2024 Reading Recap + Reading Goals for 2025

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! It's been a wild ride, and its that time of year again. Time to reflect on all the books read this year. I have always loved being able to look back at my reading stats and my opinions from previous years. Especially any trending habits. This year was different from others in terms of what genres I read, how many books I read, what format the books I read were in, etc. So, let’s get into it!

In 2024 my reading goal was 75 books. It was the same goal from 2023 because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to read more than that. I ended 2023 having read 76 books. I’m ending 2024 with having read 118 books. I read over 100 books. I repeat I read over 100 books! My ultimate goal was to read at least 100 in a year, but now to go over that…. I’m so happy! But this also makes selecting my reading goal for 2025 a little harder.

My initial thought was to push myself to read 125 books in a year. That’s about 10 books a month which I’ve proven to myself I can do (and then some). I feel like this goal is doable especially when I now read mostly on my Kindle. I have no idea why or how but for some reason, I tend to read much faster when using my Kindle. I will get more into this later, but I loved using my Kindle.

If I do decide on 125 books, I would like to broaden my genre scope a bit more. I’ve spent a lot of time this year reading sports romance books (primarily hockey—don’t ask), but I’m thinking for 2025 I want to focus more on fantasy, fiction, and horror. I dabble in the fantasy world already but having been inspired to work on my own fantasy novella more, I want more inspiration about that kind of writing.

As opposed to previous years, 2024 started out slow. I usually try to make a big push in January to set myself up for success and allow for some grace in the following months, but this year January didn’t set me as far ahead as I would’ve liked. February was my lowest reading month with two books total. Granted, I was reading the Harry Potter series at this time, and I wasn’t moving through that series very quickly.

August is where things started to really pick up for me. This is also when I really started to lean into my Kindle. In September I read 24 books: my biggest month ever. August, September, October, and November were where I surpassed my goal of 75 books and then surpassed my goal of 100 books. I believe it was October when I also decided to try Kindle Unlimited again. It was a very good decision.

Out of 117 books, 23 were 5 star reads. Honestly, I’m shocked. I was looking through my Goodreads and there were a lot of 4-star reviews as well. According to Goodreads my average rating for the year was 3.6 stars. This makes sense, I feel like this year I found a lot of good books.

Although, 2024 was primarily 4-5 star reads, there were some duds. There were no DNFs, but there were some “maybe I should DNF this book.” I rated 14 books with a 2-star review. Nothing lower than that to be honest. The rest were either 3 or 4 stars.

The most surprising part of 2024 was how much I loved my Kindle. It wasn’t until August when I realized how convenient it is to use. I can play with my dog and read my book. I can fit it in my purse with no hassle or fear of the jacket getting messed up. I can read in the dark/with ambient lighting at night. It’s just so convenient, and like I said before, I can read so much faster on it. I feel like I can crush a book in hours as opposed to reading the physical copy. It has also helped save money and bookshelf space. So far, Kindle Unlimited has been worthwhile too!

As for 2025, my reading goal is still under evaluation (as I write this at the end of December), but I’m leaning forward 125 books with some genre stipulations. My Goodreads will be updated with my 2025 reading challenge at the beginning of January.

Overall, I am so happy with how everything turned out, and I'm hoping 2025 is just as good! Alright folks, that is all I have for today! Come back next week for another blog post! As always thank you for reading:)