How To Crush Your Goodreads Goal for 2025
A few tips and tricks that help me!
Introduction:
Do you ever push off your Goodreads goal until the last few weeks before the New Year? Or do you ever set your goal too high and never reach it? Since it’s the beginning of January, I’m going to give you a plan to help you pass your book goal — and read more books than you set originally!
The Goodreads Plan:
Before we get started, I’d like to offer a disclaimer: life will get in the way of your goal, and that’s understandable. So don’t feel guilty if you don’t reach your yearly reading goal– this post is just to help you try!
Step 1: Make a list of twenty books you want to read this year. This can be really simple: picture books, novels, books from an author you like, the entire Percy Jackson universe– whatever floats your boat. The goal is to break down your TBR list into books you actually WILL read this year.
If you’re having trouble coming up with 20 books to start, head to your Goodreads TBR, open a Google tab, and paste the link below into it. Then type “20” random numbers between “1” and “(the last number in your TBR list)”. Those numbers will give you your twenty books for the year.
https://numbergenerator.org/randomnumbergenerator
Step 2: With that in mind, set your Goodreads goal to 20 books. It doesn’t matter if you think you should read more; start small and work your way up.
Step 3: Then, slowly but surely, make your way through the list. If you read other books, be sure to mark them on Goodreads as well!
Step 4: Once you have read all twenty of the books on your list, choose ten more books that you want to read.
Step 5: Repeat the process above in increments of ten, racking up your book count for the year. Every little bit counts!
Other Tips and Tricks:
If Goodreads itself doesn’t work for you and you’re partial to charts and graphs, then I’d recommend making a switch to The Story Graph! It’s a lot like Goodreads, but it has more data and asks you to choose keywords based on the book you’re reading. You can also import your list from Goodreads (although you can only do so once, so choose wisely!) It then analyzes what kind of books you like to read to give you a comprehensive list!
If you’d like to learn more about The Story Graph, here’s an article about the ownerf of the site: https://www.womenwhocode.com/blog/world-book-day-with-nadia-odunayo-founder-of-the-storygrap
If you find yourself struggling to choose books (and number generators don’t work for you), I’d suggest texting or calling a bookish friend. They’ll be more likely to give you book suggestions that you can feel good about.
These tips are super important: read the books you want to read and it’s okay if you don’t reach your goal! Reading books should be something enjoyable for you to do, not another thing on your to-do list.
I hope these tips have helped you with setting your Goodreads goal for the year! How many books did you read in 2024? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
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