Another year, another set of reading goals! As I have said before, reading goals are not for everyone. I set both book and page goals on Storygraph, but I also set more complex goals. I personally find that they help guide my reading and can help me pick one book over another. (And quite frankly, I am a goal driven person.) If goals do not make reading more enjoyable for you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with never having a reading goal. In any case, if you are curious and want to see my 2025 Reading Goals, read on!
2025 Reading Goals
These are my more complex reading goals for this year. I’ve set myself a tentative goal of 120 books and 60,000 pages for the year, but these help give stronger direction. I’ve also included the covers for books I hope to read this year!
Read 2 Non-Fiction Books Written by Women per Month
I’m not going to apologise for repeating this, because it remains a constant issue. Female authors are absolutely underrepresented in both history and biography, the two non-fiction genres I gravitate towards. Even books where women are the subject are much more frequently written by men*. So I’m going to do everything I can to help support non-fiction female authors to send the message to publishers that we want to see more. I encourage you to do the same!
*Royal history is particularly bad for being dominated by male authors, aside from a few specific areas.
Read 80% Books Written by Women
This goal is another continuation from last year, and I am glad to do it. Like the goal above, I am trying to support female authors and let publishers know by reading a majority of female authors.
I want to address this on the head of it: I have seen many, many people on social media say that they do not pay attention to the gender of the author when choosing books. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that attitude tends to reinforce traditional gender and race focuses in the publishing world. It is 2025, and we can all be responsible readers.
75% of Books Read from Library, NetGalley, Spotify, or owned for 1+ year
I am continuing on with this goal as well, though I’ve lowered it a tad to 75%, only to account for my two non-fiction specific goals. Because I’m prioritising reading non-fiction, I’m trying to realistically account for needing to purchase some books. My budget really is not huge so I can’t buy that many books (though I dearly wish I could!), but this does leave space for that.
Notably, I have decided to formally include books that I listen to on Spotify here. I’ve decided to include those audiobooks in my 75% as they truly are a bonus- I pay for Spotify for music out of my entertainment budget, so the 15 hours are just a lovely extra.
Read 5 Books from “New” Areas of History
We all tend to gravitate towards the same genres, the same authors, the same subjects. (Or most of us- if you don’t, a major kudos to you!) So, I have challenged myself to read about new-to-me areas of history. In the past few years, I have focused on reading new-to-me authors and it has changed how I look at authors. Hopefully, this goal will help me to broaden the subjects I’m reading about; maybe I will discover a new area of study! In any case, learning new things is never bad.
What are your 2025 reading goals?
Cheers,
The Historian
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