My 2025 Reading Resolutions

Because books don’t escape the New Year treatment either(!)

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2025 is here and while it is admittedly a little daunting to stare 12 fresh months in the eye, it does provide the perfect chance to set a few resolutions for the upcoming days. Perhaps it’d do us all some good to look at things as ‘some upcoming days’. My reading experience throughout 2024 wasn’t the best: middling books, a pressure to keep up with NetGalley ARCs, and my big book-buying ban challenge. Aside from rereads of all-time favourite books, I didn’t even find a single new favourite. And what’s the point of any hobby if we’re not enjoying them?

This year, I’m trying something different. Rather than aiming for quantity – which I’ve been guilty of doing in the past – I want to take the pressure off and read less, but hopefully what I do read will be of higher quality (to me, anyway!). I’m surprised I didn’t fall into a deep reading slump last year, because some of the books I picked up were truly bad or average! Instead, I want 2025 to be about joyful reading again.

Read 24 books

I think it was in 2019 that I began my book-a-week Goodreads Reading Challenge, setting my goal at a lofty 52 books. Aside from 2020 (ahem…!), I’ve managed to read this and then some every year since. It does feel like an accomplishment, and they have been a great use of commutes and downtime and cosy evenings. But, I’m interested to see what happens to my natural reading pace without a big goal. I suspect I’ll reach similar numbers, but maybe I’ll feel less inclined to plump for average-length books…

Prioritise some of my big books

… because I also want to prioritise reading some of my big books. When I use the word ‘big’, I mean both in length and in scope. I have a few chunky tomes on my shelves that I want to finally read in 2025. These include:

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

• The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I mean, we’ll see!)

• Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin

• Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer

Ease off the NetGalley requests

I really love NetGalley and think it’s been a great way to democratise the ARCs for review situation in the bookish world. But I definitely went overboard with the requests last year, and ended up feeling a huge pressure to read on time and prepare content and reviews every time. I’d like to ease off requesting eARCs to focus on reading what I genuinely want to read, and perhaps focus on expanding my bookstagram PR connections. However, my big NetGalley binge of 2024 did help me hone my tastes a little further and I discovered a few authors that I’m curious about.

Read what feels good

My Fable account really called me out in last year’s round-up, naming me a Dystopian Darling. And perhaps I do have a darker taste in literature than others on the app…!¹ I realised that I don’t necessarily want to be this way though, and I miss reading books that are purely for fun and escapism. For instance, I love a cosy witchy fantasy just as much as my mind-bending sci-fi novels, and sweet found-family tales are really fun, it doesn’t always have to be a deep and meandering family saga.

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Find me on Goodreads and StoryGraph to keep up with my bookish adventures.

What are some of your reading goals, if any, this year? And, please share your book recommendations, if they fit within my resolutions!

1. I wrote this piece before learning about Fable’s abhorrent use of AI and its internalised biases that spout out racist, misogynistic and ableist reader summaries. I no longer use Fable and implore you to read up on their story.