The 2026 Annual Reading Challenge Discussion Thread

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

March Thoughts - I have been inhabiting the massive Complete Illustrated Earthsea volume for most of the month. All of my other reads are happening side-by-side with that one. With one other 800+ page book on the go, March was a slower month, but only in terms of total books, not pages.

I'm posting a day early because I won't finish another book before Wednesday.

Cumulative Totals Through End of March:

• Total Books: 30 - 60% of goal, 40% of stretch goal - ON TARGET
• Total Pages: 8689 - 34 % of goal - ON TARGET
• Gender Goal: 55 % Female, 0 % Nonbindary, 45% Male - ON TARGET
• Country of Origin Goal: 54% USA, 46% out of US - slightly OFF TARGET
• Read from Print TBR: 19 - 95% of goal - ON TARGET
• Short Stories: 10 - 20% of goal - slightly OFF TARGET but should be caught up by end of April.
• Poems 18 - 34% of goal - ON TARGET
• Books Recommended by my wife: 13 - 108% of goal GOAL MET, adding a new stretch of 24

April Thoughts:
Finally finished all of Earthsea and the attendant front and back matter in the Complete Illustrated Edition! I finished 12 books in April, which is my second highest month of the year. All of them, save Earthsea were on the shorter side an I only had 3200 pages. Either way, my wife's increased reading time has enabled me to read more overall this year and I'm loving it.

• Total Books: 41 - 82% of goal, 54% of stretch goal - ON TARGET
• Total Pages: 13,536 - 54 % of goal - ON TARGET
• Gender Goal: 58 % Female, 0 % Nonbindary, 42% Male - ON TARGET
• Country of Origin Goal: 50% USA, 50% out of US - ON TARGET
• Read from Print TBR: 26 - 130% of goal - GOAL MET, adding a new stretch of 40
• Short Stories: 17 - 32% of goal - B]ON TARGET[/B]
• Poems 21 - 40% of goal - ON TARGET
• Books Recommended by my wife: 15 - 150% of goal GOAL MET, 62% of new stretch goal (of 24)

(posting a day early because I'll be away from my computer tomorrow and will not finish another title today)

[Tarana]

April went better. Much reading and listening went on. Bought no audiobooks and only 2 ebooks. Need to work on some magazines this month as that grouping has been static for way too long.

60 books: 26
20,000 pages: 7,380
4 books over 600 pages: 0

TBR Down 10 for each category:
Ebooks: 10
Audiobooks: -16
Magazines: 0

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm a bit late with my March update.

Bought: 8. Freebies: 4. Total added to TBR: 12
Read: 17

So a net decrease of 5 on the TBR.

April wasn't so good.

Bought: 26. Freebies: 1. Total added to TBR: 27
Read: 23

So a net increase of 2.

But May is better, and I don't think I'll but of finish any books before the end of tomorrow.

Bought: 15, but 5 were reference and not added to TBR. Freebies: 0. Total added to TBR: 10
Read: 15

A net reduction of 5.

My TBR currently standard at 717, a net decrease of 9 on the start of the year.

Slow, and not steady. Let's see how June goes.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

April wasn't so good.

Bought: 26. Freebies: 1. Total added to TBR: 27
Read: 23

So a net increase of 2.

Help me here. I've struggled with this and I can't figure it out.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by issybird

Help me here. I've struggled with this and I can't figure it out.

I suspect I made a mistake. Let me check...

... yes, apparently I can't take 23 from 27 and get the right answer.

a net increase of 4 in April...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It's nearly the end of January [...]
So a net reduction of 4.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

[...] in February, [...] a net increase of one.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

[...]March update [...] a net decrease of 5

Originally Posted by pdurrant

a net increase of 4 in April...

Originally Posted by pdurrant

May is better [...] A net reduction of 5.

My TBR currently standard at 717, a net decrease of 9 on the start of the year.

At least I got the yearly summary right: -4 + 1 -5 +4 -5 = -9

[Tarana]

I've acquired 21 ebooks and 1 audiobook so far this year. Currently, I am only 6 up on the ebooks and down 21 audiobooks. So TBR for both is down 15. So real progress this year! I have one more book in the Sandhamn series to finish and then will focus on magazines for awhile. Well ahead on pages read but not sure I'll get anywhere with long books this year.

2026 Goals

60 books: 36
20,000 pages: 11,329
4 books over 600 pages: 0

TBR Down 10 for each category:
Ebooks: 6
Audiobooks: -21
Magazines: 0

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

At least I got the yearly summary right: -4 + 1 -5 +4 -5 = -9

In June I added 12 books to the TBR, and read 11, a net increase of 1.

There were a couple of slow books this month.

So now only -8 on the year.

[Tarana]

For June, bought 4 books, read 6. Purchased zero audiobooks! My goal for July is one book and a bunch of magazines. Continue on audiobooks.

2026 Goals
60 books: 42 <--- On course
20,000 pages: 12,972 <--- On course
4 books over 600 pages: 0 <-- zero progress

TBR Down 10 for each category:
Ebooks: 8 <--- behind but progress
Audiobooks: -27 <--Way ahead!
Magazines: 0 <-- zero progress

[Dazrin]

Status at the end of June: 8,442 pages read, 31 books/short stories completed (16,838 projected), towards a goal of 12,000 pages.

2026 Stats:

• Novels/Novellas (>50 pages): 23 (74% books / 98% pages)
• Short Stories (< 50 pages): 8 (26% books / 2% pages)
• Audiobooks: 23 / 232h 39m (74%)
• Library Books: 18 (58%)

I've just started a monstrous book in Rhythm of War at 1,400+ pages, we'll see if I finish it in July or not. It's more than I have done in a couple months this year and summers can be slow depending on what we're doing.

[Tarana]

For July, read 2, bought 16. So, wrong direction on ebooks, but took advantage of a whole series on deep discount to finish off the purchases of that series. Been watching online films so my reading/listening is down, but should pick up in August.

2026 Goals

60 books: 44 <-- on target
20,000 pages: 13,739 <-- on target
4 books over 600 pages: 0 <-- Failing so far

TBR Down 10 for each category:
Ebooks: 22 <-- Failing so far
Audiobooks: -28 <-- on target
Magazines: 0 <-- Failing so far

[Uncle Robin]

After reading 454 books in 2022 (average length 330 pages), I decided I needed to read less, and have been bringing my goals down every year. This year my target was 78 books and 20,000 pages. Currently at 88 books and 30,000 pages.

I have two challenges at the Storygraph left to finish for this year: A personal challenge to read 20 nonfiction books (3 left to go and this year's MBR TBR reduction challenge the three books in the screenshot will wrap both challenges

[DrNefario]

How is everybody doing as we head into Q4?

I'm still mildly hopeful that I'll beat my main goal of reading more than I buy, although I have now fallen 9 books behind.

Most of my other goals are looking reasonable except for the one where I should start at least 50% of those new purchases. I think that's now looking extremely unlikely, and I kind of set myself up to fail, there, by the way I structured my other goals.

I'm already doing a 2025 catch-up - which I'm about to complete - and I suspect I'm going to need another one for 2026 next year, but obviously that pulled my focus from the 2026 books.

I also decided that I would do this year's reddit r/fantasy bingo card using only books I already owned when the bingo started, in April. The idea was that this would stop me buying so many new books, but in practice it has only stopped me reading them.

I have 9 books left in my alphabet challenge, soon to be 8, which should be do-able, but again I started quite late on this one because I was concentrating on last year's reddit bingo for the first 3 months. This has contributed to the general feeling that I've been lagging behind all year.

Financially, it's been fine, but looks worse than it is because of three big coffee-table book purchases in the last three months.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

How is everybody doing as we head into Q4?.

There’s no sugarcoating this one; this year as been a flat-out disaster as far as goals go. I threw in the towel as early as last spring. Why it didn’t happen, I don’t know. I had three “category” goals and I got nowhere with them. And I like that kind of challenge! I like feeling I’m developing a mild competency in a topic, or that I’m developing a deeper understanding of something I already like. I have no explanation at all for why it didn’t happen, except that I got off to a slow start because I was cleaning up hanging issues from last year.

I always set the same benchmark for books read and that won’t be a problem and I did identify a theme from my reading which is something of a consolation, but this was not good. Hoping for better next year.