phantomtomato

booknook created a great template for reviewing your 2024 year in reading, and I’ve edited it to fit me. I think the big takeaway from last year’s reading is that I’m happy with where I’m at in terms of number of books, variety, etc. Posting about my reading here on Dreamwidth has been one of my favorite online experiences this year—it’s very satisfying to look back on those posts, rather than needing to flip through my notes scattered among other thoughts in my physical journal. That’s also been a large portion of my personal writing in 2024! As I go through a period of lower interest in transformative fandom, but not a lower interest in reading new things, reflecting on the things that I’ve read (and occasionally getting to chat with other readers) has filled the role for me that sharing fic did in years past.

In 2024:

I Read: 27 books to completion

My Reading Goal: was to post at least 12 updates to my Dreamwidth journal about my reading, which I did exactly! I skipped December and condensed April and May into one post, but I also made two standalone book review posts. I’m happy with this; the point of this goal was to make reflecting on my reading a regular part of my DW life and to keep my journal active, and I did that.

An Author New-to-me in 2024 I Really Enjoyed: was Allen Bratton, whose debut novel Henry Henry absolutely tore through me. I loved it, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Bratton’s career contains in the future!

My Favorite Book of the Year/Books I Read in 2024 That I Recommend:
Favorites are difficult! I loved Where Angels Fear to Tread and Howards End by Forster, and Henry Henry as mentioned above. This was also a great year in emotionally devastating queer manga, with The Poe Clan, Claudine, and Run Away With Me, Girl. I’m not big on choosing single favorites, and any of those really could be it, so instead I’d call them a group of titles that are easy to recommend. They’re so obviously great that if the premise and format of any sounds interesting to you, it’s probably worth reading.

I would also recommend A Separate Peace to fans of the homoerotic boarding school novel genre, which stands out among the boarding school novels that I read this year. I also enjoyed two fantasy books that I read this year, very different in tone: The Idylls of the Queen (Arthurian mystery) and The Great When (sardonic riff on the British portal fantasy).

In 2025:

My Reading Goal: is to again post at least 12 Dreamwidth entries about my reading

My TBR List: includes a bunch of books that I purchased in the second half of 2024:
The Farewell Symphony, Edmund White
Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Edmund White
Love, Leda, Mark Hyatt
The Temple, Stephen Spender
Lost Property, Ben Sonnenberg
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins (spring 25 reading group book)
Star Clock Liddell, Yoshimi Uchida (on preorder)

I’d like to also read these unreads sitting on my bookshelf:
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
The Secret History, Donna Tartt

I am currently reading The Book of Life by C. H. B. Kitchin, which will be my first novel of the year.


I’ve dropped a lot of the potential questions in this template, but if it looks interesting to you, go check out the full set on booknook!