Wrap Up: December 2024

Happy last day of 2024, besties! We made it! As always with the end of the month it’s time for my monthly wrap up, but since it’s the end of the year I thought I’d also add a few other things, so this post is a bit longer than usual, but I hope you enjoy it!

Get comfy and let’s recap the last month of the year!

I won’t lie, my reading year fizzled out in November and that carried over into the final month of the year. That being said, I did get to 7 books this month and one of them was even 5 stars.

Books read this month:

• Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell (3.5 stars)
• Seven Lively Suspects by Katy Watson (4 stars)
• The Rival by Emma Lord (5 stars, ARC)
• A Lively Midwinter Murder by Katy Watson (4 stars)
• The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas (3 stars, reread)
• The Champions by Kara Thomas (3 stars, reread)
• A Guide to the Dark by Meriam Metoui (2.75 stars)

Blog posts and vlogs I loved this month:

• Favorite Books of the Year posts/videos are always some of my favorites to read and I loved reading Michelle’s. One of my top reads is on this list and some reads I meant to get to are on it as well which makes me more excited to read them.
• All us theatre kids (and non-theatre kids tbh) have been buzzing about the Wicked film, and I loved Helena’s Shows You Might Enjoy If You Like Wicked post. A bunch of my favorite shows are on this list and I’m seriously hoping for a Gun & Powder transfer based on what she’s told me about the show.
• Helena truly gets to live my best life by being able to see Broadway shows all the time, and I always love hearing about her adventures. I loved the Favorite Theatrical Experiences of 2024 post and am honored that I was with her for one of the shows!

My posts this month:

• Anticipated Reads of 2025
• Books That Surprised Me This Year
• Did I Read All of My 2024 Anticipated Reads?
• My Favorite Things: Winter Edition
• Wicked Film Review
• Favorite Reads of 2024

Now let’s chat stats for the last quarter of 2024! My reading took a HUGE dip after October, which you will very clearly see in my stats. I definitely lost a lot of motivation the busier that the year got for me, and since the end of October through now have been crazy with work, it for sure resulted in a lot less reading than normal. As always, let’s start with the books read stat.

October was great with 21 books read and then I took a massive nosedive in November with only 6 books read, and December stayed low with 7. I very easily met my yearly reading goal (and surpassed it by 18 books) which is a great thing and none of the numbers here are “bad” (there’s no such thing as a bad number when it comes to reading) but it is disappointing to see that big of a difference between October and November. What upsets me more than the numbers is that I just lost my motivation for my favorite hobby because of how busy I was with work.

I read a lot more ebooks and physical books in October, so my pages per month count is higher than hours listened. It’s fairly even in November, which I didn’t realize at the time, so that’s kind of nice. December had a lot of audiobooks for me so that hours listed number is way higher than pages read. Truthfully though, I don’t think the pages read for Nov/Dec are that bad considering the number of books that I ended up reading. 

Oh, shocker, I read mostly novels lol. I did get to a few short stories and novellas, which I was happy about. I read my first non-fiction book since March (!!!) and read two plays — it took me forever to figure out which two plays I read and then I realized they were rereads of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth 🤣

I mostly read from the library, which I am always in favor of — support your local library. Then my personal library and Kindle Unlimited tied for the next most read, followed by ARCs (17.6% you go girl!), followed by Everand and then Spotify. I decided to cancel my Everand subscription because they changed their subscription pricing and how it works, which was not at all working for me. I am hoping to use my Spotify audiobooks more often, and since I typically listen to books on 2.5-3x speed and they limit to 15 hours per month, I could usually end up reading 2 books via Spotify per month.

The last quarter of the year saw me reading mostly via ebook, which doesn’t really surprise me. Especially since I read a bunch of the Amazing Original Stories. I was actually a little surprised to see that physical books just edged out audiobooks, but then I remembered that this was combining October, November and December, but I read quite a few physical books in October.

I don’t think anyone is surprised that mystery is my most read genre, followed by romance and horror. That’s basically been my reading year summed up. It’s also not surprising that new reads and standalones were far more common than rereads or series for this last quarter. 

Not only did my reading take a bit of a dip after October, but my ratings did as well, so it doesn’t surprise me that most of my ratings were 3-3.5 stars. However, it wasn’t all bad considering I had multiple 5 stars! Though…2 of those were rereads…

Oh my God, December has been absolutely insane. This month has flown by and the first two weeks especially were incredibly busy. Starting the month with rehearsals, tech and performances for one show while also holding auditions for another show is definitely a lot! Performances of The Secret Garden went well, but I will say that was a rough tech night and I wasn’t totally sure that it would happen, but the kids pulled it together and put on a good show! Auditions for the school musical that starts rehearsal in January went well, and we’re all looking forward to getting started on that.

I went to the Dickens Fair again this year and had the best time! I dressed up as Mrs. Lovett this time and had a meat pie — once again, it was delicious. I solved a mystery for Sherlock again and picked up some loose leaf tea that smells absolutely amazing and I’m looking forward to brewing a cup while reading. 

My sister and I saw the Wicked film and I had a LOT of thoughts! I posted a review towards the end of last week and it’s linked at the beginning of this post, so if you missed it and want to know my thoughts on Wicked, go check that out!

The holidays were really nice! I baked s’mores cookies and while I had a few hiccoughs they turned out SO good and it’s for sure a recipe that I’ll make again (with a few minor adjustments). We had a really lovely night on Christmas Eve with family, and then Christmas Day was spent lounging and relaxing, which is for sure my favorite way to spend the day.

Like the rest of this month, the final week of the month absolutely flew by! I had to go into the office on the 26th and 27th, and while I was super tired I was also incredibly productive. I ran a lot of errands and did some shopping over the weekend and now I’m totally focusing on blocking/choreographing for the musical since we start rehearsals on the 7th. 2024 has been a very busy year, and the last month of the year was no different!

I can’t lie, I spent most of the month working on my Grey’s Anatomy rewatch/catch up (I finally caught up and I can’t believe we have to wait until March for it to come back). Truthfully, I didn’t really watch much outside of my Grey’s rewatch, but I definitely watched some favorite Christmas movies and the latest holiday Bake Off episodes.

Honestly, I feel like I’ve gone through this entire month in a haze and there’s not really anything that stood out to me. I have been super busy and we know I turn to comfort things when I’m busy, so it makes sense that I really just did a bunch of rewatching and listening to my comfort music. Here’s my top 10 songs of December, and you can also check out my Spotify Top 100 songs.

I’ve been super busy with setting up my 2025 bullet journal and reading journals, which has been SO much fun to do and I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out. I’ll be sharing my reading journal spreads in my 2025 goals and reading journal post later this week and I can’t wait for you all to see it!

This year had a lot of ups and downs, but some truly wonderful things happened this year, so I wanted to take a second to list them and look back on some of those great moments!

• Visiting my best friend Helena 3 times this year; once in February, once in August, and once in October
• Seeing 21 musicals/plays — 5 touring productions and 16 Broadway shows. My most seen show was (unsurprisingly) & Juliet, which I saw 6 times on Broadway this year.
• Going to 5 book signings/events this year. Morgan Matson, Lauren Graham (still cannot believe I got to meet one of my favorite actresses), Emma Lord, Ann Liang and Allison Saft.
• Going to my first Giants game since 2019 with my dad — they lost, which totally sucked but we had amazing seats and it was great to be at the ballpark again!
• Seeing one of my oldest and closest friends in person for the first time since 2019.
• Going to Niall Horan’s The Show Live On Tour, which was hands down the best concert I’ve ever been to and if I had a time machine the first thing I’d do is probably go back to that concert. I wrote a full review of my concert, and you can check that out if you’d like to relive it with me!
• Seeing one of my favorite Broadway performers, Kelli O’Hara in concert with my mom
• Stage managing a musical and directing a play

There were lots of other little moments that were wonderful and will stick with me, but these were some of the big things that definitely were bright spots of the year!

Wow…that’s it! December and 2024 is over. How insane is that? This month has been crazy, this year has been crazy…but we got through it my friends! I’d love to hear how the month of December went for you and some of your personal highlights from 2024! Let me know in the comments.

I’ll see you in 2025! 💜