Social reading apps* tempt me to put off tackling slower works for a higher short-term book count. I know it isn’t a contest, but my competition compulsion doesn’t.
I might focus on a few long reads in 2026. That 2-volume Literary History of the American Revolution. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Emily Wilson’s Iliad translation. A big novel like War and Peace or The Tale of Genji or maybe even Finnegans Wake.
I read Finnegans Wake when I was young, but in a superficial, just-want-to-say-I-did-it way. That kind of gamified text-gulping is exactly what I want to leave behind now.
* Such as StoryGraph