Many Americans jump into January with goals to make the new year an improvement on their last, and this year people are looking to get literary.
A recent YouGov poll surveyed what Americans resolve to do differently in 2025, and while many are looking to save money, nix their bad habits and get in better shape, 15% say they plan to read more. At Southern California News Group, we support this mission and have put together a guide to help you consume books in myriad ways. Whether accessing free books via handy apps for your phone and Kindle, to turning your reading into social events with your local literary community, there’s no bad way to read.
Check out the following ways to get lit in 2025.
Forget the nightclub. The book club is back, baby
The Silver Lake Reading Club made headlines in 2024. The L.A.-based club typically meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, charges $20 a ticket, consistently sells out, and landed a casual mention in Vogue. But there are many other book clubs around Southern California, including the global reading community Silent Book Club, which has chapters across the region, including in Irvine, Long Beach, Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga, Pasadena, and Inglewood. Don’t see something close to your digs? The website invites interested bookworms to start their own chapter. SBC members meet at bars, cafes, bookstores, and libraries, as well as virtually to read together. Both the Silver Lake Reading Club and Silent Book Club chapters typically invite members to bring their own books, but if you’re interested in reading the same book with a group and then debating and discussing the material, there are also more traditional-style book clubs you can search for via Bookclubs.com. The clubs range from Queer Science Fiction & Fantasy to Boozy Broads Book Club to Literary Baddies, Hopeless Romantics, and more.
Fit in a good read while multitasking with audiobooks
If you’ve been meaning to dive into a good book but are always on the go, grab some earbuds. Audiobooks make it possible to fit in reading no matter how busy you are. “Audiobooks are a gateway to a life of books,” Mark Pearson, the CEO and co-founder of Libro.fm told Erik Pedersen, who covers books for SCNG and writes The Book Pages newsletter, in 2022. “The books can come with you, so if you’re commuting or cleaning your home or exercising, you can be listening to a book at the same time. And that’s why audiobooks are the fastest-growing category in publishing and even surpassing the growth of ebooks.”
The National Literacy Trust released a 2022 report that showed (after surveying 3,000 adults across the U.K.) the mental health benefits of listening to audiobooks. The report found that 70% of adults who listen to audiobooks said it made them feel less stressed or anxious, with 67% reporting that listening to audiobooks cheered them up when they were feeling down. The study also found that 72% of adults felt that audiobooks helped keep their brains stimulated, and more than half said that listening to audiobooks made them feel more connected to the world.
There are many ways you can access audiobooks: Audible charges $14.95 a month in exchange for a book credit, but they are often running promotions for new members. Libby, the library app in which thousands of public libraries offer audiobooks for free, is another great option, as is Hoopla Digital, which is also free and library card-based. There’s also Libro.fm, Spotify, Apple/iTunes, Nook Audiobooks (via Barnes & Noble), Scribd, audiobooks.com and more.
SEE ALSO: The Book Pages: What the audiobook boom means to Libro.fm
Little Free Libraries
Depending on your neighborhood, you may encounter a Little Free Library while strolling through your block. The nonprofit organization hopes to be a catalyst for inspiring readers and expanding book access through a global network of volunteer-led Little Free Library book-exchange boxes. They are often found posted in front yards like a mailbox might be, but rather than being stuffed with coupons and bills, they’re filled with books and adorned with the invitation to take a book or share a book. While the wooden libraries sold on the website are a bit pricey ($189.95 and up) I’ve also seen DIY ones pop up around town. If you don’t have one nearby, maybe you can be your neighborhood trendsetter — not all heroes wear capes.
Claremont resident Susan G. Brunasso enjoys seeing neighbors come by to check out the library posted in her front yard. “I love hearing from parents of young children — that their kids love to come by and check out the books each time they walk by,” she shared with me on Facebook. “It’s also a fun surprise to see what new books have been placed in the little library.”
Crista Rosten, also of Claremont, installed her Little Free Library two years ago. “I use it to celebrate a diverse selection of authors and inclusive subject matter,” she told me over Facebook. “I’m a Read In Color library and also stock Spanish-language books and banned books whenever I can find them. When a neighbor told me that my library ‘was an asset to the neighborhood,’ my heart soared! I love it when I discover that books have been taken or when the library has been shuffled around. I love seeing folks walk away with a handful and I especially like when I discover new books that have been placed there overnight.”
Little Free Library has a map of registered libraries. You can check for libraries near your neighborhood here.
Are you visiting Southern California’s bookstores?
Whether in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside or San Bernardino counties, you can find an indie bookseller — and The Book Pages’s Pedersen made our readers a map that includes book shops like Bel Canto Books, Chevalier’s Books, Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, Once Upon a Time, and more. When you factor in our region’s neighbors, Santa Barbara and San Diego, there are 80+ bookstores and counting (and this isn’t even including Barnes & Noble, of which there are many.) Not only have we provided a map so you’ll know where the nearest bookstore is at all times, but Pedersen has visited many of the bookstores, including the newest, our region has to offer and shared their stories.
In Oct., The Black Cat Bookstore & Cafe opened in Old Town Monrovia. In Dec., DYM opened in Pasadena’s Hen’s Teeth Square shopping center and plans to serve boba along with their books starting in 2025. And on Dec. 14, inside a 10,000-square-foot former home decor emporium in Studio City, The Last Bookstore opened its newest outpost, a sister store to downtown L.A.’s The Last Bookstore and Montrose’s Lost Books. And while Southern California has opened new bookshop doors, bookstores are still struggling to thrive. Santa Ana’s sole independent bookstore, LibroMobile, is one of the shops that may be closing its doors in 2025.
For The Book Pages newsletter, Pedersen checked in with Ray T. Daniels, the chief communications officer for the American Booksellers Association, who made a solid point about why supporting indie booksellers isn’t just great for your personal bookshelves, it’s great for local economies. “A 2022 Civic Economics report — Unfulfilled — reported that 29% of all revenue at independent bookstores immediately recirculates in the local economy. According to the report, that’s almost 5x the money circulated when you buy on Amazon.com and almost 3x when you buy from Barnes and Noble or big box stores,” said Daniels.
Sign up for a book subscription box
Book subscription boxes are the best: You sign up for (typically) $15-$40 a month; they might have you plug in your preferences when creating a profile, give you an option from an expertly curated list or ask that you trust their savvy booksellers to send you something great, and then you forget about it. Your doorbell rings a couple of weeks later, and you exclaim, “Oh my! Who sent me a present?” The book might be a surprise depending on the subscription you choose, so even though it was you who sent yourself a present, it still has that exciting, unexpected quality.
There are myriad book subscriptions available and many offer their own specialty.
Skylight Books (located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A.) offers two different subscriptions. Rabbit Hole Reading Club is a nonfiction subscription service that dives into “pressing topics, eye-opening true life stories, and untold histories” every month. The Imaginary Friends Reading Club is a paperback fiction subscription that focuses on small press and translated works and sends out a recently released novel or short story collection each month.
San Francisco’s Black Bird Bookstore and Cafe also offers a monthly subscription, with each book hand-picked by Black Bird booksellers and personalized to the reader. Include details about yourself and what types of books you fancy when you sign up and let them do the rest. They offer subscriptions for both adults and children.
And then there’s Book of the Month, (and if your algorithm is anything like mine, you probably see them on your Instagram feed several times a day.) Book of the Month doesn’t surprise its members like other subscription boxes do, but they do curate a list of six recently released titles and let you choose from them each month. While Skylight Books focuses on indie selections, Book of the Month has a more mainstream approach and will likely hook you up with something you’d find on a bestsellers list.
There are so many different book subscription boxes, including but not limited not to ones that send out recently banned books, Young Adult novels and self-care items like candles or bath bombs, books written by Black authors, and even a quarterly subscription in which you get a signed first edition of a highly anticipated book from NYC’s The Strand. Book subscription boxes also give readers the opportunity to engage with and support indie bookstores across the country — there are book subscription boxes based out of Bethany Beach, Del., Tulsa, Okla., Brooklyn, NY and more.
Honorable Mention: Book Vending Machines
Book vending machines around Southern California aren’t as ubiquitous as Little Free Libraries, but these unicorns do exist. For the Book Pages newsletter, Pedersen wrote about one he found while scoring some pizza in Altadena. “The addition of these vending machines is the next step in our plan to expand our footprint and reach areas of the community where we didn’t have a presence before,” Nikki Winslow, director for the Altadena Library District, told Pedersen in 2023. “They will help us provide continuity of service as we move toward closing and renovating our buildings over the next few years. They will help free up our staff to plan events and partner with local organizations. . . But the best part, our patrons can access library materials – like books, movies, hotspots and more – at their own convenience, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
These vending machines can be found at libraries in Rancho Cucamonga, Anaheim, Fullerton and in 2024, one popped up outside the Eugene Colletta Memorial Emery Park Youth Center in Alhambra.