A QTL Reflection: 2024 Accomplishments and 2025 Goals

Hello, and welcome to the first-ever yearly reading reflection. This year, I asked our writers to sit down and take a little time to reflect on their reading years and see if they had any thoughts that bubbled to the surface when looking at their collective readings. Specifically, I asked them to go through and list their reading accomplishments for the year and to put down some reading goals for 2025 that might stretch them and make their year of reading more interesting. As I am not one to ask something of others I wouldn’t do myself, here are my reading reflections, accomplishments for 2024, and my goals for 2025:

Andrew

2024 was an interesting year for me to read. I usually read about 130 books a year, but as my daughter gets older and my free time gets shorter, I find myself being more selective in the books I decide to read. On the one hand, I think I generally have fewer books in my to-do queue than some of the other Quill members, as a lot of their to-dos come from my own recommendations. On the other hand, I like to tackle as many new books a year as I can to have the most clarity when it comes to making our best-of-the-year list. 

This year, I wasn’t as enamored with the 2024 releases I saw. The debuts seemed less interesting, and the sequels to the series I was following repeatedly fell a bit flat. As a result, I found myself looking backward and reading a number of older series that I have had my eye on for a while. I also jumped outside the typical books I was reading to read a little more non-fiction, historical fiction, horror, manga, and more to diversify my reading lists. As a result, I had a somewhat chaotic and irregular year, but I am coming into 2025 excited to dive back into new fantasy and science fiction. Building on this, here were some of my 2024 accomplishments:

2024 Accomplishments – Andrew

• Read/Finish The Shadows of the Apt Series – Tchaikovsky’s 10-book bug epic has been on my to-do list forever, and I finally managed to carve some time to read it this year.
• Read The Queen’s Thief Series – One of my favorite things we do at the end of the year is a team book club where we get to force people to read recommendations immediately once per year. Last year, Brandee had us read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, and I liked it so much I read the rest of the six-book series.
• Listen to More Audiobooks – One reason I have less reading time is that I have had to go to my office more. As such, I got more into audiobooks, which was a lot of fun. A stand-out listen was Rebecca Ross’s Elements of Cadence.
• Catch Up on Miura’s Berserk – A manga that had a huge impression on me in my early 20s was Kentaro Miura’s Berserk. It is a world-renowned story about war, abuse, and healing that is extremely intense, and I hadn’t caught up on it in years. Unfortunately, Miura tragically passed away in 2021 and left the work in the hands of his friends and editors. I have always wanted to catch up on all of the chapters that he wrote since his passing a few years ago, and this was the year I finally got to it.
• Read More Microhistories – I have been getting more into non-fiction, and one category that has really worked for me is microhistories. They are books that deeply dive into very specific subjects and deeply appeal to me. A great one I recently read was Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik.
• Continue to DM for a Group of Degenerates – One of the other side activities everyone on this post does is play Dungeons and Dragons. I, unsurprisingly, am the DM, and this year has marked the 7th year of continuous depravity that these hooligans have put me through. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers as I see what they have in store for me next year.

2025 Goals – Andrew

• Finish the Damn Vorkosigan Guide – Every year or so, Alex and I try to put out a large reading guide like the ones we have done for Malazan, The Culture, and The Witcher. We were cooking up a Vorkosigan one all this year but couldn’t quite find the time and energy to pull it all together. 2025 is the year, and you all should hold us accountable. Look for it relatively soon.
• Finally, Finish Discworld – I have been reading the 40+ Discworld books on and off for the past 10 years, and I am actually fairly close to having read the entire series. This feels like a good year to clean up this incredibly powerful series and maybe write a guide.
• Give Hobb Another Shot – I read the Farseer Trilogy way back, and I thought it was good but not great. Since then, I have spoken to about a trillion people who say that the Realm of the Elderlings saga is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think it’s time to dig deeper and give Liveship Traders a shot.
• Something New – Every year, I build up a backlog of authors I haven’t read that I want to check out, and this year is no exception. In 2025, I want to read something by all the following authors: Megan O’Keefe, Sienna Kristen, Alastair Reynolds, and Mercedes Lackey.
• Books to Read to My Daughter – As my daughter ages, I am getting more and more excited about what we can read together soon. This year, I am going to do some scouting and check out Howl’s Moving Castle and The Song of the Lioness to prepare to read them with her.
• Try LitRPG. I have avoided LitRPG since I was first introduced to it because it seemed unappealing. However, as the years have passed and it has grown in popularity, I admit to an increasing curiosity about the subject. It is time to dip my toe in the water with something like Dungeon Crawler Carl.
• Read Vagabond – Now that I have caught up on Berserk, my next major manga project will be to check out the very famous Vagabond. I am hoping I can go two for two on an incredible big manga series in the last two years.
• Be More Insufferable About Frieren – Listen, most of you have already watched 2024’s greatest piece of fantasy visual media: the anime adaptation of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. The manga is incredible, and the anime is immaculate. Yet, somehow, I haven’t gotten the three others on this piece to watch it yet. A new 2025 micro goal is to harass them until that happens.
• Continue to DM for a Group of Degenerates – This year, I am taking off the nice DM gloves, and my goal is to make each of them cry at least once. I don’t care if it’s from a deep emotional encounter, a tragic backstory that opens the waterworks, or a puzzle for toddlers that has them threatening to come to my house and beat me to death. There will be tears in 2025.

Brandee

A Reflection on the Year 

2024 was not a great reading year for me. Life swung on a pendulum through highs and lows, which all affected my ability and desire to read.

The year began with the sudden loss of Sadie Bug, my beloved English bulldog. At this point, I had lost three dogs, three years in a row all in February/March, so it was getting harder to get back up after so many blows. While I learned to live without Bug by my side, I also became entrenched in the final planning stages for my wedding in July. Quite frankly, there was so much excitement about our special day that books lost a lot of their luster. Reading is my escape, but this was a time in my life when I wanted to be fully present, so I didn’t miss one magical moment.

Even after the wedding, life did not quite return to normal. There was a beautiful bright spot when we adopted Churro, our newest bulldog, and his addition to our family brought a lot of joy. But overall the fall was a difficult and exhausting season, one where I struggled to manage all the work and life responsibilities that were required of me. I never felt comfortable enough to sit down and indulge in a book when I was so behind on everything else. So books fell by the wayside during the second half of the year as well.

Books are usually a lovely accompaniment to my life, but this year I found that I didn’t need their company as much. Instead, I got to focus on myself, and put my energy toward healing new and old wounds and living out my own fantasy adventure while getting married in a Scotland castle. Life was simply too real and incredible for me to seek out a story, and I don’t feel like I missed out because of that. 

So while my book count for this year is the lowest it’s been in five years, I still feel that I accomplished a lot and embraced the minor role that books had in my life for a change. The distance allowed me to grow and address my relationship with reading which has informed my goals for next year…

2025 Goals – Brandee

Despite 2024 not being an entirely productive or enjoyable reading year, I feel revitalized, and my energy is building toward attacking some books that I have been waiting to read for a long time. The new year is fresh with possibilities and less responsibilities, and I’m happy to feel the desire to read entering my soul again.

My priorities for 2025, include:

• • Killing my completionist complex. Any books that I am not enjoying by the 50% mark will be DNF’d. There are too many books and too little time to force myself to finish something I dislike. 
  • Read at least 2 non-review books every quarter, prioritizing these titles below:
    • Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed
    • Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks
    • The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare (I’m dying to pick up where I left off in the Shadowhunter series)
    • Books 2 & 3 of Sarah J. Maas’ Crescent City series

And that’s it! I’m keeping it short and simple. Don’t want to go swinging for the fences as I slowly build back up to my usual reading volume.

Alex

I had an odd year of reading that started strong before it spiraled into a quagmire of chaos and scrambling. At the beginning of 2024, I decided I wanted to minimize my obligations with regard to Netgalley and ARCs in general. It led to some fun places, with a deep dive into one of my favorite sub-genres, generation ships. I still have yet to write anything about that experience beyond the few reviews it spawned of books outside the 2024 release window, but it was a very freeing experience to just read whatever the hell I wanted. 

I caught up on some older books I had been putting off for a while. This gave me time to read some novella series that had been taunting me from my TBR (Ryan’s Seven Swords, Vho’s Singing Hills). I even felt recovered enough to take on Stephenson’s Seveneves. The new releases I decided to pick up I was fully invested in. I opted for a library pickup instead of rushing myself to release them. It was a pleasant first half of the year despite being laid off. 

But then I started to fall behind, scrambling to pick up a few Galleys and ARCs here and there to fill the void. And the pressure began to build. I still managed to find books I was genuinely interested in, but I began to feel the burnout from reading things I felt I had to, in order to be a part of the conversation. And I missed a few reviews. I took on extra reading and review loads to make up for it and started to just lose the habit of reading for pleasure. I’ve always been one to actively read, but it became an exhausting endeavor with no end in sight week to week. 

On top of all that, I felt that because of the books I was choosing, I wanted to spend more time dissecting them. I can spend a lot of energy tearing a book apart, but I wanted to marinate in books I loved, too. I wanted to find things to love, like, and maybe point out as missing. I don’t know how well I did there, but I want to redouble my efforts. 

It’s been an exhausting year, and the future looks only to be darkening. So, I want to set some goals that will help guide me through it, maybe give our readers some insight, too. I also want to find some fountains of strength in science fiction, as we will sorely need it. 

2025 Reading Goals – Alex

• Cheat on Science Fiction: This year, I didn’t read much fantasy, focusing on my one true love: science fiction. But next year, I have a few series lined up, so I can take a break from the space race. 
• Raise the Temperature – Read more climate-focused fiction, whether it’s short stories, novellas or full novels. Incorporate some non-fiction reading into the analysis as well. 
• Gazing into the Apocalypse – Examine science fiction stories about after the end of it all and the alternative visions authors have proposed. This will be a long-running project with deep dives into individual books with commentary by yours truly. Who knows, maybe my partner will help me understand how to research as well. 

Cole

2024 Accomplishments – Cole

Like the whole of history, my 2024 can be neatly divided into two eras: BCE (before child, eh?) and AD (after delivery). Thus, my year involved two halves and two associated goals. Number one was preparing for my baby to arrive. Number two was enjoying the company of and caring for said baby. I suppose the natural third step was “figure out how in the sam-hell to read lots of books while being a dad.” By squeezing in 30-page chunks during naps and teaching myself to listen to audiobooks, of course!

I read and/or listened to 56 books this year, a significant increase on last year, which notably did not include a tiny human I had to keep alive. My baby girl helped me focus my love for books into the more limited free time I had, and I’m incredibly grateful. 

I didn’t hit every goal, of course. I started (but didn’t finish) The Books of Babel, and the final two books will wait until next year! As I write this, I am a measly 12% into Wind and Truth while my Cosmere-fanatic friends are already finished or damn close to it. I didn’t review as many books as I would’ve hoped, but I still published a handful of pieces that make me proud.

The most surprising accomplishment of 2024 (the baby was the biggest, but decidedly unsurprising) was my complete and utter devotion to constructing crossword puzzles. I leapt from solver status to creator status during the days when my wife and I needed to chill on the couch for hours (because she was pregnant and I felt like resting in solidarity). I have since made more than 100 puzzles—many of which draw on my love of sci-fi and fantasy for clues or answers—and publish them regularly at The New Dork Times, my newsletter. 

It was a year of firsts and focus.

2025 Goals – Cole

2025 will be a fascinating year for me. In February, my daughter will start daycare for three days per week while I stay at home the other two. I’ll have to adjust to the new schedule, which gives me a tiny amount of trepidation, but I’m mostly excited to spend more time with her. My goals will hopefully slot nicely into my new agenda!

My reading goals are:

• Read/listen to 50+ books 
• Listen to 5 Stephen King audiobooks
• Finish Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel series
• Read Sebastian De Castell’s Greatcoats series

I also want to make a concerted effort to write and be more creative in 2025. I do a writing group with fellow QTL reviewer Alex and another friend of ours, and it has been a uniquely fulfilling creative experience. This year, I hope to chug along on my Write Club project alongside a few other creative goals. 

• Write 20,000 words for Write Club
• Publish 5 or more author guides on The Quill To Live
• Complete 3 puzzle books
• Get paid to publish a crossword puzzle

I’ve stewed on author guides for quite a while, and I think 2025 is the perfect year for them. They’ll be comprehensive overviews of an author’s work, including our reviews, where to buy the books, and more. 

To wrap things up, why not try to solve some puzzles and get a puzzle published in one of my favorite publications like Puzzmo or the New York Times?