Reevaluating 2025 reading goals

If you’re anything like me, January seems like the shiny time to be ambitious and set out to change all of your habits. Over the years, I’ve realized I set these lofty goals and don’t check back in until the year is beginning to wrap up. So I thought I’d kick off this newsletter with what I set out for my reading this year and to check in with how you’re doing.

My main goals for 2025 were the following:

• Reduce the number of unread physical books I own

• Participate in challenges that diversify my reading

• Continue regularly attending book clubs

• Use my library more often

And how they’re going…

Reduce the number of unread physical books I own

Starting Physical TBR (Jan 2025): 288

📗 Physical TBR Read: 13
📘 Physical TBR Donated: 41 
📕 New books: 28

Current Physical TBR: 262

I can at least say I’ve made a dent! While my pace of buying books is still faster than how many I read, it did feel good being able to donate quite a few little free libraries in my area. Seeing the numbers laid out like this is making me think I should revisit my buying habits, I know some of those purchases were a bit impulsive.

Participate in challenges that diversify my reading

I really enjoy participating in The Diverse Baseline reading challenge and the Trans Reading Challenge each year that they’re hosted. Here is my progress through each of them as screenshots from Storygraph. In each screenshot there are descriptions of the challenge as well as circular progress bars to show the percentage each has been completed.

The Diverse Baseline:

I am glad that I’m keeping up with one diverse book a month but I would love to bump up my bonus challenge numbers. While I’m not sure that I can complete each one (since there are more than the average number of books I finish in a year), there are some gaps in my reading that I would like to expand into. Namely different religious representations, disability representation, and non-fiction.

Trans Reading Challenge:

I feel that I am at a very good pace with the Trans Reading Challenge this year. Participating in the host’s online book club has helped me discover a lot of new books that meet the prompts.

Taking on new challenges:

To motivate myself to read more of what I own, I’ve been eyeing up a new reading challenge called “The Hardest Challenge You’ll Ever Do”. There is a point system that rewards you further if you read what you already own, so I may be sharing my progress through it in future posts.

I also picked up a summer reading bingo card from a local bookstore and their prize for a bingo is a free coffee and if you complete the full board you get entered into a raffle!

Continue regularly attending book clubs

Thankfully this hasn’t been a difficult goal to maintain! I currently attend two book clubs in person and participate in one online. I have also been considering adding a third in-person book club option but I should really watch my schedule first since I recently signed up for beginner pottery classes.

Use my library more often

I can confidently say I’m using my library so much more now than previous years. While I’m proud of this and have definitely reduced how many new books I buy (lately I’ve been putting new releases on hold at my library), it has made it harder for me to read through my physical TBR.

The deadline of knowing I only have a book for so many weeks will usually bump anything I already own down my priority list of reading. Throughout the rest of this year I may try to pause holds until I feel like I’ve read a few more of my own books, this will hopefully help balance how much I read from the library versus my own shelves.

I say this as I have 5 books checked out and at least 15 on hold, and knowing my luck if I don’t pause any of those 15 they’ll all become available at once!

For the rest of this year…

I’m proud of myself for managing a lot of these reading goals, I thought I was going to be much more behind than I actually am! I could definitely do better about my physical TBR numbers but sometimes it’s good to just do a check in without putting judgements on yourself.

I know I set out a poll at the beginning of this post, but I do hope that your reading goals are going well and that you take a little bit of time to pat yourself on the back for any and all progress you’ve made!