This is my 5th year of posting a year-end review of the books I read. In my first year of posting, I was celebrating that I beat my 2019 reading goal by reading 63 books. This year I read 88 books! My reading habits have changed now that Mama Has Slightly More Time To Read over the past 5 years, and it’s been so fun to spend some time at the end of each year looking over all the books I read and giving them some awards. I hope it’s been fun for you to follow along with my reading journey, and I really do always appreciate hearing about the books you’ve loved each year!
Below are my various Book Awards categories, in which I allow myself to name up to 3 books (generally listed in order of my liking), instead of choosing just 1 favorite. I also included some random stats about my reading this year at the bottom. Please enjoy!
Steph’s 2024 Book Awards
Top 5 favorite books I read this year:
- The Measure (Nikki Erlick)
- To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Moniquill Blackgoose)
- James (Percival Everett)
- Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Smith)
- The Riftmagic Saga (E.E. Holmes)
Favorite nonfiction book:
- The Exvangelicals (Sarah McCammon)
- … it’s possible I need to read more nonfiction 😉
Favorite romance:
- Funny Story (Emily Henry)
- Much Ado About Nada (Uzma Jalaluddin)
- In The Likely Event (Rebecca Yarros)
Most surprising:
- A Sorceress Come to Call (T. Kingfisher)
- Dragonflight (Anne McCaffrey)
- Nettle & Bone (T. Kingfisher)
Made me laugh the most:
- Just for the Summer (Abby Jimenez)
- Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt)
- The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (Brandon Sanderson)
Most disappointing:
- From Blood and Ash (Jennifer Armentrout)
- The Prisoner’s Throne (Holly Black)
- It pains me to include this one, because I didn’t hate this book. But I love the rest of the books in this world so much that, if I’m being honest, this one was fairly disappointing – if only because my expectations were too high.
Most Thought-Provoking:
- James (Percival Everett)
- If We Were Villains (M.L. Rio)
- The Warm Hands of Ghosts (Katherine Arden)
Classic I read this year:
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Favorite Re-Read:
- The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy (Katherine Arden)
- Harry Potter (she who must not be named) – really enjoyed reading this with my kids this year!
“Everyone shut up, I’m reading!” award:
[books I binge-read and sometimes ignored other responsibilities in favor of]
- Crescent City trilogy (Sarah J. Maas)
- System Collapse (Murderbot #7) (Martha Wells)
5 Books that are living rent-free in my head:
[I don’t know if it’s an indictment on the books I read this year, or on my head, that there aren’t many books not already mentioned that are taking up space in my thoughts. So this year I’ll change this category to Books that were Heavy but Still Worth Reading…]
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin)
- My Brilliant Friend / The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante)
- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (James McBride)
Favorite Characters I met this year:
- Ruhn Danaan (Crescent City, Maas)
- Hester (A Sorceress Come to Call, Kingfisher)
- Marcellus, the octopus (Remarkably Bright Creatures, Van Pelt)
- Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy (The Late Mrs. Willoughby and The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Claudia Gray)
- OK, technically I met these characters when I read the 1st book in this series at the end of ‘23, but I grew to appreciate them even more in the 2 books I read this year! Plus, I didn’t have this award category last year, so…
Book I’m most excited to read in 2025:
- Heavenly Tyrant (Xiran Jay Zhao)
- Fourth Wing books 1-3 (Rebecca Yarros)
- I’ve been purposefully waiting to read these until book 3 is released in January!
- Dream Count (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Random Statistics
This year I decided to add some miscellaneous and completely arbitrary statistics about my year’s reading, just to give a little more insight into my reading habits. Hopefully it’s worth a chuckle!
- # of books that were re-makes / alternate tellings / or based on Classic Literature: 8
- 6 were based on Jane Austen
- # of rom-coms: 19
- # of books I read with my kids: 9
- # of different magic systems I was introduced to: 14
- # of novels about coming-of-age in an impoverished community & trying to make sense of the world after a traumatic childhood: 5
- # of books that 13-yr-old-me would judge me harshly for reading: at least 28
- # of books I re-read this year: 13
- And finally, maybe the most important statistic… # of books with dragons: 7
As always, feel free to share your favorite books from this year with me in the comments, either here on the blog or on social media! Who knows, they might appear in my 2025 favorites 🙂