2025 Reading Goals

2024 was a shit year for reading on my end, I won’t lie to you. I was overworked and underpaid and pretty much just wanted to go to bed after work from June to September. After that, my reading picked back up, but because of that time frame, I didn’t reach a single one of my reading goals this year.

Now, I have a new job where I don’t have to stress all the time, and I have plenty of time to read, so my goal for 2025 is kind of going to be to complete all of the goals I didn’t finish this year, as well as a couple that weren’t really goals but were more of hopes I had.

150 Books

My first goal for 2025 is to read 150 books; this was my goal in 2024, but of course, it’s one I didn’t achieve because of a three month period where I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up a book, and a couple of books that put me into reading slumps in the year.

Diversity

One of my goals every year is to diversify my bookshelf and my reading lists; partially because cis-het white stories are what’s advertised more in marketing, but mostly because diverse stories are often way more interesting than what publishing tends to push. Here are some specific examples of where I’m putting my diversity focus in 2025:

Black Authors

I have a couple stories in my focused TBR for 2025 that were written by black authors, all of which are books that I own, and I fully intend to read all of them in the upcoming year.

My hope is that at least 20 of the books I read this year will be written by black authors, and/or about the systemic racism and such that black people go through, whether that’s in a fantasy world or based in the real world.

Asian Authors

Unlike with black authors, I really don’t have anything on my bookshelf that was written by an Asian author and hasn’t already been read to my knowledge. The issue herein comes in that I plan on giving myself a limit on the number of books I buy this year, so I’m really going to have to take advantage of my public library in ways that I usually can’t since I don’t have a car of my own.

Assuming that I can find a way to get there reliably, I’m hoping to also be able to read at least 15 books by Asian authors, but I’m really hoping I’ll be able to specifically read about various Asian cultures and learn more about them because there’s a lot of really interesting mythology and stories on that side of the world.

Trans/Nonbinary Authors

Something I realized recently is that I’ve read very few books by authors who fall under the trans and nonbinary categories, and the ones that I have were accidental (and there were only two as far as I know), which isn’t a bad thing by any means, but that realization has me wanting to intentionally read more of them.

I’m hoping to intentionally read at least 10 books written by new-to-me trans authors this year, so I probably won’t count books that I accidentally read by trans authors as anything more than bonuses (primarily because I have goaled books by authors I’m already familiar with who are nonbinary specifically).

Sapphic Romance

I read plenty of romance, but most of it is straight, and when I do read and enjoy queer romance, it’s usually Achillean, so I’m hoping to change that this year by reading more sapphic romances.

A big part of the reason I haven’t read many books in this category so far is because there are so few out there that are easy to find, and the ones that I do find are typically very similar to each other, so I get bored of them if I read too many too closely together.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find 10 sapphic books that I actually love in the new year, rather than ones that are just fine or - as some cases end up being - bad. (Bonus points will be awarded if they aren’t all YA because seriously, most of the sapphic romances I’ve read in my life were.)

Standalones

Most of what I read is series, whether they’re one continuous story or several stories that are tied together closely enough that authors make them a series. Part of my love for that type of book comes from the fact that I get to see more of the characters I love, and if I didn’t get enough of it at first, there’s plenty of time for me to be satisfied by the content.

The problem comes with the fact that series - especially continuous ones - are a huge commitment for me. I don’t like to read books in a series back to back but usually have to in order to not forget what happened in the first plot, and then I can’t get to the other books I want to read, and it puts me into a bit of a slump that I don’t want.

Hopefully, in 2025, I’ll be able to find more stories that are proper standalones, without being part of a standalone series, and I’d especially love if some of these books are fantasy novels.

Genres

I don’t have much to say about the genres I chose because there isn’t a particular reason I chose the genres that I did other than to be able to have something a bit more specific to aim forward in trying to expand the types of books I read because sometimes only reading fantasy and romance gets boring.

In 2025, I’m fully intending on reading more Horror, Mystery/Thriller, Memoirs, Poetry, and Historical Fiction. I don’t have a specific number of books that I want to read in each of these genres because I honestly don’t know if I’ll enjoy them, so even one book within them will be considered to be the level of success that I’d like.

Miscellaneous Goals

Buying

I buy way too many books, which is not good for my goal of clearing my bookshelf, so I’m hoping to be able to limit the number of books that I buy on normal days (i.e. not holidays and not my birthday).

As it is, I tend to buy four to five books on each of my paychecks, and while I’d like to say I read enough books that it at least cancels itself out, I really don’t on average, so in 2025, I’m going to only allow myself to buy one book for every three that I read, with birthdays, holidays, and the occasional therapy shopping being my only exceptions to that rule.

I’ve tried to meet this goal several times throughout the years, but I always fail, and I think part of that is because I’m too strict and don’t allow exceptions when I really just need to cheer myself up or celebrate something, so hopefully allowing these exceptions will help me reach this goal.

Brandon Sanderson

This is more of a project of mine, but I fully intend on reading every one of Sanderson’s books so that I can be a bitch to asshole men who act like women don’t know shit about high fantasy books, so I’m hoping to get started on that and try to suck it up when Sanderson writes women who are just annoyingly anti-woman and anti-joy, which I’ve already found in the first book I’ve read by him.

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Hopefully, I’ll make some positive headway on these goals throughout the year. Of course, I know there’s a pretty high likelihood that I won’t quite reach all of these goals, but even if I only hit a few but make progress towards the rest of them, I’ll be pretty happy with myself in the coming year.