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How I Read 77 Books in a Year as a Full Time Pharmacist
Last Updated on July 4, 2026 by Sierra Richard
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A 2025 poll found that only 6 in 10 Americans actually read a single book during the course of that year, and only 4% of Americans read over 50 books in a year. I am not exactly sure where that puts the 77 books I read in 2025, but it is definitely on the higher end of the average.
So today I am breaking down how I did this as a full time pharmacist, and where I found the time to fit reading into my daily life. If you have ever wondered how to read more books in a year without your whole life revolving around it, this is for you.
For full transparency, I am a research pharmacist. I work a steady schedule, which is not typical for most pharmacists, but I do have that luxury. I work in an academic medical center and I am salaried, so my workdays are about 8.5 hours. During 2025 I was working hybrid, on site two or three days a week and working from home the rest of the time, so I did not have a commute. I have a husband, but we do not have children. And I do run a small business on top of my full time pharmacist job. So that is what we are working with time wise, just to give you an idea of where I am starting.
But regardless of where you are starting, my goal for this post is to help you find a way to add more time to your day to maybe read just one more book. You do not have to read 77. In fact, it is a lot of work to read 77 books in a year, but it is something I enjoy.
The Short Answer: How to Read More Books in a Year
To read more books in a year, look at where your time actually goes. Trade some TV and social media scrolling for reading, make it a daily habit with a goal small enough to always hit, add audiobooks, and use deadlines like ARCs and book clubs.
How Long Does It Actually Take to Read a Book?
Most of the books I read last year were between 300 and 500 pages. I did have a couple that went beyond that. My longest last year was 600 pages, and the year before that it was almost a thousand. So it does vary year to year depending on what I am reading. I am getting ready to read a series where all of the books are around 900 pages, so this year I will probably read a few less books even though I will read about the same number of pages. It happens.
To give you an idea of how long a book like that takes me, those usually run between 5 and 9 hours to read, depending on a few things. Font size and page size matter, so a short paperback reads differently than a taller hardback. The density of the topic matters too. A light hearted romance is going to take me less time to get through than a dense fantasy book full of made up names that do not make any sense.
So where do I find the 5 to 9 hours to finish these books? That is the real question, and the answer starts with looking at how you spend your time.
Look at How You Are Spending Your Time
When people hear that I read that much, most of them ask, “Where do you find the time?” I have found that this is actually a very simple thing to figure out. You just take a little bit of that time to look at how you are already spending it.
Your TV and YouTube Time
The first place I looked was my television time. And that does not just mean Netflix or Hulu or a sporting event, which I still watch, by the way. During football season I will absolutely watch my favorite college football team. But it was mainly YouTube I was spending a lot of time on.
The average American actually spends 3 to 4 hours per day watching television. You might be thinking, that is not me, and that is totally fine, we are just using an average. But let’s say you are on the low end at three hours a day of TV or YouTube or whatever you are watching. That adds up to 21 hours a week. That is a couple of books right there. At the very least, it is one book.
Now, like I mentioned, I did not do away with watching TV. My husband and I will still sit down and watch a show or two together, usually YouTubers we have been following for years. When college football is on, I am watching it. Being more conscious does not mean cutting out TV altogether. It just means choosing things I actually want to watch instead of mindlessly scrolling Netflix or YouTube for something to keep me entertained. When I caught myself doing that, I picked up a book instead.
Your Social Media Scrolling
Some of you have probably already guessed where I am heading next. The other place you can get time back is your social media usage.
The numbers here were a little all over the place. How much the average person is on social media depends on their age range and their media literacy, and a lot of the polls were specific to just Instagram or just TikTok, so it was hard to see collectively what people were doing. But no matter where I looked, it came out to at least an average of two hours a day for most people in my age group, which is people in their 30s. Two hours a day is 14 hours a week. Again, that is another book or two you could be reading instead of scrolling.
So that is exactly what I changed. For a long time I have had timers on my social media apps, and recently I started deleting them from my phone altogether. In 2026 I was the social media chair for a pharmacy organization, so I could not do that before because I needed access to make changes and add things when they came up. Now that I am no longer in that role, the apps are coming off my phone. If I want to check something, I can go to my computer and check it there. And what I have found is that I have almost no reason to.
If you do not want to go that drastic, setting a phone timer and actually sticking with it can be very beneficial. The other thing I did was swap the scroll for an e-book. Whenever I found myself scrolling while waiting for food to be picked up, sitting at work, or standing in line, I replaced it with an e-book on my phone. I always have multiple books going at once. Not everybody likes to do this, and I get it, I am a little weird. But I can juggle a few books because they are usually very different genres and styles, so no matter where I was, I had something to keep me entertained that was not social media.
Long story short, I found ways to prioritize reading over other kinds of media, mostly TV and video content and then social media. That alone saved me so many hours that I was able to almost double the amount I read.
Make Reading a Daily Habit
The next thing I did was make it a daily habit, and this is where StoryGraph comes in. I am not paid by them. I have a free membership and use them as an alternative to Goodreads, and I have been using them for years. In fact, I am on a daily streak of reading every single day for 909 days using this app.
I am a person who is motivated by goals, so having a goal to read every single day was just something I decided to do a few years ago. It stuck because I made it extremely simple to hit. My reading goal every day is one page, or one minute of audio. That’s it.
Very rarely in the course of those 909 days did I only read one page or listen to one minute. Most of the time, when I would tell myself, “I just have to get my minute in” or “I just have to get my page in,” it would lead to ten pages, or a whole chapter, or ten minutes of audio instead. But making the goal so easy and accessible is what allowed me to keep the habit going.
If I had told myself I was going to read a chapter a day, well, chapters vary a lot. If I had told myself ten pages or ten minutes, then on the nights I am exhausted and it is almost midnight, am I going to pick up the book? No. I am not. I am just going to be honest, I would not. Making it so simple to keep the streak alive is one of the main reasons I have been able to do it.
Give Audiobooks a Chance
One of the biggest ways I fit more books in is audiobooks. And before the audiobook haters come at me with “that’s not really reading,” I do not care what you think. I am consuming the book. I am taking in the information and the story the author is trying to tell.
Honestly, I have found that some audiobooks are a better experience than reading the same book on the page. I really love graphic audio, and the Murderbot Diaries* that my husband and I have been listening to together on road trips is a great example. The sound effects and the different voices for each character make it so much more entertaining than it would have been for me to sit and read it.
The House in the Cerulean Sea* was another wonderful listening experience. I actually got to meet the narrator, Daniel Henning, in person, and besides being a wonderful human, he brings that story to life in a way that reading it on the page just cannot. Even the author TJ Klune recommends listening to the audiobook because of how well it is done. And I would be remiss, for all the crawlers out there, if I did not mention Jeff Hays’ performance of Dungeon Crawler Carl*.
Adding audiobooks as an option has been a really good experience. I have picked up and loved books I might not have read in a physical copy, because now you get to hear the art, the story the author wants to bring to life, plus the artistic interpretation of the narrator. For the books I just mentioned, those performances are so well crafted.
For those wondering, 32 of the 77 books I read last year were audiobooks, which comes out to about 42%. The rest were physical or digital copies I read with my eyeballs.
Fit Reading Into the Small Pockets of Your Day
Even with audiobooks and e-books, physical books are still my favorite way to read. So I just found ways to work them into my day. I would bring my book with me, and if I got a lunch break, (which did not always happen because I work in healthcare, let’s be honest) I would read my physical book then. When I was at home and had 10 or 15 minutes before I needed to start dinner, I would pick up my book. Before bed, I would pick up my book. You get the idea.
None of these pockets of time feel like much on their own. But a lunch break here, fifteen minutes before dinner there, a few pages before bed, and it adds up faster than you would think.
Use Deadlines to Stay on Track
This next one can help, but it can also add stress, so it really depends on what you like. It is having deadlines to finish books.
Becoming an ARC Reviewer
For me, a big source of deadlines was being an advanced reader for several books. These are called ARCs, which stands for advance reader copy. An ARC is a book sent to me by the publisher before the book comes out, and the goal is for me to read it around the publication date and post reviews to build early hype for the book.
So to me, the deadline is the on sale date. Some publishers request reviews as early as possible, sometimes a week in advance. Others want you to wait until after the publication date. It really depends. But having a book with a deadline attached would make me pick it up a little more often than I normally would, or prioritize reading over watching a video on YouTube, even when the YouTube video was what I would usually reach for.
If this method sounds interesting but you are thinking, “I do not have a big social media following, I do not know that this is for me,” I actually have a free guide that shows you how to do this without a huge following. I had less than 1,000 followers on the book account I was getting ARCs and physical PR boxes for. This is not something you have to be a huge book influencer to be a part of. The guide walks through five ways I have gotten these books myself, and if becoming an ARC reviewer sounds like something you want to try, I highly recommend grabbing it!
Joining a Book Club
Another form of deadline is book clubs, and I absolutely love book clubs. This has been one of the best things I have done for finding community, getting extra enjoyment out of reading, and getting me out of my comfort zone to pick up books I normally would not.
I go to two local book clubs, and I do think there is something special about being in a book club in person. But if you do not have one nearby, you can go to a platform like Fable , where there are a ton of virtual book clubs available. There are also Patreons for different podcasters and YouTubers, and plenty of other places to find online book clubs.
For me, being part of a book club gives me a built-in deadline. We read one book every month for each club. I have a romance one and a fantasy one. There are times I look at the pick and think, “I am absolutely not going to like that book,” but the majority of the time I am interested and happy to read it. And that is two books a month I am committed to. Two times 12 is 24, so there is a good chunk of a reading goal right there.
The Number of Books Doesn’t Matter as Much as You Think
I tell you all of this as a list of ways I read more in 2025, and yes, I am reading more this year too. But honestly? The number of books you read does not count nearly as much as how much you enjoy reading them.
I did not read 77 books because I wanted to read 77 books. I read 77 books because I enjoyed reading the 77 books I read. (Not all of them, some of them were hate reads, but that is a whole different story.)
The bottom line is this. If you look at your time and you are not happy with how you are spending it, find different ways to spend it. Use these tips. Maybe you realize you are binge watching shows on Netflix you do not actually enjoy, and you could pick up a book instead. Or play a game you have not touched in a while. Or finally join that art class you have been thinking about for years. Life is way too short to keep going about your days not enjoying how you spend your time.
Now, if you are reading this thinking, “I actually really do not like reading,” I would recommend finding a local independent bookstore near you and asking for recommendations. Booksellers are great at matching you with a book you might actually love. And if it ends up not being for you, find something that is.
So, if you are curious where I am at this year, we are about halfway through and I am at 33 books. My goal this year is 60. Like I mentioned, I am reading some longer books, and I have already read multiple that are longer than the longest book I read in 2025. I lowered my goal on purpose, because again, it does not really matter how many books I am reading. It just matters that I am enjoying the ones I pick up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do audiobooks count as reading?
Yes. In my opinion, listening to an audiobook means you are consuming the same story and information the author is trying to portray. In some cases, like The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, the audiobook is an even better experience than reading it on the page, because you get the narrator’s artistic interpretation, sound effects, and distinct voices for each character.
How long does it take to read a book?
It depends on the length and density of the book. Most of the books I read run 300 to 500 pages, and a longer 600 to 900 page book takes me somewhere between 5 and 9 hours, depending on font size, page size, and how dense the writing is. A light romance reads faster than a dense fantasy full of made up names
Do you have to read 77 books to be a reader?
Not at all. You do not have to read 77 books, or 50, or any specific number. The goal is not the count. It is to add a little more reading into your day and enjoy the books you pick up. Reading one more book than you did last year is a win.
How many of your books were audiobooks?
32 of the 77 books I read in 2025 were audiobooks, which is about 42%. The rest were physical or digital copies.
Can you get ARCs without a big social media following?
Yes. I was getting ARCs and physical PR boxes with less than 1,000 followers on my book account. You do not have to be a huge book influencer to become an ARC reviewer. There are several ways to request books directly from publishers and platforms.
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