Book Challenge 2025

Despite the degradation of the internet and its various services, this tradition continues. I read 150 books this year. As mentioned in the last entry, it’s to commemorate 150 years of my town library’s existence. Long live the library!!

This challenge, a solid bulk of titles includes first volumes of various manga, some graphic novels, and a few children’s books; there were plenty of other genres like horror, self-help, humor, and even college textbooks and romantasy. As usual, a lot of books were started and either paused or abandoned. Ultimately, it was a great year for reading.

Goodreads got on the yearly-recap bandwagon #GoodreadsYearInBooks. So here’s one of its images that showcases reading progress.

As with most recaps, December tends to be incomplete because the data is captured around the middle of the month. But I make the most progress towards the end due to the winter holidays.

Of the 150 books I read, notable titles included Stephen King’s Later, Kotaro Isaka’s Three Assassins and Elise Gravel’s Killer Underwear Invasion.

If you’ve been keeping score, you might be disappointed to learn that once again “As The Gods Will” remains unfinished. Maybe 2026 is the year! I did restart Gantz and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure so that was a fun return to the comics of my college days.

Here are some reading tips that helped me complete this challenge:

• Juggle multiple formats. Reading paperback, ebook and audiobook versions of the same book helps maintain momentum. I did this with Culpability which I was dangerously close to abandoning.

• Time is precious so use reading tools. Kindle’s Word Runner feature is fantastic for pure efficiency reading. It flashes each word in the same spot, so your eyes don’t have to travel across the page. Undoubtedly, some reading pleasure is lost from ignoring the physical configurations of text on a page but for weaker ebook titles, it’s the best way to power through. What Happened to Lucy Vale was 431 pages and if not for this feature, there’s no way I would have completed this title.

• Adapt reading to the text. I’m still a speed-reading neophyte, but I’ve found some success with dynamic chunking where I sometimes read word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, and clause-by-clause. This depends on the text itself. By “zooming” my attention in and out, I can filter out words without losing meaning and turn pages faster.

Hope to see you in 2026’s Book Challenge! It might not be as ambitious but I’m going to continue the endeavor: read as much as possible, read outside my comfort zone, and read for pleasure. Till next time~