2024 Reading Recap | Why do I read? – Almavina Strategic Partners, LLC

I love reading. I honestly don’t remember when it started. I don’t think I was a huge reader as a kid – maybe just your average reader. The first time I remember getting lost in reading was on our annual summer vacation when my kids were old enough to entertain themselves on the beach. (Not completely unsupervised, they just didn’t need my constant attention.) I would take a stack of 5-10 books from the library and crank through them all at a rapid rate.

Now, I spend the majority of my downtime reading. My husband doesn’t get it. “Fake people, fake problems” he says. But YES. That is exactly it. Other people, other people’s problems. I LOVE stories about people. Sometimes I am sad when a book ends because I feel like a friend has moved away. And I don’t need to like the characters in a book to enjoy it. I’m not sure there was a redeemable character in Yellow Face, but I still thought it was an incredible story. I had a hard time genuinely liking all of the characters in Small Mercies, but I’m still thinking about that powerful read.

Books show us the nuance of life. They expose us to things we can’t possibly experience ourselves. Books develop and deepen empathy. Books entertain, books can leave us devastated. And books also leave a certain part of the story to the reader. My interaction with the book and my interpretation is as important as the words on the page. I think there is less of that in TV and movies, but that might just be me.

This was my first year to set a reading goal. I set it at 50, which I hit by September 1. I’m closing out the year at 85. One of the dangers of reading that many books is that you don’t necessarily remember all of them, even if you loved them in the moment. I’m ok with that – and I’m grateful for reading apps that allow me to track my reading in one place and refresh my not-so-great memory.

My full list of 2024 Books is pictured below, but here are some fun stats:

First book of the year: Ripe, Sarah Rose Etter (also quite possibly the darkest read of the year – but beautifully done)
Last book of the year: Darling Girls, Sally Hepworth
Shortest book of the year: Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (128 pages)
Longest book of the year: All the Colors of the Dark, Chris Whitaker (608 pages)

I’m using a new tracker app for 2025 – it’s called Storygraph and it’s a black-woman-owned business. (As opposed to Goodreads which is Jeff-Bezos-owned.) I imported my data for 2024 and it offers some cool stats :