Happy New Year to you all! I hope you saw in the new year in the way you had planned. Loud and raucous or quiet and calm.

In 2024, I had a much better reading year than the previous years even though I read fewer books. I was gifted a Kobo for my birthday in September, yet I totally slowed down my reading from October onwards so I haven’t really taken advantage of it yet. But I have a month free from uni teaching so I hope to start my reading year as soon as I finish this blog post. As for 2024, if I had to pick only one book I read it would be Roger Deakin’s Waterlog. But thankfully, I get to choose a lot of books. So here are my stats:

61 books

Fiction: 32 – Romance fiction: 30

Audiobooks: 3

Picture Books and Junior fiction: 12

Non-Fiction: 17.  Memoirs, histories, narrative non-fiction 10, Design and travel 3, Academic 6

Graphic Novel  – 1

Australian authors – 10

YA – 1

DNFd but counted: 2

My 5 star books for 2023

I had 21 five star books. Here is a selection of the one’s which stood out for me:

Best of the Fiction books:

Overnight Inheritance by Rachel Bailey

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday (Reading Note 75)

Marry Me, Juliet trilogy (yep – all 3 books were 5 stars) by Jodi McAlister (Reading Note 74 for Here for the Right Reasons)

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone (Reading Note 82)

Some Kind of Wonderful by Sarah Morgan (Reading Note 79)

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

Best of the Non-Fiction books:

Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law by Alecia Simmonds

Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

Walking with Sam: A Father, A Son and 500 miles across Spain by Andrew McCarthy

All About Love by bell hooks

Best of the Picture Books

Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty

Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon

The Best of non-book reading

As an advocate for reading being understood beyond the traditional published book, it would be remiss of me to not discuss some of my favourite non-book reading. I have favourite investigative journalists, organisations, academics and other writers who I follow across several platforms. 

Rebecca Solnit – on Facebook and Bluesky

Ronni Salt – has moved to Bluesky so I can finally ditch my X

Shannon Mattern – on Bluesky (and various websites)

The Australia Institute with all its various writers and commentators

The Daily Aus – my favourite new service on Instagram

Inner West Plant People – a gardening site on Facebook focused on the Inner West of Sydney. Urban gardening tips with occasional humour. The most wholesome of community FB.

Academic Reading

The AI Atlas by Kate Crawford – an ethnographic examination on the impacts of AI. I am only 3 chapters into this book. It is gripping and interesting. A must read.

ChatGPT is bullshit by Michael Townsend Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater (open access link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5)

“Greek Melbourne” Calling! New Cartographies of Diasporic Belonging by Yiorgos Anagnostou https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/blog/greek-melbourne

The Best of non-reading

I continue to be delighted by TikTok creators. I completely avoid Booktok but I adore so many different subcultures (like chihuahua tok). My current favourites are:

The Happy Urbanist and Strong Towns

Bimbo University

Elena Charalampoudi (who has given me so many laughs – Greek female comedian)

Caleb Simpson (whose book was great but falls short of the beauty of his Tiktoks)

Chef Reactions

Wil Stracke – Australian unionist extraordinaire!

Other great creators:

Alexei Toliopoulos – film reviewer with the Betoota, on Tiktok, on websites and other places

Apartment Therapy – I’d also like to tip my metaphorical cap to Apartment Therapy whose website I followed many decades ago, whose books I bought, whose digital feeds I follow as they continue to delight with their home interiors coverage, crossing over to visual based platforms such as instagram and tiktok and youtube so well. So reflexive which is what all great creator collectives have to be in our current digital broadcast and publishing environment.

Letterboxd – I love the website, I love the tiktoks. The Goodreads equivalent for watching (not reading). I love the Letterboxd tiktok stream where they interview various stars on the red carpet or at interview/promos asking them for their favourite 4 films. I am so taken by responses and how so many people name childhood favourites. We so often dismiss the impact of children’s content, yet the films and TV shows we watch growing up shape us as much as books do. I have been so engaged by Letterboxd content that I finally got my own account (Shallowreader of course). I tried to add as many movies as I could possibly remember watching and it is telling that there are less than 1000 movies for me. I am much more likely to read a book for entertainment.

2025 planning like a fool….

My plan for 2025 is to continue to read whatever comes my way and hopefully I will be motivated enough to blog more than a handful of times a year. I will again attempt to take part in SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge. I will continue to watch all the reruns of shows that give me comfort. Maybe along the way, I will start posting more on BlueSky which at this point is like a re-creation of ye olde Twitter except this time around, I don’t have the energy to write or connect much. Yet. Maybe that will change. If not, I am still happy.

I feel that the second quadrant of the century is starting at a low point so I really hope that we are in the gutter looking up to the stars and that our trajectory is upwards and uplifting. Wishing you all a safe and calm 2025 with lots of love, food and entertainment.