I set a goal to read 96 books this year. I’ve read 10.
If I’m being honest, I wasn’t enjoying reading.
Was it that looming reading goal I set myself? I’m not sure.
I’d like to think it wasn’t, because I genuinely had so much fun planning my reading year this year.
I spent hours poring over my TBR, trying to find the perfect books for the 2025 52 Book Club Challenge. I was pumped to take on a fun reading challenge and having somewhat of a plan (and let’s be real, a cute little TBR jar). I wrote every prompt, paired it with a book title, and felt ready to tackle this massive new goal.
I was coming off a fantastic reading year—58 books in 2024—so bumping the number up felt like the next logical step.
Now, five months into the year, I’ve read 10 books… and I’m not even sure I like reading anymore.
Honestly, I had blamed my courseload for a while—telling myself I just didn’t have time or the mental energy to read. And maybe that was part of it. But books that would normally take me 3-5 days were suddenly taking months. I’d read five, maybe ten pages a day. And I wasn’t falling in love with the stories like I used to.
Nothing was holding my attention.
And fun fact? I’m a perfectionist—so DNF’ing a book? Practically out of the question! It wasn’t even that I needed to DNF… it just felt like I needed more time with the book to get “hooked.” Ya know, like a month-long attempt to convince myself I was still enjoying it.
Now that my semester’s over and summer break has officially begun, I’ve finally had a chance to reflect. And in that internal chat, I realized: 96 books in a year? Isn’t the goal for me.
Why I Set the Goal in the First Place
What did I think it would give me?
Besides forever chasing my tail? Or feeling like I wasn’t “book-ish” enough? Great, more self-doubt. Like I don’t have enough of that already.
I wanted to give myself a reading challenge—52 books for the year felt like a solid base. But I also wanted wiggle room: space for books I picked up on a whim, my monthly book club reads, and of course any ARC that magically appeared in my inbox.
So I aimed high: 96 books. I figured if I could read 58 books during a year filled with five intense classes, a couple of hurricanes, and all the usual “life stuff,” surely 96 wouldn’t be that hard.
Spoiler alert: It was.
I hated opening GoodReads and seeing that I was “only” 5 books behind. Then it became 10. Then 27.
That number hit like a punch to the gut. It stole my thunder, my reading joy, and my will to even try climbing out of the hole. I haven’t had the desire to sit and binge-read in months—so how was I supposed to unbury myself from a backlog I couldn’t even look at without wincing?
I thought about changing the goal a bunch of times. But then came the guilt, the fear of “failing,” and the shame-spiral of opening the “Update Your Reading Goal” page on GoodReads and immediately clicking away. A week ago, I finally bit the bullet and dropped it to 60. That felt more doable in the time I have left this year.
But the more I sat with it—and the more I tried to pull myself through The Watchers by A.M. Shine—the more I realized that even 60 might not happen. And that maybe… that’s okay.
So I Changed My Goal (Again)
The more I sat and struggled to read—a book, in a genre I typically love—the more I realized I had to sit in the uncomfortable space and ask myself: “What do I do to get my reading mojo back?”
I shared how I was feeling over on Threads, and asked for advice—what worked for other readers crawling out of a slump? The most common answer: “Pick up something different.”
But even that started to feel like pressure. Another book to slog through. Another thing to try.
I had written a reminder to myself in my reading journal:
📌 “Learn to DNF. If it’s not serving you, put it down.”
But I didn’t listen. I refused to DNF The Watchers—because I had a feeling I’d love it eventually. And I did… once I hit 80%. It took that long to feel the spark again, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. I had to know how it ended. I needed the answers before I went to sleep.
Nearing the end of that book, I had a pretty harsh talk with myself. Was pushing myself to read 60 books this year actually worth it?
Who was I doing it for?
Did I even care what social media thought about my reading stats? No. Not really.
And that was the light bulb moment.
I opened my GoodReads account, scrolled through all of my past challenges, and realized something wild:
In all the years I’ve been on GoodReads, I’ve completed my reading challenge… four times. Four.
And I’ve been on GoodReads since 2012.
Yep, you read that right. I may have wiggled the numbers a year or two to fake close-outs (reader math, don’t worry about it), but truly completing my challenge? Four times in 13 years.
Have I ever set a goal that high before?
Ha. No.
Most years, I set it to 24 or 36. So why did I cling so hard to 60?
Or if we’re being brutally honest here… 96?
As much as I don’t want to admit it, the answer is this: social media.
And the “book-ish” community.
And that awful little voice in my head whispering, “You need to keep up. You need to be relevant.”
I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be a voice in the book world.
But in chasing that number, I was risking burning out. I was drifting away from something I’ve loved—and from a future I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid.
This right here?
This is what gave me the confidence to hit that “change your goal” button one last time—and lower it to 36.
You’re Not Behind—You’re in a Plot Twist
I’ve never felt such a sense of relief as when I changed that damn reading goal.
I don’t know why I felt like I needed to torture myself. I didn’t have to prove to anyone that I could read 96 books in a year—except, maybe, to myself.
But that wasn’t grace. That was pressure.
And it wasn’t serving me.
What I had to realize was:
I wasn’t letting myself down.
I was being intentional.
I was choosing to enjoy my lifelong hobby again—on my terms.
My feelings around social media shifted a lot after I burned out running Planner and Paper. Back when the shop was thriving, I showed up constantly. Then COVID hit. And I never really made a “comeback” in the way I thought I was supposed to.
Somewhere along the way, I started chasing an imaginary idea of what a “perfect bookstagrammer” should be.
But the truth?
No one wants perfect. They want real.
That I can do.
What I don’t need to do is keep up a breakneck reading pace just to feel like I belong.
I don’t owe anyone a reading goal.
Not Goodreads.
Not Bookstagram.
Not even Past Me—the one who wasn’t even reading 24 books a year and still thought she was failing.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned?
Read at your own pace, not social media’s.
