It's nearly the end of March. How are you doing on those reading resolutions and goals for 2026? Can you feel the lit clock ticking? Did you mourn the hour of reading lost when we time traveled to Daylight Saving Time?
In January I noted that the Word of the Year for readers should always be "resolutions" or "goals," and I shared Guardian illustrator Tom Gauld's take on "The Five Stages of Grieving for an Overambitious Reading Resolution."
Now here we are, three months in already. As Marc Maron used to say on his WTF podcast, "Are we good, people?!" Take a beat. No pressure, even though it is the National Year of Reading in the U.K. and maybe you do need to pick up the pace just a bit. But who's keeping score?
|
|
| Jack Edwards | |
Lots of people, of course. You know some. BookTokers have ramped up the reading goals competition significantly. Last month, "book influencer" Jack Edwards, who has 1.5 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, told the Guardian: "I set reading goals that feel achievable. Last year, my goal was 100 books and I read 137. The point isn't competition; it's noticing how I spend my time. How much did I read last week versus how much time did I spend on my phone? The latter becomes about how you're perceived; it turns toxic....
"But, for me, reading has always been something I really enjoy, and you have to make sure you're only competing with yourself rather than doing it for other people. I think of reading like going to the gym: you train endurance and strength. It's not just how long you read, but how long you can sustain focus and critical thought. The brain is a muscle, you build it over time."
Booksellers have always loved the game, and play it in a variety of ways.:
|
|
| At the Brewster Book Store | |
Sunshine Book Nook, Urbana, Ohio: "We are looking forward to our reading tracker craft night tomorrow.... For those that didn't get signed up in time, we will have some take home kits available...."
The Brewster Book Store, Brewster, Mass.: "This past year, our booksellers read a wide range of genres. While challenging ourselves to read more than we did the previous year, to read outside our 'comfortable' genres, and, of course, to discover books our community will love, we were reading books published this year. We cannot wait to share them with you all as they are released. It is going to be another good year for readers!"
Word Squirrel Books, Kincardine, Ont., Canada: "Does anyone else have a reading goal in 2026 to read more classics, or is it just me?"
Niche Books, Lakeville, Minn.: "Spring break is coming, and that means it's time to track your reading! If you 1. read every day from March 27-April 5, 2. Track your pages read/minutes listened, and 3. Bring your tracker back to Niche Books with your info on it, you'll be entered to win one of two $10 gift cards! Come get your tracker this week before the challenge kicks off!"
Australians have been under pressure since December to complete their summer beach reads lists, a seasonal shadow that's creeping around to this side of the planet soon enough, folks.
If it's any consolation, I've always felt a little guilty about the number of books I read in a year, especially because the business I'm in makes other people think I'm a reading machine. I'm not. I don't keep score; I don't have goals.
Whether that's due to stubbornness or habit (good or bad, you decide) I'm not sure. But I've always been a patient reader and that does not help the numbers game. I tend to linger over pages, paragraphs, sentences. I reread passages. I underline and bracket.
Naturally, my old bookseller's instinct shows up regularly in my reading life, as I still juggle three, four, or five unfinished books while eyeing others in my TBR stack. The downside to this grazing technique, however, is that I don't finish many of them and it's hard to know what really counts as far as scorekeeping is concerned. Does reading 200 pages of a 300-page book count for anything toward your yearly reading goal? No? How does it compare to reading five picture books to your kids? I guess a win's a win, right?
To make my reading pace even more measured (in the other, non-scorekeeping sense of the word), this winter (a bitterly cold and snowy one where I live), I've been reading the brilliant Ice, a more than 1,000-page doorstopper of a sci-fi novel by Polish author Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips (Head of Zeus/an AdAstra Book). To be honest, I alternate between reading the book and listening to the audiobook. It's a technique I started doing instinctively with this novel--to keep characters and terms straight--before learning that "hybrid reading" is more of a thing now than I realized.
At the moment, my reading resolution for 2026 is to finish Ice (just kidding; I'm 700 pages in). Whether you're on track or falling behind with your reading goals for the rest of the year, know that I'm rooting for you. In a country where 40% of U.S. citizens didn't read any books in 2025 (a YouGov survey), and another 40% read one to nine books, I'm just here to say, "You're good!" Hey, we're all reading as fast as we can, man.