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This post may be too detailed for all of you, but I enjoy taking a deep dive into my reading trends each year. I also like sharing favorite books from various genres that might not make it into my “Top Ten Books of the Year” post. This is always long so bear with me as I review my 2025 reading by the numbers. Links will either go to my review, my GoodReads shelves, or Bookshop.org.
The Stats
Number
GoodReads challenge goal: 100 books
Completed: 111
Did Not Finish: 0
Format
- 40 audiobooks
- 45 e-books
- 26 physical books
Number of New-to-Me Authors
55
Number of Series Books
I started, made progress on, or finished 44 different series
Number of Re-Reads
1 (Pirate Stew by Neil Gaiman. I read it twice last year, once in print and then again on audio).
Target Age Groups
I seem to be unconsciously shifting away from books for the younger crowd, even though I do love them.
- Adult: 81 books
- Young adult: 10 books
- Middle grade: 9 books
- Children: 11 books
Average Rating
- Month with highest average rating: October with 3.91
- Month with lowest average rating: September with 3.44
- Average for the year: 3.71, basically the same as my 3.72 in 2024
Page & Hour Count
There’s always a big discrepancy between the page counts on these two sites, and I assume that’s because GoodReads doesn’t really track audiobook hours.
According to GoodReads, I read 33,987 pages, about 1500 pages more than last year.
According to The StoryGraph, I read 21,251 pages (about 500 less than last year) and listened to 357.18 hours of audiobooks, (about 60 more hours than last year).
The average length of my books was 302 pages, about the same as last year.
Shortest and Longest
- Shortest: Lola le lee al pequeño Leo by Anna McQuinn, translated by Yanitzia Canetti, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw (link to my review on GR)–24 pages according to GoodReads
- Longest: Onyx Storm (The Empyrean #3) by Rebecca Yarros–758 pages according to GoodReads
Fastest and Slowest
- Fastest read: I read a lot of picture books and graphic novels in less than one day
- Slowest read: I took 343 days to finish Another Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill (It’s meant to be read at a pace of 1 page per day across a year)
- Average across all books: 14 days (I read two page-a-day books in 2025, so they skewed this number)
Author Gender
To the best of my knowledge. I am aware that these numbers add up to more than 111, but I read a couple of books that had co-authors this year.
- Books by women: 65 books
- Books by men: 45 books
- Books by genderqueer authors: 2
Favorite Cover
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Favorite Reads among Genres
The breakdown by rough genres. The totals from these categories will likely equal more than 111, since I shelve books across multiple categories. If I didn’t review a book, I linked to a synopsis.
Anthology
Read: 7
Favorite: Another Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Audiobooks
Read: 40
Favorite: Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill, read by Catrin Walker-Booth (Top Ten Book) (link to my review)
Runner-Up: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James, read by Brittany Pressley and Kirsten Potter (link to my GR review)
Biography/Memoir
Neither of my choices is a straightforward biography, but there’s enough biographical content in each for me to feel comfortable including them here.
Read: 14
Favorite: The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Children’s
Read: 11
Favorite: Gibberish by Young Vo
Runner-Up: A Small Kindness by Stacy McAnulty, illustrated by Wendy Leach
Classics
Read: 4
Favorite: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Runner-Up: The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (link to my GR review)
Contemporary Fiction
Read: 19
Favorite: What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts, illustrated by Rohan Eason (Top Ten Book) (link to my review)
Runner-Up: The Lost Art of Mixing (School of Essential Ingredients #2) by Erica Bauermeister, read by Cassandra Campbell (link to my GR review)
Fantasy
Read: 44
Favorite: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2) by TJ Klune (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Graphic Novels
Read: 5
Favorite: Run: Book One by John Lewis with Andrew Aydin, illustrated by L. Fury and Nate Powell (link to my review)
Runner-Up: The Tea Dragon Society (Tea Dragon #1) by K. O’Neill
Historical Fiction
Read: 14
Favorite: The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry
Runner-Up: To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
History & Politics
Read: 14
Favorite: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Horror
Read: 9
Favorite: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James, read by Brittany Pressley and Kirsten Potter (Link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: Revelator by Daryl Gregory, read by Reagan Boggs
Middle Grade
Read: 9
Favorite: The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, read by Louis Hill and Georgina Jane
Runner-Up: The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale by Jon Klassen, read by Fairuza Balk
Mystery
Read: 20
Favorite: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James, read by Brittany Pressley and Kirsten Potter (Link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club #1) by Richard Osman, narrated by Lesley Manville
Retold Stories
Read: 4
Favorite: Lore Olympus: Volume 6 by Rachel Smythe
Runner-Up: The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, read by Sneha Mathan
Romantic
Read: 20
Favorite: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde #1) by Heather Fawcett
Science/Nature
Read: 6
Favorite: Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (Top Ten Book) (link to my GR review)
Runner-Up: A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko
Science Fiction
Read: 7
Favorite: Noir (Noir Chronicles #1) by Christopher Moore, read by Johnny Heller (link to my review)
Runner-Up: Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) by Connie Willis (link to my GR review)
Southern Literature
Read: 8
Favorite: Run: Book One by John Lewis with Andrew Aydin, illustrated by L. Fury and Nate Powell (link to my review)
Runner-Up: Revelator by Daryl Gregory, read by Reagan Boggs
Translation
Read: 6 (including 4 children’s books I read in Spanish)
Favorite: What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts, illustrated by Rohan Eason (Top Ten Book) (link to my review)
Runner-Up: The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood, read by Hanako Footman (link to my review)
Young Adult
Read: 10
Favorite: The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
Runner-Up: The Tea Dragon Society (Tea Dragon #1) by K. O’Neill
Reading Challenges
I did not do well with my reading challenges, completing only four of my nine year-long challenges. As always, I reviewed very few books that I read for these challenges so that’s something I need to work on. I only read two more books for my 50-book, 5-year Classics Club challenge so I will not complete the remaining 22 books by April 2026. Oh well. It was a rough year and classics were beyond my powers of concentration. For full details, see my 2025 Reading Challenges page.
| # Read | Goal | Complete? | End Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Books in Translation | 2 (and 4 additional picture books I'm not counting) | 4-6 | No | Dec 31, 2025 |
| 💯Southern Literature | 8 | 7+ | Yes | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Hundred Years Hence | 0 | 1 | No | Dec 31, 2025 |
| 💯 Craving for Cozies | 6 | 1-25 | Yes | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Nonfiction | 10 | 12 | No | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Classics | 2 | 12 | No | Dec 31, 2025 |
| 💯 Cover Lovers | 49 | 1-10 | Yes | Dec 31, 2025 |
| 💯 GoodReads /Reading by the Numbers | 111 | 100 | Yes | Dec 31, 2025 |
| The StoryGraph Onboarding | 2 | 5 | No | Dec 31, 2025 |
| 💯 The StoryGraph January Pages | NA | Read every day | Yes | Jan 31, 2025 |
| Classics Club | 28 | 50 | No | April 15, 2026 |
Graphs
One of the things that I really like about The StoryGraph is that they create all these beautiful graphs and bar charts for me each month and year. Here are screenshots of a few that I found the most interesting.
All Books Read
These are all of the books I read in 2025. You can click on a cover for my review or more information about a book. You can view my 2025 reading stats on GoodReads as well.
10 Comments
I love the graphs! Sounds like an amazing reading year for you, Jen.
Thank you!
I really want to read A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping! It sounds so cute.
It was!
What a wonderful collection of books you read in 2025 and I do love seeing people’s stats. I don’t do storygraph, but I like the way they display reading stats and information.
I debate about whether I want to continue with The StoryGraph because keeping up with it and GoodReads takes quite a bit of time, but I do like their graphics.
Last year I read the March trilogy by John Lewis, it was an eye opening series to read because so much of that time period was not taught when I was in school.
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
I’ve read several books about that time period since I graduated so I can’t remember how much we were actually taught in school. I suspect there was some mention but not a lot. I read the March trilogy before I read Run and it taught me a lot too. I wonder if the co-authors will ever finish the Run books? I think right now there’s only the one because John Lewis passed away around the time they finished it.
I loved looking through your deep dive into what you read last year. I enjoyed Another Year of Wonder so much; I do hope the author is working on Yet Another Year. I got Devil’s Highway for my birthday and I hope to read it this year. And I plan to post about Bite by Bite next week, if I can think of what to bake!
I hope there’s Yet Another Year of Wonder in the works as well (You came up with the perfect name for it if there is!). I thought Bite by Bite was just lovely.