Hello, friends and readers! It’s taken me a month to crunch the numbers and titles for what I read in 2024, a very good year in books. I read 104 books, averaging 2 a week. 49 fiction, 20 nonfiction, 15 poetry, 18 graphic novels, and 2 audio books. 70 women authors, 28 male, 2 trans men, 1 trans woman, 1 nonbinary author and 2 books with multiple authors. 14 books by BIPOC writers, 13 by LGBTQ+, and 6 in translation.
My favorite book this year was Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild Built, about a tea monk and a robot, and I gave many copies as graduation gifts. Unmasking Autism by Devon Price helped me understand myself and the world a lot better, and I recommended it to many. Two amazing memoirs were The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcolm Belc, and Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. I found 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg to be helpful for writing. Favorite novels included The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez, The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, The Expendable Man by Dorothy L. Hughes, The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, Slow Days Fast Company by Eve Babitz, and Mary Olivier: A Life and The Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair. I really liked Ghosts, short stories by Edith Wharton. I read a whole lot of graphic novels, and my favorites were My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emily Farris. Many of these were NYRB titles by women authors that I read with #NYRBwomen24.
I love a good reading project. Around the holidays, I read Christmas books, which have come to include ghost and horror stories. I read many of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels with a discussion group
I keep track of my books on Storygraph, where you can find me as kjboldon.
What did you read and love last year?
K.J. Boldon 