My reading in 2024

2025-01-19

In 2024, I kept track of my reading in my Hobonichi A5 HON (overview of how is linked here). For most of the year, I did great with tracking, however there was a dip in the middle of year, both in reading and in accurate tracking. It was fun trying to compile of these stats, flipping back and forth and reading my entries!

Reading plan for 2025

This year I'm just aiming to read 100 books. I'm only a week into my school semester and I barely have enough time to read more than ten pages a day. I usually read during my commute to and from work, but now I'm doing homework or reading assigned texts during my train rides. However, I still want to try to read as much as I can! I'm trying to figure out when it's possible.

Some books I plan on reading:

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (in progress)
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (in progress)
• Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie (in progress)
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (in progress)
• Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
• A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
• Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Notes from Underground by Fyodor Doestoyevsky
• The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
• Fangirl by Rainbow Powell
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Morena-Garcia

The Cold, Hard Stats

• 246 books were read. Before you get too amazed.
  • 181 of them were volumes of manga
  • 26 of them were graphic novels
  • 39 of them are what people usually think of as books

On average, it took me 1.48 days to read a book.

Breaking it down into a different kind of format category:

• 214 fictional books ( 20 graphic novels, 180 manga, and 14 other)
• 14 non-fiction books (1 graphic novel, 0 manga, 13 other)
• 10 memoirs (5 graphic novels, 1 manga, and 4 other)
• 7 poetry chapbooks (all regular books)
• 1 play (a regular book)

On a per month basis (average of ~20 books per month):

• 32 books were read in January
• 17 books were read in February
• 22 books were read in March
• 29 books were read in April
• 26 books were read in May
• 20 books were read in July
• 39 books were read in July
• 2 books were read in August
• 13 books were read in September
• 2 books were read in October
• 3 books were read in November
• 41 books were read in December

My Favourite Books

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I decided to re-read The Secret History by Donna Tartt while I was on a plane to Toronto. It's one of my favourite books, and it still held up on a second read. It's actually so funny. I love it so much that I'm already reading it again for a third time.

All Darkness Down Wide by Seán Hewitt

A touching memoir that I read in ebook form. I put it on my wishlist to physically own. It's that good. Very raw and honest. Hewitt is a very good writer.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I'm a big Woolf fan. This book, to me, is the blueprint. I love how Woolf flits from character to character. How the dynamics between them are so crystal clear, messy, and affectionate all at the same. How the characters interactions with each other and their immediate surroundings says so much. A beautiful book.

Hoshitabi Shounen/Star Tripper (Volume 1) by Sakatsuki Sakana

I think I saw someone on the Fediverse recommend this book, but I forgot who. This is not your typical sci-fi manga. In fact, I forgot I was reading a manga at all, because the art had very Western sensibilities. The universe that Sakatsuki creates here is carefully put together. A lot of mystery is unveiled a bit at a time. The characters met on the way, all have a little spark in them that touches you. I really quite liked this, and I look forward to more.

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down

I read this book for the Misery May challenge. Boy, was this miserable. But I couldn't tear my eyes from the page. There is a lot, a lot, of trauma in this book. When it was over, I felt a little empty. I wished that there was more to it. It felt that it ended too abruptly, with little resolution. But it's going down as a favourite.

Comparing 2024 "Wrapped" music summaries

2025-01-11

Music tracking

I like music stats. I have three accounts on different music tracking services: Last.fm, ListenBrainz, and Libre.fm. Last.fm is the one I use the most, and it's the one that I've had the longest. ListenBrainz is by the same people behind MusicBrainz, so their database is really comprehensive. However, there are (last time I checked), no social aspects, which is what I really like about Last.fm. Lastly, there is Libre.fm. It has always been extremely barebones. Very little in terms of features, but I like what they stand for, keeping things free in the FOSS sense. Of course, Spotify has their own stats that can be accessed through different services. However, I (used to) really like their year end summary. I'll be comparing the four of these (mainly just 3)!

There are a lot of images here, so I'll put the TL;DR here.

I really liked the cute, intimate feel that ListenBrainz has with their stats. A lot more creative and full of personality. Last.fm reigns above all in terms of the different stats they provide, and also providing me a psychological analysis that neither ListenBrainz or Spotify did. Spotify was a disappointment. AI generated genre names, uninspired images, and boring stats with little personalization. Overall, everyone except for Spotify was a winner.

The main summary image

Last.fm

Last.fm packs a lot of information into their summary image, which is much appreciated. A downside is that the font is quite small because of it (how else will they put all of that info in there). The design is a little sterile, but still pleasing to my eye. I'm happy that they didn't include my username, sometimes I sensitive about sharing my username places.

• Scrobbles: 45,844
• Artists: 6,172
• Albums: 9,462
• Tracks: 15,163
• Top artists:
  • IDLES
  • Mitski
  • Green Day
  • NewJeans
  • Tinashe
• Top albums:
  • TANGK by IDLES
  • The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski
  • BB/ANG3L by Tinashe
  • Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens
  • People Who Aren't There Anymore by Future Islands
• Top tracks:
  • Ditto by NewJeans
  • Do or Die by DPR ARTIC ft. DPR IAN
  • The Deal by Mitski
  • Gravity by Tinashe
  • I'm Your Man by Mitski
• Top tags: (Last.fm speak for genres)
  • Rock
  • Indie
  • Japanese
  • K-pop
  • Post-hardcore

ListenBrainz

They don't allow customizing the colours for their images, but that's alright. I think it would be a lot of work, especially since they have little art mascots throughout their summary. Not a lot of information here: just some stats, genre percentages, and your two most played albums. Some of the text overlaps onto the most played album, and becomes unreadable if the album is as dark or darker than the text. My username is on here, which feels violating. Thankfully, it can be pretty easy to edit it out.

This summary made me realize just how much rock I listen to. I'm a rocker at heart.

• Artists: 4,995
• Albums: 6,430
• Songs: 10,377
• Top two albums:
  • TANGK by IDLES
  • The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski
• Genre breakdown:
  • 5% pop punk
  • 5% indie rock
  • 6% pop rock
  • 11% alternative rock
  • 13% pop
  • 15% rock

Spotify

Classic format. Sweet and short. I wasn't happy with their colour choices, unfortunately.

• Top Artists:
  • IDLES
  • Mitski
  • Tinashe
  • Green Day
  • Future Islands
• Top Songs:
  • Ditto
  • Do or Die (ft. DPR IAN)
  • The Deal
  • Gravity
  • I'm Your Man
• Minutes Listened: 142,791

Libre.fm

Despite being so feature bare, Libre.fm at the very least has some year end stats! Of course, it's nothing fancy. Just a literal webpage, nothing downloadable. I don't think this is a priority for the developers, which is more than fair. They have no other stats, this is it.

The numbers here are quite low because I only have Libre.fm hooked up to my YouTube scrobbler. However, close to the end of 2024, I ended up switching away from Spotify and am using other music clients instead. Some of them allow for Libre.fm scrobbling, which is really cool!

• Listened to 1179 songs (approximately 69 hours of music)
• Favourite song: The Ghost of You by My Chemical Rromance
• *Top artists:
  • My Chemical Romance (68 plays)
  • NewJeans (64 plays)
  • Joanna Newsom (54 plays)
  • KAI (24 plays)
  • MARINA (15 plays)
  • L'Arc~en~Ciel (15 plays)
  • Utada Hikaru (14 plays)
  • Frank Sinatra (14 plays)
  • Petrol Girls (13 plays)
  • TAEYEON (13 plays)
  • IV of Spades (12 plays)
  • SHINee (12 plays)
  • L'Arc-en-ciel (11 plays)
  • Lucy Dacus (11 plays)
  • The Gazette (11 plays)
  • Alexisonfire (10 plays)
  • TAEMIN (10 plays)
  • Julia Jacklin (10 plays)
  • Juan Karlos (9 plays)
  • ONEW (9 plays)
  • Crystal Castles (9 plays)
  • The Strokes (9 plays)
  • XG (8 plays)
  • Plastic Tree (8 plays)
  • The Weeknd (6 plays)

Personality

Last.fm

Last.fm was the only one who did this, not even Spotify, which was such a bummer. I like being categorized into boxes because it's fun. They use a radar or spider web chart to show how you rank in certain characteristics, which lead them to

• We'd describe you as a pioneering, versatile, adventurer
• 100% consistency: You scrobbled on more days throughout the year
• 67% replay rate: How often you returned to your favourite songs
• 19% concentration: How much time you spent with your favourites
• 39% variance: How many genres/tags explored
• 63% discovery rate: How much new music you listened to this year

Time of Day Listening

Last.fm

I love this Joy Division inspired graphic. I'm not entirely sure how it works. I think each white line represents the average listening times per week. The line peaks and dips per hour depending on how much you tend to listen at that hour. It ends up looking like a series of mountain ranges. Very pretty and super smart. Apparently my favourite time to listen to music was 8am.

Daily Listening

Last.fm

This graphic makes me laugh. Last.fm decided to layout the daily listens on a snake-like line, winding left to right. Each day is represented with a circle. The bigger the circle, the more listens. The pepto-bismal pink and the shape of the line reminds me of intestines. But I appreciate having this heatmap. I listened to all 366 days of the year (I forgot that 2024 was a leap year).

ListenBrainz

ListenBrainz has a more traditional grid heatmap. The darker the colour, the more listens. The green colour reminds me of GitHub's commit heatmap.

Top Listeners

Last.fm

This was something that only Last.fm did. They showed me just exactly what rank I was for certain albums, tracks, and listeners. It's interesting but I didn't make it very high on any one thing.

• #73 listener for きのこ帝国 (275 scrobbles)
• #37 listener for Singles by Future Islands (319 scrobbles)
• #79 listener for The Deal by Mitski (362 scrobbles)

World Listening

Last.fm

The artist heatmap is quite straightforward. It's really hard to tell which countries had more listens. I think if it wasn't a blue monochromatic colour scheme, it would be clearer.

ListenBrainz

I much prefer this world map. I think most of it is due to the light scheme, whereas Last.fm had a dark theme. It's obvious where most of my listens lie: U.S., Japan, South Korea, England, and Australia.

When music was made

Last.fm

Last.fm outs me as someone who is firmly in the 2020s when it comes to music. I'm glad that I managed to have at least some listening from each decade. It's really hard for me to listen to older music if it doesn't sound "timeless." Once it starts to feel a little dated, I can't take it seriously. This is mostly a complaint aimed at the 80s, hah.

The graphic is a little uninspired. A simple horizontal bar chart. The Y-axis is all the decades from 1960. From pre-1960 to 1980, there is a small section. The 1990s is a little bit more. The 2000s is about 20% of the way across the screen. The 2010s about 40%. And the 2020's, like 80%.

ListenBrainz

ListenBrainz is a little more incriminating. The X-axis is a time scale from 1945 to 2025. Each year gets its own bar. I listen to a sad smattering of things from 1953 to 2003. Things increase a little from 2004 to 2022. And there's a huuuge spike in 2023 and 2024. So yeah, listened to a lot of stuff in 2024.

Mainstream score

Last.fm

This is only something available to pro Last.fm users, unfortunately. The mainstream score is not too accurate, anyhow. Really, it measures mainstream-ability among Last.fm users, which is not a big population to begin with. Still, it's an interesting stat to see!

I was more mainstream this year, which is a blow to my special snowflake ego, but oh well.

• This year: 61%
• Last year: 58%

Genres

Last.fm

Strangely, there was no genre slide from Last.fm's official playback for the year. However, they still had the yearly stats on their Last.year page.

• K-pop: January to May, September to December
• Japanese: January to August
• Indie rock: January to August
• Rock: Every month except for April
• Pop: January to September
• Post-punk: January to May
• Indie: February to the end of the year
• Post hardcore: February to April, July to December
• Folk: February to June
• Punk: June to December
• Classical/Piano: August to November
• Alternative: September to November
• Emo: September to December
• Christmas: December

ListenBrainz

The main summary image is the only downloadable image they had for genre, however on their summary page, they had an interesting graphic for the summaries. I'm not quite sure what to call it, a tree map but not quite a tree map.

It seems to have split my listening into a few main groups:

• Pop
• Electronic
• Hip hop
• Rock
• Punk
• R&B
• Soul
• Blues Rock
• Pop rock

Spotify

Spotify's genre analysis this year was... Disappointing, to say the least. They identified three major genres for the year but they just had to use their weird AI genre titles. To make matters worse, it was just text against abstract backgrounds. Not even a genre hamburger. I wish they did a month by month breakdown. And, of course, Spotify basically stops tracking in October/November and they missed my big Emo/Screamo phase. I'm pretty salty over that.

• January: Hallyu Vogue K-pop (like NewJeans, KEY, and aespa)
• February: Indie Sleaze Synthesizer Dance-Punk (like IDLES, LCD Soundsystem, and The Rapture)
• September: Royalcore Ballroom Classical (like Camille Saint-Saens, Frederic Chopin, and Ludovico Elinaudi)

Technical Stats

Last.fm

Last.fm kind of scattered the stats through their playback. They provided a lot more numbers than expected. It was often just text on a plain coloured background as a lead up to the next stat. Nothing special but I like the numbers.

• You hit 45,844 total scrobbles, putting you in the top 3% of listeners worldwide.
• You listened to 15,163 tracks, with an average of 3 scrobbles per track.
• You listened to 9,462 albums which is over 25 per day.
• You listened to 6,172 artists this year, 64% of which were new discoveries.

ListenBrainz

This is so cute! I love their little watercolour characters. Two green peppers (?) wearing headphones. And a tree stump just sitting there, chilling. I also like the inclusion of what year the music I listened to came from (I am too trendy for my own good).

• I chilled with music on Tuesday
• Listened to 35,849 songs
• Mainly played music from 2024
• Listened to 4,955 artists
• Discovered 3,513 new artists

Spotify

I like this slide, especially since it compares me to global stats. A little boring but the numbers nerd in me smiles in delight.

• Minutes listened: 142,791
• Biggest listening day: January 20 with 1,055 minutes
• Top 0.5% of listeners worldwide

Top Artist

Last.fm

What I liked the most was that Last.fm kept my preferred artist picture (on Last.fm, you can control what picture is displayed across the site for you for any artist). I am your typical black and white user. It went well with simple colour schemes they had.

• Your favourite artist this year was IDLES
• You scrobbled them 1,616 times
• Top 0.05% of fans worldwide

They also included a fairly useless graph, unless you listen to really popular artists. Seems that maybe there is an average of IDLES 100 scrobbles per user, and I was very above average.

Spotify

I really hated the Spotify backgrounds this year. But I think I've always hated them. At least they managed to include the bare minimum stats.

• My top artist: IDLES
• Minutes listened: 5,133
• Top 0.05% of listeners worldwide

Top Artists

Last.fm

Last.fm included a little bubble collage of my top ten artists. It's a little small, but what can you do. It would be cool if it filled the entire page with more artists, and somehow highlighted the top ten instead. It's also difficult to tell the from the smaller sizes, who ranks where.

• Top 10 artists
  • IDLES
  • Mitski
  • Green Day
  • Tinashe
  • Future Islands
  • NewJeans
  • My Chemical Romance
  • Coheed and Cambria
  • Sufjan Stevens
  • FKA twigs

ListenBrainz

I love the art on ListenBrainz's images. This one includes okra? And a piece of lettuce? I wish I knew. I don't really eat vegetables. Unlike Last.fm, this is an actual list with no artist images. However, it's easier to see the artist rankings.

Top artists:

1. IDLES
2. Mitski
3. NewJeans
4. Tinashe
5. Green Day
6. Future Islands
7. Sufjan Stevens
8. My Chemical Romance
9. DPR IAN
10. FKA twigs

Spotify

Spotify only includes 5 top artists, but also shows both the ranking and artist images. I think I like this format the most, but would like to include the top 10, not just the top 5.

My top artists:

1. IDLES
2. Mitski
3. Tinashe
4. Green Day
5. Future Islands

Top Album

Last.fm

It kind annoys me that the entire album doesn't fit in the screen. But at least it shows it?

• Your favourite album this year was TANGK by IDLES
• You scrobbled it 1,355 times (as in, listened to the songs from it 1,355 times)
• Top 0.01% of fans worldwide

Of course, it also includes the weird graph that doesn't really show any useful (imo) information! Global average is around 100 scrobbles.

Top Albums

Last.fm

Last.fm provides a carousel of the albums that you can swipe through. Sadly, it wasn't information display all on one page. Thankfully, they included the top 25 (!) albums.

I'll save you from all 25 albums but here are the first and last.

• #1 TANGK by IDLES (1,355 times)
• #25 Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness by Coheed and Cambria (196 times)

ListenBrainz

This is really cute! This is a 3x3 collage that is framed by the vegertable themed characters. Super cute idea. Lots of personality.

• Top albums
  • TANGK by IDLES
  • Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens
  • KINEMA by DPR ARTIC
  • The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski
  • Ditto by NewJeans
  • Saviors by Green Day
  • BB/ANG3L by Tinashe
  • People Who Aren't There Anymore by Future Islands
  • Singles by Future Islands

Top Track

Last.fm

No surprise here. Takes the same format as both the top artist and the top album.

• Your favourite track was Ditto by NewJeans
• Scrobbled 425 times
• Top 0.16% of fans worldwide

Spotify

This yellow is awful. That is all.

• My top song: Ditto by NewJeans
• Total streams: 424
• Top 0.001% of listeners worldwide

Top Tracks

Last.fm

I'm surprised they only included 5 tracks. It takes the form of a horizontal bar chart, and the saturation fades as you go down the list.

1. Ditto by NewJeans (425 scrobbles)
2. Do or Die by DPR ARTIC ft. DPR IAN (365 scrobbles)
3. The Deal by Mitski (362 scrobbles)
4. Gravity by Tinashe (289 scrobbles)
5. I'm Your man by Mitski (282 scrobbles)

ListenBrainz

A simple list, no album covers. Some of the same pepper and lettuce characters (literally copied and pasted from previous images).

Top Songs

1. Ditto by NewJeans
2. The Deal by Mistki
3. Do or Die by DPR ARTIC ft. DPR IAN
4. Gravity by Tinashe
5. I'm Your Man by Mitski
6. Say Goodbye by Future Islands
7. Slip, Fall, Sleep by No Buses
8. Kill Bill by SZA
9. Gift Horse by IDLES
10. Better Things by aespa

Spotify

More awful yellow.

My top songs

1. Ditto by NewJeans
2. Do or Die by DPR ARTIC ft. DPR IAN
3. The Deal by Mitski
4. Gravity by Tinashe
5. I'm Your Man by Mitski