Booksology Read interesting data for 2025
YouGov America Senior Data Journalist David H. Montgomery shared findings from the Survey Data and Analytics Technology Group’s annual study on America’s reading habits in 2025. First, 67% of those surveyed said they would read four or fewer books in 2025, with 40% representing people who don’t read books. I think the median is the most obvious, as the mean can be misleading. For example, the study found that Democrats read more books on average than Republicans, but that average was driven by heavy readership. If you look at the medians, you’ll see that the typical member of both parties read two books in the last year. In fact, these Americans read a median of two books in the last year. If you’re a data geek or just curious about Americans’ reading habits, I highly recommend doing some thorough research.
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Shombonburg Quran with Mamdani Oath
Growing up as a Muslim, with an old, thick copy of the Koran on our home bookshelf, I felt like an outsider who understood the Bible as America’s religious book, used in courtrooms, politics, and more. So I smiled when I heard that Zoran Mamdani had taken the oath of office using the Koran from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. If you’re in New York City, you can see the Koran, which was probably created in Ottoman Syria in the 19th century, on display to the public in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building starting January 6th. Learn more about manuscripts and oaths here.
Stories of the most popular literary activities of 2025
To determine which posts were the most “popular,” I extracted Book Riot’s top 750 posts of the year and extracted the posts categorized as literary activities. It’s much more interesting to consider these in conversation with each other than individually, so I’ll organize them by theme rather than just listing the top posts. This is an opportunity to provide links to these stories and a short update on the current situation as of early January 2026.
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