my 2024 reads in two sassy sentences or less, from worst to best

frank thoughts on books from a rookie reader-- but a professional hater

Alternately,

Girl discovers “Dark Academia” on Pinterest and thinks she’s a tortured intellectual now

i pinterest, therefore i am

Does anyone care what books I read this year?

No?

Are you sure?

(Please let me subtly brag about how literary and smart I am)

I promise, this one’s a quickie! My literary boasts are limited to two (spoiler-free) sentences a pop. Did I cheat with em dashes? Maybe.

me. and you, probably

Sorry if I diss your fav. But isn’t that the fun of art’s subjectivity anyways? Anyways, I’m a STEM girly who never took AP Lang & AP Lit so who am I to judge?

The List

1. How to be Parisian Wherever You Are by Sophie Mas et al. Pretentious and feels misogynistic. “I’m not like other girls” re-packaged as style wisdom.

2. You’re Safe Here by Leslie Stephens. Characters I couldn’t care less about engage in nonsensical plot with simultaneously unclear AND heavy-handed messaging. Leslie— please stop making bird analogies, they’re not as deep as you think.

3. Get a Financial Life by Beth Kobliner. Honestly? Just check out the FIRE subreddit or r/Bogleheads instead— oops! I just exposed myself as a Redditor.

4. On Confidence by The School of Life. Worse version of What They Forgot to Teach You at School (see #21).

5. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Like a more boring and weird X-men where a boy dates his grandpa’s ex-girlfriend. Pretty sure this is a children’s book so you decide if that makes it better or worse…

6. The Stranger by Albert Camus. I am not literary enough for this book. Did not understand or appreciate it.

7. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (re-read). Better than Sorcerer’s Stone and worse than Chamber of Secrets. I’m a Potterhead for life but TBH the ending drags.

8. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Really cool premise crippled by an eye roll inducing main character and illogical, repetitive plot. Also repeatedly whacks you over the head with its morals.

9. Chic Simple: Clothes by Christa Worthington. Basic, but still relevant 30 years later. A fun time capsule of 90s graphic design and fashion.

10. My Brilliant Friend + The Story of a New Name + 1/2 of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante. Difficult to get through because again, I’m not super ~literary~. The two main characters and their relationship are captivating though and I’m sure someday I’ll re-read this series and love it.

11. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I know a few Bunnys IRL so I can totally see why they killed him. Despite my love for Dark Academia as an aesthetic, I’d probably appreciate this book more given additional literary context.

12. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Precious page-turner with an unremarkable ending (I literally can’t remember what happened). Granny-centric mystery is a genre that should definitely get more coverage though.

13. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Interesting premise that actually works thanks to solid writing and characters. I love me a multi-perspective, girl-centric, nothing actually happens story.

14. In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. The entire premise feels like a red herring by the book’s trite end. Nevertheless, I devoured it and its relatable-ish main character in just over a day.

15. None of This is True by Lisa Jewell. This thriller does nuance well. Hot tip: read this for your work book club to find out which of your coworkers will eagerly defend pedophiles!

16. The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach. A classic for a reason. Actually funny and informative, though more a work of art than an interesting read.

17. The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking. Adorable and quick. Ideal for the vibe connoisseur.

18. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. Weird— not in a bad way, but also not in a good way. I appreciate the commitment to the bit.

19. Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner. Great early aughts-coded representation for gals who often ask themselves: am I autistic or just weird? Obviously flawed, but it feels ok because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

20. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is the second domestic, dystopian, sci-fi read in my top five, so I realize I may have a preferred niche. Lovely combo of hearty, weird, and subtle (over exposition is my pet peeve).

21. What They Forgot to Teach You at School by The School of Life. I 1000% believe that if schools added people/life skills to their curriculum, adults wouldn’t need so much therapy.

22. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I had to read this book in small doses because the main characters were so insufferable and/or cringe (and real). Oh Sally Rooney, you’re so good at what you do.

23. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Multidimensional main character explores utterly relevant question of achievement vs. love in creepy but cool sci fi read. Miraculously, has an ending and moral that I actually like— clearly, because I wrote a whole post about it here¹.

Bonus List!

Every book I started this year but didn’t finish

To be fair to the books I ~read~ earlier, at least I finished them.

That’s an accomplishment in itself given how fickle I am. Or maybe not given my completist nature— I sometimes finish things I don’t like out of stubbornness.

So here are the books that didn’t even make it onto this year’s list, in no particular order. Again, they’re not necessarily bad, I just consume chaotically.

1. Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

3. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

4. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

5. A Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

6. The Guest by Emma Cline

7. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (currently on The Sign of the Four)

8. Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale

9. Normal People by Sally Rooney (a re-read narrated by my boyfriend, of BF Filtering Method fame)

10. The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

11. Babel by R.F. Kuang

12. probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting. Though, that implies they’re forgettable anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My Reflections

On choosing a book

I’m a fairly passive reader in the sense that I often let books come to me rather than actively seeking them out. This is because I’m cheap. But also because I get overwhelmed by choice. Best to eliminate choice altogether then.

To illustrate, out of 24ish completed books, here’s how I found each of them:

key:

• My parent’s bookshelves: 8

• Gifts or recs from my mom: 4

• Substack recs: 3

• Other social media recs: 3

• Convenience (thrift store or book cafe find or loan from a friend): 2

• My existing bookshelf: 2

• My work book club: 2

Is my lackadaisical strategy effective? Inconclusive. Both my favorite and least favorite books + finished and unfinished books include a variety of sources.

The value of a book is not just in being read.

Sometimes I enjoy thinking about reading a book, or the idea of a book, more than the actual act of reading the book. My first instinct was that this is bad.

Upon further contemplation, I think this tangential enjoyment is a part of the reading experience. Thinking about reading a book, the possibilities that it might hold, the energy and vibe it brings to your life— are all a part of the book’s value while not actually having to do with the whole eyes looking at words bit.

What’s the optimal balance between creation and consumption?

I read a lot of books in the first few months of 2024. Then, in the middle half of the year, I leaned more into writing and read significantly less. In the final 1/4 of 2024, my consumption drastically increased while my output slowed.

I’m still not sure what the optimal balance is. Perhaps whatever I damn feel like.

My Patterns

Likes

• The intersecting stories/multiple intertwined characters trope

  (e.g., movies like Crazy Stupid Love and Love Actually or books like The Vanishing Half and The Thursday Murder Club)

• Domestic/everyday life-centric stories

• Characters that feel like real people

• A book that’s a little weird

• Subtlety

Dislikes

• Books that try to wrap themselves up with a neat little bow (said bow usually disappointing). I prefer an ambiguous ending (maybe because it can’t explicitly disappoint me?). It feels less forced. Also, because authors seem to lose the plot frequently… They start off with these super cool ideas and then totally fudge the landing.

• Over-exposition and heavy-handed messaging/morals

• Inconsistent or vague character writing

• Soullessness

Detailed Stats

because a picture’s worth a thousand words (sometimes)

And for the data nerds…

I also did some (mathematically unsound) analysis!

First, I compared data from the 24 books I finished with the 11 books I started but didn’t finish to pinpoint any stand-out patterns.

Then, I used regression analysis on my finished book data to see which features had the largest, if any, correlation with my enjoyment of a book². But remember, this is correlation NOT causation y’all.

Here’s what I found:

• I’m more likely to finish physical books than ebooks or audiobooks.

• I primarily choose books written by women, though I’m ~ equally likely to finish books written by either gender.

  • Books written by men actually had a higher positive correlation with my enjoyment. However, since that male sample size is so small, one might argue that my bar for even reading a boy book might just be higher. Or that because I read more from women, I’m more likely to come across some lady’s utter dud.

• I’m more likely to finish non-fiction than fiction. BUT this is a great example of why not to assume causation from correlation! I know that this stat is in part because most non-fiction books I completed were much shorter than the fiction novels I chose.

  • Fiction novels actually had a higher positive correlation with enjoyment than non-fiction ones did.

• I’m most likely to dislike books I pulled from my own shelf (guess I never read them before for a reason…). While I’m most likely to enjoy books that I personally picked out of the depths of my parents’ bookshelves.

xx your little bookworm (and data nerd), Audrey

1. This is not an endorsement of said post, whose quality I cannot vouch since I wrote it nearly a year ago and it’s one of my first ever blog posts.

2. Methodology: I scored each finished book on a scale of 0 to 5, one-hot encoded features (genre, author gender, source, & vessel), then regressed book score on the various features— Separately, I am NOT doing some complex multivariate regression for a blog post. Y’all gotta pay me for that sh*t.