Happy New Year! I have recovered enough from shoulder surgery to type one-handed for short periods. Which means it’s time for a slightly belated (and shorter than usual) look at my reading stats for 2024.

Last year I read 88 books or 23,928 pages. I get lovely stats and graphs from Storygraph, as their name suggests. For instance, I spent an average 6 days on each book (with lots of overlaps). I read 79% fiction, 21% non-fiction. The average book length was 275 pages. I read the most in May but I liked the books the most in August.

According to my own records, I read 18 books in translation. As for gender split, I read 64 by women, 23 by men and one by multiple authors of various genders. I’ve come a long way since the days when I strived to read as many women as men! It’s perhaps no surprise then that all 5 of my favourite books this year were written by women.

Without further ado, here they are.

My top 5 reads of 2024

Ithaca by Claire North – my review

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patricia Melo (translated from Portuguese by Sophie Lewis) – my review

Orbital by Samantha Harvey – my review

Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj – my review

This House by Sian Northey (translated from Welsh by Susan Walton)

This year they’re all novels and, as mentioned, all by women. But aside from that they’re pretty varied. Two I read in translation, including the only one of them set in the UK. They also, oddly, included almost my first book of the year and almost my last. (This is my excuse for not yet having written a full review of This House – I finished it the day before going into hospital for shoulder surgery.)

Ithaca retells a section of The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope. Claire North keeps the historical setting and the Homeric roles of the gods, but makes Penelope so much more than a wife waiting for her husband to come home from war. It’s a woman-centred, feminist perspective without losing any of the magic of the grand epic. Lyrical, funny, glorious.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a contemporary novel set in Brazil. A lawyer goes to a remote region called Acre to investigate its high rate of femicide. She becomes particularly caught up in the case of an Indigenous woman’s murder. Her interest puts her and new friends she makes in town in danger, but also helps her get close to the Indigenous communities. This book is shocking and brutal, yet compulsive reading.

Orbital won the Booker Prize so you don’t really need my encouragement here. It’s 24 hours on the International Space Station, told lyrically and thoughtfully through the (close third person) eyes of the six astronauts and cosmonauts on board. Samantha Harvey deals with the practicalities of daily life in space, the odd quirks, the constant vigilance. But also the serenity and humanism afforded by the experience of seeing Earth from a distance. Philosophical and beautiful.

Behind You is the Sea manages a structure that in other hands could be deeply annoying. Susan Muaddi Darraj explores the lives of three families of Palestinian immigrants in Baltimore. Each chapter concentrates on a different character from these families, following them closely for days, weeks or even months. There are big time jumps between each chapter as well, so that by the end of the book decades have passed. She does a great job of confronting stereotypes. It made me laugh and cry.

This House is a gentle, humane book. It’s the story of Anna and her love for a house. Set in remote Wales, we meet Anna as an older woman. Through flashbacks we learn the story of how she found the house, how she came to live there, how she has resisted selling it despite her age and health making it difficult to remain. As she narrates, key information is withheld until late in the story. Is this Anna ignoring or resisting certain truths, or is her memory beginning to fail? A slow burn small mystery but that’s not really the point of the book, in my opinion. Sian Northey has created a wonderfully compelling heroine.

My plans for 2025

My first aim for this year is to rehabilitate my shoulder to the point where I can hold a physical book open to read it, so that I’m no longer restricted to my e-reader. I feel significantly closer to that point now than even a day or two ago.

Once I’m there, I can get going on my primary aim for this year: make a proper dent in the TBR. It currently stands at 118 books. Last year, like most years, I managed to get it down under 100 books before Christmas. But then Christmas closely followed by my birthday made the number shoot up again. Which I am absolutely not complaining about. I love books, they’re my favourite presents.

What I need to do is cut down – a little, not too much – on how many books I buy myself. And I need to get better at getting rid of books I’ve tried and not got on with. I think that’s the biggie. There are too books on my shelves that have sat there for 10, 15 years – or even longer – but just don’t call to me when I’m choosing a new book. I need to cull. I have some ideas that I will come back to soon.

What are your reading plans for 2025?