I Think, Therefore I Write: December 2024

Readers never get tired of talking about books and bookish topics—it's one of the reasons I love them. This year, I noticed that one topic in particular kept coming up among the readers I know or follow online: old books vs. new books.

Some of these readers revere the old stuff, whether they're the classics or childhood favorites. If a book is still being read decades after it was published, then it should pass the "this is worth my time" test.

Other readers are always chasing the new shiny thing: the current best-sellers, the latest award winners, the books everybody is talking about. These books may enjoy some time in the spotlight, but, given how many books are published each year, will most likely be forgotten about in a few years.

I'm more of a new-release book gal. New fiction is a fascinating way to gauge the mood of our society in the moment. New fiction, even if it's set in the past or on another planet, reflects what we value and believe in today (or, at least a few years ago when the book was written) and is a fascinating way to document and explore history.

I also have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the so-called classics. I'm a recovering English major who read many of the "greats" for homework—and hated a good number of them. I'm convinced that many of the classics have only stood the test of time because teachers weren't willing to break free from the status quo and teach something other than what they were taught in school. And so we continue to have people claim that Moby-Dick is the great American novel when there are hundreds of newer books much more worthy of the title. (Full disclosure: I have never read Moby-Dick, nor have I ever met anyone who said it was worth their time.)

That being said, I did get a little burned out on all the forgettable new releases I read last year, so this year I made an effort to mix the old with the new. And you know what? It made my reading year better.

Reading trends

I tracked my reading on StoryGraph this year because they have cooler and prettier stats than my other tracking systems. (I'm too embarrassed to tell you how many places I track my reading, so you're just going to have to wonder.) One of my favorite stats was book moods:

It's ironic that StoryGraph says only a sliver of my reading was relaxing, when "to relax" is the number one reason I read.

StoryGraph also lets you rate your books with quarter stars! Because sometimes you just need to rate something 3.75 stars.

One thing I didn't like about StoryGraph was that it didn't let me assign genres myself, but still, the genre breakdown is pretty accurate, with my top five being literary fiction, historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and contemporary fiction.

I reread Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive this year to prep for book 5, which skewed my books-per-month chart a bit. I loved revisiting Roshar and was glad I refreshed my memory on some key plot points before diving into Wind and Truth, but it came at a cost. Because the books are ridiculously long, I had to sacrifice a lot of my fall and holiday reading—my two favorite reading seasons—for Brandon Sanderson, and I did resent Brandon for it at times. (Even though I was sacrificing something I loved for something I loved. You get it.)

I started my Stormlight reread in August. I read 3-4 normal-sized books between each Stormlight book to keep my reading fresh. It was a good system.

Recurring themes

Most of the time I pick books based on my mood, not the topic. So it's always fun to see which themes and trends emerge over the course of a year, because they're usually unplanned. Here's what kept popping up in my reading this year:

Artists and art collectors. I don't really care about the art world, but the publishing world sure seems to. SO MANY artist type people showed up in my reading in 2024 and it's looking like that will continue into 2025.
Absurdly rich people. I get it, we're all fascinated by how the wealthy live. But each "encounter" with a mega-rich character had me more convinced that billionaires should not exist.
Weddings that last a week. See "absurdly rich people" above.
Magical doors. This is something I'm always in the mood for.
Fake dating. This used to be my favorite romance trope, but I'm pretty sick of it now.
Copyeditors—we're not as boring as you might think!
People going for really long walks. Which also isn't as boring as you might think. Sometimes it's even life-threatening! (More on that below.)

Other book stats

Books read: 85

Pages read: 38,547 (453 pages per book). Book length definitely skewed long this year.

Books abandoned: 11. StoryGraph had some interesting insights on the book flavors I tend to abandon.

This doesn't 100% explain why I DNF books (there's no option here for bad writing, for example), but a lot of the categories from my other book moods chart are flipped, which is interesting.

Rereads: 9

Fiction vs. nonfiction

This year was a little more fiction-heavy than normal, but most of the nonfiction I read was excellent.

Male vs. female authors

Longest book: Wind and Truth, by Brandon Sanderson, 1,330 pages. Stormlight was responsible for about 15% of my page count this year. In fact, I think Wind and Truth might be the longest book I've ever read. I've read some 1,500-pagers, but they were all trade paperbacks. Wind and Truth was a full-sized hardcover with tiny margins, so the word count should be higher. The internet has been exceedingly unhelpful in verifying this for me, so I'm just going to call it.

Shortest book: Prophets See Around Corners, by Sheri Dew, 112 pages. If you only read one church book in 2025, this would be a good one to consider.

Favorite books from 2024

Best fiction: The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon. This is historical fiction at its best. Set during a time that hasn't been exhaustively covered (America, 1789–1790) about a real person but not a well-known one (Martha Ballard), this book doesn't just bring the past to life—it transports you directly to it. Everything from the family dynamics to the midwifery to the legal system is fascinating to watch unfold. This was my most satisfying reading experience of 2024.

Best nonfiction: A Walk in the Park, by Kevin Fedarko. This book falls under the one of my favorite genres: "miserable adventures I would never go on." The adventure? Walking the entire length of the Grand Canyon, a 750-mile trek shockingly few people have finished. I'm glad a good writer took on this quest so I could learn more about a truly weird place without risking life and limb to do it.

Best reread: The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson. Bridge Four is just special, you guys. There's nothing else like it.

Other standouts from 2024

I'm straying from tradition this year and not putting the rest of my favorites into fun categories. I always leave out a few fantastic books when I do that, so I'm going the boring but efficient route this time.

The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank (nf). Believe it or not, this was my first time reading this book. I read the play version in 9th grade, but all I remember was the debate over how to pronounce Margot's name and my English teacher (who was also the drama teacher) urging me to read my lines with more feeling. Still, despite basically knowing the story already, reading Anne's own words for the first time really struck me. Such a remarkable, yet ordinary, person. So much potential, lost forever. Times that by 11 million and the Holocaust was, and continues to be, a staggering, incalculable loss for the world.

One Summer: America, 1927, by Bill Bryson (nf). I've never had a burning desire to know what was going on in America in 1927, but in Bill Bryson I trust. Turns out, this was a pretty crazy summer. Not only did I learn a lot about baseball, flight, and the murder trial that gripped the nation in 1927, I saw a lot of parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s and have been wanting to learn more about the period between the two world wars ever since.

The Book of Doors, by Gareth Brown (f). I'll read just about any book about magic doors, but this one really felt like it pulled some of my own portal fantasies out of my head and used them as inspiration. The magic books in this world are just cool, and the story was fun and interesting from start to finish.

Daddy-Long-Legs, by Jean Webster (f). My friend Jamie introduced this book to me (thanks, Jamie!), and after I read it we saw the musical together, which was equally lovely. It's such a charming, funny, and smart book, and it centers on one of my favorite themes: how education can change a girl's life and open up a world of possibilities. It made me want to give more old books a chance, too.

Romey: A Reckoning, by McKay Coppins (nf). One of the best biographies I've ever read (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a Romney fan). It gave me a lot to think about regarding the state of America—its leaders, its constituents, and its future. Still thinking about these things, in fact.

Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham (nf). I've always thought that space travel is one of the coolest things humans have ever accomplished, but after reading this I felt complicit. Space travel is insanely expensive and insanely risky and I'm no longer sure it's worth pursuing. Regardless of where you fall on the space-travel debate, this is a well-researched, well-told history of the doomed Challenger expedition and space flight in general.

The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst (f). Sometimes you just need a cozy escape. This book checked all the right boxes for me.

The Women, by Kristin Hannah (f). I haven't loved Kristin Hannah's latest releases because I've grown tired of her emotional manipulations. IMO, she's ruined some perfectly good books (The Great Alone and The Four Winds come to mind) by ramping up the drama at the end for no reason other than to collect her readers' tears. The Women is definitely a tear-jerker, but I felt like all the melodrama was earned this time. This book helped me understand a little better that there is more than one way veterans sacrifice their lives for our country, and I've never been more grateful for their service.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith (f). Another book about the power of education. This is a book I've held off rereading because I was afraid my fond memories wouldn't hold up, but that fear was unfounded (even though I didn't love certain things about the ending this time around).

The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson (f). After the reading year I had, I can't not mention the Stormlight Archive here, my favorite Sanderson series. I'm well aware of Sanderson's faults as a writer and am not immune to being driven crazy by certain Sandersonisms, but what he does well he does better than anyone else. This series showcases some of his best work, and I'm glad he waited until he was a more experienced author to tell these stories the way they deserved to be told. (Fun fact: Brandon Sanderson married one of my neighbors, and when we got their wedding invitation in the mail, my dad said, "Emily is marrying a writer, so they're going to be poor.") I finished each book feeling like I had just run a marathon, but fortunately I find the idea of a reading marathon exponentially more enjoyable than a running one.