I personally will enter myself in both categories with my no-longer-experimental 2026books goal!
This is an exact repeat of my 2025books goal: from 1st January to 24th December, I will never have more than 20 books bought this year that I haven’t yet started. Books enter the list when catalogued onto StoryGraph within 5 days of purchase, and leave the list when started.
Closer to the date, I will schedule a biiiig jump in for Christmas Day, allowing me to safely get as many books for Christmas as my friends and family desire without derailing. The goal will remain flat at that total until 1st January, at which point it will start decreasing, probably aiming to have no books remaining unread from 2026 by 30th June 2027.
This goal worked really well for me this year: I absolutely nailed it. Even though I kept on mood reading as usual, and never committed to reading a specific book by a certain date, the goal kept books top of mind, and the mood came round more often than not. I’ve read everything bought before August already – and that just wasn’t the case historically.
Combined with my backlog goal, reading 100 books from my pre-2025 backlog, I made a substantial and permanent-looking dent in my to be read pile for the first time in years. Can’t wait to see how it looks after this year!