Crunching the Numbers of a “Slow” Reading Month

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]Photo by Aaron Lefler on Unsplash

I got curious. The other day I mentioned that I haven’t really been reading a lot lately, and I tried to pin it on being too busy and too exhausted by the end of the day. Yes, there’s some truth to that — I havebeen very busy — but I still wanted to figure out whether this was an unusual reading year for me or not.

So I started looking at some of my reading statistics from one of the websites I use to track my reading, books I want to return to later, and ideas for future library or bookstore trips. And when I looked at my reading numbers for 2024 and 2025, I was honestly a little stunned. I’m still trying to figure out what the data is really telling me.

For 2024, if I’m to trust the statistics, I finished a total of 56 books , adding up to 16,719 pages. I haven’t cross-checked this number, but it sounds plausible, especially because I’ve stopped participating in those “Read 100 books this year!” marathons and have focused more on reading for pleasure.

So: 56 books and 16,719 pages in 2024.

Number of Books and Pages for 2024/2025

That’s already a little less than what I’ve achieved so far in 2025. As of today, I’ve finished 62 books , totaling 17,221 pages.

Here’s the interesting part. In 2024, it looks like I had at least six months where my finished-books count was 10 or more. One outlier was September, with 11 books. The lowest was March, where I only read two books — which happens to be exactly where I’m sitting now in November 2025.

Looking at 2025, the only month where I made a serious dent was February, where I finished 10 books. That was the only month this year where I reached that number. Everything else throughout the year has been between three and five books per month — nothing to sneeze at, but definitely less intense than 2024.

So somehow in 2024, I had six high-volume months, while in 2025 I had only one. Meanwhile, November 2025 is on track to tie the lowest month of last year with just two books finished.

I’m sharing all this even though I’m not entirely sure what point I’m trying to make, other than to show that I’m still reading a solid amount — and these numbers don’t even include the books I decided to abandon, which is something I’m getting better at as I get older.

I still think I might be able to bring my November number up by maybe two more books. We’ll see. But even if I do, it’ll still be a pretty low month compared to the rest of the year. Hopefully I can make up the difference in December, when I should have a couple of weeks off and a lot more reading time.