2025 Reading One Book a Month
For this year I set a couple of new year's resolutions. One was to say no more so I had more time, I don't think this has gone so well, and the other was to read at least one book a month and at least 12 by the end of the year. This page is to record my progress.
I used to read a lot, but lost the fun of it somewhere. I think my list of books I wanted to read had become a bit of a chore. When I started to read a lot of books from the list I never really got into them. In 2024 I read very few books so really wanted to read more. I went with one book a month so it wasn't to overwhelming and also started with some shorter books so it wasn't too hard. I want to find the fun in reading again.
Update 01/06/2025: I have been really enjoying pulp fantasy books and fantasy in general recently. Dwellers in the Mirage in the mirage was pretty good, I have been making my way through The Complete Chronicles of Conan and absolutely loved The Eyes of the Overworld. I started reading these sorts of stories because they were the inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons and are referenced in the Appendix N. I'm going to keep reading these.
Update 23/8/2025: I started to read Sword against Deviltry and really didn't get into it. Then I haven't read much since until The Courage to be Disliked which I got through really quickly. So much for continuing to read pulp fantasy. I think I can catch up if I read a few more books in the next few months. That should be doable since I have a few holidays coming up. That is if I get into some books. I will have to slightly modify the challenge to reading 12 books in a year though, but I think that is fair.
Update 26/8/2025: I have read another book this month with Flowers for Algernon. I think I need to not get hung up on trying to make myself finish things that I am not that invested in. I got through this in three days, albeit I was on holiday, and really enjoyed it. It isn't that I don't have the motivation to read, just not things that I am not enjoying.
Update 28/11/2025: I went to Türkiye at the end of September and was hoping to get some more reading done. I got about halfway through The Nicomachean Ethics while I was there and was putting some effort into it. It was good, but it didn't enthuse me to read. I like Greek philosophy because it is often still applicable today even though it is millennia old. Yet often it feels like I am putting in a lot of effort to understand ideas that are practically common knowledge today. As a result, after I got home I didn't pick the book up again and also barely did any reading for a month. Instead I have played lot of games including replaying The Banner Saga and The Banner Saga 2, playing Bloodthief, PEAK, some Hades II and Slice & Dice. These were all a lot of fun and games I recommend but I didn't really do any reading because I kept getting sucked into different games. I'm not very good at doing a little bit of lots of hobbies at once and tend to really focus in on one for a while. It got to November though and I started to feel guilty so I looked at my bookshelf to see if I had any short books that could get me going again and I had Siddhartha and Old Moon Quarterly Issue 1. These were both very short and I have now read them both in a month or so. It feels kind of like cheating because the books together have a total page count of less than 200, but I needed to catch up so here we are. I guess that is the issue with only measuring the number of completed books. I will try to make the last couple books with a bit more heft to them.
Books Read
- January - Tao Te Ching
- February - Dwellers in the Mirage
- March - The Enchiridion & Discourses of Epictetus
- April - Planet of no Return
- May - The Eyes of the Overworld
(I have some catching up to do if I am going to finish this) - August - The Courage to be Disliked
- August - Flowers for Algernon
- September - Digital Minimalism (reread)
- November - Siddhartha
- November - Old Moon Quarterly Issue 1
- December - Dungeon Crawler Carl
- December- Carl's Doomsday Scenario