Hello!

Considering my last post about my 5 star reads from 2024 was longer than most of the essays I wrote at school, I thought a slightly shorter post was perhaps needed today!

Normally when I talk about goals, I yap and yap and with my broader goals, I absolutely could do that, but my reading goals are relatively simple! I have three main goals, a few passive challenges, one TBR list and a couple of books clubs to be thinking about in 2025 so here’s a little summary!

First and foremost, the reading goal I’ll be putting in on Storygraph – the number of books I’m aiming to read in 2025. In the next year I’ll be aiming for 60 books – I usually work in multiples of 12, last year as an anomaly because I went with 52 (based on one a week) rather than aiming for a goal of X books per month, but we’re back to the 12s in 2025! 60 books equates to 5 a month which although I didn’t achieve this every month in 2024, I did average at over this. I think this is the perfect goal to balance being achievable for me, but not being so easy that I don’t feel like I have to try. It’s a challenge I’m very ready to tackle!

My other two goals are obvious and not as well structured in terms of having a number goal but they’re a step in the right direction!

My second goal is to buy less books than I read – although I bought less in 2024 than I did in 2023, I still bought significantly more than I read and faster than I could read! My physical TBR is feeling a little overwhelming at this stage and I don’t want to feel like I’m constantly reaching for an impossible goal – I’m buying all these books because I’m desperate to read the stories and at this rate I’ll never be able to. I’m not going to pretend I won’t buy any books next year because that’s just not going to happen, but aiming to buy less than I read.

Then lastly, I want to make sure I end the year with less books on my physical tbr – I’m not putting specific numbers on this yet because I think a number that big will still overwhelm me. I’m planning to do a big sort out of my library over the New Year and I will be getting a definitive count of all the books I own but haven’t read, then my goal for 2025 is to make sure I don’t have more books than that number by December 31st 2025.

If I can lower the number that would be amazing, but considering that number has been steadily (steeply) going up since I got back into reading in 2020, just being able to break even in this coming year would be huge progress.

So those are my three main focuses!

The passive challenges I will be tracking in my book journal are the Alphabet Challenge (trying to read a book that starts with every letter of the alphabet), the Author Alphabet Challenge (same but with author’s surnames) and a book bucket list bingo board type thing that I copied from Rachel Catherine. When I say ‘passive challenge’ I mean I will be tracking my progress, but I won’t be actively trying to complete these challenges. If I get one or two letters away in the Alphabet Challenges or I only have a couple of bucket list goals, I will probably skew my TBR to fit them in, but this not something I’m intending to ‘succeed’ in. Just a fun opportunity to colour in squares in my journal!

The One TBR that I will be actively trying to complete next year is my 25 in 2025 list which I chose in this YouTube video – I’m going to be using a smaller TBR jar to choose two of these books to read per month and I’m hoping I’ll actually be able to finish a yearly TBR this year! I got to 75% in 2024, but I’m going for the full hundo in 2025!

And last but not least – book clubs. These are more like buddy reading but it’s more fun to call it a book club!

‘With’ my husband (it’ll make sense in a sec) I have the Wedding Book Club – when we got married we asked our guests to give us a copy of their favourite book so we’d have a little library of our favourite people’s favourite books, then in an endeavour to read them all we (I) decided to start a book club so we take it in turns to choose a book each month and I read it and he doesn’t! This will be our third year reading from the wedding library and having made it through 22 books in the collection last year, I’m excited to continue my progress!

Then a new book club – in 2024 my sibling got back into reading with the discovery of co-reading (simultaneously reading a physical book and an audiobook, great for aiding concentration in neurodiverse people or if you have dyslexia! Also it’s fun) so we’ve decided to start a little buddy reading book club. We chose our first book together on a London trip in October and I think going forward we’ll take it in turns monthly to pick from the selection of books that cross over on our TBRs!

And that’s it! Arguably that’s quite a lot (and this post wasn’t short at all), but I’m so excited about reading in 2025 – January 2024 was my worst reading month of the year, so I’m determined to get off to a better start this New Year!

Happy Christmas to all who celebrate, Happy December to those who don’t!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx