2025 Year in Review - mostly about the numbers.
Books read: 124
including 3 partial read books.
This was a year of reading more books than any other. A previous record was 122 books, and generally a large increase over the past few years.
One way this happened was I read a few more short books than have in the past. Last year I tried to concentrate on very long books, although I only read 10 it did mean I had a good page count for the year. This year the average book-page count came to 294, while in 2024 it averages 311 pages.
2025 was a year where I read more of my owned books than in years prior, however I still accumulated more books in my collection than I read. So the mountain of owned books grew by 22 books. Not too bad, actually, but I would love to have this number much smaller. My goal in 2026 will be attempt to accumulate less books. Maybe even read the new ones as I get them.
I also want to mention I read 79 of my owned books, which averages 63.7% of owned to borrowed or NetGalley books. Somehow I thought that percentage would be higher for my owned books. In any case the total number is the largest in any year.
Generally, the format of owned read was mainly print books, and that is reflected in the end totals since I actually acquired more print books throughout the year out of any format. But I accumulated more audiobooks, since I bought more of those than listened. It will be a goal of mine in 2026 to get to these audiobooks.
Like last year the next week or so I am going to go through the books I have tagged, ensure I own them still or delete eBooks I no longer have access to. I also have a few omnibus books to split out so each book will count, so one may become three. So the starting 2026 the numbers may vary slightly than the final totals below.
January.01.2026:
Own-to be read total: 1,168
📕 Print books: 772
🎧 Audio books: 176
💻 eBooks: 220
Numbers: end December.31.2024
Own-to be read total: 1,149
📘 Print books: 765
🎧 Audio books: 165
💻 eBooks: 219
Tracking the books I own and how long I owned the books and the age of TBR book read:
current year: 2
last year: 18
less than 5 years: 7
5 to 10 years: 17
10 to 15 years: 5
15 to 20 years: 2
20 to 25 years: 15
> 25 years: 11
If you consider anything over 20 years, that would be the largest number with 26 books, otherwise the most read are the books I acquired last year in 2024. I had a goal of reading 12 books owned over 20 years, so reading over double that number feels like a great success. And in those oldies I found some gems I should not have waited so long. And a few where I would have enjoyed the book more way back then.
The past few years I have tracked where my print books reside on my bookshelves and tried to read “around the shelves”. This means trying not to read from just one bookcase, but read from all of them. The fiction bookshelves are the most heavily read from, with the non-fiction more spread out. This year I pulled books out of 23 different bookshelves, which is more than prior years. 2024 I had read from 20 different shelves. This is another way I would like my reading to continue.
Overall I'm very pleased with my 2025 reading year and expect to have another interesting reading year in 2026.
2025 goals: - How did I do?
🗄️ Read around my bookshelves, from most of them. (33 shelves) ✔️ Read from 23
🗃️ Read at least 12 books super old owned books ✔️🚀Read 26
🗃️ Overall gain less new books in the year than I read (net zero/negative) ❌ fail
Total gain: 22
Goals for next year in Reading:
Since the country I live in is turning 250 years old, my plan is to read six or so American History books, mostly from what I already own and unread. I would like to read more than I accumulate and with not going to the annual library conference this year it may be achievable. I usually get a bunch of free books at the conference.
I have been diving deep into my bookshelves that have books sitting there for more than twenty years and would like to continue pulling these off and getting them read, finally. Also, I want to focus on my bought and owned audiobooks. I heavily listen to audiobooks and tend to get most of them from the library, although a good percentage are an audio version of a print or eBook I own. Still, I want to listen to those I paid good money for and hope to get through a higher number of those books than in previous years.
In year’s past I listed a few books I’d like to read, and generally didn’t do well with that, so I’m not going to list any books.
2026 goals (maybe too many):
📒 Read at least one book from the majority (20+) of my bookshelves (33 shelves)
📒 Read 12 super old owned books (20+ years)
📒 Read 4 of the partially read-owned books
📒 Read 6 books on American History (most being owned)
📒 Listen to 12 audiobooks owned (16 is better)
📒 Read 12 eBooks (mainly from nook, but from kindle also)
📒 Overall gain less new books in the year than I read (net zero/negative)
