new year, (maybe?) a new me: 24 books that i want to read in 2024 #bookblogger

---

Hi friends!

How are you? How has the new year been treating you? What books have you been reading?

I have been pretty good! This break that I have had in the new year has been good for me, I think. It has meant that I have had more time to create some content that I’m really happy with (shameless youtube plug here)! And also re-focus on my blog!

Today I wanted to have a bit of a chit chat with you all regarding the 24 books that I really hope to read in 2024. Now, last year, this post and ‘project’, so to speak, was an epic fail but reading is all about fun and I also love creating lists…so here we are.

I also just want to thank everyone for the support on my blog even though last year I was not the most active. My sincere gratitude and love!

Let’s get started, shall we?

---

I’m going to categorise these first ten books as the classics I hope to read in 2024. Have you noticed that I have been using the word hope quite often? I am trying to not put so much pressure on myself and my reading, so this list is a list of hopeful possibilities.

Back to the classics.

Numero uno on my 24 in 2024 list is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Yes, this was on last year’s list but it’s different this time, I swear! I am actually currently reading this already! Look at me, achieving things. Mind you, I am very very slowly reading this book because that is all I can do at the moment! I’ve read around 130 pages and wow. I did not realise how absolutely wild this book is?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?! So insane and unhinged and I am obsessed.

Cross your fingers, because the next one is a doozy. I would really like to read The Brother’s Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I may have also put this book on my list for last year, but regardless, I want to try and tick this off my little classics bucket list. Do I know what it’s about? I’m guessing about brothers – and it’s a russian classic, so it will most likely be depressing, explore religion and theology, and be quite dense. I cannot wait.

In a similar vein, I want 2024 to be the year that I finally read The Master and Magarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I have only heard incredible things about this book and I don’t know how, but I have also been able to remain spoiler-free regarding any information pertaining to this novel. I think this book will work ever better for me if I don’t know much about the story and characters going in!

I watched Saltburn like everyone on the planet and I freaking loved it. Literally the cinematic representation of the kind of weird and unhinged and slightly feral books that I love to read. So of course I want to read Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh. I would love to do a Saltburn inspired reading vlog but that would depend on timing. But this book. Rich people doing shitty things, a man is befriended by said rich family, and shenanigans ensue. Cannot wait.

I have been meaning to read Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin for years. I have been quite bad in reading poetry and long-form poetry, which is saddening consdiering that Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelly and Paradise Lost by John Milton are two of my absolute favourite poems of all time. So, this year I would like to read more classic poetry and i would like to start with Eugene Onegin. I have never read Pushkin so I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Sadness and melancholy, I’m guessing.

We all know how much I love Virginia Woolf and this would not be a quality list without her. I would really love to read The Waves by Virginia Woolf this year! I feel like I haven’t read a Virginia Woolf in so long…maybe it’s been more than a year! I would also like to add a re-read to this list and that would be Orlando. I read Orlando years ago and I loved it but I have had this feeling of needing to reread it since the end of 2022. I need to scratch this itch!

Because I have heard so many good things, I want to read Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. This was another book that was on my 23 books in 2023 last year and never got around to it, so I really would like to do so this year. All I know is that it’s a book about Madame Bovary and it was scandalous when it was released.

2024 is the year that I finally read a book by Marquis de Sade. I hope to read Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue this year and although I don’t know what this book is actually about, I do know that it’s going to be an intense examination of sensuality and sexuality in the period the author was writing in. I also have a non-fiction book that I would like to read this year that is a cultural critique on this novel by de Sade, so I want to read the novel before I read the critique.

Is 2024 the year that I read The Outsider by Albert Camus? I sure hope so! I have read The Plague by him as well as a selected collection of his essays titled Summer. I am quite in love with Camus’ writing and how deeply philosophical his work is. He makes me think in ways that I never have before.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is also a classic that I have always been intrigued by, and maybe that intrigue came about because of a Criminal Mind’s episode, but so what?! I actually know nothing about this book and I want to keep it that way.

I read The Warden by Anthony Trollope last year for Victober (vlog here) and really enjoyed it! It was slightly suprising but also not. The Warden touched on themes that I love, especially in classics. So I would really like to continue this series and read the sequel, Barchester Towers. I feel like this one is going to be dramatic! The Warden’s best friend, the Bishop, is quite sick (may be on his deathbed?) and the Bishop’s son who is also the Warden’s son-in-law and boss of both his father and his father-in-law, gets even more chaotic?! Excited.

---

Now, let’s move on to fantasy and literary books I would like to read this year!

I have to read The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan! Book five in the Wheel of Time series. I read book four last year, which I still have to write my blog post about it! I absolutely adored The Shadow Rising so I just know that I am going to love book five just as much because things are becoming SO INTENSE.

I think this book was either on my list last year or I put it as one of my most anticipated books of 2023 and that was Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. I really love Mariana Enriquez’s short stories – I have read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in the Fire and really enjoyed how the stories were written and the way in which Enriquez weaved the gothic and dark with the feminist. I don’t know much in regards to the plot of Our Share of Night, but I do know that it focuses on a boy and it does what Enriquez does best: the weaving of the dark and gothic and speculative.

James Islington is on my list. Everytime I walk past the fantasy section in a bookstore, I see his trilogy and I always say to myself, one day. Well, that one day is going to happen in 2024. I found The Shadow of What Was Lost for $2 at an op shop here in Melbourne last year and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity (lol. op shop is an opportunity shop. get it?). This is epic fantasy, a slow-build, character intense focus about free will and theology and psychics. I am very vague on the details for a reason. I hope I love it.

Last year, I saw this book on the shelf at QBD, a bookshop here in Australia, and was shocked that I didn’t know it existed! It was a 2023 new release and I had to grab it. The Witches of Vardo by Anya Bergman. Witches, women, fighting against the Man – what more could I want?!

I read my first ever Ann Patchett book last year, The Dutch House, and I was mesmerised. In the aftermath of reading that book, I purchased Tom Lake and this is a book that I want to make sure I read this year. I have heard that this is a pandemic book but at the same time, it’s not a pandemic book. It’s meta. It’s about life and life choices and how we get to where we are. I hear it’s beautiful, so I am really looking forward to it.

I think 2024 is the year that I finally read Elena Ferrante. It has to be. I have The Lying Life of Adults on my shelves and I desperately want to read it. I feel as though Elena Ferrante is going to be a new favourite author? If I love this book, then you best believe that I am going to finally read the Neopolitan series!

Catherine Lacy is an author that I have been hearing murmurings about for a few years. The first time I actually heard about her was from a youtube video by sunbeamsjess and she was talking about Pew. Ever since then, I have been wanting to read it. A few weeks ago, on a little trip to Camberwell, I went into this fabulous bookstore called Cook and Young on Burke St and finally freaking found this book. It was never a priority enough for me to buy it online, but I promised myself that if I ever saw Pew in a bookstore, I would grab it. And grab it I did.

The only thing about this book that I know is that it is narrated in a choral ‘we’ voice and I was immediately sold. Brutes by Dizz Tate is supposed to be a weird and dark book that hits all the spots for a book that I will most likely enjoy. I will be reading it this year!

I love how I want 2024 to be the year that I get through quite a lot of series that I am in the middle of reading, but lo and behold, I keep on adding more series to the bloody list.

I have never read a Robin Hobb novel. I know, the audacity of me. I really want 2024 to be the year that I read Assassin’s Apprentice but also the entire Farseer trilogy. I would love to sit here and say that I will read the entire realm of the Elderlings, but I honestly do not think that is possible for me this year! Let’s keep it…slightly small? Lmao.

I can’t believe this is the only poetry on my list but I want to slowly get through Devotions by Mary Oliver, which is a collection of selected poetry organised and curated by Mary Oliver herself. I love poetry and the few poems I have seen by Mary Oliver, I have fallen in love with so fingers crossed I fall in love with this collection.

Was this also on my list for last year? Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer will be read this year. It will be. It has to be. I can’t believe it has taken me this bloody long to finally read this book. It’s supposed to be amazing!!!!!! I annoy myself.

And finally, the last book on my list.

Drum roll, please.

Breasts and Eggs by Meiki Kawakami. Another book that I have owned for years and still not have read. This is a book that I have to read this year because if I don’t, I am going to unhaul it. That’s how long it has been sitting my shelf. Ridiculous.

---

And that is it for today, my friends!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed!

Are there any books from my list that you have read? Which ones should I prioritise first?

Do you have specific books that you will like to read this year? Again, let me know!

As always, happy reading friends.

All the love,

allie

xx

---

𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓾𝓫𝓮

𝓽𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓻

𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓶

𝓰𝓸𝓸𝓭𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓼

𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱