Reading Challenge Year Two
Reflecting on the books I read in 2025, and looking ahead to 2026
Context/ TL;DR
This is very much a sequel post to one I had written as 2024 came to an end, reflecting on my 2024 reading and looking ahead to 2025. You can read that here, and it has a lot more context as well as some tips on setting and achieving your own reading goals. This post is a little simpler, as I reflect on the actual books I have read, and look ahead to 2026.
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The short version is, I set a goal of reading 52 books again in 2025 and ended up reading 56. I have read more pages this year than I had in any single year in the prior decade. My reading was also a lot more structured and intentional, something I will look to work on further in 2026, by expanding on my goals with a page count goal (keeping # of books static) and trying to build in more variety in my reading with a genres goal.
Recapping 2025
About 4 books and 2400 pages more than 2024. ‘nuff said. Exceeded the goal comfortably, and fine-tuning this somewhat for 2026 (see below)
Average book length was about 17 pages longer, but the longest book I read was under 1000 pages (compared to the 1400 page Sanderson doorbuster in 2024).
Looking Ahead to 2026
I will be structuring my 2026 reading a lot more. While I did follow some themes in 2025 (started a Discworld re-read, read all of Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four run, obviously continued my neuro-science and physics reads) I feel like I need to expand my horizons and read a few more genres/ books I would otherwise never just stumble upon and read. To this end I am doing the following challenges for 2026:
- Base/ Numeric Challenge: Read 52 books/ 18000 pages (intentionally bumping up page count but keeping book count static)
- Stretch/ Genre Challenge: Read at least one book in every genre listed on the Goodreads alternative Storygraph. This is going to be tricky! For reference, I only read across 23 genres this year according to Storygraph, so upping that to ~58 is going to stretch me.
- Tsundoku Challenge: I have a list of 54 Kindle titles and 26 IRL books t that I have bought but never read/ finished. So the goal is to work on whittling this list down further. So I have to read at least 20 of these. Yes I know, I have a bookshopaholism problem :)
Themes/ Track Goals
- Discworld: Re/read at least 6 Discworld books
- Wheel of Time: Re-read all 14 main series ‘Wheel of Time’ books and the prequel, New Spring by Robert Jordan
- Poetry: Read at least 3 books of poetry
My 2025 Reads — Recommendations (in no particular order)
Top 5 Non-fiction Recommendations
- Behave — Robert Sapolsky
- Reality+ — David Chalmers
- Everything is Tuberculosis — John Green
- Everybody Loves a Good Drought — P Sainath
- The Past As Present — Romila Thapar
Top 5 Fiction Recommendations
- The Witcher: Crossroads of Ravens — Andrezj Sapkowski
- The God is Not Willing, No Life Forsaken — Steven Erikson
- Forge of the High Mage — Ian Cameron Esselmont
- Piranesi — Susanna Clarke
- Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow — Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes
Top 5 Professional/ Utility Books
- (Quantum Computing) The Fabric of Reality — David Deutsch
- (AI) Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom
- (AI) Empire of AI — Karen Hao
- (Economics) Our Dollar Your Problem — Kenneth Rogoff
- (Geopolitics) Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism — Yanis Varoufakis
All My 2025 Reads
(follow me on Goodreads or on Storygraphs for a short review of each!)
Conclusion
I genuinely feel richer for having done these reading challenges for the past couple of years. Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum up and expand my horizons in 2025.
What do you think I should be reading in 2026? Are you doing a reading challenge of your own? If you made it this far down, do leave a clap and perhaps a comment on this post.
For my tips on running your own reading challenge, please read the previous year’s post here. Over & out!
