Big Book Summer 2024 Wrap-Up

Book By Book

Well, since the leaves are starting to turn colors here, I guess I better wrap-up the 2024 Big Book Summer Challenge! Apologies for the delay–we just returned from a much-needed vacation. Big Book Summer officially ended on September 2, finishing its 12th year. And this was the biggest year by far. I host this challenge every summer and always enjoy participating in it myself. You can read all the details at the challenge page linked above, but the basic idea is to read books of 400 pages or longer between the end of May and the beginning of September – just one or a few or as many as you want!  First, I’ll wrap-up the whole challenge here and then tell you about my Big Book Summer. You can also watch my Big Book Summer Wrap-Up Video.

Participants in the Big Book Summer Challenge:

This year, we blew away all previous records with a total of 174 participants! Of those, 11 people participated through their blogs, 24 participated through their YouTube channels, and 139 (!) readers participated through the Goodreads group, though everyone enjoyed the book discussions on Goodreads all summer long. You can still visit the group to see what everyone else read for their Big Book Summers or to join in the discussion of Lonesome Dove. There’s a Wrap-Up thread there, if you want to share what you read this summer. And if you have a blog or YouTube channel, the links list on the challenge page is still open for reviews or wrap-ups. Everyone can check out the Reviews list at the bottom of the Challenge page for some great reviews of Big Books.

The winner of the annual Big Book Summer Giveaway is …

She received a gift certificate from Bookshop.org, a great website where you can buy books conveniently online while supporting indie bookstores.

Congratulations, Tina!

And a Big Book Congratulations to everyone who participated in the challenge this year! 

Whether your goal was to read one Big Book or as many as possible, I hope you had fun reading and sharing your reading adventures throughout the challenge. If you missed it this year, you can sign up for Big Book Summer 2025 next May 23 (it always starts the Friday of Memorial Day weekend in the U.S.) and join the fun–that’s only 8 months away! 

My Big Book Summer:

I look forward to Big Book Summer all year and devote my entire summer to reading bigger books. This year, I read a total of twelve Big Books, half in print and half on audio, for a total of 6,284 pages. Links go to my reviews, where available, or the video where I talked about the book:

• The Women by Kristin Hannah (480 pages) – audio
  
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (858 pages)
• Countdown by Deborah Wiles (400 pages) – middle-grade audio
• Mr. Nice Guy by Jennifer Miller & Jason Feifer (400 pages) – audio (at 4:05 in the video)
  
• Hereafter by Tara Hudson (432 pages) – YA audio (at 8:23 in the video)
  
• The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (488 pages)
• Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (880 pages) (at 4:32 in the video)
  
• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (574 pages)
  
• The Ferryman by Justin Cronin (538 pages)
• The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (416 pages) – audio
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune (416 pages) – audio
• Trust by Hernan Diaz (402 pages) (at 31:05 in the video)

How was YOUR summer of reading?