I Read Only Non-Fiction Books in 2024, and it Killed My Motivation

How I plan to reignite my passion and purpose in 2025

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash.

One of the main reasons I switched from Goodreads to StoryGraph was the ability to visualize my reading stats.

One stat in particular stood out to me:

Image by the author via StoryGraph.

In 2024, I read 11 nonfiction books. Not a single deviation — just pure focus on high performance.

That was on top of the countless articles, textbooks, and research studies I consumed to finish my Ph.D.

And I wondered why I was burnt out on reading. A habit and passion I’ve carried since discovering Encyclopedia Brown at age seven.

The problem was that I neglected fiction. Fiction has a cinematic quality that makes reading feel like watching scenes unfold in your mind. But more than that, it’s a force multiplier. It sharpens your emotional awareness, expands your imagination, and lets you study human nature through characters as you watch them grow, fail, learn, and overcome. You can’t replicate that kind of learning anywhere else.