Reading challenge of 2025 and new goals for 2026

 

New year's resolutions are not my forte, as I tend to break them pretty fast.

However, having book-related goals is totally manageable. I have worked on my reading goals last year, and did pretty well. One of my aims was to read more non-fiction, and last year their number increased to ten, which I'm pretty pleased with. They were on the subjects I'm interested in, and tied in with the fiction selection nicely (for example, a biography of Edgar Allan Poe and a novel American Boy, where Edgar appears as a young child).

My reading challenge on GoodReads keeps a tally on the amount of books I have read in 2025 - 99. 

Setting the same goals for 2026: hoping to read 52+ books;

Read non--fiction books, including a rather scary looking volume of Citizens by Simon Schama (I want to learn more on the subject of the French Revolution after we've seen a fantastic exhibition on the French Revolution in Paris last year);

Read more from British Library Tales of the Weird and British Library Crime Classics;

Study another book in a Dual Language series (I enjoyed an Introduction to French Poetry a lot);

Expand the range of books written by indigenous authors;

Discover a book outside my typical genres, and try something new, maybe Romantasy, which I have been avoiding so far (I prefer dystopian kind of fantasy, i.e. The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc);

Return to some old favourites (maybe Mary Stewart's Arthurian series);

Try not to worry about not finishing books I don't enjoy;

Take more books to the charity shops, especially those that I will never read again.

I am also hoping that this year I'll be able to attend some literary events, like book signings, and talks. 

And here is a full list of all the books I read through the year.

 

It was a year of Icelandic Noir for me, and it might well continue. I have just started The Shadow of the Northern Lights (Hildur no.3) by Satu Rämö on my Kindle. I have bought quite a lot of books from Orenda and Zaffre publishers (they do a lot of Icelandic and Scandi Noir).

Just before the new year's eve I bought The Killing Stones: The Return of Jimmy Perez by Ann Cleeves (and was peeved yesterday to see it a half price in the same bookshop). 

What else? I tried a free trial of Kindle Unlimited for 3 months, but decided not to continue. I have too many unread books in my Kindle library, and it was not worth it for me. 

What are you reading now? Do you have reading goals for 2026 that you care to share?