2026 Reading Goals

[Bone2pick]

A considerable amount of people dislike setting goals for their hobbies. For them, the goals realign their relaxing pastimes into stressful, quasi-competitive undertakings. This is easily understandable — different strokes for different folks.

Others, like me, take pleasure and profit from setting goals. We consider goals muy bueno because they help provide direction and motivation to make progress within our hobbies. This is well-understood, and yet I opted to waste everyone’s time and explain the obvious. Forgive me.

Are you considering setting a reading goal for next year? If so, please share it in this thread.

The past few years I’ve set out to read (on average) a book a week, and I’m aiming to hit that mark again. In addition, I would like to become better acquainted with a particular genre I’ve largely neglected: the crime novel. So I put together a list of ten (interesting to me) crime novels I hope to read before 2026 wraps up.

They are:

1. Double Indemnity - James M. Cain
2. Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter
3. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
4. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
5. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Marathon Man - William Goldman
7. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
8. Angels - Denis Johnson
9. Defending Jacob - William Landay
10. The Lodger - Marie Belloc Lowndes

That’s it. Those are my goals. I hope to see some of yours.

 

[Tallyfire]

Nice idea!

My first goal is: read less. Yeah, that's a bit of a weird one, but I read extremely widely this year, having discovered that I can borrow digital books (and audiobooks <3) from libraries. I've read 105 books this year and I'll manage a few more before the month is out.

The next goal is: read more consciously. I don't think I reread a single book this year. Everything was new -- and it was great, but I'm done with promiscuous reading for now. So I'll be rereading books I've loved and looking at them much more closely to see how they do what they do, and how I can do it too. And I'll quickly drop books that don't match what I'm looking for.

The only new books I have on my list so far (because I love the authors' other works):

1. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Middlemarch - George Eliot
3. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
4. Exhalation - Ted Chiang
5. Way more short stories

 

[Dogberry's Watch]

Oh, this is a thread I love.

Last year, I made a bingo board of things I wanted to do in general, but this year I want to make my board a book one. Obviously, I'll read more than 25, but I have several on my shelf that have been there for probably close to a decade and the person I am can't bear to part with them. But maybe I will when I've finished reading them. Anyway, yeah. Book bingo board. Some of that list includes

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
2. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
3. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go is haunting, @Tallyfire , I wish you well)
5. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (I've tried to read this one a few times and it comes across as kind of "in your face" about vegetarianism, and that's not the kind of vegetarian I am, so I get a little put off by it. But Foer is one of my favorite authors, so I want to give it a decent attempt.)
6. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
7. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (I read the prequel this year and my lord, what an epic)
8. Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
9. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
10. We Weren't Looking To Be Found by Stephanie Kuehn

And so on, and so on. I have hopes for myself to read a decent chunk of my tbr shelves.

 

[defaux]

1. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. 
   
3. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

Two of my favourite novels on your list already. I'd love to discuss with you when you get to them.

read more consciously.

This.

I had been on the read more journey for a couple years, and honestly, even though I was "succeeding", I wasn't really getting much from it and began to get bored.
Once I started wanting to write more seriously and to study the techniques to do so, I put together a reading list of specific genre, style and technique studies, and I'm both getting so much more from my reading time and loving it.

My list is up to around 60 books and a dozen or so shorter works, iirc (I won't bore you with the whole thing unless someone's actually interested). I don't get through them all that fast, but I intend to focus as much time as I can on it.

 

[Tallyfire]

4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go is haunting, @Tallyfire , I wish you well)

I read The Remains of the Day this year. It's not haunting, but it is sad and beautiful. I hope you enjoy it! (I watched the movie right afterwards and also liked that.)

I'll be looking through the others lists to see if there's anything I should add to mine. Just generally, I want way more classics next year.

I had been on the read more journey for a couple years, and honestly, even though I was "succeeding", I wasn't really getting much from it and began to get bored.
Once I started wanting to write more seriously and to study the techniques to do so, I put together a reading list of specific genre, style and technique studies, and I'm both getting so much more from my reading time and loving it.

This sounds like me. It seems like we're on a similar journey and I'm a step behind I'm glad to hear your reading is going well.

 

[Papaur]

My 2026 reading goals are all about quality and consistency. I want to read every day, even if it’s just a few pages, and focus on books that challenge my thinking. More physical books, fewer distractions, and a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I’m aiming to slow down, take notes, and really absorb what I read instead of rushing through titles.