Happy New Year!

As 2026 gets underway, I’m taking a moment to think about my book-related goals for the year to come.

My bookish goals mainly have to do with my reading habits: What do I want to focus on more — or less? What types of books do I want to read? What challenges do I want to join or set for myself?

Many of my reading goals are similar to those from years before… but that’s okay! I’m a work in progress — and my life as a reader continues to evolve.

Below are goals (intentions) that I’ll try to keep in mind as 2026 rolls along.

READING CHALLENGES

I’ll be joining a few challenges, as well as creating a few just for me:

Goodreads:

This is one I do every year. Last year, my goal was 150 books, and I ended up reading 159. However — I want to take things a bit slower this year and give myself breathing room for longer books and/or books that take more concentration or effort. Keep in mind that my goal number includes print and audio books, and I usually also have at least a few graphic novels and children’s/middle grade books in the mix.

StoryGraph:

I love that StoryGraph lets us break out our annual goals in three ways: Total number of books, number of pages, and number of hours (for audiobooks). I think my page and hours numbers from last year are pretty doable, but once again, I’m going to lower my total book count for the year.

More StoryGraph challenges:

I’m creating several challenges for myself on StoryGraph to help me stay on track with my personal goals. I’ve set these up as public challenges, just in case anyone wants to join in… but really, my intention is to use these as motivation for myself! My challenges are:

• Non-Fiction Reading: Read at least 10 works of non-fiction — any topic will do.
• Read My Coffee Table Books: Because I have a tendency to buy these and not truly spend time enjoying them. This is the year to change that!
• Read My Shelves: My most important challenge of the year! I’m committing to reading at least 20 books that I’ve owned since 2025 or earlier.
• Getting Graphic: Making time for more graphic novels, especially those I own and haven’t read yet.
• Series Starters & Sequels Challenge: Committing to reading at least 10 books from series — either starting a new-to-me series or continuing a series I’ve already started.
• 20th Century Decades Challenge: This is a holdover from 2025 (and it’s a challenge I love). The goal was to read one book from each decade of the 20th century. I’ve made it through all but two, and decided to extend the end date so I could actually finish!

GENERAL INTENTIONS & GOALS FOR 2026:

Beyond the challenges, here are my overall goals related to reading, blogging, and my bookish life:

Read whatever I feel like, as much as I can. I say this every year… and every year it’s worth repeating! I’m always happiest when I read without a plan. It’s a wonderful feeling! Apart from ARCs and book group books, this is the approach that works for me… which is why I tend not to join big, popular reading challenges with a ton of prompts and categories to live up to.

Keep ARC requests manageable, and keep up with the ARCs I’ve committed to. I did really well with this goal in the 2nd half of 2025, but find myself starting 2026 with more ARC commitments than I’d really prefer. I’ll see them through — after all, my ARC request are all for books that I truly want to read! But beyond the ARCs I’ve already committed to, I’m going to attempt to limit my requests for the rest of the year.

Keep up with my book group books. We have our book-of-the-month picks all set for 2026, and I find I do best if I plan ahead and figure out in advance when to start each book.

Make time for my priority series for 2026, which I’ll be highlighting in a separate post this week.

Read books I already own. I know, I know… we all say this, every single year! I’m getting a little annoyed with myself for not doing a better job of reading books promptly after I add them to my shelves. I have so many books in my home and on my Kindle that I haven’t read yet — and while some no longer interest me, there are plenty more that I really do want to read. I’m going to push myself in this direction throughout the year, although it can be hard to keep the momentum going when favorite authors keep releasing new books.

Continue finding time for classics. I’ve been participating in the Classics Club spins for the past couple of years, which I love — but I have a big list of classics yet to read, and I’d like to carve out some time for at least one or two outside of the “spin cycle”.

Continue to pare down the number of physical books on my shelves, and be mindful about which I keep and which I send on their way. I’ve now had my own Little Free Library for over a year, and I’ve loved seeing the books come and go. When the LFL starts looking a little empty, I restock with a few books from my shelves that I haven’t looked at in ages. It’s a great feeling to see my “old” books get grabbed up and taken to a new home! I’m continuing to list books on Pango Books too, which helps me feel like I’m offsetting my book buying dollars a bit while also sending my gently loved books onward to someone new who’ll love them.

Do a big audiobook reread: I’ve been wanting to do an audio re-read of the Green Creek series by TJ Klune for a couple of years now. There’s also a new audiobook edition of Outlander, and well… it’s never a bad time for an Outlander re-read!

What are your bookish goals for 2026? Whatever they may be… wishing you lots of bookish delights!

It’s Tuesday… the listiest day of the week!

I enjoy two different Tuesday memes, and once again, their topics align this week — so I’m linking up with both.

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Bookish Goals for 2025, with the prompt: How many books do you want to read this year? Are you hoping to read outside your comfort zone? Are there books you meant to read last year but never got to? Are there new-to-you authors you’re hoping to read?

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Meeghan Reads — and the topic is Top 5 bookish resolutions for 2025, with the prompt: What are 5 bookish resolutions you want to achieve in 2025? Any reading challenges you will be signing up for? Or would you like to focus on a specific genre or diversity to read more from? (Click here to see Meeghan’s upcoming T5T topics for January – March)

Isn’t it great when Tuesday topics fit together? I’m not necessarily answering their specific prompt questions — focusing more on my reading and book-shelving habits than on the specific books I want to read. (And not that much has changed from this time last year — I could probably just copy and paste my entire post from 2024 and call it a day!)

My goals are less about numbers, genres, or challenges. Instead, I’ll talk about my intentions: I intend to improve some of my reading and bookish habits, although my focus may shift during the year. Below are goals (intentions) that I’ll try to keep in mind as 2025 rolls along.

Read whatever I feel like, as much as I can. I say this every year… and every year it’s worth repeating! I’m always happiest when I read without a plan. It’s a wonderful feeling! Apart from ARCs and book group books, this is the approach that works for me… which is why I tend not to participate in very few (if any) reading challenges.

Keep ARC requests manageable, and keep up with the ARCs I’ve committed to. I’m a little over-extended for the first few months of 2025, but once I read all my February and March ARCs, my commitments should be much more under control. I intend to slow down on requesting any additional ARCs, other than ARCs for books I intend to read upon release no matter what.

Plan ahead to make time for my book group books. We have our book-of-the-month picks all set for 2025, and I’d like to be more thoughtful about planning my reading time so I include these books without feeling pressure or worrying about deadlines.

Commit to reading (or sampling) my priority series for 2025, which I highlighted in my series-to-read post for this year.

Keep my Goodreads challenge goal realistic. I’ve ended up exceeding my Goodreads challenge goal during each of the past several years, but that has a lot to do with including graphic novels and children’s books in the mix. Which is great, and I love when that happens, but I don’t want to assume it’ll be true every year. I’m starting with a more modest number to keep the pressure off and allow time for reading bigger books too, if I feel like it. And if I find myself ahead of target by mid-year, I can always adjust to a more ambitious goal.

Remember to note the format of the books I read. This isn’t a big deal, but I’ve been noticing that I tend to read certain genres via audiobook and others via print, and I probably should say which is which in my reviews. Not that it truly matters, but the audio experience can be very different than the print experience, and even just for my own reference, I’d like to be more consistent about classifying books correctly.

Continue finding time for classics. I’ve been participating in the Classics Club spins for the past couple of years, which I love — but I have a big list of classics yet to read, and I’d like to carve out some time for at least one or two outside of the “spin cycle”.

Continue to pare down the number of physical books on my shelves, and be mindful about which I keep and which I send on their way. 2024 was the year where one of my dreams came true, and I finally installed my very own Little Free Library. I’ve begun sorting my many, many books into keepers and non-keepers. For the ones I no longer feel the need to own, I’m trying to sell the ones in best condition on Pango Books, and most of the others are going into the LFL.

Do a big audiobook reread: I’ve been wanting to do an audio re-read of the Green Creek series by TJ Klune. I haven’t started yet — the books are long, and I only want to start when I know I’ll have both the time and the focus to listen to the four books in the series straight through.

What are your bookish goals for 2025? Whatever they may be… wishing you lots of bookish delights!

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Bookish Goals for 2024.

OK, I’m more or less repeating what I’ve written in past years. I’m not a big fan of resolutions, so let’s consider this instead that I’m setting some basic intentions. Whether or not I’ll stick to these as the year progresses remains to be seen… and I’m fine with that.

These are a few general concepts I hope to apply to my reading this year:

Read whatever I feel like. I say this every year… and every year it’s worth repeating! Other than book group reading commitments, I’m always happiest when I read without a plan. It’s a wonderful feeling!

Keep ARCS manageable. I have a lot of ARCs on my plate for books releasing in the first half of the year, but many of these are books I’d want to read no matter what. I intend to slow down my requests from this point forward — so I can get back to the point above!

Spend some time reading (or sampling) at least a few of the books/series I highlighted in my series-to-read post for this year.

Make a dent in my classic reading plans. I’ve been participating in the Classics Club spins for the past couple of years, which I love — but I have a big list of classics yet to read, and I’d like to carve out some time for at least one or two outside of the “spin cycle”.

Decide what to do with the books I’ve pulled from my shelves but haven’t yet removed from my house. I keep fantasizing about installing a Little Free Library, but I’m not sure that where I live is really conducive to having one of those. So, I need to start doing some sorting – some nicer books to try to sell, some to trade it an a used bookstore, and some to go to my library’s donation center.

Do a big audiobook reread: I’ve been planning to do audio rereads of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and also want to do the same with the Green Creek series. Both will take a lot of time, and are probably multi-year projects. I want to at least get started in 2024.

Mostly, for 2024 and always, this pretty much sums up my attitude:

What are your bookish goals for 2024? Whatever they may be… wishing you lots of bookish delights!

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Bookish Goals for 2023.

At the risk of being totally repetitive, I’m basically repurposing the version of this topic that I did in 2021 (apparently, I didn’t bother writing one in 2022!). Year after year, certain basic goals, resolutions, concepts remain true.

I really don’t believe in making resolutions, but I do have some general ideas about how I want to focus my reading in 2023, so here we go:

Read whatever I feel like. Okay, I say this every year… and every year it’s worth repeating! Other than book group reading commitments, I’m going to mostly be sticking to reading without a plan. It’s a wonderful feeling!

Keep ARCS to a minimum. I feel like I’ve been getting better at this. It can be hard to resist requesting every shiny new book that comes up on NetGalley, but I know I’m happiest when I’m not overloaded with obligation books.

Read at least a few of the books/series I highlighted in my series-to-read post for this year.

Tackle at least a few books outside my comfort zone or that will take a bit of extra effort. The main one I have in mind is The Silmarillion (but don’t hold me to it — plans may change!)

For the sake of keeping bad habits in check, don’t hit the Buy Now button for Kindle books just because they’re a price break! I have more books in my Kindle library than I know what to do with. I’m trying to get better at only buying e-books when I’m ready to read them. (This already seems like it’ll be tough to stick with… but it’s worth making the effort.)

And one ongoing task — I should probably reorganize my bookshelves (yet again) and put together a new stack of books to donate. One of these rainy days, I’ll get around to this one!

That’s about it for me. I hope to have a year full of fun, enjoyable reading with very few requirements about when I finish a certain book or what to read in any given moment.

What are your bookish goals for 2023? Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy year… with plenty of great books to read!