I write down the books that I’ve read as I finish them – in an old school jotter. With notes in the margins as to what sort of book they are, so I’ve totted up my stats and here they are.

I’ve read 122 books in 2024, I’ve reviewed most of them.

I’ve only read 11 non fiction books – I must do better, although I have also dipped in and out of quite a lot – as you do.

I’ve only read 10 vintage crime books. I thought it would have been more than that.

I seem to have only read 2 contemporary crime novels – how did that happen?

I read 36 books by Scottish authors.

I read 39 contemporary novels.

I read 20 children’s (YA) books

I read 19 historical fiction books, I thought it would have been more.

Only 13 classics, although I am notoriously strict (or picky) about what I deem to be a classic.

Only three books in translation.

It has been quite a good reading year for me. I’ve found more than a few new to me authors that I plan to read more of – or have already done so, particularly C.J. Sansom.

In 2025 I intend to take a very relaxed attitude to my reading so I almost certainly won’t commit myself to joining in with any challenges. I’m going to ‘dree my ain weird’ as we say in Scotland, in other words I’ll do my own thing and go my own way, depending on how I feel, with no pressure whatsoever. I’ll be visiting the library a lot, so many have been closed down completely in Fife over the past ten or so years and I hate to think that they might be going to have another cull of them, but with the state of local council finances it’s a distinct possibility in the future I think. I want to keep their borrowing statistics healthy.

I hope to do more gardening, craft and cookery posts in 2025 – well that’s the plan anyway, but 2024 was a very poor year for gardening. The only decent weather that we had in Scotland during the summer happened to be the almost three weeks when we were in the Netherlands. It was so annoying watching the BBC news while there (they’ve always been able to see the BBC as the signal is so strong) and seeing that the weather was so good back home, especially as we didn’t have very good weather where we were on holiday. To make matters worse as soon as we got back to Scotland the rain started and didn’t stop, if it wasn’t too wet to garden, it was too windy. Such is life.

So that was 2024 – blogwise anyway.