How I'm Approaching Reading in 2025
New Year, New Reading Goals.
The past few years I’ve set a goal to slow down my reading and clearly, that’s not an attainable goal for me. While realistically I’ll still fly through 2 audiobooks a week, I can be more intentional with my nighttime reading before bed. I called it earlier in 2024 that this year is going to be my Fantasy year. I want to read through Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series on my Kindle and then branch out from there.
Read my Shelves
One of my main goals this year is to reach for books on my shelves first — whether that’s my Kindle, books I own a physical copy of, or audiobooks I have on my phone through the Libro.fm influencer program. I have a huge selection of backlist titles to read and they’re books I’m genuinely excited about! I’d love to read all of the books I pre-ordered in 2024. I’m too embarrassed to admit how many unread books I have on my Kindle but I have a “Priority TBR” collection and have loosely scheduled some I’d like to read each month in my Notion reading tracker.
Here’s a peek at home I keep things organized. The Upcoming ARCs have publication dates. My monthly TBR list has notations of the format in which I own the book (NG = NetGalley, K = Kindle, P = Physical Copy).
Request less ARCs
Over the past year, I’ve become more selective about which ARCs I request or agree to read. I already have 5 to read in 2025 and I plan to read one a month on my Kindle to review prior to publication date.
Revisit My Rereading Challenge
In 2024 I planned to reread a selection of 12 books that were significant to me at different times in my life. I thought it would be easy to get through one a month, but I’m even more of a mood reader than I thought. It was satisfying to revisit books from my past and I’m feeling motivated to get back to my challenge in the New Year. From my original list, I still need to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The Catcher in the Rye. I’m planning to do more of a deep read for these three titles in the Spring and Summer of this year. Just a reminder— The Rereading Project section of my newsletter will only be available to paid subscribers moving forward. I’d love for you to upgrade your free subscription to be able to access these posts and join the conversation about the classics in the comment section.
The Rereading Project
I briefly mentioned in my last newsletter that I’m embarking on a personal rereading project. I’m finally ready to share more about it with you today. I’ve been a little nervous to put this out into the world because I know it means I’m opening myself up to a bit of accountability to commit to it and finish.
I enjoyed reading Issue 101: The Reading Life of... in Petya’s Substack
. I appreciate Matthew’s wisdom and there’s some great food for thought in his interview that might help you frame your new year in reading. I’ll leave you with this quote from Matthew that resonated with me.For every book I choose to read, I also choose to probably not read something else. So, being intentional about the process is necessary, even more so when, like me, your reading life is devoted to lifelong learning.
Are you setting any reading goals this year? I’m always curious about what guides your reading habits.
Happy Reading,
Follow along with my reading journey in real time on Goodreads, Storygraph, or Fable.
Love these thoughts. I too want to read more from my shelves but we shall see. I did read one already so I'll consider that a win.
Such a good idea to have the books charted out in a monthly view. I have so many books on my iPad that I know I'll probably love (the reason I bought them, lol), but I'm such a mood reader-- and slow reader, I feel like I'll never get to them, which makes me sad.