2024 Year-In-Review: Books I Read

I read 28 prose books this year, nominally in-line with the last couple, though six of them were RPG rulebooks, as I finally got through the stack of Kickstarter books I’d been backing for several years. That total breaks down into 6 Kindle books, 2 Kobo books, 7 other eBooks, and 13 physical books.

Genres were all over the place; after RPG rulebooks I had sci-fi, fantasy, a couple of memoirs, some non-fiction, some self-help, some comedy, and a horror novel. Orson Scott Card was actually my most-read author as I read four books from the bundle of his Enderverse stuff. My only runners-up where two Terry Pratchett novels and the two Patrick Thomas Dear Cthulhu books.

Recommendations: My love of time travel is evident as I recommend All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler. Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle is fascinating by being both a solid horror story (for people who aren’t that into horror) and also the most autistic book I’ve ever read. And, of course, New York Times Bestseller Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis, on the extremely odd chance you’re reading this and haven’t read it yet.

On the comics front, I made massive progress on my backlog of Humble Bundles by finishing eight of them: Escape Ordinary with Vault Comics, Winter Horror by Image Comics, Incal to Twilight Man by Humanoids, Spice Up Your Love Life, Neil Gaiman Dark Horse Collection, Jimmy Palmiotti and Friends, Image Comics in the 10s, and Dynamite 20th Anniversary. That was 149 trade paperbacks worth of posted reviews in 2024, plus five more from unfinished bundles, or approximately 770 pamphlets worth. Which also explains why I went through most of the first half of the year without reading prose books.

Going into 2025, I have a new stack of recently-acquired books on the dresser; I still have a couple of Humble Bundles I haven’t gotten to; and I have yet to do my complete read-through of The Books of Magic.

2024 Year-In-Review: Puzzles!

I had a strong start to my puzzle game this year but then had a big gap through the summer and fall, which meant I fell far behind the past few years. I’ve been pickier about which ones we bring in, though there were also a few that I powered through despite being less enamored with.

We did ten 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles: Sherlock Holmes, Secret History of All-American Comics, TV lunch boxes, 8-Bit Armageddon, Country Life: Earl's Auto, Otters, Transformers, The Book Shop, Forever Stamps, Hershey's. We did five 500-piece jigsaw puzzles: Puzzle Complaints by Sandra Boynton, Murder by Puzzle, Uticon 2022 and 2023, Classic Signs, Seasons Greetings from The Avengers. I also did five 100-ish piece puzzles (US Presidents, Batman, three from the "Birds of a Feather Collection") and most of my Hanukkah box.

So that’s only 15 “real” jigsaw puzzles. I have no idea if I’ll do more or fewer in the next year; I’ve got a stack on the shelf including several I’m excited about, but it’ll also depend how much TV I’m watching because the two activities often go together.

In the Paint-By-Stickers realm, I did 13 total: 7 from Kaleidoscope Sticker Mosaics, 5 from Paint-by-Sticker Travel and 1 from Paint-by-Sticker Flowers. That was on par with last year and I feel like I’m more likely to keep up that trend. (And I still have plenty more on the shelf to do!)