2024 had some significant challenges to my reading. My dog died in April, and I had a really hard time caring about reading while I was grieving that lose. Despite that, I still managed to read 47 books in a year.

How did I stack up to my secondary goals?

One of my goals for 2024 was to re-read 5 books during the year. I had the idea while reading In Emergency Break Glass by Nate Anderson. The idea was to start putting together a personal canon of books that I read and reread with the hopes of gaining deeper insights. The irony is that I failed to finish my reread of the book that inspired this goal. I ended up rereading 4 books this year:

1. The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim
2. Utopia for Realists by Rutger Burgmen
3. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Throughout the years, I have asked for and received many books as gifts for Christmas and my birthday. I have quite the backlog still of books that were gifts that I have not read. I wanted to read 5 of these books, and I read the following 5:

1. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Star by Bruce Campbell
2. Does Santa Exist? by Eric Kaplan
3. Slaughterhouse V, or a Children’s Crusade: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
4. The Wicked Wit of Scotland by Rod Green
5. Scary Book of Christmas Lore by Tim Rayborn

Since I had plans to travel internationally, I planned on reading a book related to each country I visited. As mentioned in my books that were gifts list, I read The Wicked Wit of Scotland by Rod Green, which was pleasant book of witticisms that ranged from side-splitting to so-so. I read The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo to represent my trip to France. It was interesting to hear some now familiar places mentioned, but I think I was too far removed from the time and place to understand the satire. Finally, I read Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken to represent Ireland. I enjoyed Bright I Burn right up until the end. The ending diminished the book for me. I really wish she had done something else, but won’t spoil that here.

My last goal for the year was to start building an Index Card Catalog in my personal note keeping system. I successfully completed this by adding notes for all of the books mentioned in my goal setting post. Unfortunately, I don’t think this endeavor will be very fruitful since I’m just copying down highlights and some of my own thoughts. This approach is likely not contributing to deeper reading of texts.

What were the best books that I read during 2024?

In no particular order are the best books that I read during 2024.

Radicalized

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow features 4 novellas that I’ve thought quite a bit about since reading them. One of these novella’s has even become very prescient given recent events related to health insurance and violence. The novella for which the collection is named features a story wherein aggrieved individuals are radicalized by internet forums on the deep web to commit violent acts towards the health insurance industry. It was unfortunately dismal to have something I read earlier in the year become a stark reality. My first reaction to that story was that I thought that there was a conceivable future that I hope wouldn’t come to be, but now it just seems inevitable.

Other stories in the collection include: Unauthorized Bread, which explores our current reality with respect to Digital Rights Management (DRM), and how that could negatively impact working class people’s access to necessary material goods; Model Minority where Mr Doctorow explores the idea of contingent whiteness using a version of Superman (another concept that has really stuck with me and I would certainly like to write about); and The Masque of the Red Death, which showcases some of the selfishness of the wealthy preparing for end of world scenarios by having a stock broker loose everything in an apocalyptic pandemic.

Radicalized is the book that stuck with me the most this year. I think I’ll continue to recommend this collection to people for the foreseeable future.

If It Bleeds

The titular story of If It Bleeds by Stephen King is not the story that stuck with me the most this year from the collection. Instead there’s a three act novella that is told in reverse sequential order called The Life of Chuck that I keep thinking about. It’s fascinating that Stephen King wrote 3 separate short stories and figured out after writing them that they belonged together as one narrative. The other stories including a novella staring Holly Gibney and an interesting meta-narrative about the process of writing a story called The Rat are also very enjoyable.

Full Throttle

Full Throttle by Joe Hill is yet another collection of shorter stories that had at least one story that really stuck with me. Late Returns features a man morning the loss of his parents. He picks up a part time job in his home town driving the library’s bookmobile. As he works this job, he encounters the ghosts of folks who forgot to return their last book to the library before they died. I found it to be a very touching meditation on grief and the hope of re-connection with those we love either in the afterlife or just through the enjoyment of art.

What were the worst books that I read during 2024?

I thankfully didn’t read too many books that I didn’t like this year. I suppose that could be due to not reading as many books this year. No matter the cause, I’m just thankful to not have as many books to add to this list. In no particular order, the following are the worst books that I read this year.

Does Santa Exist?

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book. Let’s take the means and methods of philosophy to discuss the existence of Santa Clause. There’s a book that would do this that I still think would be amazing. Unfortunately, Eric Kaplan’s book fell far bellow my expectation. The philosophy was too reliant on mysticism, and did not meet my expectation of exploring the concept of fictional characters being real and how that concept might affect our enjoyment/appreciation of art.

This book also shed some light on something that I’ve been critical of for years: The Big Bang Theory. Eric Kaplan happens to have been a writer on that show. I’ve always felt that the portrayal of people on the autistic spectrum in that show via the character Sheldon Cooper was incredibly mean spirited. Having read a book by one of the writers of the show that ended up having some incredibly ableistic things to say about folks on the spectrum, I have even less doubt in my criticisms of The Big Bang Theory.

The Boys Omnibuses

I love the Amazon Prime show The Boys. I looked forward to reading the source material it was adapted from. Unfortunately, the comic was Garth Ennis’s attempt to out edgy one of his previous comics: Preacher. I just could not make it through the entire series it became quite the slog to read through all of this edgy humor centered around an incredibly dated view of LGBT folks. I’ve read elsewhere that Garth Ennis has taken the time to grow since the late 90’s and early 00’s, so I wont damn him too harshly for what he’s written. It just got to the point where I had to stop.

Conclusion

2024 was an awkward year for reading. I didn’t quite have a large breadth of books read to completion this year, but there were still items that I feel warranted a little bit of extra praise at the end of the year.