Reading Without Limits or Expectations

Summary

At the beginning of 2025, I set an intention for my year: Reading A Lot, But Differently. Now that the year has ended, I want to assess how I did. I certainly accomplished the first part of it — I read 121 books last year, the most since I've been keeping records — but did I do the second part, the "differently" part? No, I didn't.If anything, I stuck more closely than ever to the genres and styles that usually comfort me. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this as an approach to reading. It just didn't feel good to me this year. At certain points I had the sensation of being constricted, frustrated even, that I didn't seem to be able to break out of my habits. I wanted to read longer books, or books I've previously pegged as "challenging", or books in languages and styles that are new to me. Yet I didn't. The desire was there, but I still didn't do it. More on how I'm going to try and remedy that in a moment.One aspect of my reading this year that did really work for me in 2025 is this space here, this blog/newsletter. Recording the books I read satiates my appetite for gradually accumulating data. Reviewing each title allowed me to flex a critical muscle I don't use much these days, now that I rarely write reviews for traditional media outlets. Discussing matters arising with readers and receiving recommendations was wonderful. Nothing to change there. I will make some tweaks to my process, though, so that I don't end up with a huge backlog of reviews to post as I did in 2025.I was also conscious of feeling a little aimless with my reading this year. Outside of the books I needed to read for my podcast, I had no project or principle to what I read. I added titles that looked interesting to my Storygraph's "to read" feature diligently and then barely read any of them. I did a lot of scrolling on library apps and placing holds that I then never used. I think there's definitely a place for "mood reading"; just following your nose to whatever will satisfy in tho...