Before we get to That Artsy Reader Girl’s weekly Top Ten Tuesday topic, our 2026 goals, let’s check in on how I did with last year’s:

1. Read 52 books. 62 titles finished.
2. Read 25 books I own. I managed a piddly four.
3. Read more diversely (15). 18 titles were written by authors who identified as BIPOC or queer.
4. Write at least 6 non-Top Ten Tuesday posts about books this year. I managed six review posts.
5. Read more backlist titles (15 books published outside this half-decade, and at least 7 from before the year 2000). I finished 10 books from before 2020 and only two from the 1900s.
6. Read 3+ books of poetry or novels in verse. Fail, although I did finish two works of prose by poets.
7. Read more nonfiction — at least 5. 10 books.
8. Read a book by an author who lives in Africa and one who lives in Central or South America. Fail.
9. Send the books I’ve bought as gifts to the people they’re meant for. Fail.
10. Give every book I own a permanent home on a shelf. Fail

Okay, so that’s not a great track record. I read more, read more diversely, and read more nonfiction, but still leant toward recent works of fiction from the library.

Let’s see what we can do about it with some goals for this year:

1. Read 52 books. This number works for me as a target.
2. Finish at least 20 books I own.
3. Read 3 works from pre-1900, 5 books from the 20th century, and 10 books (total) published before 2021.
4. Publish reviews for all 12 months DURING 2026 (with a few days’ grace period for December).
5. Finish 1 play, 1 short story collection, and 2 books of poetry.
6. Read works by authors from at least 7 countries, at least 5 of which should be in translation.
7. Read at least 5 books by queer and/or trans writers.
8. Read 5 works of nonfiction, in at least 4 different Dewey Decimal areas.
9. Send the gift books out into the world. (I bought them so friends would get to read them. Silly to hold on to them forever.)
10. Give every book I own its own shelf space. (This should be my ultimate goal for my personal library and if I can’t figure it out, more books should move on to other bibliophiles.