reading round up 2024
all the books i loved, liked and really fucking hated this year.
for a little context, these past two years have seen me on somewhat of a journey back to reading, mostly in a bid to have one small thing for myself in the midst of the all consumingness of owning a restaurant ( a post for another day i promise), but also because it connected me to a part of myself that i had long forgotten. the little kid version of me who devoured book after book after book, who forged her mum’s signature on her reading log in the fourth grade so her hours wouldn’t be invalidated (and then tearfully confessed her crime at one in the morning to two very bemused and slightly annoyed parents), who counted down the days to the next scholastic book fair, and who did something just because she loved it so much.
like most millennials however once i got to high school and teenage angst, t9 texting and required reading came along i stopped reading for fun, in fact i stopped reading almost entirely for a very very long time… until the beginning of last year. i don’t know if you know this but opening a restaurant is really fucking hard, it takes over everything, every aspect of your life boils down to this one thing and it can feel a little bit like you’re drowning all of the time ( it’s also really fun and really rewarding in a lot of ways don’t get me wrong) but i felt like i didn’t have anything in my life that wasn’t based around this place, nothing that was mine, so i decided to turn to my old familiar friend reading. in january 2023 i picked up i’m glad my mum died by jenette mccurdy (yes i did come out swinging) and didn’t look back. i set a goal for myself to read 20 books by the end of the year, fairly certain i wouldn’t make it past 6, however when it was all said and done and the year was over i had read 37 (!!!) books. and it wasn’t so much the quantity of books i had managed to read, it was the fact that i had made the time for myself and let myself do something just for me, just for because i loved it, again.
so this year i set my goal just a little bit higher at 45 books and as of christmas eve i finished my 60th and final book of the year. it really has been so fun to reconnect with reading, to chat about books with so many friends both old and new, and experience all the stories that are out there.
so without further ado, here’s my reading round up for the year!
books i loved
did i think a book about septuagenarian crime solvers would help me work through the grief of losing my grandparents? absolutely not, but here we are. reading this took me right back to the coffee shop my grandparents went to every day (except sunday’s when it was shut) to meet their gang of friends, crammed around the smallest possible table with the largest possible number of cups of tea and scones it could contain, chatting incessantly and bickering occasionally. and the times i spent around that table with them are some of the happiest memories i have, and this book and the following books in the series gave me a little bit of that back, and for that i am grateful.
a lovely, easy, heartwarming novel featuring a sentient octopus you can’t help but root for. i’m actually not entirely sure where my copy of this book ended up because i lent it to someone, who lent it to someone, who lent it to someone, and i kind of love that actually. marcellus 4 ever <3
i can’t say enough good things about this book, honestly. i understand there’s a big moral grey area when it comes to anything true crime related, and i say that as someone who consumes a lot of true crime related content. on one hand you want these stories to be told but on the other it feels exploitive to expose people’s suffering for public consumption and “entertainment”.
however, this book does such a good job of focusing the narrative on the women and centering their experience, their feelings, their truth, all while highlighting the rampant misogyny that exists within our judicial system, the media, and the police.
it’s empowering to see women be centered in a story, in a crime, where they’re usually largely overshadowed. it’s incredibly written, it’s heartbreaking and hard to read at times but i cannot recommend it enough.
i don’t want to spoil a single thing about this book because it’s truly unlike any other book i’ve ever read. i couldn't put it down and i will be thinking about it for a long long time.
i’ll be honest, i wasn’t sure what to expect from this and i swithered about whether or not to make it my last book of the year but then my mum said she read it and loved it so… say no more, what clare says, goes. equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, it’s a book i looked forward to reading every single day, it’s the kind of book you aspire to write yourself, and dread the ending of because it’s just that good.
books i liked but didn’t love
a hot take? maybe, but let me explain. i loved the martian, it was my first foray into science fiction reading and for a book with such an insane premise i found it so well written and engaging and fun to read that i didn’t mind the amount of reality suspension needed to believe it was possible. . so needless to say i had incredibly high expectations for PHM and i felt like it was such a let down! part of the reason the martian is so good is because you actually believe mark watney is smart enough to get himself off that god forsaken planet but ryland grace, not so much. there was just too much “aw shucks lets try this and hope it works out and humanity isn’t wiped out” or “wow i learned an aliens language in like a day!” for me and the amount of reality suspension needed to believe the ending of this book was just too much oh! and there was not nearly enough swearing for a book centered around one man’s journey to save every single person on earth, if it were me every other word out of my mouth would have been fuck, shit or some combination of both of those things.
quite possibly another hot take but this was my second time reading kristin hannah and i just haven’t been that impressed either time but her books are consistently and highly praised so i’m starting to think maybe the call is coming from inside the house? i just find her writing kind of juvenile and extremely repetitive, i swear to god if she mentioned the marks on the walls left by the paintings one more time i was going to tear my hair out. i’m willing to give KH one more go though, or maybe i’m just a glutton for punishment?
i don’t want to be one of ~those~ people, i really don’t but i think it’s always so obvious whenever someone writes a book or makes a movie/tv show that’s centered around the restaurant industry, that they themselves have never actually worked in a restaurant. it usually ends up ringing extremely false (don’t even get me started on the travesty that is the movie burnt) with the one shiny exception being.. you guessed it, the bear ( i knew the bear was the real deal in season one when syd and carmy sat outside drinking out of plastic quart containers). so maybe i’m just a bit of a hater or a sceptic but this book was a great example of that, anything that had to do with the chef/restaurant aspect just felt like what someone’s idea of all of that is (the tattoos, the CIA) as opposed to what it’s actually like. and i’m sorry but there is no chef in the world, with the exception perhaps of the late great anthony bourdain, who would curry that kind of public interest in their life. all in all, a cute and easy read that i enjoyed but didn’t love as much as i expected to.
books i really fucking hated.
jesus fucking christ, where do i even start? i actually feel like a worse person for having read this book, truly. i picked it up thinking “ooh a cute romance set in glasgow! i’m feeling really homesick, this will be lovely.” reader: it was not. now don’t get me wrong, i like a bit of smut as much as the next gal, but this was horrific. how many times was the smell brought up (!!!) i stopped counting at 8 to be honest, and if it’s as bad as the author repeatedly led us to believe zara needs to get herself to the gyno ASAP… also the phrase vaginal juices has no business being printed anywhere, ever. i honestly don’t know if i’ve ever disliked a character in a book more than zara, i was actively rooting for her to end up alone because she’s so fucking insufferable. the rampant fat phobia and body shaming was on another level, i could go on at length but i won’t, but the fact that zara was repeatedly described as fat, chubby, having a muffin top, etc and was then revealed to be a size TWELVE, no words. i would like to congratulate the author of this book on two things… the first being successfully setting feminism back a good fifty years and the second giving me confidence that if i ever wanted to write a book, i could certainly write something better than this steaming pile of shit.
i was really excited to read this as a lot of people i know read, and love, tessa bailey but Y’ALL.. i took this on vacation with my family and i felt physically uncomfortable reading this with them in the same house, let alone the same room. the writing, particularly the sex scenes, were so unbelievably cringe… like why are we referring to a vagina as “her sex” or a guy’s dick as his “velvet helmet” LIKE WHAT, i was horrified to think my mother was two seats away from me on the couch while i was staring at those words. like i said, i love a good romance but everyone is this book was so insufferable you couldn’t root for any of them, except for abe.