AND MY READING LIST FOR 2024
I have been on a roll these last few months and I attribute it all to my new library membership. There is something freeing knowing that you can pick up and drop off all the books you want! And to be honest it’s even taught me delayed gratification, while these days if there isn’t something available somewhere we’ll just go on Amazon and buy it. So when I saw that I was 250th in line to get a book I really wanted to read, my first thought was, “I’ll just buy it”. I had to actively tell myself to wait and instead, find other books to read in the meantime!
And thank goodness I didn’t buy it, because it really wasn’t all that good.
I’ve been relying on the social media posts by Book of the Month and Reese’s Bookclub for recommendations, but I’ve started my search for books to read in 2024 elsewhere. There are a few articles with good lists that I’ve noted to get me through the first few months of the year, but would love to get more recommendations from you too! If you read anything amazing this year, drop it in the comments and we’ll start our own list.
The Everygirl
The Best Books of 2023
The NYT 10 Best Books of 2023
Bazaar’s 45 Best New Books of 2023 You Won’t Want To Put Down
The first 10 on my list for 2024?
I did find this year that I need to learn to pace myself. Because I’m a speed reader, there were some weeks where I powered through three books. But then I look back at the list of the books I’ve read this year and there are some I have to google to remind myself what they were about. So this year, I’m going to keep myself to one book a week. That way I can still read about 50 books a week, and hopefully I’ll be able to remember them all a little better 🙂
Of the 50 books that I read this year, there were some that I absolutely loved (I’m talking crying at the end, didn’t want to leave the characters), some that I thought were good enough to recommend (most of the time those are my “beach reads”), then others that I was disappointed in. And this is where you have to remember these lists are completely subjective! Everyone has different taste in books and that’s part of the beauty of it. I rarely don’t like a book enough to put it down on that list, but I did provide explanations as to why I didn’t like them to give some context.
Let’s see what I got up to this year…
BOOKS I ABSOLUTELY LOVED
You will notice that all of Kristin Hannah’s books are on this list, she is 4 for 4 in books that made my cry in the end. And she has a new book coming out in February! Can’t wait.
BOOKS I LIKED ENOUGH (EASY BEACH READS)
I was actually kind of disappointed in Tom Lake, that was one that I was over 200th on the waitlist and expected it to be really good! And a lot of these weren’t bad, but they weren’t good enough to really keep me interested enough that when I closed the book I go, “ugh! That was awesome!”
BOOKS I DIDN’T LIKE VERY MUCH
Okay, hear me out. It takes a lot for me to not actually like a book, and again, this is just my opinion. 1) The House In The Pines was predictable, and I didn’t have that gasp moment that I should have had 2) The Marriage Portrait and My Last Innocent Year didn’t really grab me. As I kept reading I was waiting to really care of be drawn in by the plot 3) Maybe Now was the sequel to Maybe Someday and the story should have stopped with the first one. 4) L.A. Weather felt disjointed and other than one thing, nothing really ever happened. The characters and plot didn’t really develop well so I never really connected with anything. 5) Honestly, I skimmed most of Happiness Falls. It really could have been an on-the-edge-of-my-seat kind of book. Maybe it was just the mood that I was in, but I felt like there was so much filler that the whole story just fell flat. There were so many questions, with so few answers that you just kinda left the story like… okay? 6) It’s funny because The Survivaslists was on a lot of people’s “favorites” list but I honestly did not like one second of it! I don’t know maybe it was the mood that I was in or what but from chapter one, I knew that I wasn’t going to be into it. And when I got to the end, I was right. Personal opinion? Nothing happened. The order of events didn’t make sense. And you aren’t sure you like even one of the characters. Overall it is just confusing and I would suggest this be a pass.
