2025 Reading Goals

Time really got away from me. It is time to start thinking about my reading goals for next year. We'll take a look at this year's goals and see how those worked out. Then we'll decide what goals to get rid of, what to modify, and what to keep the same.

2024 Goals

1. Read 100 books - This was a reasonable goal considering that the year before I had set the goal at 50 and then read 120 books. It turned out to be a challenge because of changes in my life in the last couple of months of the year. It could still happen, but it has been a challenge.
2. Read the 10 Oldest Unread Books on My Bookshelves - This was a new goal last year. I hadn't done this one before, so I wasn't sure how it would go. It turned out to be great. I gave myself 2 extra months to get it done, since there are 12 months and only 10 books. I had a struggle with that last book, and I was really glad for the extra time.
3. Read 50 Unread Books From My Shelves - This was also a new concept this year. I knew I had a lot of unread books and that I had to find a way to prioritize reading those books. Most of them are books I still want to read. Yes, the 10 oldest books is one way, but that's only 10 books. This goal got my TBR down, but gave me more choice and more ability to Read at Whim. However, 50 books turned out to be too many. I hated not being able to read the book I just bought because I was behind on my goal of 50 books from my shelves.
4. Complete the Booklist Queen's Reading Challenge - This was really fun. I have participated in yearly challenges in the past, to varying degrees of success. One year, the Book Riot Reading Challenge was so hard, that I completely gave it up and I haven't done it since. I did my best to fulfill these challenges with books from my shelves, but I couldn't do that for all the prompts, so I ended up reading books that didn't meet the other challenges. I think this is one of the reasons I didn't read 50 books from my shelves. I prioritized the reading challenge prompts, and ran out of time to meet all my goals.

So how are we going to move forward into 2025? Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Read 80 Books - Instead of aiming for 100 books, let's cut it back to 80. Honestly I have no idea what my work-life balance is going to look like in 2025, so 80 might still be too many. Or too little. I just know that there were several books on my shelves in 2024 that I didn't read because they were long, and I was afraid I wouldn't have time to meet my goals. That still may be the case, but can you imagine how freaked out I would have been if I had missed the mark even further?
2. Read the 10 Oldest Unread Books on My Shelves - This one I am planning to bring into the new year unchanged. Well, the titles of the books will change (obviously). None of these books is ridiculously long (ahem, The Luminaries), so I hope it's not as taxing a goal is in 2024. I do notice there are only 3 novels on the list. Interesting.
   1. Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld
   2. The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
   3. Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles by John Mack Faragher
   4. Faithful Place by Tana French
   5. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
   6. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox
   7. The Regional Office is Under Attack by Manuel Gonzales
   8. The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado by Holly Bailey
   9. The 33 by Hector Tobar
   10. Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb
3. Read 40 Books from My Unread Books Shelves - Taking a lesson from my 2024 goals, I am going to scale this back a little. 40 books is still half of my total books goal for the year, which is what it was last year. We'll see how that goes. Again, these must be books that I owned by 11:59 pm on December 31. Whenever I buy a book I put it on my list, and any book I read from that list is not counted toward this goal.

I have one more thing I want to try, but I am not sure if I want to make it a goal. For one, it's pretty radical and may not work. For another, I'm not really sure how I would measure it.

I would like to spend each month focusing on a different section of my shelves. I have 11 sections, so that even gives me a free month. The reason it may not work is that I may get all contrary about reading the same genre of book for a month and throw the whole thing out the window. Also, how would I set a goal? Read a certain number of books from each shelf per month? I guess so, but right now I'm not even sure what a normal reading month will look like. So I'll just leave this as a sort of nebulous goal. If it goes well, maybe I'll figure it out for 2026.

So there are the goals for 2025. This ended up being a really long post. That will be fun to look back at all next year when I try to remember what my goals are.