Reading Activity for 2025

I know we are past the mid-point of January, but I forgot this was sitting in my drafts, so I thought I may as well post it, and I find looking at my reading stats fun!

This past year, I read 82 books, which was 4 more than the previous year. I also read 319 comic book issues on Marvel Unlimited! I definitely feel like I’ve got the good value out of that subscription.

This is how my ratings broke down:

• ⭐ Only 1 book was a DNF (or 1-star rating), which is 5 fewer than last year!
• ⭐⭐ 7 books got 2 stars, which is 8 fewer than last year!
• ⭐⭐⭐ 25 books were middle of the road 3 star reads, which is 7 more than last year.
• ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 40 books were excellent 4-star reads, which is 5 more than last year!
• ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 9 books were fantastic 5-star reads! That’s 5 more than last year.

My average rating was 3.63 stars, which, unsurprisingly, is up from 2024’s 3.44 stars. All that shows it has been a fantastic year for reading, and I’ve picked good books for myself! You can read here about my favourite books of the year, and my last favourite or most disappointing reads here.

Of the 82 books I logged, 24 were collections of comic book issues, so if I discount those, that is 58 novels or fiction books. 22 of those were eBooks, and 36 were audiobooks. I didn’t finish any print books this year – although I am currently reading Rouge (again) in paperback!

This is the chart I got from The StoryGraph on my books’ formats. I fairly successfully loaded in my Goodreads data, but I’m not sure how accurate it is, as some of the editions are probably still wrong (it is a laborious process to fix them).

My own calculations from my Obsidian reading tracker are 423.5 audiobook hours, but I do round up to the nearest 0.25 hour in there.

The longest book I read was Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie, which is an almost 24-hour-long audiobook. The longest eBook was Persepolis Rising at 608 pages.

The shortest book was Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 at only 175 pages. The shortest audiobook was Ayoade on Top at only 4.75 (ish) hours.

My audiobooks come from a variety of sources:

• 11 from Audible
• 21 from BorrowBox via my local library
• 4 from Spotify, before I cancelled my Premium!

The StoryGraph also gives me a breakdown of genres, which was interesting. Fantasy is unusually high for me because I read the Discworld Witches and Rivers of London series on audio. Rivers of London will also be pushing up the Crime numbers.

I read quite a few series this year

1. The Expanse – 3 more from this series, I now only have one left to complete it!
2. Sweetpea – I read all 5 and loved it. Highly recommend this series, especially on audio!
3. Discworld Witches – loved re-reading then continuing this. I have now read all 6.
4. Thursday Murder Club – I read the 3 latest books so I am now up to date. I’ve enjoyed these more since switching to audio.
5. Rivers of London – this was a new series for me, and I got up to the 8th book on audio before I decided not to continue.
6. Dublin Trilogy – I read the first book and did really enjoy it. I am open to reading more if I come across them.
7. Simon Snow – this was a re-read, I enjoyed this first one (Carry On) on audio, but based on reviews for the second (and later) books in the series, I decided not to continue.
8. Shades of Magic – also a re-read of a trilogy I previously loved. I have outgrown this, and I also didn’t like the audiobook narrator. I decided to stop at just re-reading the first book.
9. A Court of Thorns and Roses – I knew I wouldn’t like this… There is no way I’m reading any more.

This year, I started keeping a note to track the books I bought, so I know I bought 55 new books.

• 3 from Kindle (all 99p) before I gave up on Amazon
• 28 from Kobo (all 99p)
• 4 second-hand print books from World of Books. Most of these are art reference books.
• 9 print books in the Vintage Classics Weird Girl series from an actual bookshop.
• 11 Audible audiobooks.

I also bought in paperback some of my favourite books from recent years, so I have a physical copy for my library. I didn’t track that, though!

Of the new books I bought, I already read 14 of them (roughly 25%) in 2025. All the rest get added to the TBR collection!

I am not sure how many eBooks are waiting to be read because when I started sideloading books to my Kindle and then jailbroke it, I messed up the Collections I was using to keep track!

I am currently writing up my “goals” for 2026, but I am going to try to be more focused on learning and a little more intentional with what I read, so it’ll be interesting to compare next year. We’ll see if I actually did that and how much difference it makes!