Let’s start this new year off with some good vibes, some glass-half-full energy, by starting with my bookish ins. 

First up is reading more than one genre and outside your comfort zone. 2025 is the year to challenge ourselves and live dangerously! Read that one book you’ve been putting off for forever. There are so many beautiful, beautiful books that you’re missing out on by limiting yourself to a certain genre. I think I read very widely and across genres – I’ll pretty much read anything in front of me, although I will always have a soft spot for the magic and escapism of fantasy. But there are still occasional books that weren’t in my niche. An example; at first I thought Brandon Sanderson wasn’t for me. I see a lot of men reading it and somewhere in my brain I had discounted it as a ‘boy book’. But one day I saw a video of @freyv_reads raving about Mistborn. Her review gave me the push I needed to start it, and now I can’t believe I hadn’t picked it up sooner. For anyone in the same boat I was in, rest assured. Brandon’s female characters are wonderfully fleshed out and characterised, and Vin would easily be one of my favourite characters of all time. Whatever reservations I had were completely unfounded, and this warrants a conversation about misogny in the book world. Is there such a thing as a ‘girl book’ or a ‘boy book’? Brandon himself recently said that he welcomes all new readers after Mistborn made its first appearance on the USA Today Bestseller List. He encouraged existing fans not to gatekeep the Cosmere from readers who may predominantly read romantic fantasy and this may be their first foray into the world of epic fantasy.

Switching screen time for reading, specifically before bed. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always read before bed and now it’s more of a comfort habit than anything else. That feeling, when it’s the middle of the night and it feels like no one else in the world is awake, when it’s just you and the world you’re immersed in. As a self-diagnosed night owl, this is my all-time favourite time to read. It’s better for your health and your sleep than scrolling your phone before bed, as all of us have no doubt been told. (Privately, reaching a mind-blowing plot twist at 2am also ruins my sleep…)

Reading has always been a bit of a solitary hobby for me. Sometimes, curling up with a book by myself is exactly what I need to recharge, but this year I definitely want to make books more of an experience. I’ve already made strides with this, joining a book club and connecting with some fellow bookworms who live locally and planning bookish dates with them. 

This also links in with my next in – buddy reading. No matter how you buddy-read, whether you read chapter by chapter with a friend, or just casually at the same time, I love having someone to discuss the events and plot with. I don’t know what I’d do without my bookish besties, who listen to me rant at all unholy hours. 

Getting hyped for new releases! One of my absolute favourite feelings is being so excited for a new book release. Maybe it’s the new instalment in a series you love, or a brand new novel from a favourite author. I always mark release dates on my calendar, and sometimes have countdowns on my phone and it brings me so much joy when I’m finally holding the release in my hands. 

Now let’s move on to my bookish outs.

Starting off strong is this (new?) phenomenon of people skim-reading, or just reading the dialogue has been recently making the rounds on BookTok and Bookstagram. Until seeing this discourse, I wasn’t even aware this was something people did? It’s bordering on madness to me. Firstly, by doing this, you’re missing out on so much. The descriptions, the atmosphere, key plot points. If you find yourself doing this, then hey, maybe reading full-length novels isn’t for you and that’s okay! You could try scripts and plays, movies and TV. There are so many different mediums out there, and even different ways to consume those mediums. If it’s an attention-span kind of thing, you could try audiobooks. 

Which leads me neatly onto my next point. People who complain that listening to audiobooks isn’t actually reading.This one gets me riled up. I would think, in the progressive age of 2025, that we had moved on from mindsets such as these, but I still get reels saying that audiobooks shouldn’t be counted as reading, shouldn’t contribute to a Goodreads reading goal etc. I find this so concerning and frankly quite ableist. There are many reasons why somebody would prefer audiobooks over physical books, such as health conditions, time restraints or simply enjoying the immersive experience.And at the end of the day, we all love stories. That’s as simple as it gets, and why should it matter how someone else consumes those stories? The spoken word is a more ancient, respected practice than the written word and without oral storytelling, much of our history would be lost to time. 

*lets out a deep breath*

That felt good to get off my chest. And while I’m on the subject of audiobooks, I recently discovered an amazing charity called Calibre Audio. They provide audiobooks to people who struggle to read due to health conditions, such as dyslexia, visual impairments or energy-limiting chronic illnesses. I’ll share the link below in case anyone reading qualifies and is interested – I’d definitely recommend checking it out.  

https://www.calibreaudio.org.uk

Judging people for their book taste. Reading is a hobby, and hobbies are intended to be fun. Repeat it after me, reading is meant to be fun! This obviously excludes any books that are problematic in some way or another (*cough cough It Ends With Us*). Then, I think it’s perfectly fine to broach that topic, and in fact I think we should be having more of those conversations in 2025.

Just because someone chooses to spend their free time, their hobby, reading books that differ in genre to the books that you favour, doesn’t mean they’re more or less intellectual or highbrow. It just means you have different tastes! And that’s okay. I once had someone refer to my book taste as ‘middlebrow’, which I find rather amusing now. Read what makes you happy. 

I’ve also seen a lot of other people resolve not to set a Goodreads goal this year, rather focusing on reading more quality of quantity and I also think this is something to reflect on. In 2022, my friend group and I made a competition of who could read the most books in a year. Being the fiercely competitive person I am, I ended up winning with a grand total of 147 books (second place came in at 125). But it was also the year where I read the worst books. I found myself picking up books for how quickly I thought I could speed through them. In both 2023 and 2024, I averaged around 95 books (which I’ve now determined is probably my average). But overall, now I measure my reading goal by how much I enjoyed the books I read that year. If you only read one book but you loved it, I’d count that as a success. 

What do you think of my 2025 reading resolutions? Do you agree or disagree, and do you have any of your own?