The 30 Books I Read in 2024

Dec 23, 2024

In 2024, I decided I wanted a hobby. As a fifth year graduate student, I was juggling writing my dissertation, applying for jobs, and trying not to let those two things take over my life. My first idea was to continue learning French (a goal I had for 2023), and though I did numbers on Duolingo (as in a 300+ day streak 💁🏾‍♀️), it didn’t hit the way that it was supposed to. C'était comme une corvée (meaning it felt like a chore for my non-French folks). Simultaneously, some of my friends and I made plans for a book club (shoutout to Kalese, Megan, and Marissa), and thus it was decided this’d be the year I read for fun again.

I’ve always been a big reader, but when it becomes your job to read you reasonably don’t want to add more on top of that. To be a good writer, however, you need to expose yourself to good writing. And fiction has the best of the best. Finding books got easier after I learned about Libby (thank you Dafna), which lets you get free ebooks and audiobooks with your local library card. This solved the issue of spending too much money on books I would probably only read once (and my library is big enough). I didn’t have a set number in mind, nor did I track in-depth reviews, but I somehow got to 30.

As far as a key goes, one star (⭐️) is a really good book and two stars (⭐️⭐️) are ones I absolutely loved and would absolutely recommend. Imagine my face stamped on their covers like Oprah or Reese. Having no star doesn’t mean a book was terrible, just nothing life-changing.