Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2025
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is a really great one: bookish goals for 2025!
FIRST OF ALL. Did you see this adorable artwork of me and my two cats that Senny designed for me? You can find her on Instagram at @sennydoesarty. She’s amazing. I can’t recommend her enough. I am redesigning my blog banner to include these images, but it’s taking me forever, and I can’t wait any longer to share them.
This year, I plan to repeat some of the same reading challenges that I’ve been part of before. It does seem to help me read backlist titles more consistently, and it’s fun to look for books that meet each prompt.
Organization is still a goal, but I’m struggling to clarify what that looks like for me. I’m having a hard time keeping up with the clutter in general, and having a ton of books coming in and out of the house for review doesn’t help that, but I haven’t hit on a great solution yet.
At any rate, here is my list of goals.
Bookish Goals for 2025
1. Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge
This will be my third year participating in the Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge, hosted by Austine Decker. This one REALLY helped me tackle backlist titles. In 2023, my first year doing the challenge, I read about 30 books from my backlist TBR. Last year, I read more than 60. (I probably added double that to my reading list, so I’m still making negative progress toward reading all the books, but hey… there are worse problems to have!)
2. Book Riot’s Read Hard(er) 2025 Reading Challenge
Read Hard(er) is another challenge that I tracked last year and really enjoyed. I like that it helped me make more inclusive reading choices and think about the topics in the books I was reading. I’m excited about doing this challenge again this year, and some of the prompts for the Read Harder 2025 Challenge look awesome.
Reading diversely has been a longterm goal, and this list helps me pick books purposefully and broadly.
3. Read 200 Books
Last year my goal was to read 200 books, and I’m sticking with that for this year. It’s a comfortable goal for the amount of time I’m able to read.
4. Read 3-5 More Classics/Critically Acclaimed Books, Especially Those by Marginalized Authors
This is part of an ongoing quest to read more inclusively. There are a lot of great writers and stories that didn’t make it into my (very white) public school education, so it’s time to make up some ground. Topping my list at this moment: James Baldwin and Octavia Butler.
5. Feature Books in More Themed Lists
I love sharing reviews, but I am not sure those are the most helpful posts about books. I love reading lists about different kinds of books: great books about summer camp, or kids in foster care, or kids going to a magic school. I’d like to write more list posts like that this year.
6. Continue Using a Reading Tracker Spreadsheet
I spent some time customizing the reading tracker spreadsheet I’ve been using, and I’d like to tweak it even more this year. I love having interesting stats and reminders and reading challenge progress all in one place. The original sheet came from a blog called Addicted to Romance. The blog no longer exists but you can find the blogger on Instagram.
7. Donate More Books and Support Bookish Charities
I can’t keep all the books I review, and even if I could, what good are they sitting on my shelf? I want to find homes where they’ll be read and enjoyed. This year, I’m going to try to send out one box of books or make a monetary donation to a bookish charity each month.
8. Take Reading Breaks When Necessary and Stop Feeling Guilty About It
This year, I had several periods when I couldn’t keep up with my reading plans. Sometimes, it was because I was unwell. Other times, I was just so busy that by the time I sat down at the end of the day, I fell asleep. Stress and anxiety played a role as well.
I spent a lot of time worrying about the authors and publishers I was letting down by falling behind on my reading. A few noticed and sent emails. Some may have noticed and not said anything. Others probably didn’t notice at all.
This is another reason I’d like to get better at list posts as a way to talk about books when I don’t have the time or energy to read them all.
9. Connect with Other Bloggers/Reviewers
I’ve had a great time connecting with other Kidlit reviewers this past year, and I’d like to continue that into this coming year. I set up a link on my home page to click into WordPress Reader and keep up with my blogging friends’ posts easily.
10. Read a poem every day.
Poetry is an art form that I don’t feel well informed about or very good at reading, and I’d like to broaden my experience with it and deepen my ability to understand it. In one of the books I read this year (Why We Read by Shannon Reed), the author had a similar struggle and decided to read one poem per day. She found it a much more manageable amount of poetry to consume at a time and a helpful habit. I’ll give it a try and see if it works for me.
What are your bookish goals for 2025?
I’d love to hear about your reading plans for this year. Are any of my goals similar to the ones on your list?
If goals are too structured or anxiety-inducing, leave a comment and let me know what bookish event (book release, conference, author event, book you want to read, etc.) you’re most looking forward to this year.
That artwork is adorable!
Taking breaks and not feeling guilty about it is the sort of energy I hope to have in 2025 as well.
Best of luck on all your goals!
Yes!!! This is the year for it. Best of luck to you as well. 🙂
Love the new artwork! It is so cute 🙂
Hope you all are doing well. We’ve had a couple of bugs the last few weeks. Tis the season for cold weather ails-ugh! XOXO
Thanks! I hope you all feel better soon. We’ll manage to get together eventually. 🙂
I’m thoroughly impressed with all your goals. I tend to not write mine out but try to continually work on them. I too would like to donate more books besides the Little Free Libraries around me. It’s difficult because I still don’t know what to do with ARC’s that have it one the binding. Can these be donated, for example? Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you! Oof– yeah, ARCs. Some publishers have a disclaimer that is VERY strict and basically says you don’t own the ARCs and the publisher can ask for them back. Others don’t have any stipulations like that. I have sent some to a Juvenile Detention center before. I don’t want to give them to someplace that will sell them. :/ I’ve heard some teachers say their students get excited about them, especially if it’s still before the publication date. Hope that helps!
I definitely need to stop feeling guilty about taking breaks too. These are all fantastic goals and I wish you the best of luck with it all. Beat the Backlist is one that I’m really hopeful for this year! I also want to try and connect/blog hop much more this year. 🙂 Oh, the graphics are awesome!!
Thank you! Taking breaks is so hard! Hopefully it’s something we’ll get better at as we practice this year. 🙂 I hope we both have a great one!
I’m also trying to connect with more bloggers and reviewers. I hope you can accomplish all your goals this year!
Connections make such a difference. 🙂 Thank you! I hope we both have a great reading/blogging year.
An everyday poem sounds like a lovely idea 🙂
Octavia Butler is so good, I need to read James Baldwin too, i want to read more classics by women and maybe not American/british authors
The poetry goal is going well so far– I started with Mary Oliver, and I’m finding her work really accessible, so I think that was a good place to start. I’m really excited about reading Octavia Butler’s work. 100% agree with you on reading classics by women and moving beyond American/Brit authors.
Good luck with your list posts. Those can be so fun to read and to write!
Thank you! I love your goals list, too.
I have a TBR pile of books I’ve been trying to get through for the past five years. My goal in 2025 is to finally read every book in that teetering stack.
That is really smart! I saw a similar idea in a post where the blogger mentioned a 25 in 2025 reading challenge where you build a stack of books to read during the year. It’s a cool idea. I hope you get through the whole stack this year.