Reading ‘Goals’ for 2026

Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by Artsy Reader Girl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share a love of all things books! I love thinking up my responses and the weekly blog hop to see what everyone else wrote!

This week’s prompt is for 2026 goals (Bookish or not), and this has been something I’ve been musing on a lot as I use January as my groundwork month for planning and laying some foundations for what I want to achieve in the rest of the year.

My Big Idea for 2026 is that we’re going for Experiments and not Goals. I’ll just try things out for a bit and see if they work for me rather than declaring I’m definitely going to do this thing for a full year and then feeling ashamed when I forgot all about it by March!

I am very excited about reading and generally what I am going to put into my brain this year! In that vein, I am hoping to –

1. Continue to read more closely, and take time to understand my reactions and opinions. If I have a strong reaction to something, try to let it sit a bit before making a judgment and consider why I’m feeling that way (positive or negative!). Unintentional, but I guess this is just advice for everyone on everything in 2026!
2. Try being more intentional in what I choose to read based on what’s currently resonating with me. I found at the end of last year that immersing myself in a theme really helped me to link ideas.
3. Read more non-fiction for learning. Next month, I have some fun books to introduce me to philosophy.
4. When reading in print, annotate the book! I started doing this in the last month, and it is making a big difference to how I connect with the book.
5. Keep up making notes in my reading log as I read. I’m not always great at this, but it does depend on what I am reading, whether I feel like anything is worth noting!
6. Make time in my week to read the London Review of Books. I have been enjoying reading it, but it’s a meaty publication, so I will need to earmark time dedicated to reading it, or I am just going to end up with a pile of unread journals (currently this is 3)!
7. Try to find interesting book podcasts. I am taking recommendations, but I’m also really fussy!
8. Be less concerned on number of books read and focus on quality and what I get out of them. I set my goal to 70 books this year (knowing most of those will be audiobooks), but I may lower it to 50.
9. Give The StoryGraph a proper shot this year. I don’t have any friends over there yet so do follow if you use it!
10. Attempt Nic’s Law of Fives Reading Bingo! I love the idea, but it’s going to need some careful planning (and maybe reworking) to pull off.
11. Top Ten Tuesday doesn’t have to be every week for me; this year, I plan to just pick up the prompts that spark my interest to free up more time for everything else I’m hoping to accomplish!
12. Oh, and I am definitely going to read a lot more comic books on Marvel Unlimited! They make excellent morning reading with a cup of tea.

I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else is thinking for 2026. Anyone else hoping to step back from the online noise, spend more time with their own thoughts and/or learn something new this year?