It was mindboggling to me to learn that the average American only reads AND finishes a median of four books per year. Four! I’m lucky if I come home with less than four books every time I venture to the bookstore/library! I thought for my last post of 2024, I would tally up all the books I read this year and provide a list of great reads for those looking to create/load up their TBR in 2025 book pile. Since I didn’t keep track of anything, it took me a while to piece together a rough list (I will start keeping track so it doesn’t take so long next time!). This list includes novels, novellas (short books, ~60-150 pages), anthologies (short story collections by different authors), graphic novels, and manga. It doesn’t include the dozens and dozens of short stories I read in various online magazines like Uncanny, Nightmare, or Apex. It also excludes a few books I had to read for my book club if they weren’t sci-fi/horror/fantasy (and/or I didn’t like them).
The grand total comes to a whopping 33 novels/novellas/anthologies and 8 graphic novels/manga! Do I recommend all of these books? Yes! I liked them all, though some more than others. Honestly, if I really dislike a book, I don’t bother finishing it. There are so many great books out there, why waste time slogging through something I don’t enjoy? Only so many hours in a day!
So here, in no particular order, are all the books I read and finished in 2024:
Novels/Novellas (33)
- The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
- White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
- Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
- The Kaiju Preservation Society by Jon Scalzi
- All Systems Red by Martha Wells
- Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
- Linghun by Ai Jiang
- Nightshift by Stephen King
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Solaris by Stanislav Lem
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
- The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
- Blood from the Air by Gemma Files
- Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno Garcia
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia
- Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
- The Employees by Olga Ravn
- I, Robot by Issac Asimov
- Nightfall and Other Stories by Issac Asimov
- Tenth of December by George Saunders
- Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: Anthology of Hysteria Fiction edited by Jolie Toomajan
- Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
- Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation anthology edited/translated by Ken Liu
- Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams
- Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow
- The Best Horror of the Year vol 15 anthology edited by Ellen Datlow
- The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror vol 4 anthology edited by Paula Guran
- Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror vol 1 anthology by Tenebrous Press
Graphic Novels/Manga (8)
- The Night Eaters vol 2 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
- Monstress vols 4-6 by Marjorie Liu and drawn by Sana Takeda
- The Nice House on the Lake vol 1 by James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno
- The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V. and Fillipe Andrade
- Hide by Kirsten White
- Coda vol 1 by Simon Spurrier and Matías Bergara
- PTSD Radio vol 1 by Masaki Nakayama
Go pick up some of these excellent books to start off 2025 right. Happy reading!