2024 Year in Reviews

2024-12-31

11 years. 1300 book reviews. 170 movies. 100 seasons of TV shows.

That’s so ridiculous when you write it out. It’s kind of neat how something builds up if you just keep doing it over time.

Posts in Year in Reviews:

In any case, I enjoy collecting stats on various things and sharing them out. Both as a way to look back and remember for myself and in the hope that someone else finds it interesting and/or shares anything new/interesting I haven’t seen!

Overall this year:

Table of Contents

Books

This wasn’t quite as impressive a year when it comes to reading as compared to last year… but it’s still a ton, so that’s all right. 😄

Statistics

By type of book:

  • 196 total books
  • 140 novels (~1 ever 3 days, 111 pages/day; up from last year)
  • 28 graphic novels/comics (way down from reading all of Ultimate Marvel Universe last year 😄)
  • 11 were children’s novels
  • 7 were non-fiction (up from last year!)
  • 7 were short stories
  • 3 were novellas

Basically, if it was long enough to read in more than one session and I write a review of it, I count it!

By format,

  • 120 were digital (ebooks and graphic novels/comics)
  • 70 were audiobooks
  • 6 were physical!

I very very read physical books for myself, so actually picking up Wonderland as a hardback from the library (while waiting in line to vote) was a nice experience. Ebook readers are still amazing tech though.

The other 5 were all children’s books. Some of those books have been out of print long enough, they just don’t have digital versions, which was an interesting finding.

Longest/shortest:

The shorter 3 were all three Mercy Thompson shorts from the Shifting Shadows anthology. I probably could/should have treated that all as one book.

By year, I read 2 books published this year and 5 last year:

Amusing that 3 of the 7 non-fiction books were in this category!

On the other end, I have 6 books published before 1990:

And there’s another of the non-fiction!

By genre (with some overlap):

  • Fantasy - 170
  • Science Fiction - 108
  • Adventure - 92
  • Aliens - 67
  • Animals - 67
  • Urban Fantasy - 49
  • Romance - 39
  • Magic - 38
  • Paranormal - 36
  • Shapeshifters - 32
  • War - 28

Those 67 ‘Aliens’ and ‘Animals’? The Animorphs. 😄 That’s actually 2/3 of the science fiction as well.

I once again tend to rate somewhat higher than ‘average’. I tend to read books that I think I’ll like and continue series I’m already liking. So I have:

  • 117 ✭✭✭✭✭
  • 58 ✭✭✭✭
  • 19 ✭✭✭
  • 2 ✭✭

And finally, by series:

And finally, re-reads. Last year, I managed to only re-read 3 books… this year I reread all of the Mercy Thompson books along with the Animorphs (although it’s been easily 15-20 years). Between those two, that’s 88 books / 45% of my reads. Amusing to see that so different.

Personal Favorites

My personal favorites (feel free to reach out for ones I may have rated lower, but that you might like):

  • All of the Mercy Thompson series (also Alpha & Omega) - there’s a reason I’ve read them 5 times all through (so far)
  • The Quantum Evolution series - they’re odd sort of soft sci-fi, but I loved the worldbuilding, especially the different branches of new humanity
  • The Green Bone Saga - fantasy based on a mostly modern alternate world with Jade based magic focusing on Japanese clan inspired gang warfare; it’s amazing how much the books grow over the series as well
  • The Daevabad Trilogy - it starts as ‘what if daeva and jinn etc’ and grows so much beyond that; again, it’s fascinating how different (and good!) the three books feel with one consistent story

Full list

All ~200? Here you go (by order read)!

Click here to skip to TV or click here to go back to the top.

Posts in 2024 Book Reviews:

Dang.

TV

A relatively quiet year for TV this year:

  • 4 seasons of For All Mankind - Wonderful alternate reality sci-fi; from the USSR winning the race to the moon up to living on Mars in roughly the 2010s. Worth a watch! I can’t wait for season 5.
  • Seasons 2-6 of Black Mirror - This one varies wildly from amazing to meh, but overall, a fascinating series to watch.
  • Taskmaster + Taskmaster NZ - Still watching in a semi-random order; now with more NZ. I love this show.
  • Doctor Who - I’ve watched up part of the way through 12 previously. Realizing how much I’ve missed… well, it’s time for a rewatch. 1 season so far.
  • The Rings of Power: Season 2 - It’s so pretty. Just try not to know how much they’re changing from the source material? And also how stupid everyone in the show is from time to time.

Full list

Posts in 2024 TV Reviews:

Movies

And I thought I got away from movies last year (with 11)… Well, here’s the 7. And I watched all but 2 of those in the last month or so.

Posts in 2024 Movie Reviews:

I should probably make more time for movies. They’re nicely self contained2.

Board Games

I still haven’t actually gotten around to reviewing board games, but I do have a ton of fun stats from Board Game Stats.

Overall: 1313 plays of 227 different games; 85 new to me.

Specifically on Board Game Arena:

  • 1211 plays of 178 games (62 new to me) total
  • 1040 plays of 170 games (46 new to me) turn based
  • 171 plays of 58 games (16 new to me) real time

In real life:

  • 95 plays of 64 games (21 new!)

Down a bit this year.

My most played games were:

  • Cartographers (31)
  • Draftosaurus (28)
  • Ark Nova (26)
  • SpellBook (25 new)
  • Alhambra (24)
  • Harmonies (24 new)
  • Biomos (23 new)
  • Nidavellir (22)
  • Metro (22 new)
  • Welcome To… (22)

Overall, I played 18 games 18 times each, so I have an H-Index this year of 18! I could easily have gotten that to 19 (all 3 currently at 18 are short games), but so it goes. It’s amusing that this is the same as last year.

I played with 53 different people in real life. Mostly immediate family, but I have 21/16/12 games with the top three people I’m not related to.

This year, I’m at 450 wins (34%), so right about the same as last year.

I played the most in March-May and again in August-September, but nothing dramatically different.

Steam Games

Compared to last year, I played a bit less, although the mix is definitely different this year.

For one, Factorio: Space Age released! Yeah, I spent a while on that this year.

Otherwise, I spent a lot of time on Roguelites and puzzle hunting achivement games this year.

Roguelites:

  • Backpack Hero - Now out in full release with a story mode; I still think I like the single run mode better; but I liked it enough to 100% it!
  • Balatro - Man this game is addictive. Poker, the roguelite, but it’s so much more.
  • Bio Prototype - Removed from Steam for publisher issues at some point, but looks like it might be coming back.
  • Dungeon Clawler - A newer (early access) claw machine roguelite. It’s fun how different plays are.
  • LONESTAR - A fun mathy sci-fi turn based fighting game
  • Peglin - I had 100% in this one during early access. It’s Peggle, as a roguelite!

Puzzle games:

Factory games:

  • Beltmatic - A simlified factory game designed around doing math to numbers 😄
  • Factorio1 - Factorio.
  • Shapez - A ‘pure’ factory game based on combining shapes; I’m looking forward to trying Shapez 2 at some point

Games that I got 100% achievements in:

Factorio… man, that’s going to be something to get all the new ones.

  1. And then Factorio released a wonderful DLC… ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Sometimes. Marvel Cinematic Universe. ↩︎