Between May and November of 2025, I didn’t finish one book. Amidst the chaos of finishing up my senior year of high school, going on to prepare for college over the summer, and then actually starting my first semester, it seemed as if I had lost any motivation to pick up a book. Finally, after a 6-month reading slump, I started to get back into a regular habit of reading towards the end of last year. With the new year still being young, I wanted to share some of my reading goals for 2026 that you can hopefully also implement into your reading journey this year.
1. Read 15 Books in 2026
In the past few years, I felt as though I kept overshooting my yearly reading goal, so this year I wanted to take a step back after the great reading slump of 2025 and aim for something I know I can do. In the past, I easily could’ve knocked this goal out of the park, but I think it’s important to step back and not be so focused on trying to read a huge number of books within a year and just enjoy literature!
2. Read books from Goodreads Reading Challenges
For those of you who don’t know, Goodreads is a popular book tracking and social media platform. One of its many features is their annual reading challenge, which prompts you to set your reading goal for the year. Within these yearly challenges, however, they have smaller, more seasonal challenges to help break up your reading. For many of these challenges, you are able to browse from a list of books regarding specific criteria, such as the top read books from the previous year or popular retellings of famous stories, and pick a book to read to unlock an achievement. It’s a small incentive, but I find it a fun way to discover new books or even motivate me to pick up a book I’ve been meaning to read that happens to be on one of the lists. Some books I’m hoping to complete for the ongoing Winter Challenge include Intermezzo by Sally Ronney, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller!
3. Keep a Reading Journal
Although I just talked in detail about Goodreads, I’m hoping to use the platform in tandem with a physical reading journal that I started for 2026. My goal for the journal is to incorporate creative expression when it comes to reading as well as encouraging critical thinking towards the books I have read instead of just consuming them and moving on. A problem sometimes with tracking platforms, such as Goodreads for books and Letterboxd for films, is that there is still the feeling to perform to an audience even through reviews for these mediums since at the end of the day, these are social media platforms. With the journal, however, I have a completely analog space just for myself to write about feelings towards a particular book. I’m excited to see how my practices evolve as I continue to keep this journal!
4. Limit the books I purchase until I read more that I already own
Perhaps the most difficult goal I have for myself this year is to put a pause on book shopping until I make a dent in my physical to-be-read pile. I like to think that reading books and buying books are two different hobbies, and although I’m not as bad as some of the cases I’ve seen online, I am still no exception to this ideology. Besides, this’ll make buying new books all the more fun after a much needed break from it.
I hope that these goals spark some inspiration for your own 2026 reading journey! Whether you aim to finish 1 book or 100 books this year, may 2026 be a great reading year for us all!