Well, well, well, if it isn’t the end of the year that has been creeping up on me slowly. Last week, I made the mistake of looking at the Notion page I created for my 2026 reading and discovered I had ignored most of what I had written down. I had also created a little reading list for myself, and so far, I’ve only read one of those books (The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, which I only achieved last week). But, 2027 isn’t here yet, which means I can still rectify this situation. There are more or less two months left, so there is hope. Here are the books I’m hoping to still get to this year. Wish me luck!
Emma by Jane Austen
For the past three years, I’ve slowly been making my way through the Jane Austen novels. I’ve read them once before as a teenager, but in German, which is a bit of a crime, so this time around I’m reading them in English. Turns out, they are so much more enjoyable in the original! One of my reading goals for 2026 was to reread more books, and I did read Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion earlier this year. Now the only book left to complete my Jane Austen reread is Emma. How very classic to keep the book I enjoyed the least the first time around for last. Emma annoyed me beyond comprehension, but that was ten years ago, so perhaps I will like her more now? It doesn’t exactly help that the book is 500 pages long, but I’ll be damned if I don’t finish this project in 2026. Emma, I am coming for you, whether you like it or not.
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Speaking of projects, I really want to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. The guy was productive though, so there are quite a few to get through. Ever since graduating from university (and thus no longer being “made” to read Shakespeare every semester), I’ve been asking for a play for all my birthdays and each Christmas. This way, I’m making sure I’m slowly but steadily making my way through all the plays. This year, I received Antony and Cleopatra for my birthday, and the goal is to have read it before Christmas, when there will hopefully be a new Shakespeare play waiting underneath the tree for me. I’m sort of asking for the plays in a completely random order, so I have very little idea what Antony and Cleopatra is about (well, it’s probably about Antony and Cleopatra, now that I think about it), but as I want to read them all anyway, that doesn’t matter much. Plus, plays tend to be short, so this should be a quick win (though you should never rush through Shakespeare, in my humble opinion).
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Whenever I go on holiday abroad, I try to buy a book that was written by an author from that country. And then I try really hard not to let it sit on my bookshelf for so long that I barely remember the trip I bought it on. This year, I went to Ireland to visit a friend, and while there I picked up Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. This nonfiction book has been described to me as the book you ought to read if you want to gain a better understanding of recent Irish history. That is a topic I would like to learn more about, and I am genuinely looking forward to reading Say Nothing, but I suspect it will not be an easy read. Which is why I’ve told myself I’ll wait until I have enough brain cells lined up to really dedicate my attention to this book and topic, but I also don’t want to procrastinate doing so, so I am giving myself until the end of 2026 to read it. I have quite a few travel plans lined up for next year and I can just see myself buying books all over Europe and not reading any of them.
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
A dear friend gifted me the four Sherlock Holmes novels last year, and while I read the first one earlier this year, the other three are still waiting for their turn. Since I thoroughly enjoyed the first one, I want to keep the momentum going and just read them all, because I have genuinely been meaning to read them for the better part of fifteen years. So you see, this has gotten out of hand and I would do well to stop procrastinating and just get on with it. My edition has all four novels in one big book, and something about having only read one of them makes me feel as though I stopped reading a book after a quarter, and that makes me very uncomfortable. So for my own sanity’s sake, I simply have to finish them before the end of the year.
I’ll keep this list at four books (well, six, if you count the three Sherlock Holmes novels separately), because otherwise I will simply be setting myself up for failure. If I manage to get through all of them in the next couple of months, I will genuinely be thrilled. If not, they might just migrate to my 2027 reading goal list. Oh well. Happy reading!
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