repeats this year on audio.

TBR:

In this next year I'd like to work through the Old Testament along with the Bible Recap. I'd also like to give Pilgrim's Progress a go & make it through a few more with the kids. Listening to Laura's Little House with them has been quite fun for me. 

"Reading aloud covers a multitude of sins. It is a grace. When we cannot escape ourselves, we can escape to other worlds together." / Mere Motherhood, Cindy Rollins

//

To end, here's one my favourite quotes of the year from St-Exupery ~ one of the world's first airplane pilots when flying was still very much a dangerous exploit. Wind, Sand, Stars is about some of his experiences of flight. I love the imagery here...

"Like a poet, you are a connoisseur of the first signs of dawn. From deep in the chasms of troubled nights, you have willed so often the coming of that pale flower, that gleam of light which rises from the dark lands of the east. Sometimes that miraculous spring has unfrozen slowly before your very eyes, & healed you when you thought that you were dying."

While it didn't feel like a great reading year, I'm thankful for the good ones I came across & hope to focus more on quality than quantity looking ahead, though there's no lack on the TBR...!

//

Cheers to reading in 2025