Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. This week’s prompt is Bookish Goals for 2025 (How many books do you want to read this year? Are you hoping to read outside your comfort zone? Are there books you meant to read last year but never got to? Are there new-to-you authors you’re hoping to read?)

Hello Readers! I hope your new year is going great so far! I haven’t shared my bookish goals since 2022. In 2023, I decided to NOT set any goals, which actually worked well that year. And in 2024… well, it was a struggle for me, so I didn’t have the brain power to set or achieve any goals. But it’s a new year and I’m happy to feel ready to set goals again!

Let’s see what I’m hoping to accomplish in 2025!

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1

Limit my ARCs

I read 25 ARCs in 2024. If I would have kept my usual reading pace of 100 books for the year, I would have finally successfully limited my ARCs. But since I only ended up reading 61 books last year, and 21 of those were short stories or children’s books, that means the bulk of the novel-length books I read were ARCs. I’m currently signed up to read 10 ARCs through the first-half of 2025 (including one I didn’t get to last year). If I can limit the second-half of the year to 10 or less, as well, I’ll call that a win!

2

Read more from my own shelves

Every year it’s a goal to read off my own shelves, whether digital or physical. Last year I only read about 7 books that I’d already owned. Surely I can do better than that. Here are a few books I’m hoping to FINALLY read this year:

3

Continue to borrow books

One thing I did well last year was borrow ebooks through Libby more often. I ended up borrowing about 9 books. I also read several free short stories or novellas through Kindle.

4

Continue to use StoryGraph more

While I was working hard to find shorter books to fulfill my Popsugar Reading Challenge last year, I discovered StoryGraph had a ton of different suggestions for books to fill prompts than I’d found on Goodreads. I also used some of their year-end stats for my 2024 wrap-up post.

5

Re-read more

I re-read ONE book last year. And it was a short story. Ha! I love to re-read books. There’s something so comforting about it, and last year would have been a perfect year to dive into a re-read. Hopefully I can pick up more than one in 2025. 😉

6

DNF

I was pretty proud of myself for DNFing 2 ARCs last year. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but for me it was a big step. Hopefully I can continue to put aside books I’m not enjoying.

7

Un-haul

(My main bookshelves, but not my only ones. 😬)

I’ve slowly acquired quite a collection of physical and digital books, and un-hauling books has been a reoccurring goal for me the last several years. Every year I like to reevaluate my tastes and maybe part ways with those books that have been lingering on my TBR for years. Plus, now that I’m using Libby much more, as I go through my physical books, I check to see if they’re available on Libby, and if it’s a book I know I won’t want to keep after I read it, I go ahead and un-haul it, with plans to read it on Libby. And that gives me more room on my shelves for my keepsake books, artwork, or plants! 🥰

8

Read a new series

In 2023, I re-read The Hunger Games series before I read the new prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It was so fun to dive back into a series and it made me want to do that more often. I’d planned on doing it last year, but it didn’t happen. Maybe in 2025!

Several years ago I snagged both of Sarah J. Maas’ series, Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses, on sale via ebook, and my daughter read and loved ACOTAR last year, so I’m hoping to make it happen for myself. I know everyone has their different ideas about which one to read first. Feel free to advise me!

9

Complete Challenges

While I did complete my annual Popsugar Reading Challenge last year, it wasn’t exactly up to my typical standards; I ended up using more short stories than I like to. This year I’m hoping to avoid that. I also have a new fun and different kind of challenge planned. I’ll be sharing more about that soon!

10

Blog when/what I want to blog

So, some good that came from my slower reading and blogging year in 2024… I realized I only have to blog WHEN I want to and about WHAT I want to showcase. I was trying so hard to keep up with Top Ten Tuesday, my monthly TBRs and wrap-ups, not to mention book reviews, that when it all became too overwhelming, I basically stopped posting much of anything by the end of the year; I felt too far behind to catch up. Which I was not happy about. When I realized I didn’t HAVE to participate in every TTT or post monthly TBRs and wrap-ups, it took a big weight off my shoulders. I realized if I’m not enjoying what I’m posting, my readers probably won’t enjoy it as much either. I’m excited to start 2025 with a fresh perspective!

Do we share any goals? What’s your top goal for 2025? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!