My Reading Recap for June 2026

What June 2026 Actually Looked Like

The ReadingHabit June recap email landed in my inbox on the 1st, same as always, and this time I already knew what I was going to do with it. Last month I turned May's version into a public post for the first time – the stats, the books, the favorite, the whole month laid out – half as a record for future-me, half on the off chance it's useful to someone else. It worked well enough that I promised there'd be another. So here we are: entry number two.

If you read May's recap, you know the drill: the numbers, the books I actually finished, the one that stuck, and the habit running underneath it all. June was a lighter month than May on almost every count – less time, fewer pages, one fewer book – and I'll be honest about why. But the streak held every single day, through two countries and a wrecked morning routine, and that turned out to be the real story of the month.

The Numbers

Straight from Wednesday's recap email, my numbers for June:

• Books finished: 3
• Time read: 9h 54m
• Pages turned: 376
• Sessions logged: 47
• Streak at month-end: 181 days (every day of 2026 so far)
• Average daily reading: ~19 minutes
• Current reading speed: 0.67 PPM (≈167 WPM)
• Year-to-date: 23 of 18 books (five ahead of the yearly goal)

Two numbers stand out: 9h 54m and 376 pages is a clear step down from May's just-under-12-hours and 563 pages, and the daily average slid from 22 minutes to 19. June was simply a slower reading month, and I'll get into why below. The second is the year-to-date: 23 of 18 books, now a full five ahead of the goal the yearly math said was reasonable. That's the magic of a streak – even a slow month still nudges the yearly number forward. My reading speed hasn't budged from 0.67 PPM (about 167 WPM, comfortably below the ~238 that gets cited as the adult average), which is right where I benchmarked it on the Reading Speed Test and right where I've stopped worrying about it.

The Books

In the order I finished them, which this month means one heavyweight followed by the two-part finale of a series I've been reading all year.

The Art of Spending Money

by Morgan Housel

Housel's third book, on the strangely personal side of spending: why a smart purchase for one person is a waste for another, and how to spend on a better life instead of a bigger signal for others.

Est. read: 4h 16m

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I went in with high expectations and Housel met every one of them. I already loved his first two – The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever – so the third had a lot to live up to, and it did, right away. It's less about growing money and more about the strange, personal business of spending it: the argument that a "smart" purchase for one person is a total waste for another, and that you should spend to improve your own life rather than to signal wealth to people who aren't really paying attention anyway. If you liked either of his earlier books, this is an easy yes.

Book 12: Looking for Answers

by Alex West

The twelfth entry in Alex West's 'Not Business Advice' series. A short, candid field note on the experience, learnings, and decisions behind building his own business.

Est. read: 58m

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Alex West's "Not Business Advice" series has been a running thread in my reading all year. I wrote about Book 11 in last month's recap and Book 12 finally landed this month. It goes a little deeper than the earlier ones, more of the actual reasoning behind the calls he made in his own business. Fifty-eight pages, and I read the whole thing in a single sitting in one day, which is exactly the kind of quick, honest read I keep coming back to this series for.

Book 13: Castles in the Sand

by Alex West

The final book in the 'Not Business Advice' series. It's the longest at just under 100 pages, and the one that reflects back and ties the whole run together.

Est. read: 1h 39m

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And then, published the same day, the one that closes the series out. At just under 100 pages it's the longest Alex West has written in the series, and I deliberately read it slowly – partly because he's unrolling and reflecting on so much here, and partly, honestly, because I didn't want the series to end (there's a specific melancholy to the last book in a run you've loved). It ties everything together really nicely. I don't have much of a critical take beyond this: I loved it, and I'll be rereading the whole series for years to come.

The One That Stuck

No contest this month: The Art of Spending Money. The idea I keep turning over, days after finishing, is that the best thing money buys isn't anything you can point at: it's control over your own time. Not the car, not the house, not a life that looks good to other people, but the ability to decide what you do with your hours. It reframed spending for me as a question I hadn't really been asking: does this buy me more control over my time, or less? Some of the things I'd assumed were "smart" money moves look different under that light, and a couple of the small ones suddenly look like the best money I've spent. That's how you know a book really stuck – it didn't just teach me something, it changed a question I keep asking myself now.

Last month I predicted this recap would maybe have a "this one missed me" entry (an honest dud that every reading month eventually serves up). Plot twist: June didn't deliver one either. Two clean months in a row, no book I had to grit through or abandon. This isn't the norm, and I'm not promising it'll last – the duds are coming, they always do, and when one lands I'll name it right here. June was three books I'd genuinely recommend.

What the Numbers Don't Show

Here's why the numbers dipped, and it's the part I find more interesting than the numbers themselves. June was the most I've travelled in a single month all year – two new countries, and with them two new routines. The two-window habit I lean on (a session in the morning right after waking up, another at bedtime) bent hard under that. For a good chunk of the month my partner and I were cat-sitting two very sweet (but constantly looking for affection) little characters in the Netherlands, and lingering in bed to read after waking felt a bit criminal with two cats nearby, waiting to be entertained. So the morning window moved to the early evening, on the couch, cats in close proximity. It wasn't the routine I'm used to, but it was a reading session every day, which is the only thing that actually counts.

The clearest example of the month was the night I took a sleeper train from the Netherlands all the way down to Switzerland – an eight- or nine-hour overnight journey that took away both of my usual reading windows. No morning-after-waking session, no settled bedtime read. On paper that's exactly the kind of day a streak dies on. It survived only because I'd already read earlier, back in the Netherlands, before we left for the station. That's the whole argument for building a habit deep enough that it stops depending on perfect conditions: on a normal day I read out of routine, but on that train it held because 180-odd days of routine had turned "did I read today?" into a question I answer early, almost without noticing.

None of that shows up in "9h 54m" or "19 minutes a day." The dashboard counted the cat-sitting couch sessions and the pre-train pages exactly the same as any bedtime read, and they weren't the same at all. That's the thing I keep relearning: the metrics aren't the habit, they're the receipt for it. Two smaller notes for the record. All three of June's books went straight onto my re-read shelf – Morgan Housel's third joins his other two, and the now-complete Alex West series is one I'll keep coming back to whenever it pulls at me again. And Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, which I've been foreshadowing to read since May? Still untouched, but it's genuinely next up the second I finish my current read. Last month I said "June maybe, July more likely." July it is. For real.

See You in August

If you've never pulled a whole reading month into a few short paragraphs – I'd genuinely encourage it, even just once. A single note on the last day of the month is enough; you don't need a blog, a public post, or anything. The act of writing it is what turns a blur of "I read some stuff" into a month you actually remember. If you want a running start, the monthly-reflection prompts I use are built for exactly this. And if the counting part sounds like work – it isn't, or at least it doesn't have to be. ReadingHabit logs the sessions while you read and hands you the tallied month on the 1st of the following month, so the only thing left to do is the reflecting.

See you in August.