We’re down to the last few hours of December, so I’m wrapping up my project to read the TBR. Here’s my last few reads for the year, which includes a sort-of cheat: Empire in Black and Gold is my current read I just started on the 27th, and at 600+ pages there is very litle chance I’m going to finish it before we ring in the New Year – even at my best reading speed.
As you can see from the table above, my reading slowed right down over the last few weeks, due to my mum passing away in November. Nonetheless, Project Read the TBR was a success. I had an informal goal of getting down to under 100 books in the queue, and according to Goodreads, my “Mount TBR” shelf is currently sitting at 98. Yay, me etc. Of course, since I *actually* read a total of 110 books in 2024, clearly I could have read a lot more. A few books also had to be added to/removed from the shelf mid-year because a) I read some series openers that I then decided not to continue with, and b) I am an idiot who cannot be relied upon to maintain my Goodreads shelves accurately.
But on the subject of series openers, in the course of this project I discovered some crackers, many of which I had been sleeping on for a number of years, including:
- Eternal Sky – Elizabeth Bear
- The Redwinter Chronicles – Ed McDonald
- Rook & Rose – MA Carrick
- The Tower and the Knife – Mazarkis Williams
- The Divine Cities – Robert Jackson Bennett
- Memoirs of Lady Trent – Marie Brennan
- The Craft Sequence – Max Gladstone
- Planetfall – Emma Newman
- Shades of Magic – VE Schwab
- Spellcrackers – Suzanne MacLeod
- The Bone Season – Samantha Shannon
- The Laundry Files – Charles Stross
- Weather Warden – Rachel Caine
- The Shadow Campaigns – Django Wexler
- Wolfhound Century – Peter Higgins
- Winternight Trilogy – Katherine Arden
- The Greatcoats – Sebastien de Castell
- Drowning Empire – Andrea Stewart
- The Blackhart Legacy – Liz de Jager
These were all thoroughly enjoyable, all for different reasons, and I want to read on. As a result, my list of ongoing series now numbers 48, so 2025’s TBR looks, to use a seasonally-appropriate phrase, somewhere between “Ouch” and “boi-oi-oi-oing”.
There goes my pocket money.
