pagesofjulia

It’s time for the annual year-in-review, folks. (You can view past years here.) As ever, if these numbers are yawn-inducing, come back on Monday and we’ll review books again!

In 2025, I read 94 books (100 in 2024).

Of those I read this year:

• 88% were fiction (Last year, 84%). Boy, has this ever changed since I was a nonfiction writing student!
• 75% were written by female authors (69% last year). That’s a big one over the long stretch, too, although not a huge change from last year. I definitely used to read more men than women. I’m not even trying.
• Genre-wise, we are still guided by ‘contemporary’ at nearly 45% of the fiction I read. Next is fantasy/speculative fiction at 31%, historical at 18%, and LGBTQ fiction at 17%. Children’s/YA was 14% of my fiction reading, and it’s all single digits from there, led by mysteries, thrillers, coming-of-age stories, noir/gothic and dystopian. Last year the largest chunk was of course contemporary (24%), followed by double digits in fantasy, historical, LGBTQ, sci fi, and speculative. Larger single-digit groups included children’s/YA, mystery, and thriller. It looks like children’s/YA made a bit of leap, maybe because of the growing importance of a couple of younger folks in my life.
• Because of a big road trip and the addition of a bike trainer to my garage, I listened to four audiobooks, all late in the year (none last year). And one of them made the best-of-the-year list!
• Nearly matching last year (at 48%), 47% of the books I read this year were for my own pleasure. The rest were for assigned review.
• I purchased more than a third of the books I read in 2025, and more than half came to me for assignments, mostly from my lovely editors at Shelf Awareness. I’m buying a hair less since last when, when I purchased 49% of my reading.
• Last year I reread a whopping seven books. This year? Zero.
• I did 46% of this year’s reading via e-books (last year, 43%). Not a big change but gosh I wish it were a little fewer than that.
• I read 74% white authors this year, and just 12% Black authors (an aggregate 25% nonwhite). Last year 69% of the books I read this year were by white authors, but the Black authors numbered in the single digits. Still and always work to do. I continue to feel dismayed at how overwhelming the numbers remain unless I make a pretty hard effort. Part of this has got to be my own thoughtless selections, but I know part of it is still at the level of the publishing industry, too.
• 23% of the books I read were authored by people who publicly identify as queer (last year, 19%.) That one, by contrast, feels like a number that’s creeping upward through no conscious effort of my own.

New to last year’s accounting was an unusually high number of books I chose not to review because I did not like them enough. This year, there were six of them to 2024’s twelve. Improvement there, I guess.

And in the overall… nothing new that I feel I need to work on. Still chasing more diversity in the authors I read. That’s the world, friends. Any reading goals for y’all?

Filed under: musings | Tagged: lists, year in review |