Considerations – and charts! – on the challenges of 2024


As we prepare to send 2024 out with a bang, I wanted to reflect on my reading journey this year.

Personally, 2024 has been a year of immense growth and intense change. I hit a milestone birthday, and a major educational moment. I got a big promotion. And I did a big International trip (and several small ones). Somewhere in the middle of this I tried to find time to read – and to write about that reading…

I would say, generally, I’ve been more successful at the former than the latter. And so I want to lay out – what happened with my reading, and my writing, in 2024? And what do I want to do next? To do this, we’re going to look at both hard numbers (Goodreads data!) and softer goals (my challenges and commitments from last year). I’m hoping a more thoughtful review of both will help me set a clearer course for 2025…

Some charts…

I have mentioned quite a few times that I’m a consultant professionally (thus my love for categorizing my Christmas reads). And so of course I thought it would be fun to do some analysis on my reading this year. (All thanks to Goodreads, which allows you to export all your reading data for analysis!)

Before we get into the juicy stuff, some high level stats:

  • I read 186 books in 2024…
  • …which amounted to 60,579 pages of reading
  • In a surprise to nobody, my top genre was mystery, which took up about half of my books and pages read. These were mostly split between cozy mysteries, modern “traditional” mysteries, and true Golden Age mysteries
  • My next-most read genre was fantasy, where I split between epic / political fantasy, fairy-tale retellings, and more modern / urban fantasy
  • Perhaps surprising to me was the fact that my third most-read genre was nonfiction – I read more psychology and business books this year than I realized
  • A bit of a slow year on the epistolary front, with only 9 reads in one of my favorite genres. Something to try and remedy in 2025?

Not charted, but I read 6 “healing” books translated from Korean and Japanese this year. I’m a bit surprised, because it feels like I read more based solely on how prominent they are in my memory…

Next up is a look at my reading over time:

To me, it’s interesting to see how much it peaks and dips in different months. You can see I started off ambitiously in January, trying to write so many posts. As work picked up, my reading stated to fall off until April hit with very, very little reading. To get myself out of that slump I started binging Peter Wimseys. This made May and June extremely busy, until I hit a back-to-school period in in July. The rest of the year was more even, and I was able to get back into a reading routine that’s reflected in the numbers.

To me, this chart is a reminder of how easily I can fall into a cycle of binge-reading. I learned last year how much a routine can help me enjoy books. This year, the lesson was on how tenuous that routine can be…

My final chart offering is a look at my ratings, by genre, compared to the average Goodreads score for the same books.

Generally, I seem to be a grumpy reviewer – my average rating was 3.55, compared to 3.84 on Goodreads. I’m frequently rating books lower by 0.3-.6 points, with a few exceptions:

  • I’m generally less grumpy at my nonfiction reading, perhaps because I’m so selective with it.
  • I seem to be well-calibrated on average in modern “traditional-style” mysteries, which is nice to see given how much I love them.
  • Same for the epic / political fantasies I choose, which bodes well for my ability to use Goodreads ratings to pick new ones.

I have a couple of thoughts / hypotheses on this overall rating grumpiness. It’s possible that I’m just a grumpy reviewer, taking out the stress of 2024 on my hapless reading. I also tried to inject more diversity into my reading this year via the 52 Book Club Challenge, which forced me a bit out of my reading comfort zone as I tried to fulfill each of the prompts. That may have caused me to read fewer books I knew I’d love, as I tried to engage with new material. Thus, Grumpy Owlet… (?)

…and a review of challenges

Speaking of my challenges, it’s also the right time to check in with them. Last year, I tried three commitments: the 52 Book Club Challenge, a commitment to try and read more P.D. James, and an attempt to write more non-review content. So – how did I do?

52 Book Club Challenge: Speed Round

As of December 31, 2024, I’ve read all the books in my 52 Book Club Challenge for the year. This may come as a surprise to those of you following along on the blog, because I haven’t made posts about all of the entries… So, here’s a speed round to catch you up on the rest of my reading:

  • Bibliosmia: A smelly book:
    • The Echo of Old Books was a fine historical novel with a light magical realism twist. If you’re looking for cozy historical romance between star-crossed lovers, this might be up your alley.
  • Lowercase letters on the spine:
  • Women in STEM:
    • The Stars Turned Inside Out  is a murder mystery that takes place inside CERN. Switzerland, romance, physics AND metaphysics, and mystery make for a unique story, though I’m not sure I fully buy all the philosophical musings underpinning it.
  • Part of a duology:
    • The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the follow-up to The Kamogawa Food Detectives, and it meets every single expectation I had of it. Adorable and delicious.
  • Nominated for The Booker Prize:
    • The Lives of Others is a book I was hopeful I’d like because of my Bengali roots. Unfortunately, it spent too much time in physical and mental abuse mode to appeal to me. Not really my cup of tea, but certainly striking to read.
  • The other book with the similar plot:
    • The Westing Game is a classic that I grew up loving and that holds up every time I read it.
  • Title matches lyrics from a song:
    • Partners in Crime is Tommy and Tuppence at their cutest. Does this story make the most sense ever? No. Do I need it to when it’s full of fun puzzles? Not really.
  • Published by Hachette:
    • Revenge of the Tipping Point is the latest Malcolm Gladwell, and like all his books, an interesting source of ideas. I listened to the audiobook, which is extremely well-produced. If you’re at all curious about this one, I highly recommend the audiobook version.
  • Non-fiction recommended by a friend:
    • Cultures of Growth is written by one of my favorite professors, Mary Murphy, who studies growth mindset in organizations. This is the stuff I nerd out on when I’m not writing for this blog.
  • Set during a holiday you don’t celebrate:
    • The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is maybe cheating, since the holiday is a fantasy world one? I’ll take it. I love P. Djeli Clark, but this did not do it for me, in large part because the novella length allowed for less of the stunning worldbuilding from other novels. Some great action sequences and a reasonable puzzle, though.
  • Includes a wedding:
    • Dial A For Aunties is honestly a fever dream. I’m not sure it should even be called a murder mystery – it feels more like the outline of a comedy movie in which a murder takes place. Fun shenanigans, but totally outlandish.
  • Related to the word “Wild”:
    • Weyward is a historical fantasy spanning generations. Strongly feminist, but softly fantasy. I’ve been dancing around this one for ages and wish I had liked it more, but there’s something odd to me about spending so many paragraphs on women’s abusers in the name of establishing modern empowerment.
  • Published in 2024:
    • Death in the Air is a traditional mystery that takes place over the holiday season at a Himalayan retreat – think Glass Onion, but just a bit more zen. A decent puzzle, but one that could have used a little more cohesion in the protagonist’s arc.

…so those are the 13 books I ended up reading, but not having the space to write about. While writing this post, I’ve realized that the pressure of feeling like I had to write about each of ^these^ stories made me put off writing any posts at all, and I felt more panicked as I fell more behind.

Specifically, because of the reading diversity required to fulfill this challenge, I ended reading a bit out of my comfort zone. And while I value that kind of reading, I find myself hard-pressed to write about books in genres I don’t always frequent. It’s not – exactly – that I worry I’ll be wrong – just more that I know that my scale for enjoyment is not necessarily appropriate for this read. I actually really value the reading diversity the 52 Book Club Challenge brought to my life – but I’m not sure that means I want to commit to writing about all of it.

P.D. James challenge: A total flop

I wrote a single post on Adam Dalgiesh this year. I then got totally preoccupied with the 52 Book Club Challenge and my other series ideas and just – didn’t read any more. As commitments go, total flop.

A good learning, though, that overcommitting to specific and structured blog post types can lead to trouble. Every time I thought about reading Dalgliesh, I came up with some other series I felt was more urgent or interesting or creative. And because I value that creativity, Dalgliesh got put on the back burner. Clearly, I need to leave myself some room to flex that themed reading / writing muscle…

Writing more non-book content

I wrote maybe two of these posts this year… Not particularly shining on this one either.

Considerations on the above…

Putting all of the above together, I have some thoughts on what happened this year:

  • I decided to not just read, but write posts on 52 books based on a diverse array of prompts
  • This proved difficult when the diversity of the books meant writing posts on them was more challenging than expected
  • I also kept coming up with mini-series ideas (like Black History Month, my Euro travel series, and even Advent of Mystery) that I now had to try to make worth within the bounds of said 52 specific prompts – quite the feat!
  • This all was made more difficult by busy periods in work and life, during which I wanted to read and write in my sweet spot

My takeaway, then, is that I might benefit from splitting reading commitments from what I choose to write about. My challenge this year was not in reading the 52 books – I tripled that volume – but writing about them when my brain was otherwise fried. So it might be good to give myself a bit more flex to write what I want in 2025, even as I have more structured reading habits.

…and commitments for 2025

With all that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking for 2025:

52 Book Club Challenge – with a twist

As I mentioned earlier, I loved how much diversity the 52 Book Club added to my reading list – it’s just writing individual blog posts that felt constraining. So I think this year I will try splitting the goals: I’ll commit to reading the books, but I’ll try something different when writing about them. Instead of 52 separate posts about each of the reads, I’d like to try to make a monthly round-up post of everything I’ve covered that hasn’t already inspired me to write. I’m hoping this lets me have my cake and eat it too…

If you’re interested, you can follow along with my progress here.

Actually writing non-review content…

I’m hoping that freeing up my creative space will allow me to write more about the process of reading and why I love it so much. I’m less familiar with this kind of writing – at least in public – and I imagine it might take me a bit longer to produce. So I’m expecting I might be able to make 6 posts like this happen?

…and maybe adding some cozy mystery games to the mix?

When making my gift list I noticed that there were not that many writers focused on reviewing mystery games – either board games or video games. I actually love these kinds of puzzly games, and I’ve been toying with the idea of adding them to the review backlog. I think I’d be able to make 3 or 4 happen in 2025…

I’d love your thoughts and feedback on this – would you like to read about cozy mystery games, digital and analog alike? (And do you have any you’d like me to try?)

Are you interested in content about mystery board games and / or video games on The Cozy Owlet in 2025?

A note of thanks

As we close out 2024, I want to take a moment to thank you. Thank you for all the book recommendations, the engaged comments, the community. When I started this blog, I could never have imagined how much this blog would grow in 2 years. A quick trip through 2024:

  • I wrote 47 posts and 45.7k words across all of them
    • The Cozy Owlet community reached over 4,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, and WordPress
    • I reached 1,200+ search clicks on Google, which is an absolutely bonkers number for me to think about – what do you mean over 1000 people found an answer to a question in something I wrote?
      It’s incredible to think about, and if you’re still here 2k+ words later reading all my rambles, thank you! I can’t wait to see what we do together in 2025.

Until next time, stay cozy, and stay curious!

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.


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