I hope you had a relaxing New Year’s Day! We are home now after spending the holidays with family and I’m looking forward to taking down holiday decorations, curling up with a good book, and soaking up these last cozy (and rainy!) days before falling back into our regularly scheduled routines. But first, I’m sharing a review of what went well last year in my reading life and what I want to do differently in 2026.
Long(er) books. I love books under 300 pages or under 10 hours on audio and I get super intimidated by large books. According to my Goodreads “Year in Books,” the average page count of the books I read was 306 pages…which means there were some books longer than that. The longest book I read was The Women by Kristin Hannah (471 pages) and shortest was The Serviceberry by Ruth Wall Kimmerer (112 pages). Definitely keeping “read longer books” on my radar for 2026.
25 minutes of close reading every day. I’m not sure I’m in my “close reading era.” I would love to cozy up every single day for 25 minutes of reading, but I’m on-the-go quite a bit, so audiobooks are my jam and it is very hard to read closely while listening to a book. If you have tips for reading closely via audiobook, let me know, otherwise I plan on dropping this one in 2026.
Book reviews. I definitely improved in writing book reviews this year, but only for books I loved. It is really hard for me to write a review for a book that was just okay. I’ve also discovered I’m better at reviewing a book as I read it, so need to remember to write down my thoughts as I go! For 2026, I’m considering a goal to write a review for all my 5-star reads. My average rating for books this past year was 4.4 stars, so I’m pretty generous!
Build bookish community. I joined a new book club this year with a group of moms. I was not as consistent with MMD or with another local book club, so it’s something that I want to focus on in 2026. (More to come on this!)
Morning non-fiction pages. This goal was to read a non-fiction book for about 5 minutes each morning. I finished Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig and started another, On Writing by Stephen King. Keeping for 2026!
That’s it for now, more to come next week on my intentions (reading and more!) for 2026. If interested, you can read the full-length post of my goals outline from January 2025.
Questions for your weekend:
- What went well in your reading life last year?
- What didn’t go well? Are you going to keep it for 2026 or drop it?
Check out some of my recent blog posts in case you missed them over the holidays!
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