2025: My Year in Reading

I read 38 books this year. Mostly nonfiction, and proudly representative of my major interests: cosmology, deep time, and human nature. I ended the year with a stack of around 10 books sitting on my end table, most of which I’ve had checked out for several months and I just haven’t bothered to read yet. I keep renewing them from the library but when the time comes, I choose to sit in front of the TV rather than read.

When I have done some reading this year, it’s been in intense spates, several titles all in a row, all in a couple days. A punctuated equilibrium: watching TV is my default state, with quick periods of ravenous reading scattered around.

I’ve been struggling with this for the better part of decade. Peruse any of my past Year in Reading posts and you’ll see me harping on this. I consistently get to the end of each year with a feeling that I didn’t read enough, or didn’t read regularly enough. I have this idea in my head that I’m supposed to be a more dedicated reader than this.

Thing is: I didn’t used to worry about this. I didn’t used to think about it much at all. So why has it been such a major source of pressure and disappointment for me over the past decade? Let’s do some honest accounting of my history as a reader…

The only time in my life I was a truly ravenous reader was in grade school. I would spend hours every day tearing through books, mostly my dad’s science fiction collection. I had a couple major series I’d reread once every year or two. My reading lessened a bit in junior high, but I still read a lot. 9th grade is when my mom pointed me to Kafka, Camus, and I had my first experience reading Kierkegaard. But in high school, I largely stopped reading (though the summer after my junior year is when I discovered Sam Delaney, and forever changed the course of my reading life). I got so busy with theater and clubbing, I didn’t have time. I think I maybe read less than 10 new books each year of high school, plus the half dozen or so I’d been regularly rereading throughout childhood. I read a decent amount in college (natch) theater stuff and philosophy and anthropology in particular, and started spending good amounts of time browsing stacks in the library and perusing book stores.

My reading slowed way down in my 20s. I got insanely busy with work and had a social life that took up almost all of my free time. I spent most of the rest of my free time watching TV, binging shows via Netflix, and I’d go to the movies as often as I could. Visual storytelling replaced books for me to a significant extent. I didn’t entirely stop reading, and this is the period of my life when I really got into authors like Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman, among many others. This is when I was introduced to Terry Pratchett and I devoured all of his work. This was the era of my life I probably spent the most time in libraries, spending occasional free days browsing shelves and reading whatever caught my fancy. This is when I got into nonfiction pop-science and exploring religious texts, impulsive deep dives into random historical topics. My 20s is when I established what remains my pattern: short, intense bursts of ravenous reading, interspersed between long periods of not reading at all. I also developed a bad habit of buying random books that caught my fancy at the book store and then never read them.

But I don’t think I read more than 20 books in any given year in my 20s, and often not even that many. I stopped rereading books, too. I was satisfied spending most of my time with TV and movies.

In all, I haven’t been what I consider a ravenous reader since grade school. And that never bothered me before. So why does it bother me now? Why do I have it in my head that I’m supposed to be more of a reader than this? Why do I look at 38 books this year and worry it’s not enough?

I think it’s because of my chosen profession: I have an internalized stereotype of librarians—we’re supposed to be big readers. There are so many in the library profession who set 100 books a year as a challenge, and so many who define much of their identity around reading so much.

And that’s wonderful! But that ain’t me. 38 books in a year would be a huge amount for me in most other eras of my life. I also physically can’t read 100 books in a year: I’ve always been someone who reads deeply, I’ve never been able to master the skill of skimming a text. I struggle to believe anyone who reads 100+ books in one year actually absorbs much of what they read. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what brings me joy. I prefer to read less and absorb more.

The reason I belabor this every year is because I’m scared that it’s becoming hard for me to make myself read. I hear so many stories of people who lose their ability to concentrate on a long text. My inability most nights to make myself sit down and focus on a book is worrying. But: I don’t have any problem focusing for hours on TV shows and movies. And I do focus: I get just as deep into these as I do any book. I still spend large amounts of time immersed in stories and storytelling culture. I don’t think I’ve lost any ability to focus on reading. I think the problem is I’ve been trying to force myself to read more than I want to, and more than what’s the right amount for me.

I do think I have a problem with spending too much time scrolling social media. This is a very shallow and fracturing experience, and I’ve done some good work this year on lessening its hold over me.

I honestly don’t think it’s a problem that I don’t read much. (I also don’t believe 38 books in a year qualifies as “not much.”) I think the pressure to read more is external: it’s a perception that comes from being a librarian. I read as much as I want to and I don’t really want to read more.

I’ve been pushing to see myself as a kind of reader that’s just not who I am. That’s dumb.

Imma read when I want to. I need to let go of expectations to be someone I’m not. For my own well-being, I need to stop categorizing reading as something I’m supposed to do, and live with it as a joyful thing I get to do when—and if—I want to do it.

For a list of my favorite books I read this year, go here >

Books I Read in 2025

Asterisks (*) indicate titles I reviewed for Booklist.