How to read 100+ books in a year and why would you want to?
Plus, 10 favorite kids books I read this year
Each month, 320 Sycamore Studios shares stories, and a love of books. Because reading with kids can change the world for the better.
Hiya.
Sometime around March, I started to wonder if I could read a hundred books this year.
Why yes I could. I hit that goal in October and just kept going. And with a couple weeks left in 2025, I’m guessing I’ll get to around 125 or so.
I know. It’s a totally arbitrary metric. But it has been a fun experiment.
So, at the risk of being insufferable, I thought I’d share how I did it, and why a person might want to.
For the record: I’m no hermit.
I wasn’t locked up in book prison or anything.
I worked and traveled …
… and spent time with family and Netflixed (including a rewatch of the first four seasons of “Stranger Things”).
The secret, if I have one, is that I listened to a lot of audio books. That, and I stayed off social media.
Okay, here’s my take.
How to read 100 books in a year
Keep your definition of “book” loose. Some “books” are glorified essays that are bound like books. One book I read was a repackaged graduation speech. (Disclaimer: I didn’t count picture books in my totals. It would be an interesting experiment, though: How many picture books could you read in a year?)
Listen to audio books. Stephen King counts them as reading. That’s good enough for me. I listened to 40 or so on my library app.
Read when you work out. Audio books when you’re running. (I got through all of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” on a single marathon-training run in September.) Physical books on the stationary bike. (Always better than whatever dumbness they’re showing on the gym monitors.) Either on the elliptical. (I use my hands to hold my book. I never quite understood the purpose of those arm bars.)
Protect yourself from yourself. I took the social apps off my phone.
Read when you walk the dog. Audio books, so you can keep an eye on the dog and steer him away from that goat poop he loves to eat.
Read when you do chores. I would have been so much better at chores when I was a kid if I’d had audio books around. These days, I don’t usually mind — and sometimes look forward to — vacuuming, changing the sheets, washing the dishes, etc. Especially if I’m listening to a great novel.
Read short(er) books. I’ve been toying with the idea of re-reading “Moby Dick”, especially after listening to Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Why Read Moby Dick?” in July. Maybe next year. 2025 was my year of the book century. (That said, I read a lot of grownup books this year, too. Around 50 nonfiction books, more than a dozen novels, a handful of Shakespeare plays, a few books of poetry, etc.)
Remember that some short books are longer than long books. Marcel Proust’s “Days of Reading” is only a tick over 100 pages. but you can’t, as Remy from “Ratatouille” would say, “just hork it down”.
And vice versa. I read Philip Pullman’s “Northern Lights” (AKA “The Golden Compass”) for the second time and the pages flew away under my fingers.
Read graphic novels. Why not? I read 16. Most aimed at kids, like Raina Telgemeier’s “Sisters” and “Ghosts” and “Guts”. Some weren’t, like Guy DeLisle’s “Hostage” and “Pyongyang”. Some were kind of both, like the amazing story of John Lewis and the civil rights movement told in the “March” trilogy.
Read some long books, too. I’ve been chipping away at “The History of Philosophy” for about seven months. It’s slow going, and sometimes I feel like I’m “seeing all the words” more than actually reading. But insights happen here and there, and it’s gratifying.
Read on weekend mornings. My only real reading “ritual” is on Sunday mornings. It’s my own personal Church of Book. I get up early, stow the phone in a distant room, make a pot of french press, and read from the current stack of books. I’ll read one for a while then switch to the next. Whatever catches me. No plan. I have a notebook at hand. I jot down ideas. A couple hours pass. It’s the closest thing I have to a spiritual practice.
Read in all the other gaps. There are all these fissures in a day. Riding on a bus or train or subway. Driving to the market. Waiting in line. Brushing your teeth. Making dinner. Going to the bathroom. Reading can fill them in like kintsugi gold. You can finish a book and not know how you found the time.
Why would you want to?
Just because. As Annie Dillard wrote, “a life spent reading — that is a good life.” There’s no reward. No “100-Book Club” T-shirt. Though I’d totally wear one.
Okay, maybe there IS a reward. I read a fair number of business books and often hear the phrase “leaders are readers”. I’ve often found that reading can substitute for experience until you actually get the experience. Plus, nothing confers videoconference credibility like a thoughtfully stocked bookshelf for a backdrop. (I don’t know about you, but I’m always snooping to see what people have read.)
To stop being so precious about reading. I used to feel that, given how limited my time is, I need to be oh-so-serious about what I read next. (The pressure!) But this year made me realize there’s a lot more time than I thought. Time for whims and tangents. Time to try new authors. Time to try books and then abandon them if they don’t fit or I’m not ready for them. (There were about a dozen that just didn’t “take” for me this year.)
To build your attention muscles. Focus is good.
Because reading is cool. And scrolling is the new vaping.
Because reading incites thinking. This is where I get to drop a Proust quote: “Our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off ... ”
Because reading is “outside”. As much as anything can, reading gives us a place outside ourselves to consider things. That may be the most important reason of all. There are powerful forces in the world that want to enclose and limit and monetize our attention. Reading physical books objects to all that.
Reading is good value for money. Why, you can walk down the street and just grab a book. Hours of entertainment free for the taking!
I close the year having learned so much and made so many new friends. And that feels like a pretty good thing.
My 10 favorite kids and YA reads of 2025
As you can tell, these are books I read this year, not ones published this year. It’s a totally subjective list, offered in a spirit of “Here are some books you might like”.
“Watership Down”, by Richard Adams
“Book Scavenger”, “The Unbreakable Code”, and “The Alcatraz Escape”, by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman.
“When Stars are Scattered”, Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
“Rez Ball”, by Byron Graves.
The “March” trilogy, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.
“Northern Lights”, Philip Pullman.
Have a wonderful holiday season and, as always, happy reading.
— Jeff
We’ve published 20+ stories so far and you can read them all for free on our bookshelf page. If you like physical books, a dozen of our titles are available for sale on Amazon.