My 2024 Retrospective

                                             

                                                 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 Well, it isn't 2025 yet but I've read my last book of 2024 and posted the review.  So I figured I might as well get moving on the 2024 retrospective post.

There were a total of  38,300 views for this blog in 2024.  This was more than twice as many views as I had in 2023.  So I'm doing pretty well.

 My most viewed 2024 post was on my other blog, Flying High Reviews.  It has more people viewing it regularly than Shomeret: Masked Reviewer.  That most viewed post  was my review of  The Lantern's Dance by Laurie R. King which can be found here.  The most viewed 2024 post on this blog was my review of Mother Tongue: A History of Women's Words by Jenni Nuttall which can be found here.

My number of reads are sadly low this year.  I read only 27 books which is ten fewer than in 2023.  I certainly hope I can read more in the upcoming year.  This will depend on whether my boss retires.  Then I can retire myself.

There were only two five star reads.  Last year I had four of them. This is an alarming trend.  If I have half the number of five star reads in 2025 as I did this year, I will only have one.

So these two five star books are the ones that are receiving the Golden Mask Awards for 2024.  I will post about them below.

1) Better The Blood  by Michael Bennett

  Here is the summation about this book from my Goodreads review:

I thought that this novel was powerful and indeed beautiful and haunting in its resolution. It's been a while since I've read any fiction that deserved to be given five stars for its thematic focus and the complexity of Bennett's view of the various characters who are all parties to this personal and political conflict.

Since it's my only five star fiction of 2024, it is also necessarily my favorite novel of the year.

2) Stories Are Weapons by Annalee Newitz

My Goodreads review of this book is below:

A book with the title Stories are Weapons sounds like it will be disturbing.  Some readers who have not been paying attention to what's been going on in the United States may find it disturbing.  If you have been following American current events, you will not be surprised by what Newitz has to tell us.  Although I didn't find it surprising, I did find it tremendously insightful which is why I would give it the grade of A+ or five stars on Goodreads.

 This is what I considered to be the best non-fiction of 2024.

I sincerely hope that I will read more and rate more of them as A+ in 2025.  There should be no direction to go from here but up.