Without a doubt, 2024 will be remembered on this blog as The Year of Fiction. I am a nonfiction reader. Nonfiction has always dominated my public reading, from 2006 forward, and it’s never been close: usually nonfiction leads by margins like 70/30 or 60/40. In 2024, however, the tables turned: fiction led nonfiction all year, and by the same 60/40 margin — and more surprisingly, it wasn’t historical fiction or science fiction doing the work, but general fiction, which constituted 18% of my reading all by its itty-bitty self.
One of my goals for 2024 was to keep my bought-books percentage under 10%, which I’m happy to report I did: library books and Kindle Unlimited were the overwhelming majority of my reading, supplemented by ‘previously owned’ titles and some free-with-Audible subscription action as well. I read 3 KU titles (on average) a month, so I’d say it’s paying for itself. As far as the medium wars go, the long dead heat between ebooks and physical definitely changed this year:
Most-Highlighted Kindle Titles:
Anxious Generation, 69.
Family Unfriendly, 66
Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, 61.
Scarcity Brain, 63
American Carnage, 53
I was pretty good about reviewing most books, but the books I didn’t review were good ones. Oof. Will see if I can post reviews for those this quarter.
We begin with General Fiction, with 34 titles. This is….well, weird. Historical fiction and science fiction usually constitute the bulk of fiction, with some remainder being things like thrillers. This year, though, for whatever reason, I was really into fiction. Not only did I discover some new favorite authors, but I think the fiction high also led to me discovering a lot of new blogs and bloggers this year. Obviously, the chief standout is Rachel Joyce, who I’ve loved every single time I’ve picked up one of her works. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye and The Music Shop were my favorites, but all of them were wonderful reads with strong characters and stories that involved human connection. I also waded a bit into the waters of Japanese literature: What You are Looking For is in the Library was one of my top ten favorites for the year, and Before the Coffee Gets Cold is part of a series that I will be continuing this year. Another notable author I found this year was Ruth Ware: I picked up one of her books because it had an IT focus, and wound up reading four by her during the year.
Science Fiction displaced historical fiction, a feat that’s not as remarkable as fiction supplanting nonfiction, but noteworthy all the same. It ended with 29 titles, or 34 if we count tie-ins like Star Trek. I’m tolerably sure this was SF’s best year to date, actually. Finding Becky Chambers’ work via other book bloggers was an SF highlight: I found her Monk and Robot stories charming, but I really liked her Wayfinders series.Her SF has an interesting mood which I described as ‘cozy’. She’s in the neighborhood of an emerging subgenre, “solarpunk“, which is very ecological/sustainability focused. I made my introduction to two of SF’s greats, Ursula le Guin and Frank Herbert, and revisited an old favorite, Ray Bradbury. Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit is my favorite of the year, I think, with The Illustrated Man nipping at its heels. (I know that probably has classic SFs clutching their chests, but while I liked Dune and The Disposessed, and while they’re greater works artistically, I enjoyed Chambers more.) Another memorable favorite was SHELLI, a detective-thriller involving an android.
History, longrunning queen of the stacks, may rest assured that she’s still queen of the nonfiction stacks, with 24 titles. The books were a varied lot, too, covering topics like baseball and video games along with the usual stabby-shooty-politics stuff. My favorite among them was The Dixie Frontier, a social history of the south during the late 1700s & early 1800s, when places like Alabama and Mississippi were the frontier. Also notable were Ballpark, a history of baseball parks within the American city; Brutal Reckoning, a massive history of the Creek nation and its role in early American history; Life Below Stairs, a social history of Edwardian servants; Hello, Everybody!, on early American radio; and Hitler’s Heralds, on the paramilitary organizations that were used to put down bolshevik power-grabs and then attempted their own — twice!
Historical Fiction had a good year, I think, with 17 (9.2%) titles, and interestingly most of the authors featured were new to me! Wayne Grant was the highlight of this category, as I tried a novel of his set during the English Civil War, and then read through most of an entire series by him set during the Crusades. They’re not on the level of Cornwell or Kane, of course, but were fun historical adventures nontheless. The Broken Realm was my favorite of these, following two young veterans who arrive home to find that their home has been occupied by an enemy, taking advantage of the brewing struggle for power between John, his mother, and the King, Richard. While I checked in with my usual band of authors: Cornwell, Hennessey, Harris, and Shaara, there were a host of newbies like Rachel Joyce, Helen Simonson, and Russell Sullman.
In Society and Culture, I read quite a few good titles: Troubled was far and away the best, being a memoir of the author’s escape from familial chaos and the foster system which left him with sharp criticisms of “luxury beliefs” espoused by the monied elite that sound nice but have terrible effects on we mere plebs. Bad Therapy was also excellent, and reviewing it will be one of my goals for this first quarter.
Religion and Philosophy was marked by the release of Living in Wonder, the booklaunch of which I attended. That was a first for me, and I greatly enjoyed meeting the author — again, not something I’ve done previously. (I met three authors at that booklaunch: Rod Dreher Paul Kingsnorth and Jason Baxter, whose books I read subsequently.) Related, I have to mention one of my favorite books of this year which is more in the miscellaneous category, How to Stay Married: it’s the memoir of a man discovering his wife was having an affair with someone, and their struggle to rebuild their relationship. I mention it here because religion is part of the story, but also because I found the book via Rod.
In Politics and Civic Awareness, I was small but mighty: of the seven titles I read, five were really good and the other two were fine. Anxious Generation and Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist would vie for the best.. The first looked at the effects of smartphones and social media on Gen Z, and the latter was a collection of essays about nature, mysticism, and the corporatization of environmentalism .
While a strange year for my reading, in terms of nonfiction taking such a backseat, it was enjoyable nontheless, leading me to some great authors and new bookish friends. 2025 is off to a strong start already, and I’m looking forward to what it might bring!
Reading Freely 