With a new year comes a new reading goal!
For 2026, I will be setting my reading goal to 12 books just like last year. I’m still working through repairing my relationship with reading and lessening the pressure, so I want to keep things light. Since I’m not where I want to be yet, though, I want to take it a step further than last year — I am going to set specific reading challenges for myself in an effort to push myself out of my comfort zone to help lessen my self-induced pressure.
The rules are as follows:
- I must complete all challenges before December 24, 2026 (because who wants to be stressing about reading challenges between Christmas and New Years’?).
- No single book can count as having completed more than one challenge.
- I can pause or stop these challenges at any point if they add negative pressure instead of helping to relieve it.
The challenges are as follows:
- Read a single book that is more than 900 pages long. As I mentioned in my article about reading goals, I still feel anxiety when reading longer books. I’m hoping that, by pushing myself to read a longer book, I’ll be able to face that head on and realize I don’t need to think that way.
- Read a series with six or more books. I’ve been avoiding series a lot in the past few years because I developed commitment issues. It’s at least partially because I’m afraid that I’ll lose interest halfway through then get distracted by another book and never go back — or I do go back, but I forget everything and have to start all over again. That fear isn’t totally valid, though, because if it’s a good series and I take my time reading it, I’ll remember what’s important. I just have to prove that to myself.
- Read a science fiction book. Science fiction is very much out of my comfort zone, as I’m not a fan of science or space. I respect Star Wars as a classic and I rewatch it irregularly, but that is the extent of my sci-fi tolerance. I really want to break out of that, though, because I know there are a lot of amazing books out there that just so happen to be science fiction.
- Read a book one chapter at a time. For this challenge, I will only be allowed to read one chapter a day, and I can’t read any other books during this time — just so I can guarantee that I focus. I tend to binge-read my books, which is part of how I read so many. But it also leads to me yo-yoing between reading a lot of books and none at all. I want to try this challenge as an attempt to slow myself down, to force me to savor and fully process a book.
- Read a nonfiction book that is not a memoir or self-help book. I’ve wanted to read more nonfiction for a long time, but when I do, I tend to gravitate toward specific nonfiction books that are close to my comfort zone. I want to push myself out of that and learn more — particularly about history.
- Read a classic novel that is more than 400 pages long. I’ve been wanting to dive deeper into classics for a while, but I’ve been avoiding it because I know that most of them aren’t quick reads. They are beautiful and timeless, but they are often dense with gorgeous language and subtle lessons and many other elements. As a result, I mainly have read the shorter works — which is something I want to change.
Whether things go well or poorly, I plan on reporting back with an article towards the end of 2026 to see where I ended up. Either way, I think that I’ll learn a lot through this process and I’m excited for it. If you plan on following any of these, or some of your own, let me know in the comments!
Thank you for exploring with us! Until next time, may the pages and paths ahead of you be great.
