This post was supposed to go up a week or so ago, but it took much longer than anticipated to put together so I decided to get most of my 2025 wrap up posts out of the way first before posting this one, to give myself a bit more time to work on it.
Every year I set goals and last year I found that whilst I abandoned and forgot about most of my new years resolutions after the first week or so, I was much more active in tracking my progress towards my reading goals – largely because I have a both a reading journal and a spreadsheet + Storygraph to help me do so (keep an eye out for some other goals-related posts coming your way soon that will try and apply this methodology to other areas of my life).
Thus, I thought I’d take you through my reading goals today and also show you the spreads I’ve made in my reading journal to help keep myself on track! Without further ado, let’s take a look at my 2026 reading goals.
If you want a baseline for this post – go and check out my 2025 reading goals reflection post!
This is technically not designed as a top ten Tuesday post – but I do have 5 key goals + 5 reading challenges and I happened to finish it the same day as T10T is doing their goals topic, so I’m counting it as my T10T post for the week! Feel free to link your own goals post (T10T or otherwise) in the comments as I will be blog hopping today and later this week and I love reading about people’s goals!
Big Yearly Goals
I technically have 5 goals + some reading challenges this year, but on top of that I have what I call the “big yearly goals”: how many books, how many pages, and how many days.
I want to read 52 books this year. This is the same as last year (which I easily surpassed!), but this year I’m only counting new reads that have an ISBN towards this goal. Seems a bit arbitrary, but I reread a lot of books last year and read a lot of individual short stories, so this year I want to focus more on getting books off my TBR. I’ll definitely still reread books etc. but those just won’t count to this goal (hence why there’s no change despite me easily surpassing it last year).
- I also want to read 20,000 pages, which is less than I read last year (25k) but higher than my 2025 goal (15k). This is mostly to stop me reading tons of short books to reach the goal!
- Finally, I want to increase the number of days I read. Thus, I want to read a little bit at least 2/3 days of the year (244 days total). This is the same as my goal last year, which I didn’t quite meet, but I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get there this year!
Goal 1: Be Consistent
My first main goal (of five) is to be consistent. I’ve broken down each of my main goals into actionable, specific goals and there are two for this one.
1: Read 20min/day at least 3 times/week.
This is also inspired by a goal I had last year (30min/day, 4x/week) that I almost but not quite met. It’s a pretty simple idea – unlike my 244 day goal which only requires me to read a single page, this goal is more about cultivating a reading habit where I read for a good amount of time most days (e.g. before bed or whilst commuting).
2: Read 2 short stories or essays per month [24].
As with the other part of this goal, this is an adaptation from a 2025 goal that ended up being unrealistic. Last year I wanted two Korean short stories per month and 1 short story general per week but this just ended up being too much and I didn’t do anything at all for most of the year. Instead, I’m going to aim for 2 either short stories or essays per month (on average), but will consider it complete so long as I hit 24.
However, to start with I will only count one story per author per collection, to keep the spirit of variety. For instance, a short story collection with 8 stories by 8 authors would count 8 times but one with 8 stories by 1 author would only count once. We’ll see how this goes for the first couple of months and then I might get rid of this rule if needed.
Goal 2: Decrease my TBR and keep on top of purchases
Like I said above, I really want to work on getting my TBR down this year. Starting last year I’ve been really working on reducing the number of books I buy (quite successfully, with a couple of exceptional circumstances), and I want to take that even further this year by also focusing on getting more backlist titles of my shelves as well.
1: Read more books off my TBR than I purchase
I want to see a net decrease in TBR books this year. To do this I’m not doing a book ban (would never work for me – I love bookshops too much) but I am making myself earn by book purchases. This is something I did last year too, but I’m making it a bit stricter this year.
Essentially, I have to earn points that I can cash in for book purchases (with one ‘freebie’ per quarter). I am going to run two different point systems this year: normal and special.
Normal – for every 3 books I read that were on my active TBR before 1/1/2026, I can purchase 1 book for my active TBR. My active TBR are books that I could pick up and finish at any point.
Special – for every 3 books I read that were not on my active TBR before 1/1/2026 (e.g. borrowed books, new purchases, inactive TBR books), I can purchase 1 book for my inactive TBR*.
*My “inactive” TBR is mostly comprised of books that I bought for research that I might be dipping in and out of rather than reading cover to cover, or books I buy in a foreign language that are a bit too hard for my current level but that I want to get to in the future. Basically, things I don’t expect myself to be taking off my TBR as a priority.
2: Tackle sections of my bookshelf that are under 20% read
My “bookshelves” are organised my genre (and I put that in brackets because I currently have none and all my books are in boxes) and there are some sections that heavily dominated by unread books. This is partially because I haven’t had regular access to most of my books for quite a few years now, so I tend to end up reading either new purchases or books that are available through the library.
However, I want to make sure that all of the sections of my bookshelf are filled with at least 20% read books.
Thus, I have identified a few key areas that I need to read from this year:
- Classic poetry (x1)
- A book from central or South America (x1)
- A speculative fiction book from the Anglosphere* (x1)
- Travel or nature writing (x2)
- A book about tea (x1) – and yes this is a section in and of itself
- Mythology and fairytale (x1)
- A short story collection from the Anglosphere* (x1)
- A nonfiction humanities book (x1)
*I separate my fiction and classics into Anglosphere (UK/US/CAN/AUS etc.) vs World Literature sections.
Goal 3: Read and review new release promptly
I made my 2025 reading goals before I started this blog, so although I had a goal to be aware of new releases and pick one per quarter to read, I had no review-related goal.
This year, however, I want to read more new releases and I also want to place a greater emphasis on reading and reviewing them within a couple of weeks of their coming out. This means I will be preordering more books/buying them upon release, but it hopefully means I can write useful reviews for everyone!
I haven’t pre-picked all of the books for the whole year, as you can see above. I have identified my books for the first few months since Waterstones had a 25%(20%?) off preorders deal back in December, but the rest of the year is mostly up for grabs, bar a couple of releases that I’m already super highly anticipating. (You can check out a full list of my anticipated releases for Jan-Mar here!)
I will also be casually participation gin the New Release Challenge 2026 (@The Chocolate Lady) as part of my aim to review new releases.
Goal 4: Revisit authors and continue series
This is also a goal that I’m continuing from last year, although I’ve tweaked it slightly to turn it into bingo boards!
1: Read more books by authors I’ve read from before
For this, I have a bingo board featuring 9 authors I’d like to read another book from this year, most of whom are authors that I already have an option on my physical TBR.
Additionally I’ve created a little “wall of fame” for the authors that I read multiple books by in 2026.
Authors I want to read:
| Author | Books I’ve Read Before |
|---|---|
| Tan Twan Eng | The Garden of Evening Mists |
| Han Kang | The White Book; Greek Lessons |
| Elizabeth von Arnim | The Enchanted April; Elizabeth and Her Garden |
| An Yu | Ghost Music |
| George Orwell | Shooting an Elephant; Animal Farm |
| Becky Chambers | Monk and Robot series; To Be Taught, If Fortunate |
| Taylor Jenkins Reid | The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo |
| Lisa See | Lady Tan’s Circle of Women |
| Fredrick Backman | My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises; And Every Morning, the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer |
2: Continue series I’ve started
I’ve identified 9 sequels or series finales that I want to read this year. Most of these are series that I’m not caught up on, but there are a couple of 2026 releases there too.
There’s also a “series wall of fame” for series I complete.
Sequels to read:
*I actually haven’t read book one of Wayfarers by Becky Chambers yet, but I’m so confident I will enjoy it that I’m putting book two on here just so I don’t push off continuing the series for too long!
Goal 5: Read more globally and diversely
This will probably always be a goal for me!
1: Read a book from each major region of the world
What counts as a “region” or even “major region” is pretty subjective and in the past I’ve just done continents, but for this one I’m specifically going to try and focus on some regions that I notice myself reading very little from: Central/South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Central/South Asia. These are some pretty big regions, but I think that’s useful for making the goal actually achievable. I have ideas for some of them, but if you have recommendations do let me know!
Since I love translated fiction anyway and achieving this goal would mean reading even more translated fiction, I’ll also try and participate in the 2026 Books in Translation Challenge (@Introverted Reader). I’ll probably get to Linguist (10+) level but let’s cautiously put my goals as Bilingual (7-9 books).
BONUS: Complete the Storygraph Reads the World Challenge 2026
I’d also like to actually complete the Storygraph Reads the World challenge this year. I joint it every year and then never get very far with it. It’s a pretty simple challenge: every year, the Storygraph picks 10 countries and you try to read a book from that country. This year the countries are: Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Iraq, Morocco, Senegal, Sweden, and Thailand. I’d love recommendations for these too!
2: Read at least 6 books by POC authors (except East Asian), including at least 2 by Black authors
Please note that I only exclude East Asian authors from this because I naturally read a lot of books by East Asian authors (I mean, it is kind of my whole degree so…).
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory, and again I would love some recommendations. (I do have quite a few on my TBR, but I’d love to find more!)
Reading and Blogging Challenges
Apart from these goals above, I also have a couple of reading challenges that I’m planning to participate in or ones that I’m running for myself as little bonus challenges.
Out of Your Comfort Zone Reading Challenge (@BookCheshireCat)
This is a “lowkey challenge all about reading outside your comfort zone”, where you earn badges depending on how many books you read outside your comfort zone throughout the year. I’m aiming for the “Traveler” level, which means reading 10 books outside my comfort zone. There are also badges for bonus prompts, which I will try and complete if I can, but I’m not going to stress them too much.
For the sakes of this challenge, I tried to define what my comfort zone is: fantasy (except long epics), translated Japanese/Korean fiction, sci-fi set in space, and books on premodern East Asia are all not allowed to be used in this challenge (for me). For other books, I’ll use my gut feeling to determine if it counts!
Café Crawl Challenge 2026 (@Genie In A Novel)
This is a café-themed reading challenge with 12 main prompts and 6 bonus prompts based on drinks and food you’d order in a café. I’m going to try and fill as many as possible.
There’s no real goal-related reason for me to do this challenge, it just seemed really cute and fun!
Romanceopoloy 2026 (@Under the Covers)
Romanceopoloy is by far the most complicated of these year-long challenges – the thing that comes closest to it in terms of vibe/set up is probably the Magical Readathon (which I will be trying to actually complete in 2026…) but this one is specifically focused on romance books. It has nothing to do with any of my goals, I just think it’s a fun concept so wanted to join in.
To complete, you technically need a minimum of 20 prompts filled from various categories (although you can double up if you want), but since I’m picky with romance subgenres, I tweaked it a little bit (-> 16 prompts). I will be trying to complete the “Fantasy Theory” and “Historical Studies” prompts as well as the core ones + a single one from “Paranormal Studies”. I’m also counting any book where there is a strong romance element that fits one of the prompts even if it’s not a romance-first book.
Non-Fiction Reading Challenge
This challenge is something I made up for myself, but I was inspired by @Lauren and the Books on BookTube’s Nonfiction challenge and will potentially be using some of her prompts for guidance (although I’m not planning on reading nearly as many books)!
It’s a pretty basic challenge – basically I want to read 12 nonfiction books in 2026. I’m going to start by saying I want them to be books I choose to read outside of what I need for my classes or my master’s thesis, but we’ll see how things go.
As part of this I’ll also casually be participating in the Nonfiction Reader Challenge (@Bookd Out) to review nonfiction books and read other people’s reviews. Bookd Out also host the Speccy Fic challenge for speculative fiction, so I’ll probably have a look at working towards that as well.
2025 Purchases Reading Challenge
Excluding books I bought in other languages, books I was actively reading when making this challenge and books I bought for research, I had 12 books left on my 2026 purchase list that were not read. Of those, 3 were Christmas/birthday gifts that I got at the end of December.
This goal is pretty simple: read all 9 books that I purchased and didn’t read, and as a bonus try and get to the three Christmas/birthday gifts as well. This is all a part of my attempt to make sure books don’t end up sat on my shelves for *years*.
These are the books, since that image might be too small to actually see:
And that’s it for my reading goals for 2026!
If you liked this post, please keep an eye out for my upcoming Q1 personal curriculum, with some specific reading goals for Jan-Mar as well as my language learning, creative writing, blogging and personal development goals for the first quarter of the year!
If you made your own goals post, let me know down below!
Keira x
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