January 2024 and December 2023 Reading Recap (Plus a Goal!)

"Start the year as you mean to go on" isn't great advice when you're sick on New Year's Day...

This year did not get the start that I hoped! I got hit with the stomach flu right around 12:05 a.m. on New Year’s Day and spent the next few weeks trying to get my feet back under me. Between that, the holidays, wonky weather, and work projects, I just haven’t felt a ton of reading energy in the last couple of months.¹

That said, many of the books I did finish in December and January were quite good. Here’s a recap, as well as an explanation of my one reading goal for 2024:

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Fiction and Nonfiction

📘 The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan

In this book, J. Courtney Sullivan tells the story of Frances Gerety, the pioneering marketer who came up with the phrase, “A Diamond is Forever,” along with the stories of four other women in relationships of various types, and their connection or disconnection from the ideas represented by diamond rings. The story thread about Gerety is a fascinating piece of historical fiction that almost felt a bit like reading nonfiction (in a good way). I also loved each of the other stories. My favorite was Delphine, a woman who runs away from a stable relationship in Paris to pursue big love with a (much younger) prodigy violinist… which goes as well as you might expect. Overall, this was a great read.

📘 Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone by Juli Berwald

I love nonfiction where I get to do a deep dive (no ocean pun intended) into something that I had no idea I might be curious about. In this case, jellyfish! I also love nonfiction where the author writes about some of their own experiences and process reporting the story, and felt like Berwald’s personal narrative added a lot to this book. I definitely have a deeper appreciation for jellyfish and a sense of their (still largely unknown) role in various ocean ecosystems after reading his book. This is great popular science writing!

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Fantasy

📘 Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

I love the description of this one: “Two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family’s library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection—a tale of familial loyalty and betrayal, and the pursuit of magic and power.” This was probably my favorite book of the last couple of months — the characters were vivid, the mystery was compelling, and the rules of magic were clear and unique. I’d love a sequel someday!

📘 Divine Rivals and Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

Iris and Roman are rival journalists, both competing for a columnist position at the newspaper where they are working amidst an increasingly dangerous war between two warring gods. Iris writes letters to her brother on the front lines, which disappear after she slides them underneath the door to her wardrobe. But of course, they’re not going to him… they’re ending up with Roman, forging a connection the two don’t fully understand.

I ended up very swept into the plot of the first book, even though a lot of the rest didn’t make a ton of sense to me. The setting is sort of 1920s-ish with World War I-style trench warfare, it has magic with no discernable rules, and all of the journalists don’t seem to behave like actual reporters. It didn’t entirely make sense, but I liked it anyway — enough that I bought and finished the second book of the duology, Ruthless Vows, in January.

📘 Down Comes the Night by Allison Swift

This book was an impulse purchase from a Twin Cities indie bookstore that specializes in romance novels, Tropes & Trifles. It turned out to be a perfect early winter read, about a young, magical healer who is called to a remote estate to help cure a mysterious disease. Except it turns out the victim is one of her kingdom’s most notorious enemies! I loved how atmospheric and moody the book was, while still having a gripping plot and compelling central characters. I got some real Frankenstein vibes from it too, which was also a delight.

📘 To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

This book has an amazing premise — a young, Indigenous woman bonds with a dragon and is forced to attend a colonizer-run dragon academy — but it just did not land for me. I haven’t totally been able to pin down why, but I think part of it is because it seemed like there was a lot of expository dialogue, but I still felt confused for huge sections of the book. It might have just been too close to high fantasy for my tastes but may work better for others.

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Romance

🎧 The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

I ended up listening to three of Ali Hazelwood’s STEM romances this year, in the opposite order in which they were published, which I think was a mistake. The Love Hypothesis was her first novel, and so it just didn’t feel quite as polished or well-developed as the other two I listened to this year, Love, Theoretically and Love on the Brain. She’s still great, this just didn’t quite land for me.

🎧 Wildfire by Hannah Grace

Russ and Aurora hook up at an end-of-semester college party, expecting not to see each other again. Turns out they’re both counselors at the same summer camp, where their campus fling complicates what they both hoped to get out of the camp experience. This was cute, but I think the ages of the characters didn’t quite work for me. I like my romance protagonists to have a little more life experience.

🎧 The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson

Given how much romantasy I’ve read this year, I thought I’d be into a rom-com about two wolf shapeshifters who fake date their way into a real relationship. Turns out, I am not into spicy werewolf shenanigans or very strong Alpha Male vibes in romance. Live and learn!

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My One Reading Goal for 2024

In 2023 my only reading goal was to experiment with reading what I wanted rather than what I felt I should read. And in a lot of ways, that was a huge success — I found my way back to fantasy novels, followed the rabbit holes I wanted to go down, and ended up reading more books than I’ve read in a long time.

One consequence of that goal was that my reading felt unbalanced, and I added a lot of books to my shelves that I never got around to reading. So while I still want to focus on what I want to read, I also want a goal that will help make balance and reading off my shelves more of a priority this year. Here’s the goal:

In 2024, I want to read 24 backlist books that I already own.

Last year, I read 18 books that would fit this criteria, so it’s a stretch but not impossible. To help myself make it happen I’ve pulled out a small stack of options — approximately 12 fiction and 12 nonfiction — because I can get overwhelmed with decision fatigue looking at my full shelves. But, I’m not going to strictly hold myself to that list if something else on my bookshelf catches my eye. I’ve already finished two titles this year — The Engagements and Spineless — and feel good about my chances of achieving this one!

How’s your reading year going so far? Have you set any reading goals for 2024?

1. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been sucked down the rabbit hole of Dimension 20 RPG videos — it’d be embarrassing to tell you how many hours I’ve watched, so we’ll just leave it at… a lot.