For the past 6 years (2020-2025) I set a goal to read 100 books a year. I set this challenge through Goodreads which is the website I use to keep track of everything book related. In 2025 I finally hit my goal and read exactly 100 books.

At the end of the year, Goodreads gave me some interesting data about my 2025 year in books. My busiest reading month was January with 14 books. My quietest reading month was October with 4 books. I read (on paper and audio) 38.3K pages. The longest book I read was The Count of Monte Cristo (on audio it was 47 hours!) and the shortest book I read was Small Things Like These.

Today I want to share a breakdown of the type of books I read and some of my favorites from the year. But first, I should note that I read purely for entertainment (even non-fiction better be entertaining or I will not get through it). If I could only pick one hobby to do for the rest of my life (thankfully I don’t have to) I would pick reading. I set a goal to read a lot each year not because I think reading is important but because I think it’s really fun. Goals should be fun!

I wanted more data that Goodreads provided so I typed up all my finished 2025 books into a spreadsheet and charted their type and a few more details about them. Then (for the first time since high school?!) I got to make pie charts.

As you can see the bulk of my reading was fiction. But still 16 non-fiction books? That’s a lot for me. (For comparison, in 2022-2024 I read 14 non-fiction books total).

I read 6 memoirs (my favorites were Endurance by astronaut Scott Kelly and This American Woman by comedian Zarna Garg). My favorite non-fiction of the year was The Light Eaters by Zoe Shalanger which was a wild book about plants. It’s well-researched and at times dense but it’s also MIND-BLOWING.