For most of the decades I was childless, I read an average of a book a week. I use LibraryThing to catalog my reading.

Since 2022 I have fallen far, far short of that cadence—and, rather uncoincidentally, haven’t updated this blog either. In 2022, I read 8 books in total. The longest of these was JR by William Gaddis at 752 pages, a book I have started and failed to finish many times over the years.

In 2023, I doubled this count and read 16 books. All quite short, easy reads, but I was starting to get my groove back, so to speak. The last book I read in 2023 was finished at the start of October, just before I started work at Intercom. I read nothing in the ensuing 6 months, instead working myself to the brink of burnout and beyond the point of exhaustion.

In 2024, I changed jobs again and read 12 books in the year. An average of a book a month, but my reading was front-loaded and primarily happened in the second quarter of the year, before I became once again immersed in work. The longest of these was Salt, a nonfiction book by Mark Kurlansky of 496 pages about the history of well, salt. It was, shall we say, a bit dry? I’m not a big nonfiction reader. If it’s not work-related, I struggle to get through it and often will not finish.

So in comparison, 2025 has been a blissful respite. No job changes, no major life milestones to navigate. It’s been a quiet year, despite changing teams twice at work and pushing through some quite chunky technical projects, and parenting a high-energy toddler. I read 16 books, but two of those were 3-in-1 trilogies (the Sweetpea series, and Ursula K LeGuin’s Three Hainish Novels), so in a certain light, if you squint a bit, we can call it an even 20. Well, 21 once you factor in the O’Reilly-published book I acted as a tech reviewer for! And if for some reason you were to count re-reads and kids’ books, my Read Count for the year would probably be multiplied by a factor of 30. The longest book I read this year was Robert A Caro’s masterpiece work on Robert Moses, The Power Broker, at 1344 pages. I finished it in August and promptly took a three month break from reading anything at all.

I continued to draw lots of reading-related inspiration from Mandy Brown’s blog A Working Library. This year, a lot of my reading was also inspired by Remy Sharp (thanks, Remy!). I am, as ever, always on the lookout for recommendations that can help me get back into the swing of things. Although 2026 will be another very slow year for books for me, I expect, as we’re expecting our second child midway through the year!

Other reading

It’s not that I’ve been reading so much less, really. It’s more that my attention span, and the time I can dedicate to reading, is shorter as I navigate the distractions of parent-life and give most of my deep focus to work-related pursuits. So I’ve been doing quite a lot of shorter-form, non-book reading. Never social media, I dipped out of that quagmire years ago. Never online news: I just… cannot bear it, with the state of the world. But often by RSS, a far more long-standing habit of mine. Most of the RSS feeds I read are people I know or would like to know (and I would love to have more of these—send me your blog links!), things like Atlas Obscura, Longreads, and music blogs.

This year I also subscribed to two print magazines: Vittles, and The Fence. Between these publications and the few newsletters I subscribe to, I think I’ve found a sweet spot that gives me just the right level of exposure to the world out there, without overwhelming me with grief and dismay. I’m curious how other people are navigating things. What are your coping mechanisms to avoid empathy overwhelm? Which voices shape your world view, how much news do you consume, and through what channels? How does this affect your relationships (both the online ones and those closer to home)?