It’s time for my First Quarter Reading Goals update for 2025!
Back in January, I wrote about my Top Ten Bookish Goals for 2025. And I’m not the type to set goals and then just forget about them. No, I prefer to check in with my progress every so often. I do this for a few reasons:
- It can be a good morale boost to see the progress I’ve made so far, motivating me to keep going.
- I can see where I’m currently falling short, which helps me course-correct and make more progress going forward.
- I can take a moment to review the goals themselves and see if they’re still important to me and/or if I want to edit or remove them.
First Quarter Reading Goals Plan
Today, we’re going to review the progress that I’ve made toward my 2025 Reading Goals so far. One by one, we’ll look at each goal and talk about how I have/n’t achieved them and if I’m on track to finish by the end of the year.
Since we’ve made it through the first quarter of 2025, I expect to be roughly 25% done with all of my goals. Ideally, I’ll be further along than that, but if I’m behind, I still have plenty of time to catch up.
So, without further ado, let’s jump into the reflection!
First Quarter Reading Goals Update 2025
GOAL 1: Read 3 classics written by women.
I’m proud to say that I’ve made some great progress on this goal! So far, I’ve read 2 out of 3 classics written by women:
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett | ★★★★✬ 4.5 stars
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle | ★★★★☆ 4 stars
It’s interesting to me that these are both more along the lines of “children’s classics,” since this isn’t exactly what I intended with this goal, but I’m counting it nonetheless!
The Secret Garden was my favorite of the two so far, but I also absolutely adored A Wrinkle in Time! In fact, I’m already reading the second book in the series, A Wind in the Door (I won’t be counting this as a separate classic for the purposes of this goal, though).
The fact that I read both of these books during March demonstrates how much of a mood reader I can be. I guess I was really in the mood for children’s classics!
That said, I only need to read one more classic written by a woman to complete my goal for the year. I’m hoping to read something more along the lines of a Jane Austen novel or something similar, but we’ll see!
GOAL 2: Read a short story collection.
Spoiler alert: This is the only one of my goals that I’ve made absolutely zero progress on.
I still want to explore a short story collection at some point this year, but the inspiration hasn’t struck yet. I’m not going to force myself to pick one up until I’m sure I’m in the mood for it, so the wait continues.
After all, my goal is just to read one collection, and I still have 9 more months to achieve this. So I’m not sweating it too much.
GOAL 3: Get my physical TBR down to zero.
Ok, on the surface, I haven’t made any progress on this goal either (I still have 8 unread books on my shelf), but hear me out!
One of my unread books is A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle. This is the third book in a series, and I don’t physically own the first two, so I have to borrow those from my local library.
And as I mentioned earlier, I have read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Book 1 in the series) and am making my way through the second book as we speak. So even though I haven’t reduced the unread books on my shelf, I’m working my way toward being able to read one of them soon, you follow?
Anyway, my progress is slow so far, but I’m counting it as a win for now, especially since I’m planning to donate roughly half of my unread books that I don’t have any interest in reading.
GOAL 4: Track all my reading in a spreadsheet.
As I mentioned in my initial post about my goals, I was inspired by this Instagram post from @emmaas.books to track my reading in my own personal spreadsheet.
To be honest, the more I’ve been using Storygraph recently, the less I’ve kept up with my spreadsheet. I don’t feel like I’m tracking a whole lot of extra data that Storygraph doesn’t already process, so my spreadsheet feels a bit… pointless?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go through and update it sometime soon (I’m at least a month behind at this point), but I’m also open to giving up on it entirely at some point. I guess I’ll update you at the end of Q2?
GOAL 5: Read 3 books translated from another language.
Now here’s another goal that I’ve made some real, tangible, irrefutable progress toward!
In January this year, I readThe Vegetarian by Han Kang (★★☆☆☆ 2 stars), which was originally written in Korean and translated to English by Deborah Smith. Unfortunately, this is probably my least favorite book I’ve read this year, although I want to be SO clear: I totally understand the appeal! It simply wasn’t for me.
Anyway, 1/3 is obviously some great progress, given that we’re only 1/4 through the year! I still have 9 more months to pick up just 2more translated works, and I’m extremely confident that I’ll be able to achieve this.
GOAL 6: Write reviews for 40% of the books I read.
- Educated by Tara Westover | ★★★★☆ 4 stars
- Holy Ground by Catherine Coleman Flowers | ★★★★☆ 4 stars
- The Grace of Wild Things by Heather Fawcett | ★★★★★ 5 stars
- Loveless by Alice Oseman* | ★★★★★ 5 stars
- Dead Good Detectives by Jenny McLachlan | ★★★★✬ 4.5 stars
- Wishing Well, Wishing Well by Jubilee Cho | ★★★★★ 5 stars
- Where Only Storms Grow by Alyssa Colman | ★★★★☆ 4 stars
*Note: I have already written my review for Loveless, but I have not published it yet. This book impacted me on an extremely personal level (in the best way possible!), and I want to make sure my review does it justice. So I’m taking some time to mull it over and edit several times over before publishing 🙂
As is evident from my ratings shown above, I have mostly reviewed books that I really enjoyed this year. This wasn’t intentional, but I’m rolling with it.
As of writing this post, I have read 16 books this year and reviewed 7 of them, which puts me at a 44% review rate! Plus, I might still write reviews for 1 or 2 books that I read recently but haven’t gotten around to those yet.
Anyway, I’m thrilled to be on track with this goal so far! I’ll admit that I expect to fall behind at some point this year, but I’m glad that moment hasn’t arrived yet. I’ll take the win while I have it!
GOAL 7: Read 5 memoirs about people with a different minority identity than me.
AND
GOAL 8: Read 6 nonfiction books about nature.
It makes sense to combine these two goals for this reflection because I’ve read two books so far that cover both categories:
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer | ★★★★★ 5 stars
- Holy Ground by Catherine Coleman Flowers | ★★★★☆ 4 stars
Both of these books are essay collections covering topics of nature and the authors’ lives. I didn’t intend to read two books with such similar structures, but their contents are quite different and incredible in their own rights.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is Potawatomi, and Catherine Coleman Flowers is Black. Both authors discuss their identities in their essays and weave in their experiences throughout, so they solidly fit into Goal 7. As for Goal 8, as I mentioned, both books delve into topics of environmentalism, which is exactly what I’m looking for.
For the first quarter, I’m making solid progress on both of these goals, and I’m excited to read more in both categories.
GOAL 9: Read a cli fi book.
I guess it’s a little debatable whether I’ve completed this goal or not.
In March, I read Moongarden by Michelle A. Barry (★★✬☆☆ 2.5 stars). This book was described to me as a retelling of The Secret Garden but with cli-fi elements. But after reading it, I have my doubts.
It was definitely sci-fi, but the climate elements were not nearly as prominent as I had hoped. It’s more of a backstory than a main feature.
So while you could maybe argue that I technically read a cli-fi book, Moongarden really wasn’t what I’m looking for, so I’m not really counting it. I still have my eyes on Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (I’ve been on the waitlist for it at my local library for SO long!) to cover this goal. We’ll see if I get around to it in the next three months!
GOAL 10: Have fun!
This goal is 100% subjective, so it’s up to me to decide whether I’m on track or not…
And I say I totally am!
I’ve read a wide variety of books so far, and I’ve been careful to focus on books that I truly want to read rather than those that I feel I should read. And that’s exactly the point of this goal!
In fact, I would go so far as to say that Goal 10 is my most successful one yet!
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Thank you so much for diving into my First Quarter Reading Goals Update for 2025 with me! I had so much fun going through this and seeing all the progress I’ve made, and I hope you got some vicarious fulfillment and/or motivation from this as well.
Now, I’m simply dying to know: Do you also have any reading goals for 2025? If so, I would love nothing more than to know how mush progress (if any, and however you quantify “progress”) on them. Feel free to share you own first quarter reading goals and/or your progress in the comments.
Until next time, happy reading!