2024: The Year In Books

As 2024 comes to a close, my fourth full year of remote working, I managed to once again surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 61 books, two books more than my previous high set last year and my fourth consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I completed the challenge in mid-November and surpassed last year’s total in mid-December.  I read 22,622 pages, by far my highest total of all time and just the second time I’ve managed to surpass 20.000 pages.

Of those books, only five were non-fiction and, of the remaining 56 novels, only five were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with two hard covers, two paperbacks, 53 e-books and no audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 46 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

Over 69% of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 19 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Jessica Knoll Isabella Maldonado Kathleen McGurl Lisa Taddeo
Lisa Jewell Millie Bobby Brown J.M. Dillard Lee Goldberg
Avery Cunningham Margot Douaihy R.F. Kuang Jessica Simpson
Jeffrey Lang Dayton Ward Holly Wilson Karin Smirnoff
Walter Beede Michael Connelly Rob Harvilla

Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver, Laura Lippman, Elin Hilderbrand, Jessica Knoll, Michael Connelly, Minka Kent, Lee Goldberg, Rebecca Forster, Stephen King, and Sarah Pekkanen were the authors that I read multiple titles from during 2024.

17 of the books I read were released this year, while only three of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1997.

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Book 10 (of 52) – Hearts And Minds

Hearts and Minds – Dayton Ward

In the 21st century, decades before Earth made their official first contact with the Vulcans, a ship from a distant planet crashed into the Georgia forest, prompting the secret agencies tasked with keeping the planet safe to go into hyperdrive to respond, in their minds, appropriately.  In the 24th century, Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise-E find themselves making what they believe to be first contact with a new world, but instead find themselves arrested and made to stand trial for the devastation Earth caused to the planet.  With nothing in Starfleet’s official records, can they find the truth?  Or will they suffer the same fate as their 21st century forbearers?

Hearts and Minds, a 2017 entry by Dayton Ward in the post-Star Trek: Nemesis world of The Next Generation, pulls together characters from multiple versions of Star Trek, all of whom appeared in the time-travel stories from the 20th century, and ties them into the latest adventure of the Enterprise-E.  As usual, it is nice to take a break and revisit some old friends, seeing what they are up to, and seeing what is new in their world since last we met on the movie screen.