In Gedanken (1894) Friedrich Prölls
~ source Wikimedia Commons
YEAR IN REVIEW
2024 READING STATS
Number of Books Read: 48
Number of Re-Reads: 10
Genre You Read The Most From: Classics / Mystery
The Pet Dove (1895) Daniel Ridgway Knight ~ source Wikimedia Commons
BEST IN BOOKS
Best Book You Read in 2024: Man’s Search for Meaning
Book You Were Excited About and Thought You Would Like More But Didn’t: Homer and His Iliad The Iliad is second to the Bible for me and thus, I thought I would be fascinated with this book. What a disappointment! There was so much speculation, and sort of a clunky narrative. I enjoyed his writing on the geographical and topographical aspects of the Iliad but that was about it.
Most Surprising (in a good or a bad way) Book You Read in 2024: The Mother of Israel Golda Meir Good, in that if you sift through the excessive admiration of the author, you get some good basic information on Meir. Bad, in that the formatting was terrible!
Book You Pushed The Most People to Read (and they did!) in 2024: Beowulf I lead the read for my Discord group. It was about the 6th or 7th time reading this poem and it gets better every time.
Best Series You Started in 2024. Best Sequel. Best Series Ender: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome It would have been The Dark Is Rising series if I hadn’t read Swallows. I had planned to get through the whole series but sort of stalled off. I need to pick it up again in 2025.
Favourite New Author You Discovered in 2024: It’s hard to believe that I haven’t read any works by Walter Scott but I finally read Ivanhoe and really enjoyed it.
Best book from a genre you don’t typically read / out of your comfort zone: Big Sur but I say that with reservations. I’ve read a couple of Kerouac novels before: I loved one and couldn’t stand the other. So it would be unusual for me to pick this one up to read. And I didn’t enjoy it.
Most action-packed / thrilling / unputdownable book of the year: Robinson Crusoe. There were a few, but I’ll go with that one.
Book you read in 2024 that you are most likely to re-read next year: Pride and Prejudice. I could read this every six months! ❤️
Favourite cover of a book you read in 2024: Death on the Nile
Most memorable characters of 2024: Oh, wow, there are so many! But I’m going to choose John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker from Swallows and Amazons.
Most beautifully written book you read in 2024: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, but beautiful in an extremely unique way. It is both poetic and a comedy and quite fun. It was unfortunate that he burned most of the second part.
Most thought-provoking / life changing book you read in 2024: I would definitely say Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Almost nothing about the Holocaust could be uplifting but the way Frankl dealt with the tragedy was truly inspiring. And I even loved his therapy in the second part: looking forward and finding meaning in life instead of looking back and developing a victim mentality.
Book you can’t believe you waited until 2024 to read: Bleak House and Great Expectations
Favourite passage / quote from a book you read in 2024:
“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”
“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”
“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”
“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”
― H.A. Hayek
The shortest / longest book you read in 2024: Review of Mein Kampf (George Orwell) (18 pages) & Bleak House (1,017 pages)
Book that shocked you the most: Big Sur. Such a waste of lives and we’re supposed to enjoy reading about it. Huh?
OTP of the year: Elizabeth and Darcy. I couldn’t choose any other!
Favourite non-romantic relationship: Robinson Crusoe & Man Friday.
Favourite book you read in 2024 from an author you’d read previously: Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Best book that you read in 2024 that you read solely on the recommendation from someone else: Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper
Best world-building / most vivid setting from a book you read in 2024: Dead Souls. Poetry and comedy combined!
Book that put a smile on your face / that was the most fun to read: The Railway Children. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
Book that made you cry or nearly cry in 2024: Man’s Search for Meaning I probably don’t have to explain why
Hidden gem of the year: The Road to Serfdom It’s such an important book and so necessary as a recurring warning. And everyone needs to learn basic economics!
The most unique book you read in 2024: Dead Souls
The book that made you the most mad: Homer and His Iliad From his wonky theories, to his odd personal insertions (ie. “to Homer, dark lives matter”) it was a tedious and frustrating read.
Hausaufgabe (turn of 19/20th century) Simon Glücklich
~ source Wikimedia Commons
YOUR BLOGGING / BOOKISH LIFE
New favourite blog you discovered in 2024: Boy, I have not been in the blogging world lately so I have nothing for this question.
Favourite review that you wrote in 2024: Ah, I don’t really know. I’ll choose Dead Souls because it is my most recent novel review.
Best discussion / non-review post you had on your blog in 2024: Really none. Again, I’ve been pretty blog-absent lately.
Best event that you participated in: Not really an event but I have a couple of people with whom I’m regularly budding reading and it’s been great!
Best moment of bookish / blogging life in 2024: Beginning to review again has been nice. If it doesn’t interfere with my reading plans too much, I’ll keep it up.
Most popular post this year on your blog: As usual, An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson was #1 with 1,628 views.
Post you wish got a little more love: I don’t know. I don’t even have my Google Analytics set up so I’m not surprised if I have low views. I’m not focussing on that anymore in any case.
Best bookish discovery: That Value Village is suddenly getting in lots of Folio Society editions. They aren’t cheap but certainly cheaper than buying new.
Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of the year?: Pretty much. I only had my Goodreads challenge at 46 books and I hit it.
Old Books – Catherine M. Wood
~ source Wikimedia Commons
LOOKING AHEAD:
One book you didn’t get to in 2024 but will be your number one priority in 2025: The Republic or at least a few of Plato’s Dialogues
Book you are most anticipating for 2025: War and Peace a chapter a day for a year.
Series ending / a sequel you are most anticipating for 2025: I might read The Chronicles of Narnia again and I’d also like to continue with The Swallows and Amazon series, not to mention finishing up The Dark Is Rising series
One thing you hope to accomplish or do in your reading / blogging life in 2025: I have a few reading partners, a book club and some challenge targets so I need to make the time to read and I need to keep on track. I’m looking forward to taking on the Deal Me In challenge again.
Previous Years in Review
Photo #1 courtesy of DGlodowska on Pixabay
I got Homer and his Iliad from the library and it was nowhere near as good as I expected it to be! (I didn’t finish it.)
My favourite Golda Meir quote (maybe apocryphal? Since you read the book, you might know.): “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.”
Happy New Year!
That’s a relief to know! I heard that someone else had the same experience. I was reading it with someone else so I had to finish it. 😝 I’m reading How To Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks and my Homer and His Iliad experience is colouring it, I think. I’m not enjoying it either! 😩
Great quote! I had a few other great Meir quotes as well: “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” and “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” and “Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!” But The Road to Serfdom had so much wisdom to impart, I chose it instead.
Happy New Year to you as well! Thanks for the wishes!
Nice recap!
Thanks, Silvia! Great to see you! Happy New Year!
Nice! Frankl’s book is great! Happy new year!
https://wordsandpeace.com/tag/year-of-reading/
Thanks! Hopping over to your blog!
I love reading Beowulf. Have you read different translations? If so, which is your favorite? I’m sad that I misplaced my Serraillier version. I have read McNamara and Tolkien. And Tolkien is the only version I own now.
I was blown away by Robinson Crusoe, too. I did not expect to embrace it like I did. In fact, I have to read it again someday soon.
I’ve only read the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf. I absolutely love it and highly recommend it! I have the Tolkien translation so I really should read it one day. Oh, yes, I have read the Serraillier retelling but I thought it was a children’s version …??
I’ve read Robinson Crusoe twice and I could definitely read it a few more times. It’s a great book!
I finally updated my WordPress so hopefully your comment went through seamlessly!
Aye, it didn’t work. I got a “nonce verification failed,” or something like that. ?? Anyway, what I said was: Yes, Serraillier is a children’s version, but it was my favorite. But the next time I read Beowulf, I will get the Heaney copy. Thanks!
It didn’t?!! How strange. My site is all up-to-date. The odd bi-polar world of the internet. 😝
You’re welcome!