I read books so you don’t have to. Most of you probably don’t. An estimated 46% of Americans didn’t read a single book for pleasure in 2023. I couldn’t find more recent numbers, but then, I was too depressed by the whole thing to hunt diligently. Based on those results, reading more than 50 books in 2024 once again put me in the top 1% of readers. That status seems undeserved. I’m not a speed reader, not a publishing professional or book reviewer, not a retiree blowing through Louis L’Amour westerns. I’m not the only one unimpressed by my total. When a friend asked recently how many books I’d read last year, and I said 55, her face registered disappointment. “I thought you’d have read more,” she said. “I’m readin’ a book a week!” I said defensively. She’d read “15 to 18,” but because reading is part of my brand, she expected more. Meanwhile, there’s Janice Rutherford-Lim, the retired San Bernardino County supervisor, who reads rings around most of us. “I got through 192 books, 121 of those fiction,” she reports. Her favorite was Beth Brower’s historical fiction series, “The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion,” in eight volumes, a series she calls “smart, uplifting and joyful.” Don’t look to me if you’re looking for any hot reads. Like any reader, my choices are personal and idiosyncratic. I read fiction, science fiction and nonfiction, especially Inland Empire and L.A. history. If you read my Jan. 3 column, you know I also finished the Travis McGee mystery series. The majority of my 2024 books were published in the last century. Or before, in the case of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” believed to have been written in the 8th century and read by me, uh, last April. It was worth the wait. My two favorite books were both fiction: Octavia Butler’s “Kindred,” published in 1979, and George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” from 1872. Butler, a Pasadena native who wrote science fiction, has become far more celebrated since her 2006 death. The main character in “Kindred,” a Black woman in California near American’s Bicentennial, is repeatedly pulled through time into the antebellum South due to a bond with a White boy, the son of a plantation owner, who needs her help. It’s a deeply felt and observed novel about slavery, an American theme that has only become more essential and contentious in the past four decades since Butler’s debut was published. “Middlemarch” concerns a year or so, 1831-32, in the life of a village and surrounding townships in rural England. We follow a couple of dozen characters, from gentry to laborers. The best characters have their foibles, the worst have redeeming qualities. And George Eliot — a pen name for a woman, Mary Ann Evans, as writing wasn’t considered women’s work in the 1870s — brought an acute understanding of human nature and psychology to bear as she delves into characters’ motivations and conflicting impulses. She also pokes fun at everyone, but always humanely. One witty line among hundreds: “To point out other people’s errors was a duty Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from.” While I am reluctant to go around recommending books with impunity, let me say this: If you’re in the mood for a 19th century British novel of 800 pages, this is a good one. More than one-third of my reading last year involved the Inland Empire — mostly nonfiction, but with a bit of fiction too, all read to increase my knowledge base. The 2024 update to “100 Things to Do in Riverside Before You Die” by Larry Burns was one. Some of the things I learned about Riverside: It’s got a Taiwanese bakery, Uncle Chuang’s; Sycamore Canyon Park is a sprawling 1,500 acres; and you can ride a 1/8-scale train at Hunter Hobby Park. Joan Hall’s two volumes of “Through the Doors of the Mission Inn,” published in 1996 and 2000, are made up of short essays on notable people who’ve stayed at the famous inn, which opened in 1903. The hotel, of course, was never a Catholic mission, which is the top question visitors ask. Then there was Albert Einstein’s wife, Elsa, who according to Hall visited in 1931 with her famous husband and on their tour inquired: “Was this ever a convent?” Informed that no, the hotel had always been a hotel but had been built to look like a 19th century California mission, the German-born Elsa, wrote Hall, “seemed puzzled.” It’s hard to blame her. I also learned a lot about the parent navel orange tree and Eliza Tibbets from “Creating an Orange Empire,” Patricia Ortlieb’s 2011 history of her great-great-grandmother’s role in birthing the citrus industry. With any luck, I will write again about the tree soon. As if there weren’t enough reasons, reader Roger Kessinger has been asking me for years to make fun of the plaque on Navel Court that overlooks Eliza in favor of husband Luther, and I’m always up for some good mockery. I read some San Bernardino histories too. Nick Cataldo, one of our history columnists, gave me all three of his books and I read them all, soaking up knowledge as I went. 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A few things I learned: “one of the great parties in our city’s history” took place in 1939 at the grand opening of the Arrowhead Springs Hotel, with performances by, among others, Judy Garland and the Marx Brothers; the nickname “Berdoo” was popularized by the local chapter of the Hells Angels; and a young Billy Bob Thornton worked for a year at San Bernardino’s Shakey’s Pizza. I’m confident that any Shakey’s potatoes fried by Billy Bob Thornton had extra mojo. Onward to 2025, where more books lie ahead, for me and perhaps for you too. David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, bookishly. Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.