Books & Beyond: Special Edition

Wrapping up 2024's sources of creative inspiration (and sharing a few intentions for 2025)

Usually, I share a Books & Beyond summary every two months. But, for various reasons, I’m behind this year. So, instead of staying behind, I’m going to wrap up the final four months of 2024 in a tidy little bow, sharing some looks at the past four months, my year as a whole, and a few 2025 goals and resolutions related to digital entertainment. (I’ll be back in the next few days with a look back at 2024 here on A Liminal Life!)

I’d love to hear your best-ofs from the past twelve months: please leave a comment to share your favorites and recommendations.

My Year in Reading

2024 was a strange reading year for me. With the overwhelm of the Earthship project, I lacked both the time and the mental energy to read as much as I’m accustomed to. And that means that 2024 has been, by a long shot, my year of the fewest books read in quite some time.

I read 64 books in 2024: that’s 42% fewer books than 2023, and 46% fewer pages. The last time I had a lower reading year was 2018. (I shared my 2023 stats here, and my 2022 stats here. I log my reading history in Storygraph, my preferred, independent, and non-Amazon-owned book tracking app.)

Interestingly, this trend aligns with that of many of my fellow readers, at least according to a handful of conversations I’ve had with the team at What Should I Read Next and other bookish friends. I’m curious why it’s been such a tough reading year for so many, although with everything happening in the world lately, it’s very possible we’re all just feeling a bit wrung out and distracted.

In addition to my count of books, pages, genres, and stars, each year I keep track of my reading formats and how I source my books (although imperfectly: my 2023 and previous year stats are incomplete. My first mini-goal of 2025 is to be more detailed in this type of tracking.)

So in terms of this type of data, I’m fairly pleased with my 2024 stats:

Of the 64 books I read, I bought 23 of them new in 2024. 21 came from the library, while 9 were via an early 2024 trial offer of Kindle Unlimited. 5 were holdovers from new 2023 purchases I yet hadn’t gotten to, 3 were gifted (either directly or via gift card-funded purchases), and 3 were received via NetGalley advance reader copy access.

Which leads me to another one of my 2025 reading intentions:

Other than gifts and gift certificates which I will use for new books, I want to read exclusively from my existing library of titles, and books available through my library cards. (I can typically rely on a few bookish gift certificates each year so as long as I plan accordingly, I expect I’ll be able to purchase new a few titles that appeal or are on my anticipated reading list.) But, like so many readers, I have a fairly embarrassing backlog of owned-yet-unread titles, and I’m excited to carve into that some this year.

The Past Four Months…

…On the Page

• I have a strange resistance to reading Kristin Hannah—probably because she’s such a bestseller-table / airport author—despite the fact that I’ve really loved most of her titles, and The Women was no exception. My review notes that it’s “Maybe my favorite Kristin Hannah yet despite the fact that it was somewhat predictable and I felt it bogged down a bit around the 75% mark. I love how she makes you care about her characters so much from the very start.”

• In October, I shared a guest post on the Modern Mrs Darcy blog featuring 9 books celebrating Diné (Navajo) authors and stories, which might include titles you’d enjoy, too. I’ve loved being surrounded by such great literary culture in New Mexico, and I look forward to expanding my reading of local authors in the year ahead.

• November was the first month in a long time that I felt like myself as a reader again (and perhaps not coincidentally, the month we departed the U.S. to take a break and start traveling again….) I discovered one of my favorite books of the year, The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, which I spoke about in our Modern Mrs Darcy Team’s Best Books Patreon bonus episode. And December closed the year strong, with two five-star reads: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty (which I enjoyed so much more than her Daevabad Trilogy, it almost feels like reading a different author) and Naomi Alderman’s The Future, which I likewise found much more enjoyable and much less on-the-nose than The Power.

• Interestingly, all of my 5-star reads in 2024 were written by women (two by the same author). This made me curious about the overall diversity of my reading: something that Storygraph doesn’t track by default, but I look forward to exploring in my 2025 data collection efforts.

  

…In my Ears

• After Hurricane Helene devastated so many in September, I somewhat unintentionally devoted extra attention to the theme of this specific disaster and our collective response. A few podcast episodes that really stood out to me were the It Could Happen Here Podcast’s episode The Things That Helped People In Western North Carolina, an after-action report of sorts that considers what worked, what didn’t, what we can learn from these experiences. Looking at this catastrophe from an entirely other angle was Outside/In’s The Ballad and the Flood, which in the vein of Anne Helen Petersen’s “just trust me” links, I’ll simply encourage you to download and listen to.

  

  I’ve not spent much time in North Carolina, but I’ve had a few delightful hiking and camping trips there across the years: here’s a waterfall shot from a 2005 excursion.

• Is the Strong Sense of Place episode Cemetery the perfect Halloween podcast episode? It might just be.

• I’m a die-hard fan of all things V.E. Schwab, and Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters books brought me back to reading fantasy as an adult, so their conversation on Schwab’s No Write Way podcast was particularly enjoyable. (Personal time machine: An interview with Cassandra Clare)

• I also have to give a shout out to my friend Amelia Hruby, who brought her wisdom to the We Can Do Hard Things podcast in Episode 367: Glennon’s Dramatic Social Media Plan with Amelia Hruby.

…On the Screen

• When we’re on the road, we don’t watch as much TV: mostly because of geoblocking across various streaming services (which we’re too lazy to care about solving). Apple TV+ offers consistently reliable content, so we’ve been enjoying the latest episodes of some of our favorite shows there: Silo, a re-watch of Ted Lasso (perhaps even better the second time around), and Shrinking.

• We also packed our portable hard drive containing the Lord of the Rings trilogy and (nearly) all of the Harry Potter movies, so over the past few months we’ve enjoyed a re-watch of everything except The Goblet of Fire, which was somehow omitted from the collection.

…In my ‘Stack

I usually share one article I’ve saved from a fellow Substack writer: today, I’m sharing a few.

First up, a post that aligns with some of my attention to the disaster in North Carolina and subsequent assessments of what happened:

Our Astonishingly Fragile Supply Chain

An evocative read perfect for the moody month of November:

oh, November

And finally: a few posts ago, I made the briefest mention of my “winter solstice seasonal reading library.” This is not that, but it is a lovely round-up of winter books from a favorite author (and, I have a related question, below…)

Winter Lights and Winter Books

Up until now, I’ve taken a bit of a scattershot approach to my Substack reading. In 2025 I’d like to be more intentional not only about what I read (and which writers I support as a paid subscriber), but about engaging in their spaces by commenting and sharing their work. This might even look like connecting with other writers for interviews or guest posts…I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to explore options. As a writer here myself, I know how meaningful this type of engagement is, how much of a difference it makes to see new subscribers (free or paid!), and I know how limited our time and attention is, too. So as I head into the new year, I’ll be exploring other ways to create community connections among the readers and writers I know, admire, and appreciate here on Substack. I’d love to invite you to join me: would you leave a comment and share one Substack you can’t wait to read every time they share a new post?

Recently on A Liminal Life:

The two most popular posts from my recent archives, in case you missed them:

Wait, was that a tornado?

Call to Prayer and Christmas Trees

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