As I did last year, I want to share the list of books I have finished during 2024. Last year, I had read 55 books by New Year’s Eve. This year’s total of 47 is lower but is still pretty good, considering the amount of writing I had to do to complete my MA in Creative Writing, the fact that our baby daughter didn’t come home from hospital until she was nine days old and all the other things life throws at you. In addition, without a commute to work, I didn’t listen to any audiobooks, after enjoying nine during 2023. The full list is as follows:
| Title | Author | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| The Autistic Brain | Temple Grandin & Richard Panek | Autism (strengths and the science of) |
| Emancipation for Goalposts | Chris Etchingham | Football History |
| A Love Letter to Football | Mark Davies | Memoir (Fandom / Cancer survival) |
| The Sweet Life | Glyn Williams | Travel Writing / Journalling |
| The Essential Difference | Simon Baron-Cohen | Autism (the science of) |
| Down and Out in Paris and London | George Orwell | Memoir / Social Commentary |
| Homage to Catalonia | George Orwell | Memoir (Spanish Civil War) |
| Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly | Billy Connolly | Memoir / Humour |
| Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War | Daniel Gray | History (Spanish Civil War) |
| Stramash | Daniel Gray | Scottish Football / Social History |
| Up Pohnpei | Paul Watson | Memoir / Travel Writing |
| Lost Railways of Surrey | Leslie Oppitz | Transport History |
| Scattershot | Bernie Taupin | Memoir (Music lyricist) |
| From Belgrade to Buenos Aires | Lee Colvin | Football Culture / Rivalries |
| Troublemaker | Leah Remini | Memoir (Scientology) |
| Field of Dreams: 100 Years of Wembley in 100 Matches | Nige Tassell | Football History |
| Lost Railways of Merseyside and Greater Manchester | Gordon Suggitt | Transport History |
| Inshallah United: A story of faith and football | Nooruddean Choudry | Memoir (British Asian Man United fan) |
| Nowhere to Run: The ridiculous life of a semi-professional football club chairman | Jonathan Sayer | Memoir (Non-League Football) |
| So It Started There | Nick Banks | Memoir (Musician - Pulp's drummer) |
| Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? | Nige Tassell | Music History |
| Readme.txt | Chelsea Manning | Memoir (WikiLeaks / Trans activism) |
| Lost In Music The Remastered Edition | Giles Smith | Memoir (Pop Music) |
| Played In Germany | Kit Holden | Social History / Football History |
| The Ruhleben Football Association | Paul Brown | First World War History / Football History |
| Ernest Hemingway on Writing | Ernest Hemmingway, Larry W Phillips (Ed) | Writing as a craft |
| Limitless | Tim Peake | Autobiography (British Astronaut) |
| New Town, Ancient Church | Ian Simpson | Local History (St Chad's Church) |
| Small Man in a Book | Rob Brydon | Autobiography (Actor / Comedian) |
| Bedsit Disco Queen | Tracey Thorn | Memoir (Musician - EBTG Singer) |
| Atlas of Forgotten Places | Travis Elborough | Travel / History |
| This is the Life | Ciaran Murphy | Memoir (GAA player / fan / journalist) |
| Italian Ways | Tim Parks | Travel (Italian Railways) |
| Don't Laugh, It'll Only Encourage Her | Daisy May Cooper | Memoir / Humour (Actor and Writer) |
| Great Uncle Harry | Michael Palin | Biography / Family History / World War 1 |
| Delivering the Unexpected | Andrew Burnet | History (Postal Museum Guidebook / Companion) |
| Do Not Alight Here | Ben Pedroche | Transport History / Walking Guide (London) |
| Tired & Tested | Sophie McCartney | Memoir (parenting) |
| Nine Minds | Daniel Tammet | Narrative Portraits of Autistic People |
| Those Blue Remembered Hills | Glyn Williams | Travel Writing / Journalling |
| Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism - Revised and Expanded | Dr. Barry M. Prizant , Tom Fields-Meyer | Autism (strengths and the science of) |
| The Lost Subways of North America | Jake Berman | Transport History (Underground / light railways) |
| Liverpool's Railways Through Time | Hugh Hollinghurst | Transport History |
| Invisible Child | Andrea Elliott | Homelessness, poverty, parenting |
| Slow Trains to Istanbul | Tom Chesshyre | Travel Memoir |
| Metropolitain | Andrew Martin | Transport History (Paris Metro) |
| The Reshaping of British Railways | British Railways Board | Transport History (Beeching Report reproduction) |
Because I make a note of the general themes of everything I read and colour code my master spreadsheet, it was fairly easy to spot some patterns and trends, which I would like to share with you.
The rise of the eBook
In 2023, I read eleven eBooks. In 2024, that number stands at 22. That’s almost half of all the books I’ve finished, compared to 20% of my reading during 2023. If I’m honest, I don’t find the eReader experience quite as satisfying as settling down with a traditional tome, but they do have some advantages. One is that you can use your gadget in the dark; on those nights when our son just would not sleep, or during our daughter’s earliest days, without my Kindle I would have either gone mad or passed out where I stood.
Another advantage in many cases, but not all, is affordability. I subscribe to daily emails from Bookbub which flag up deals on books, tailored to my preferences. Titles which I bought and read because of Bookbub included Readme.txt by Chelsea Manning, Rob Brydon’s Small Man In a Book and the quite remarkable Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott. I usually paid £0.99 or £1.99 for each download. Given that I’ve been an unpaid carer since September 2023 (hence the lack of commuting time for audiobooks), I would have been unable to buy these works in traditional formats, so would not have read them. Santa has brought me quite a few hard copy books this year, so I’m not going completely digital just yet.
What I read in 2024
In 2023, I highlighted certain patterns to my reading:
If you look at what I’ve been reading, you’ll notice that in the main, it falls within four broad categories; football, transport history, the autistic condition and memoir. Three of these are my Special Interests, or SpIns and memoir is related to my studies.
Memoir has dominated again this year, accounting for some 40% of the books I completed. I owe some of this to my tutors, who consistently urged our group to read in the genres we wanted to write. But the great Stephen King also had this to say about reading:
You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so… If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Transport history accounted for seven books, mostly read after the completion of my studies, while only six were directly connected to football, although that was influenced by my deteriorating relationship with the game. Perhaps by accident, I read as much social history as I did books about my SpIns so there’s every chance my habits and interests have been reshaped by postgraduate study.
Then, of course, there was Nine Minds by Daniel Tammet, which doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories I usually use but was, without doubt, the finest book I read in 2024.
What I’m reading in 2025
Anything and everything, within reason! Realistically, non-fiction will continue to dominate, because I get a lot of joy from acquiring knowledge. I’ll also be tackling my bookshelves; there are titles on them which were bought either for or by me years ago but haven’t been read yet, for some reason or another. I’m going to try and correct that, to a degree.
What I’m not going to do is take on the 52-book challenge again. Reading should be fun, so I’m not going to give myself an arbitrary target that will nag at me all year and upset me if I miss it. The joy is in the reading, not how much of it I do and I need to remind myself of that sometimes!
Whatever you read and however you read it, I wish you a happy and healthy New Year.