2024 Wrap Up

 

I'm not really sure where 2024 went. It feels like a long time ago that we ushered it in and yet it also flew by. It was a strange reading year for me and I ended the year in a real blogging slump. I couldn't seem to find a good way to follow all of my favorite blogs any more so I've been a very bad blogging friend to top it off. I'd like to say that will change in 2025; but, if I've learned anything over the years, I've learned not to make promises I don't know if I can keep. That said, let's wrap up 2024! 

Top Fiction Books: 

James by Percival Everett

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Table for Two by Amor Towels

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

After Annie by Anna Quindlen

Chenneville by Paulette Jiles

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

The Morningside by Tea Obrecht

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Long Island Colm Toibin 

Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterley

Top Audiobooks:

Chenneville by Paulette Jiles, read by Grover Gardner

The Maid by Nita Prose, read by Lauren Ambrose

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond, read by Dion Graham

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, read by Genevieve Gaunt

The Trackers by Charles Frazier, read by Will Patton

Long Island by Colm Toibin, read by Jessie Buckley

The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow, read by Gabra Zackman

Top Nonfiction Books: 

Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

Life In Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin

The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamande Ngozi Adichie 

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright

By The Numbers: 

I read a total of 80 books. Of those 84% were written by female authors, a record 58% were audiobooks, 81% were checked out from the library and 16% were from Netgalley (which goes to show that I read very few books from my own shelves!). 

Six of the books were part of series, six were works of fiction based on real people, and four were written by Omaha authors. Two of the books were short story collections and three were either prequels or sequels. Three were set during Covid. 

I tend to think of books as often being of more than one genre so these numbers will not total to 80: 

24 literary fiction

19 historical fiction

15: mysteries, nonfiction

11: women's fiction, U.S. history

5: fantasy, memoir, self-help

3 chick lit

1 each: Western, science fiction, biography, classic, dystopian

I read books set in: Greece, Italy, England, Dominican Republic, Poland, France, Australia, Ireland, and two set in Nebraska. 

The themes I read about included: diversity (a disappointing 10 books), family, social issues, mental health, friendship, war, the justice system, feminism, marriage, abuse, and grief. These tend to be themes I'm consistently drawn to so I imagine if I looked back over the years, I'd see the same things. 

In 2025, I'm not setting any goals. But I would like to read more physical books, more books that I already own, and to read more diversely. I'd also like to finish up the books I started as read-alongs in 2024 and maybe be part of more of those in 2025. 

What did your reading year look like for 2024? 

Happy New Year!

“For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.” — T.S. Eliot

Mini-reviews: Revenge Wears Prada, The Paris Bookseller, A Rosie Life In Italy, and Sorrow and Bliss

Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns by Lauren Weisberger

Read by Megan Hilty

7 hours, 10 minutes

Published June 2013 by Simon and Schuster

Publisher's Summary: 

Almost a decade has passed since Andy Sachs quit the job “a million girls would die for” working for Miranda Priestly at Runway magazine-a dream that turned out to be a nightmare. Andy and Emily, her former nemesis and co-assistant, have since joined forces to start a high end bridal magazine, The Plunge, which has quickly become required reading for the young and stylish. Now they get to call all the shots: Andy writes and travels to her heart's content; Emily plans parties and secures advertising like a seasoned pro. Even better, Andy has met the love of her life. Max Harrison, scion of a storied media family, is confident, successful, and drop-dead gorgeous. Their wedding will be splashed across all the society pages as their friends and family gather to toast the glowing couple. Andy Sachs is on top of the world. But karma's a bitch. The morning of her wedding, Andy can't shake the past. And when she discovers a secret letter with crushing implications, her wedding-day jitters turn to cold dread. Andy realizes that nothing-not her husband, nor her beloved career-is as it seems. She never suspected that her efforts to build a bright new life would lead her back to the darkness she barely escaped ten years ago-and directly into the path of the devil herself.

My Thoughts: 

I love the movie adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, but I'd forgotten how far from the source material it veered until I read the sequel. Andy may have quit that dream job, but I was pretty disappointed to find that she quit it only to run a bridal magazine. Never trusted Emily or Max and Weisberger gave me exactly what I'd expected. Predictable. I'm a fan of a lot of movies adapted from books like these; but not, it appears, the books themselves. 

The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher

Read by Lauryn Allman

10 hours, 37 minutes

Published January 2022 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

When bookish young American Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company on a quiet street in Paris in 1919, she has no idea that she and her new bookstore will change the course of literature itself.

 
Shakespeare and Company is more than a bookstore and lending library: Many of the prominent writers of the Lost Generation, like Ernest Hemingway, consider it a second home. It's where some of the most important literary friendships of the twentieth century are forged-none more so than the one between Irish writer James Joyce and Sylvia herself. When Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Beach takes a massive risk and publishes it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company.
 
But the success and notoriety of publishing the most infamous and influential book of the century comes with steep costs. The future of her beloved store itself is threatened when Ulysses' success brings other publishers to woo Joyce away. Her most cherished relationships are put to the test as Paris is plunged deeper into the Depression and many expatriate friends return to America. As she faces painful personal and financial crises, Sylvia-a woman who has made it her mission to honor the life-changing impact of books-must decide what Shakespeare and Company truly means to her.

My Thoughts: 

Picked this one up because "Paris" and "Bookseller" intrigued me. Was pretty excited to find that it was about Sylvia Beach, who founded the famous Paris bookstore "Shakespeare and Company." While Beach led an interesting life, surrounded by fascinating people, the book dragged a bit for me, with so much of the focus on Beach's struggle with James Joyce and the publishing rights for Ulysses. Maybe the problem was that I wanted to shake her and make her understand what an a*# Joyce was before he about wiped her out. Part of it was just too much detail to getting that book "right" before it was sent out into the world. 

A Rosie Life In Italy: Move to Italy. Buy a Rundown Villa. What Could Go Wrong? by Rosie Melody

368 pages

Published October 2024 by Sourcebooks

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

When Rosie Meleady's landlady doubles her rent in cold, wet, overpriced Ireland, she packs up her family, her two dogs, and all her possessions into a camper van and sets off across Europe to sunny Italy, where she plans to grow her destination wedding planning business. 

Even though it has been a dream she attempted to follow several times, Rosie and her family soon find out moving abroad to start a new life is not all sunshine and gelato.

Between a hurricane, a global pandemic, and accidentally buying a massive villa—that has definitely seen better days— from eight cousins in the middle of a long-standing family dispute, Rosie pulls back the curtains on the less glamorous side of moving abroad. 

Lighthearted, uplifting, and utterly escapist, A Rosie Life in Italy is HGTV meets Under the Tuscan Sun—a delightful peek under the covers of what it's like to throw caution to the wind, take a risk, and build a life you once only dreamed of having.

My Thoughts: 

This one was a slow start for me (Rosie and her husband bounce around a lot in the beginning and seem particularly inept with their money) and things early on bounced between too much detail and giant jumps in time. But things picked up and I did enjoy this one, especially once I got more attached to the family and once they made the move to Italy. Although it does take all of the book before they actually have bought that rundown villa. This one's a memoir which makes the fact that they are only just getting their business in Italy up and running and have just started buying the villa (what a process!), when Covid hits all the more intense. 

That publication date is for the paperback edition, the edition I got through Netgalley. I wasn't aware of that so was startled, when I looked this one up, to discover that there is entire series to be read now. 

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Macon 

Read by Emilia Fox

10 hours, 38 minutes

Published February 2021 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.

Because there’s something wrong with Martha, and has been for a long time. When she was seventeen, a little bomb went off in her brain and she was never the same. But countless doctors, endless therapy, every kind of drug later, she still doesn’t know what’s wrong, why she spends days unable to get out of bed or alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks. 

And she has nowhere to go except her childhood home: a bohemian (dilapidated) townhouse in a romantic (rundown) part of London—to live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker) and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished) and try to survive without the devoted, potty-mouthed sister who made all the chaos bearable back then, and is now too busy or too fed up to deal with her. 

But maybe, by starting over, Martha will get to write a better ending for herself—and she’ll find out that she’s not quite finished after all.

My Thoughts: 

I seems strange to say that I really liked a book in which mental illness and it's devastating consequences are the focus. But I really did - the book is well written and Emilia Fox does a terrific job. Family relationships and communication are explored in a caring way that shows that we don't always know what's happening in someone else's mind or life. Because we're getting the story from Martha's point of view, we're also getting the story from an unreliable narrator, which makes the entire book quite a ride. 

Life: It Goes On - December 29

Happy last Sunday of 2024! It's going to be a beautiful one here - almost 50 degrees and sunny so one of my goals for the day is to get in some outside time today before winter finally arrives this week.  

How was your Christmas? Ours was...not what we'd had planned. I brought a bug home that had me wanting to sleep most of last weekend (I couldn't, of course, because I'm a woman and I had to get all of the things done before Christmas), then Big Guy got it and Mini-him caught another bug that might have been Covid (he didn't test positive but lost his sense of taste so we erred on the side of caution) so they didn't come over. I packed up their gifts and a load of food and delivered it to them so we were able to FaceTime them later (along with our Alaskans) so we got to watch everyone open their gifts. Thank heavens for technology!

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Not a lot, but I did finish Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss. 

Watched: Red One, the newer Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life and the annual viewing of Elf with Miss H. Also football, because our Huskers were in a bowl game at long last. 

Read: I finished A Rosie Life in Italy and now I'm back to Karen Russell's The Antidote, which I'm hoping to finish in the next couple of days so I can start the new year with a new book. Going to try to pick something that will inspire me to get back to more reading in 2025. 

Made: Ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppermint ice cream. And I spent a chunk of Christmas Day helping Miss H meal prep for the coming week since she was working five doubles in a row when she went back to KC. 

Enjoyed: Some time with my dad on Christmas, taking him gifts and some of his favorite foods. Also, went to dinner Friday night with Mini-him, Miss C and her parents to one of my fave places. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: On working on my journals this week - closing out the 2024 edition and getting the 2025 edition ready to go. 

Thinking About: Christmas is coming down this week and tough decisions will be made. I just have too much and it's so much work. Once it was up this year, I just kept looking at it thinking of how much work it was going to be to take it all down again. 

Feeling: Frustrated - back pain has me hobbled again. Back to my PT exercises. 

Looking forward to: Another low key New Year's Eve celebration with friends and more time off of work this week. 

Question of the week: How do you usher in a new year?