‘Last year I read 137 books’: could setting targets help you put down your phone and pick up a book?

BookTok influencer Jack Edwards motivates himself with reading goals – and he’s not alone. Authors and avid readers discuss the rise of metrics, and reveal how many books they finished last year

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very January, thousands of readers log on to Goodreads, Instagram or TikTok and make the same declaration: this is the year I read 50 books. Or 75. Or 100. Screenshots of spreadsheets circulate, templates for tracking pages and percentages are downloaded, friends publicly pledge to “do better” than they did last year. What was once a private pastime is announced, quantified and, in some corners of the internet, judged.

The appeal is obvious: in a distracted age, reading can easily become crowded out by work, screens and fatigue. Literacy rates in the UK are stagnating: in 2024, around 50% of UK adults read regularly for pleasure, down from 58% in 2015.

As the UK launches its National Year of Reading, a steady drumbeat of commentary has framed the decline of book culture as a civilisational crisis. Columnists have painted lurid pictures of a post-literate society, in which the shrinking cultural centrality of books represents a slow unravelling of the habits that once underpinned modern public life. In this context, reading targets promise discipline and a sense of progress.