I woke up to see that a writer friend had tagged me in her exhortation to read more books in 2025 because she'd used a picture of our Little Free Library. And of course the week has been full of various enjoyable year-end roundups of reading lists. Then Lisa wondered about my top books of 2024... The thing is, I don't have a digital record of my reading. Reading is what I've always loved doing but also kind of my work work. So it never made sense (for me) to quantify my reading by hours/pages/titles. When I read for pleasure, like other things I do for pleasure, I tend to do it rather whimsically and for as long--or as little--as I want to. It's not very efficient. But that feels perfect to me.
Lisa's question made me curious, though. So I went to check on my scribbly physical planner, where I usually note what I'm reading "for fun" to compile this top-12. (I think these titles are a mix of 2023 and 2024 and are in no particular order.)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message; Catherine Newman, Sandwich; Paul Murray, The Bee Sting; Percival Everett, James; Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!; Sally Rooney, Intermezzo; Fady Joudah, […]; Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection; Emma Cline, The Guest; Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child: Stories; Tania James, Loot; Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir; Teju Cole, Tremor. (Fun fact: Teju Cole used to comment on this blog a very long time ago.)
Pic: OM's Facebook Reel of our Little Free Library. I did a quick search, and this is the first picture of it in the snow, I think. I love that our neighborhood keeps it so well stocked. It used to be all my responsibility in the other place where we had it from 2012-2016.