Last December, I met up with my friend Fabian for coffee. As usual, it wasn’t long before we started talking about books. “Have you set your reading challenge for the next year?” he asked.

No, I haven’t, and I won’t. I applaud people for setting such goals, but for me, reading is leisure and pleasure, and shouldn’t feel like a chore. Besides, I’m an avid reader as it is, always with a book in my bag. If anything, I think I should cut down on reading and spend this time differently. For example, focus on languages.

But I thought it would be fun to look back and reflect on what I read in 2024. 📚 Let’s go!

Thriller and Crime

Seasons usually influence what I read and watch, but a thriller, crime or mystery story is a good option all year round!

In the summer, I finally finished Dan Brown’s whole bibliography (excluding the children’s book) with Deception Point. I also read Andrea Mara’s Someone in the Attic. Both gripping and twisted.

What better thing to do on public transport?

In the lead-up to Halloween, I went for Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? as hyped in one interview by my favourite author, Emily Barr. Her psychological thrillers lean heavily into travel fiction, taking you to places near and far. The First Wife transported me to Barcelona last spring. But if I’m completely honest, it’s my least favourite out of all her books so far.

Young Adult and Children’s

More enjoyable was The One Memory of Flora Banks, Emily’s first YA novel, and a turning point of sorts for her. I read it out of curiosity as it’s set in the Arctic and deals with such themes as delusion and amnesia.

Coffee time at Taggs with The One Memory of Flora Banks

In a local library, my eyes caught the colourful cover of Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes. It wasn’t the first time that artwork made me reach for a book! This one was relatable thanks to its LGBT+ theme, although quite anxiety-inducing at times…

Reading Sonora Reyes’s debut novel at my favourite local café, Hej

Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon was gifted to me by Fabian and marked two “firsts”: my first manga and the first book I read in German! I was ploughing through it with a dictionary within reach, but was that not a great way to learn? And a bit of a nostalgia trip at the same time, just like the Moomins book I got from my sister for Christmas the year before (Muminki zebrane. Tom I).

Turns out that most of my friends aren’t familiar with the Moomins, but if you’re a millenial from Eastern Europe or Scandinavia, they would have been an integral part of your childhood. Maybe even bigger than Disney!

In my sister’s garden, reading her Christmas present

Other Fiction

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before Your Memory Fades (winter), Emma Harding’s The Berliners (spring), André Aciman’s The Gentleman from Peru (summer), Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist (autumn). Although very different, they have one thing in common: all are about time travel or time-hopping. And I didn’t realize this until now!

On my way to work reading The Gentleman from Peru

There are two more LGBT-related books. In the summer, I speedily read Umberto Saba’s controversial Ernesto, and ended the year with Mae West Is Dead, a collection of short stories edited by Adam Mars-Jones.

Memoirs

Last autumn, I was whiling away my commute with two audiobooks. Barbra Streisand’s My Name Is Barbra is an epic memoir by a super-prolific artist. Delivered entirely in her own voice, it is meant to be listened to first, but later you still want to reach for the print version and check out the photos. The Woman in Me by Britney Spears doesn’t focus on her music as much as I would have liked, but it helped me get my head around the whole conservatorship drama.

In February, around the 10th anniversary of my trip to India, I was reading Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald. It made me nostalgic and sad that I haven’t been there since…

The highlight of this section has got to be A Memoir from the City of Youth which the author Rron Ukimeraj gifted me himself in Kosovo. I’ll write about it in a separate post.

Another coffee and book moment – this time at Dit’ e Nat’ in the titular “city of youth”

Other Non-Fiction

It would seem natural to classify Moon Laramie’s Spirit of Garbo as a biography, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a study of Greta Garbo’s spiritual life and beliefs. A niche book, absolutely recommended to the fans of this enigmatic actress. I’m somewhat interested in spirituality and religion, and last year read also Dark History of the Catholic Church by Michael Kerrigan and Deepak Chopra’s Power, Freedom, and Grace.

Indulging myself in the moment at Indulge café

The next three are all by Polish journalists. #Sława by Karolina Korwin Piotrowska looks back on the history of the world’s obsession with the titular #Fame. Aleksandra Gumkowska’s Seks w wielkich miastach (Sex in Big Cities) is a fun travelogue about sex lives and dating habits of people in different countries around the globe. To feed my fascination with Albania and learn more about its disturbing history, I read Błoto słodsze niż miód by Małgorzata Rejmer. This one is available in English as Mud Sweeter Than Honey.

Christopher Herwig’s Soviet Bus Stops was actually a photo book, but I have read whatever text there is and will include it in my list. 😁

Stats!

So, in 2024, I have read… 25 books! That’s two a month – I’d say it’s pretty good. I never kept statistics before, but I think this is my personal record.

The five gifted books aside, the rest is split almost evenly between the titles I borrowed from libraries and bought myself. As a moderate minimalist, I buy physical books with caution. And I love Amazon’s 99p Kindle sale! 😃

Last year, I moved away slightly from non-fiction and focused more on novels. If I can recommend one, it would be The Berliners.

Somewhere on the Bakerloo Line, in the company of The Berliners

Which books (and how many) did you read in 2024? Do you have any goals for 2025? Let me know and check out my Goodreads page to see what I’m reading now.