📚 2024 Book Report: Last Year in Review

Standout books! Pie charts! Or, why I was not cool in high school

Happy 2025 to you all! A friend of mine turned 45 last week and was encouraged by the fact that 45 squared is 2,025. May you all find such auspicious omens for the year ahead.

Speaking of birthdays, The Diving Board turns one this month! Our lil’ community is growing up so fast! I’ll soon be sharing a reflective, celebratory post with (1) lessons learned from my first year of newsletter-writing, (2) my hopes and plans for The Diving Board’s next chapter, and (3) digital birthday cake. 🎂

But today, we’re all about the books. Honestly, I’m all about the books, all the time.

I have been working on this post in the margins of a very busy couple of weeks post-holidays. I’m so glad to finally be getting it out to you today!

Let’s dive in.

Ever noticed how recalling a book you’ve read can instantly evoke the place you were when you read it? How just hearing the title of that book summons sights, sounds, and smells from a moment in your past? Sometimes, I think I love a book largely because I loved where I was when I read it.

For instance, I read Anna Karenina while studying abroad in Spain my junior year of college. The book is an all-time favorite, and every time I think of it, I’m transported to a bench along the Guadalquivir River in Seville. I think of Anna Karenina, and I feel youthful, and adventurous, and free.

From 2024, I vividly remember these reading scenes:

📘 Reading Slow Productivity in a hot tub at our hotel near Disney World (one of the few quiet moments of that week)

📕 Reading Lincoln in the Bardo in a camping tent during an hours-long rainstorm

📗 Skipping work to read the entire Hungry Authors book in one cozy afternoon on my couch

📙 Sitting in my favorite chair (my husband thinks it’s his chair, but I know the truth) in our music room, a candle flickering next to me, devouring stories of famous writers and artists in the book Daily Rituals

Reading is not my life. But it anchors my life. Reading provides a continuous thread, a soundtrack, a grounding I can return to anytime, anywhere.

Reading also soothes me. I’m learning to accept that I am high-strung person, that my nervous system is hyper-sensitive, that I get overwhelmed and flooded easily. Reading is regulating.

Talking about Reading

I know a lot of book-bragging happens on the internet, so much so that I can feel myself hesitating to share openly about what I read this year. But I love hearing about other people’s reading lives: how they choose what to read, what books were special to them, and how reading fits into their lives.

I also love analyzing my own reading life, sharing what I think about what I read, and opening an exchange with others that expands our mutual reading horizons.

So, in that spirit, here are the stats, pie charts, and musings about my 2024 in Books! I hope something you see here inspires you to reflect on your own reading life, discover something new, and share the gift of your own reading recommendations in the comments.

In 2024, I read 46 books.

16 of these books were fiction, while the rest covered an array of nonfiction genres.

I realized while pulling this recap together that I read no poetry in 2024! Nor did I write much of it. Interesting. Things come and go in seasons, don’t they?

While I prefer reading books in print, I’ve learned that I read so much more if I also read eBooks, either on the Kindle App on my phone or on my actual Kindle.

My phone is omnipresent in my life (just me?), so I’ve learned to use it as a tool for reading rather than just for doom-scrolling. (I do my fair share of doom-scrolling, too.) Stuck in a long line at the post office? I pull out my phone, read a book. Waiting in the lobby to see my doctor? I pull out my phone, read a book, and there I am in my happy place.

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The 6 Best Books I Read in 2024

Why 6? Because in my Reading Tracker spreadsheet 🤓 I rate everything I read on a scale of 1-5. A (lucky) problem I’ve encountered is that I give so many books a 5 that I struggle to discern the true standouts. So I exalt a few exceptional books with a score of 6 – those handful of titles that truly wowed me, moved me, or changed me. These are my soul books: well-written, timely, and unforgettable. In 2024, six books happened to receive a “6” rating.

Note: Three of these books I reviewed in my Q1 Book Report, so I won’t repeat myself too much here. Feel free to go back in time for more detail!

1. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Pollan’s research (including his own, ahem, “personal investigations”) into the historical applications of psychedelics as well as their potential present and future uses straight up blew my mind. I love a book that significantly changes or expands my thinking on a topic – especially one so controversial as mind-altering drugs. The most memorable chapter described the neurological processes that occur in the brain during a psychedelic journey which produce, for many, temporary dissolution of ego and permanent shifts in consciousness. Wild.

2. How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key. Cry-laughing. Laugh-crying. I’m not even sure which of those best describes my emotional experience of reading this book. I just know I will never forget how this memoir about infidelity and its aftermath made me feel, and how surprised I was by that strange combination of emotions, and how much I wish more books left such an imprint on my heart.

3. The Overstory by Richard Powers. Don’t read this novel if you want something you just can’t put down. On the contrary, The Overstory is one of those books I had to put down many, many times before I crossed the finish line. The book is long, yes, and slow-moving. But it’s also existentially heavy, as its characters reckon with current and future losses in the natural world resulting from human interference (e.g. forestry, climate change, agricultural industrialization). The species we can’t get back… The old trees and original forests dwindling to a precious handful… I felt a deep, deep grief as I read this book, and it hasn’t left me since. (I’m really selling it, aren’t I?) In my view, The Overstory qualifies as a force of nature in and of itself. Highly recommend.

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. And now for a sharp left turn…a seminal novel on pedophilia! Lolita is one of those books I’m a little sheepish to say I read, much less loved. But I can only be honest here, and I did love Lolita. I’ve always wondered if this title is so famous largely due to its shocking content (especially when it was published in 1955). While I’m sure the shock factor plays in, Lolita is just so incredibly well-written. The narrator and main character Humbert Humbert is an anti-hero if ever there was one, and by no means did I root for him. But I found him fascinating and expertly crafted. I picked up Lolita because I plan to read Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory, which I’ve heard is stunning. I figured I first ought to read the novel that secured Nabokov a spot among the masters. I’m glad I did.

5. The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eva Eger. For those who loved Night by Elie Wiesel (a book permanently seared into my consciousness during high school English) or Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, make The Choice your next read. Dr. Eger chronicles not only her haunting Holocaust survival tale but her decades-long journey to face her trauma, heal it, and ultimately help others heal. (Dr. Eger became a psychotherapist in midlife.) In one indelible scene, a teenage Eger, a trained ballerina newly wrenched from her life and taken to a concentration camp, is forced to either dance for Nazi officers or die. This book is breathtaking. Tip: The Audible version of The Choice was excellent.

“When you have something to prove, you are not free”.

-Dr. Edith Eva Eger inThe Choice

6. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. This one was a re-re-re-re-re-reread, of course. (For you full-blown muggles out there – this is Book 1 in the series.) I read it out loud to my daughter Mabel, then encouraged her to continue on her own with the next book in the series. We have an unbreakable rule in our home: we don’t watch a Harry Potter movie until we’ve read the corresponding book. My son Amos, to whom I read the first two books a few years back, has refused to read anything on his own for the past 2 years. However, I reminded him of our family rule after Mabel finished Book 2 and we had all watched the movie together. Not wanting to be left out, my “I don’t read” son promptly consumed Book 3. Mabel did too, we watched Movie 3 last weekend, and now they’re on to Book 4. I AM THRILLED. My son (!!!) asked if we could have “Family Reading Night” after which I wept at my actual wildest dream coming true. Photo evidence:

I am sitting nearby on the couch, alternating between reading and not believing my eyes.

I didn’t start reading Harry Potter until I was in college, so it wasn’t a part of my own childhood. But these books were and are among my absolute favorites of all time, and I’m pinching myself that I’ve reached the stage of parenting when my kids are falling in love with these stories. I’ve decided to reread the series alongside them, so I’m guessing you’ll be hearing me talk about Harry Potter again as the year goes on!

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Other Superlative Reads of 2024

Most Thought-Provoking

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Written in 1929 in the wake of the women’s suffrage movement, A Room of One’s Own is a long-form essay lamenting the unwritten works of brilliance that never entered the world due to women’s oppression. Woolf argues that the lack of economic autonomy and the narrow societal roles ascribed to women robbed generations of females of the freedom, security, and privacy (“a room of one’s own”) that allows creativity to truly flourish.

Early in the book, Woolf recounts her experience of visiting a public university library, yet being promptly turned away. You see, women were not allowed access to that space unless accompanied by a man or given a “letter of introduction” from a male.

The longer I live as a woman, the more of a feminist I become. Do we really think the intervening 100 years between Woolf’s experience and our own has dissolved the impact of centuries of women being devalued as second-rate humans with nothing to say worth hearing?

A Room of One’s Own made me mad, and it made me want to keep writing, damn it.

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”

-from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Best Pageturner

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I’ve never had great language to describe the fiction I love until I came across these three distinctions this year:

• Commercial Fiction: Books which prioritize a strong plot rather than an elevated writing style (examples: The DaVinci Code, the collected works of Colleen Hoover)

• Literary Fiction: Books which prioritize elevated writing (ex: use of literary devices, beautifully crafted sentences) rather than a strong plot (modern examples: The Overstory, The Goldfinch, The Kiterunner)

• Upmarket Fiction: A combo of the Commercial and Literary styles, these titles are plot-driven and rely on some degree of elevated writing, as well as strong character development (examples: Gone Girl, The Time Traveler’s Wife)

When it comes to fiction, I love a good literary read, and I also enjoy upmarket fiction for the page-turner quality. Call me a snob, but I just don’t care for commercial fiction. (Since I am not a music snob – see my earlier posts for incessant references to Taylor Swift and other pop queens – I’m allowed to be snobby about fiction, mmmk?)

Upmarket fiction is FUN. I recently read a deliciously good upmarket novel called The Plot. (I also just finished the second book in the series called, appropriately, The Sequel.) In The Plot, a once-promising author whose trajectory fizzled after a successful first book must stoop to teaching “talentless” students in a second-rate MFA program. Life is dull and directionless until he encounters a student who has developed a million-dollar plot, the kind destined to become a massive commercial success. Hijinks ensue. I’ll leave it at that. Enjoy!

Most Influential

How to Grow Your Small Business by Donald Miller

I reserve this superlative for a book that results in significant concrete action in my life. This year, my choice is boringly titled How to Grow Your Small Business. I’ll keep this brief: the book is solid, it helped me take steps to “professionalize” my small business, and I highly recommend it for anyone growing something entrepreneurial. I absolutely do not recommend it for people who only prefer books that move the heart. This one’s all practicality.

P.S. For my fellow oughties evangelicals…yes, the author is that Donald Miller. His early work was very formative in my young adulthood. Just know this book is diametrically different from Blue Like Jazz, but useful nonetheless.

Most Transformational

How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz, PhD

Now for a book that generated change from the inside-out, a book that evolved how I feel, think, AND act. I spotted the newly-released How to Winter on the shelf at Barnes & Noble in November and resolved to purchase it immediately. Given that I live in one of the northernmost parts of the U.S. with not only one of the coldest but also the longest winters…I needed a paradigm shift. How to Winter has helped me embrace winter this year more than I ever have.

How so? I’m lighting lots of candles. I’m appreciating the stark beauty of bare trees, placid skies, and rust-colored marsh reeds coated in frost. I’m embracing the darkness as an invitation to slow down and cozy up for a while. I’m complaining less (about winter, at least). In short, I’m welcoming, rather than resisting, the season.

(Ask me how I’m doing with “winter appreciation” around early April in Minnesota, and my tune may have soured by then.)

“Those who appreciate winter generally orient toward the season's wonders: coziness and gathering around a fire, crisp air and starry skies, slowed-down rituals and chance for rest. For people with this mindset, winter is not a limiting time of year to dread but a time full of opportunity to anticipate.”

-from How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz

Most Unconventional

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

What a weird and wild read. I loved it. I have never, ever read a book structured like this. The story chronicles a short period of the afterlife of 11-year-old Willie Lincoln, who died of typhoid while President Lincoln led the country. The narrative unfolds via excerpts from historical texts (nonfiction) and short, sometimes non-sensical eyewitness quotes from ghosts (fiction – obvs). I read this book in just a few sittings while camping, so I was able to get absorbed in it. If I had tried to read it in fifteen-minute chunks over many days, I probably would have found it hard to follow. P.S. This novel qualifies as literary fiction – the writing quality, rather than the plot, is the star.

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Honorable Mentions:

• Fiction: Small Things Like These; The Dutch House; The Covenant of Water; Beneath a Scarlet Sky; Impossible Creatures; Absolution

• Memoir: The Liar’s Club; When Women Were Birds; Ambition Monster

• Prescriptive Nonfiction: On Writing Well; Slow Productivity; Part of Me; Hungry Authors; The Year I Met My Brain

• Other Nonfiction: The Right Stuff; The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory; Daily Rituals

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Talk to Me!

What did you read in 2024 that you’re still thinking about? I want alllllll the recommendations in the comments!

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My 2025 Reading Crystal Ball Says…

In 2025, I see myself reading more fiction.

I don’t read tons of fiction because I so rarely find fiction that I truly love. But learning the three fiction categories I mentioned above (Commercial, Literary, and Upmarket) makes me feel more equipped to suss out my reading sweet spot, which I think is probably upmarket with a heavy literary bent. Tell me a captivating story in beautiful language. Is that too much to ask? Recommendations welcome!

And I’ve got to get some poetry back in the mix this year!

I also see myself reading more nonfiction on the topic of “burnout” as I prepare to hopefully write my own book on a neighboring theme.

Speaking of which…if I do indeed get a book deal this year, that means I’ll be writing a book soon. If that happens, I suspect I may be reading less….and doing a lot of other things less. I’m going to have to steal time from somewhere!

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ICYMI, more bookish posts from the Diving Board:

• 2023 in Books

• Q1 Book Report (2024)

• Q2 Book Report (2024)

• Q3 Book Report does not exist, see here for explanation

One last thing!

Register for my friends’ Andy & Michael Nelson’s virtual premier of “Begin Again”, a multi-media exploration of grief, loss, and joy. The two-part event on February 18^th and 25^th includes storytelling from Andy’s ongoing cancer journey, live music from the angelic Lynn O’Brien, guided exercises and discussions, and heaps of wisdom for the road ahead. I attended the original in-person version of “Begin Again” last year, and I’m still thinking about it months later.

Andy & Michael are two of the most inspiring, poetic people I know. Learn more and register here. If you choose to attend, I’m 101% sure your heart will expand. (P.S. Andy & Michael recently launched a Substack, too!)

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See you next time on The Diving Board!