How I'm Changing My Reading Life in 2025
Setting new goals and why they matter
I’ve started planning my yearend favorite books post, so I’ve been looking at my reading stats and trying to figure out which titles will top my list. My stats have shown me some patterns I like, but there are also patterns I wish were better. I feel a strong urge to rethink my approach to reading, leading me to establish some quantifiable goals for 2025.
I realize that sounds pretty serious for what is a hobby, but reading is my number one hobby, and I spend many hours on it each year. I also spend a lot of time researching books (sometimes for work, sometimes for myself) and shopping for books, either to purchase or borrow from the library. I spend my workweek in high school libraries, trying to connect students and staff with books that will entertain and enlighten them. In summary, books and reading are a massive part of my life. Books are my jam, as the youths would say. (If you’re a youth, please confirm. Thanks!) Literature is one of my great passions, and I’m still paying off the college loans to prove it. Because of that, my reading life deserves serious consideration.
As I reflect on my 2024 reading goals and share new ones for 2025, I hope you find yourself inspired to think about your own reading life. What’s missing? What do you love about it? What would breathe new life into a hobby you’ve invested a lot of time and money into? Let’s figure it out together.
Reviewing My 2024 Reading Goals
In My Favorite Books of 2023 post, I shared my 2024 reading goals toward the end. Let’s see if I achieved them.
Goal #1: Read 75 books.
Check! Goal accomplished with some time to spare.
Goal #2: Read at least one book I own per month.
Oopsies. I completely forgot I set this goal, so, um, this could have gone a bit better. So far, I’ve read 11 books I own. While that’s almost hitting the goal I forgot I set, this number makes me realize I need to prioritize reading from my personal library more. I own way too many books that I’m ignoring. Sorry, books!
Goal #3: Catalog my library.
Check! I used LibraryThing to do this over the summer.
Goal #4: Read more translated and/or off-the-beaten-path books.
This is a terrible goal because I didn’t give myself a specific number. I did read some translated and off-the-beaten-path books, but not as many as I’d like to in 2025.
Naming What Matters
I’ve been a longtime fan and follower of Kendra Adachi, a.k.a. the Lazy Genius. Kendra helps people organize their lives and suggests a few principles to make it happen. (I highly recommend her book, The Lazy Genius Way.) At the beginning of a problem or project, Kendra urges her audience to name what matters. I found that to be a helpful mindset when thinking about my 2025 reading goals. Here are some things that matter to me about my reading:
Reading diversely. I read a fair amount of titles from nonwhite authors, but I can and want to do better to ensure I’m listening to and supporting a wide range of voices, including those who don’t write in English.
Reading the books I’ve already bought. As I mentioned above, I need to read more of the books I own. I have them, spent money on them, and I want to read them. I love my local libraries and library apps, but I want to give my own collection more love.
Reading more poetry. I love poetry, yet I only read a handful of poetry books in 2024. I want to spend more time with this art form going forward.
Revisiting old favorites. Throughout 2024, I kept saying I would reread favorites like The Secret History or Stoner, but I never did. I want to revisit books I’ve loved and remind myself that the new releases will still be there whenever I get to them.
Setting a reading goal that encourages me to read instead of scroll. I thought about not setting a numerical goal for the books I hope to read in 2025, but setting a number matters to me because it keeps me focused on picking up books rather than mindlessly scrolling Instagram or watching cat videos on TikTok (though cat videos have their place, obviously).
My 2025 Reading Goals Are…
Now that you know why I take my reading life so seriously and understand what matters to me about it, here are the goals I’m setting for next year.
Read 75 books.
This is the goal I’ve set for the past few years, and it works well for me. Seventy-five books is a high enough number to stretch me, but it’s realistic enough that I achieve it year after year.
Ensure at least 50% of those 75 are by nonwhite authors.
Right now, only about 30ish% of my 2024 reading is from authors of color.
Read at least 12 poetry collections from my shelves.
Whether I read one a month or several collections back-to-back, I want to spend more time with poetry in 2025.
Read at least 20 other books from my shelves.
Twenty is still a pretty low number considering the size of my book collection, but it’s achievable, which is what matters. A huge chunk of my reading is done on my Kindle, which goes back and forth with me to work each day. I love reading digitally, but I want to use my Kindle less at home and opt for physical copies of books I already own instead.
Reread at least three favorites.
I’m excited to revisit some beloved stories. I’d like to write some Substacks in which I deep-dive favorite titles.
What about you?
I know the goals I set are right for me because I’m excited about each of them. I’m eager to deepen my reading, explore new writers, and spend time with writers I already adore.
One of my life mottos is to mind my own business, but I’m very nosy when it comes to other readers and their reading lives. I’d love to hear what goals you achieved in 2024 and what goals you’re setting for 2025. If you didn’t achieve anything and don’t plan to achieve anything in the future, this is also a safe space for you as long as you leave a link to your favorite cat video in the comments.
Thanks for being part of this bookish community!
I am really taking my time thinking about my reading goals this year. For the last several years my goal has been 100, and I’ve always met or exceeded it. This helped me put down h phone and read more, but looking back on this year, I realize this approach is no longer serving me. I’ve read over 100 this year, and yet so few have stayed with me. So many books all kind of blend together. I was flying through them without really absorbing or even enjoying them!
For 2025, I want to slow my reading down. I want to savor books, linger over passages, annotate, highlight, take notes, save quotes. I want to read more classics. I want to re-read some of my favorites. I want to go back to the feeling I used to have when I was younger, getting lost in the pages of a good book without thinking about a goal or wondering what I should read next.
Hope everyone has the reading year they hope for in 2025!
My number one goal this year is to read what I already own (I’m afraid I might be addicted to buying books 😅), so I set a rule: for every two books I read from my shelves I get to buy or borrow one.