Hello everyone,
Happy New Year! I hope 2025 turns out to be a wonderful year for all of you ✨
Before we look too far ahead, it is time to look back one more time on 2024 with my annual Goodreads Challenge Summary and Stats.
Having fallen just short of my 2023 target of 55, I decided to lower my Goodreads goal in 2024 to a slightly more manageable 52. One book per week, still not easy but something I felt I could just about achieve, even considering the fact I have less time for reading than I used to and have become more prone to distractions.
And achieve it I did! I reached the target of 52 with a few hours to spare, having taken my time with my last read of the year. Although it was on the last day, I felt that it was never in any serious doubt.
It was an odd year in the sense that I seemed to mostly either read fairly short books, or rather long ones. There were fewer that sat in the middle ground of about 350-400 pages, with the extremes of a double figure page count in Medusa and almost 600 pages worth of Rule Of Wolves.
Usually I begin my stats with the amount of books I finished in each month of the year, but I actually cannot recall the details clearly enough to do that this time. While 2024 was a good year in many respects, it was also one where I was somewhat deprived of sleep and fell significantly behind on writing book reviews, so there has been a lot of fighting against the tide.
There were many reading highlights in 2024. I picked up lots of books that turned out to be fantastic, some more surprising than others. A year which began by finally acquainting myself with The Hunger Games trilogy started off well and continued to get better, especially around autumn.
So for this post, I am looking back on all the books I read in 2024 and have compiled some interesting statistics relating to them, which provide a useful insight into my current reading habits and preferences.
Ratings
⭐ – 1
⭐.5 – 0
⭐⭐– 2
⭐⭐.5 – 2
⭐⭐⭐ – 8
⭐⭐⭐.5 – 10
⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 12
⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 – 5
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 11
Average rating: ⭐⭐⭐.77
Well, here is the proof that I read lots of special books in 2024!! Over a fifth of the books I read were given a five-star rating, with the total of 11 comfortably my highest in years. There were fewer four-star reads, while the other numbers remained fairly similar to previous amounts. The average rating of 3.77 is a record high, up from 3.74 in 2023.
At the beginning of last year I felt confident that my physical TBR had a lot of treats in store, and that certainly proved to be the case. I really hope that it can be the same again in 2025.
Genres Read
Crime: 2
Mystery: 9
Thriller: 6
Fantasy: 10
Historical Fiction: 8
Young Adult: 3
Mythological Fiction: 2
Horror: 2
General/Contemporary Fiction: 5
Science Fiction: 1
Non-fiction: 4
This is very interesting! For the first time since I began taking part in the Goodreads Challenge, fantasy tops the list for genres read! I knew that I was turning to fantasy more often in 2024, but to see it reach double figures ahead of the rest is still something of a surprise. A lot of those fantasy reads were amazing, too!
Elsewhere, I read more non-fiction and young adult contemporaries, but fewer thrillers and general/literary fiction novels.
It must be stressed that a lot of the genres overlap, for example some of the books I have included in the mystery or thriller categories are marketed towards a young adult audience. I have just chosen the genre that I feel each book applies to the most 🙂
Formats
Paperback – 35
Hardback – 10
E-book – 3
Audiobook – 4
Well, those stats represent a dramatic increase in the number of paperbacks I read in a year, up from a much more balanced 25 in 2023. E-books have slipped massively, from nine to just three.
Paperbacks will always be my favourite format, although I do like to go for hardbacks for particularly pretty covers or for consistency. Due to my physical TBR I barely picked up my Kindle all year, while audiobooks tailed off a little too. That explains these numbers, plus the fact I quite like to own physical copies of the books I want to read.
Other Stats
Standalone: 35
Series: 17
New-to-me authors: 19
I am actually surprised that I read so many standalones. It feels like I am reading lots of sequels, but clearly not as many as I thought!
Pages read: 19,209
Average length: 369 pages
Books written by BIPOC authors: 9
Books with LGBTQIA+ representation: 10
Buddy reads: 8
Despite finishing an extra two books compared to 2023, I apparently read fewer pages. It is true that some books were quite short, Goodreads totals are not always reliable – especially in relation to audiobooks.
The bottom two stats are down on 2023 also. I guess that I did not have time for as many buddy reads. In fairness, a lot of buddy reads were long books.
Let’s Chat
How did you get on with your reading challenge? Do you have any interesting reading stats from 2024? Let me know in the comments!
Happy reading 🙂
