This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about our bookish goals for 2025, which is always an interesting one to ponder. I fall in and out of love with having strict goals like a target number of books to hit: I feel like it’s an important motivator for me to keep making time for reading, but at the same time it risks making reading be about numbers instead of enjoyment. So my goals always try to balance that out… So, without further ado, let’s jump into the goals!

1. Read 400 books this year. This is the same target I managed to hit in 2023 and 2024, so it feels doable now. “400 books” includes novellas, comics, manga, individually published short stories like Kindle Shorts, audiobooks, potentially even radioplays. It’s a deliberately broad selection. If I hit my goal by reading every volume of Fairy Tail, starting again from the beginning, that’s absolutely fine if that’s what I feel like reading.
2. Roll with it. If it hits September and I haven’t been able to read anything like enough, I am absolutely going to drop my goal to whatever seems reasonable. I can be stubborn about this; I “had” to read 66 books in December in order to meet my goal for 2024. But the whole time I was trying to listen to myself and check how much I still wanted to do it, how much I actually felt like reading. There’s no use in a goal that makes you feel miserable, unless your aim is misery.
3. Read 90,000 pages this year. That means the average page count of the books I read should be 225 pages. I’ve avoided setting it too high, so that it leaves plenty of room for manga that clock in at 160 pages, or graphic novels at 100 pages, or whatever it might be — while encouraging me to also read some of my longer books as well to balance the scales.
4. Ensure at least a quarter of my reading is books from my backlog. I’m not sure yet how realistic this is. So far, 84% of my reads (11/13) have been from my backlog, but that’ll probably change later in the year once I’ve received more review copies, been to bookshops, etc. I actually thought about saying half my reading should be from the backlog, and I might still bump this goal up, but I thought I’d start out by seeing how it goes. I think a quarter should be fine, even a half, but I’m a mood reader, so I try not to paint myself into a corner.
5. Read according to my whim, no matter what. Lists are so tempting. I love lists. But as I just mentioned, I’m a mood reader. There’s no way I can stick to a plan to read a specific list of books, or anything of the kind.
6. Read for an hour a day, on average. It doesn’t always happen; I tend to read for a bit under an hour a day during the work week, and then binge on the weekends, at least while I’m still studying. But it’s a good marker and driver of mental health for me: I read more when I feel alright, and I feel better when I read. So I try to keep an eye on this, and ensure I make the time.
7. Try to finish (or DNF) the books I start within a reasonable length of time. I have some books “on hold” that I’ve been partway through for ages, and I’ve been trying to rid myself of that habit. I don’t want to be super restrictive and say “only one book at a time”, because that’s not at all how I read and it isn’t fun. But I would like to keep it to a reasonable number, and have them all be books I’m actively reading, rather than having a handful of books that have been paused for weeks or months.
8. Stay curious. I want to try new things, and things I wouldn’t necessarily automatically pick up. Manga with silly titles (The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, I’m eyeing you), non-fiction books about topics I don’t normally read about (though given the range I read, surely few things are unexpected anymore), enormous doorstoppers that will take forever that have been intimidating me (At the Feet of the Sun? I loved the first book, but I’ve been holding off on this one!), and so on and so forth.
9. Read first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I want to stop grabbing my phone first, and reading is an excellent way to start the day slowly, gently, and without immediately turning on the firehose of social media, email, and work. It’s also a good off-ramp for the day, which specifically requires time away from screens, helping to resist the temptation to stay glued to them unil the last minute.
10. Graduate from my MSc. Not a reading goal, you say? No, but if I can just finish this degree, I’ll have more free time again, and you know I’ll be using that for reading. I’m gunning for a distinction, though it feels increasingly difficult to reach; at this point, really I’ll be proud just to finish, because it’s been a rough five years. I’m experienced with studying (this is my fourth degree), and thrive on it to some extent, but the time limit has been a difficult ask alongside full-time work and miscellaneous life events. Technically, I won’t graduate this year (the ceremonies will be in February 2026 — yes, two ceremonies: one from University of London, one from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) but I want to be eligible to graduate at the next ceremony. Once that’s done, I’ll be free to spend more time reading, visiting people’s blogs, etc, etc. I look forward to it very much.

And that’s my plans for the year! We’ll see how they go: what I said in #2 applies to all of these, I want to roll with the punches and adjust my goals as-needed!

Today’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl‘s Top Ten Tuesday is “most anticipated books releasing in the first half of 2025”, so let’s take a look…

1. Murder as a Fine Art, by Carol Carnac (January). Technically this isn’t new, but where would I get my hands on it other than through the British Library Crime Classics reprint? Carol Carnac is slightly better known as E.C.R. Lorac, but sadly less known than she ought to be in all her guises. Her mysteries are some of my favourites, and I’m eager to read this one.
2. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, vol. 10, by Misaki, Momochi, Sando and Lamp Magonote (January). I haven’t quite read all the existing books yet, but I’m eager to keep following Lizel’s adventures, watching him charm everyone he meets, scheme like the best of ’em, and read the entire contents of a bookshop even faster than I would.
3. But Not Too Bold, by Hache Pueyo (February). I’ve read this as an eARC already (review here), but I’m looking forward to seeing what others think. It’s a little bit gothic, a bit creepy, and yet it’s a romance too…
4. The Ten Teacups, by Carter Dickson (February). Another one from the British Library Crime Classics collection. I’ve not always loved the work of Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr, but I gained a bit more of an appreciation for it in the last year, and I’m curious about this one. There’s still the chance I’ll dislike it, but equally a chance it’ll be a five-star read for me.
5. Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett (February). I love this series, and I’m really happy to have received an eARC for this one as well. The formatting unfortunately leaves something to be desired (it’s an epub clearly generated straight from a PDF without cleanup), so I might hang on for the published version, alas. But I’m super excited to return to Emily’s world.
6. The Tomb of Dragons, by Katherine Addison (March). I urgently need to get to my eARC of this, because I don’t want to wait for the release in March! And here’s firmly hoping that someone finally gives Thara Celehar a hug. (I can dream.)
7. Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite (March). A fun SF mystery, which I’ve already read (review here). I know a couple of people who are going to love it, and I’m going to very much enjoy their enjoyment.
8. Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green (March). The number of people who immediately notified this was going to be a thing when the news of it broke was… gratifying, honestly. Y’all know me! Yes, it’s high on my list, and I’m very hopeful for a new book on tuberculosis that will (I hope) make the seriousness of the situation clear to laypeople. Given my current degree and my undergrad dissertation, it probably won’t teach me anything new per se, but I’m always interested in how different people frame the problems — and you never know what someone fresh to the topic may notice or pick out as important. Either way, I expect to have Opinions.
9. A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett (April). I really liked The Tainted Cup, so I’m keen for the follow-up. I love genre mashes like fantasy and mystery, so this is catnip to me.
10. The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, by Malka Older (June). Again, I had an eARC copy of this and enjoyed it (review forthcoming) — it might not be my favourite of the Mossa and Pleiti books in some ways, but it was still a fun time, and I’m looking forward to having more people to talk about it with.

And there we go! I’m sure there’s a lot missing, and I’m looking forward to browsing other people’s lists and learning just how much I missed out…