Tiff’s 2024 Year in Books
Hello Dear Reader!
Happiest of New Years and welcome to 2025. I hope your year is off to a good start.
I wanted to talk a bit about the books that I read in 2024 and highlight some of my favorites. In 2024 I read 43 books! This is a little misleading though because I spent a lot of 2024 focusing on shorter stories. Many of the books I read this year could be read in a single afternoon.
I also tried to get a little bit out of my comfort zone by reading a little bit outside my fantasy genre. Apparently for me that meant reading horror and some grimdark type fantasy. (I blame Phil for this.)
Between those two things that meant that my themes of 2024 were more or less short stories and horror. I kind of like the idea of loosely picking a theme for the year and think I will continue to do so in the future.
In 2025, I think I want to focus on longer novels and try to tackle more epic fantasy series as well as some literary fiction. There are actually a lot of books I read years and years ago that I would like to re-read that fall under this category. In order to get through all the books I want to read this year it probably means listening to more audiobooks. I am generally not a strong auditory learner and I often struggle to pay attention to audiobooks, but I think it will be helpful in allowing me to get more reading time in. I have some longer commutes for work once a week and it would be good to be able to put a book on in the background while I do dishes or paint miniatures or enjoy my other hobbies. Yay multitasking!
Some of the books I would like to read in 2025:
I want to make sure I get in some more books by Independent Authors!
Ashley Ottesen has compiled an AMAZING list of Independent Authors for anyone to check out.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Haven’t read this series in ~20 years, so I would like to revisit it.
The Stormlight Archives Books 1-5 by Brandon Sanderson
Wind and Truth came out in Dec 2024 and I want to re-read the whole series leading up to it
The Faithful and the Fallen series by John Gwynne
I see his books on the shelves and always wonder about them, but after reading a review for one of his series by Christopher Buelhman I decided I should probably jump in and read them.
Without further ado, here is a complete list of all the books I read in 2024. Italic titles are by independent authors. (I may have missed some, so if I did, please let me know.) Be sure to check them out and give them a review if you read their book! And Bold Titles were some of my favorites this year:
Undercover by Tamsyn Muir
Out of the Mirror Darkness by Garth Nix
The Garden by Tomi Champion-Adeyemi
Persephone by Lev Grossman
The Candles are Burning by Veronic G. Henry
What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo
Awakening Anne by Kalynn Applewhite
The Story Equation by Susan May Warren
Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
The Daughter’s War by Christopher Buelhman
The King-Killing Queen by Shawn Speakman
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan
The Tyranny of Faith by Richard Swan
The Trials of the Empire by Richard Swan
Slewfoot by Brom
White Horse Black Nights by Evie Marceau
Silver Wings Golden Games by Evie Marceau
The Neversleep Scrolls: The Mind Thief Murders by Phillip Walton
A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff
Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff
Song of the Hundred Year Summer by Shaylin Gandhi
Vampire on the Orient Express by Shane Carrow
Somna by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay
La Vie de Guinevere by Paula Lafferty
The Sword Keeper by Joe Vasicek
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond
The Bloodless Princes by Charlotte Bond
The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko
So there you have it. I may do a longer post about some of my favorites and why I liked them so much, but for now that’ll do.
Till next time dear reader, let me know what books you loved in 2024 and what books you are looking forward to reading in 2025! <3 Tiff
P.S. A note on setting reading goals:
I read 43 books. To me that seems like an obscene amount, but to put this in perspective, Goodreads tells me that I read 12,203 pages. The entire Stormlight Archives series by Brandon Sander (so far) is 6,331 pages and only five books long. All that to say, I think number of books read can be a bit of a silly thing to track because I could have read 43 books or I could have read 10-12 books and gotten a similar amount of pages. Set goals that are reasonable and enjoyable for YOU. We’re not out to play the comparison game with anyone.
I see a book influencers on social media who read like 10+ books a month. I have no idea how they manage unless they’re listening to audiobooks on x2 speed every spare waking moment of the day. And absolutely no disrespect to those people, if that’s what you like to do and that’s what you enjoy, more power to you! My point point is, that’s not necessarily reasonable for a lot of us. I was only able to read as many books as I did this year because some of them were as short as 35 pages, with most of them being around 200 pages. I could sit down on a Sunday afternoon and knock out a book like The Fireborne Blade (about 165 pages) or Silver in the Woods (about 107 pages) in 2 or 3 hours.
My point is as long as you are reading and enjoying what you read, then that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you read or how many books you get done or any of that as long as you are happy with how you are spending your time and engaging with your reading material. Here ends my public service announcement.
