One late night, doom scrolling on Instagram I came across this Instagram Clip of a show discussing how elite college students can't read books.
My mind blown with the idea that “In 1976, 40% of high school seniors had reported reading at least 6 books beginning to end…and 1 in10 graduates today have read at least 6 books from beginning to end." How can this be true?
This of course got me to purchase Apple+News so I could read the whole article in “The Atlantic” titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” ((Atlantic article)) Which set off a series of events that included a deep dive to see if I could find studies or more articles, and asking my fellow teachers and colleagues what they thought of all this. The conversations were deep, thoughtful, and insightful, but without resolution.
Then I did what any reasonable, sane person would do, I brought it up to my friends over coffee at Espressions. Their reactions were equal to mine, aghast and sad that people weren’t finding joy digging into books and getting lost in stories.
And then Devin said, “We need a “Book-It” style program to get people reading…only with coffee and comfy chairs.”
After some noodling, Lisa, Devin, and I came up with the idea of the 2,025 Books in 2025 Challenge. We are inviting everyone to join us in collectively reading 2,025 books this year. This equates to 169 people to agreeing to read 1 book a month for the year. We are pretty sure this is attainable.
We are inviting readers of all ages, genres, and levels to join us in this challenge. Books can be read via an actual book, an e-reader, or listened to as audio books. (Yes, audio books count too!)
All three of us are avid readers. We love reading and we read a lot! Like a lot, a lot. Devin even has an annual book journal that she keeps where she lists all the books she reads, doesn’t finish, ranks them and even has a “March Madness” type contest of books each year so she can decide “the best book she read that year.” (PS she’ll be doing a workshop on this in April.)
HOW DO YOU JOIN THE CHALLENGE?
- Read (or listen to) a book.
- Submit it online or tell our barista's about it (and they will help submit it)! Log your books & reviews here!
- Get your special bookmark if you are in the Aurora area!
- If you aren't from around here, don't worry, you'll learn how to at least get a really cool sticker when you log your first book!
We will keep a running tally to share on our website, social media, and in our coffee shop, Espressions: Coffee and Community in Aurora, Nebraska. We are inviting readers of all ages, from all the places, to join us in reading!
For those of you who, like us, loved Pizza Hut’s “Book It Program”, you are probably wondering, but where is the pizza? Well, we aren’t giving away pizzas, but we are giving away drinks at the shop, gift certificates, books, stickers, and other prizes.
While we are still working out a few of the details on prizes, here are the FOR SURE OFFERINGS:
- Book Mark Tracker: For our Espressions guests, stop in to get a book mark for more prize opportunites!
- Book Review Spotlight: If you r stellar book review is shared, you will receive a prize and we will contact you.
- Monthly Drawing: Each book you submit each month will be entered into our drawing. Onve winner will be from Nebraska, anda second winner will be from our world-wide pool!
There will be more prizes and reading specific events this year too! Be sure to watch our socials, our website, and our tracker in the shop, to see how we’re doing reading, what people are reading, where they are reading at, and who won what!
We know that this won’t provide the overall fix to helping students re-engage with reading, but we do believe, in some small part, as a community, we can most definitely be a part of the solution.
Here’s to happy reading in 2025!
