The 3 Words Guiding My Reading in 2025

And other ways I'm hoping to make this my best bookish year.

Hi, friends.

I’m the kind of person who loves a resolution. Setting goals — even arbitrary ones — and planning out steps to hit them is how I scramble for a sense of control amidst the increasing chaos of daily life. It’s addictive. Unfortunately, as I’ve finally come to internalize (thanks, therapy!), it also doesn’t work.

So every year, I work hard to resist the urge to set a million strict, detailed New Year’s resolutions. That said, I also believe that nothing important gets done by accident. So I walk myself back into “intentions” territory instead.

This year, I have two intentions for my non-reading life. My great-grandmother used to knit Christmas stockings with people’s names on them for every family member, spouse, and baby on her radar (seriously; this is my mother’s grandmother, and all my cousins on my dad’s side have stockings). When she passed away in 2023, one month shy of her 100th birthday, I promised myself and my family that I would take up the mantle. But I’m a crocheter, not a knitter. So this year, I’m on a mission to work my way up to the skill level I need to start knitting stockings for the handful of people who already need one, including my 6-month-old daughter. Big thanks to my friend Carina (@time4reading) for giving me excellent advice on how to get there!

Second, in the health category, I’m planning to repeat what I did in 2022 to build my running practice back up: spring 5K, summer 10K, and fall half marathon. This was a great time; it’s slow and steady, leaving plenty of room for off weeks, illness, injury, etc, but also provides enough structure to create consistency. I’d love to stick to a weekly strength training and yoga practice, too — hopefully that will help keep me strong and injury-free. So expect to see plenty of treadmill audiobooks in my wrap-ups!

And then there’s the reading side of things.

I have a few random bookish intentions in 2025. First, I’m going to get back to taking notes in Notion as I read, which is something I used to do (and loved) but stopped because it slowed me down as I was trying to power through more and more books. That’s not the vibe I want! I’m also going to try to care less about the “balance” of my Instagram grid (hard!) so that I can let myself put up more fun, low-key posts as the ideas strike.

I also want to read some books on literary theory. I didn’t have room in my college course schedule for very many English classes, so there’s a lot I don’t (explicitly) know about how literature works under the hood. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to know what I wanted to learn — I’d originally asked for books on literary criticism, because that’s what I’m ultimately trying to get better at — the criticism part. (Shout-out to

Sara Hildreth

for asking the right clarifying question and then sending me a whole slew of recs on literary theory).

But as I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, my biggest bookish intention for 2025 is to reduce how much of my TBR is driven by frontlist literary fiction FOMO. December was the best reading month I’ve had in years, and only a small part of it was dedicated to frontlist litfic. It also included fantasy and nonfiction books that I’d been meaning to read for months but had deprioritized in favor of lit fic ARCs and new releases. Plus, reflecting on my reading year overall, I realized that I liked, but didn’t love, most of the lit fic books I read. I’m listening too much to hype and not enough to my own tastes.

So the plan is to shift the balance away from literary fiction and over to more nonfiction and sci-fi/fantasy, plus be more selective with the lit fic I do pick up. I’ve also created a list of books that I’ve been meaning to read for so long, and that feel so ”me,” it’s actually embarrassing that I haven’t read them yet (think Parable of the Sower, The Poppy War, and The Underground Railroad), and I’m going to check some off by the end of 2025.

Here’s how I’m going to make sure I do it:

The “three words” guiding my 2025 TBR

A set of “three words” is meant to help you identify what feels the most true to you and tune out the noise as you make choices in your day-to-day life. It’s especially common in the world of personal style, helping people curate their wardrobe and decide what to wear each day. But I’m borrowing it for books!

I’ve been thinking about it for the past couple of weeks, and here are my three words. Each of these resonates deeply with me when I consider not only what I like to read, but also why I read at all.

• Emotion: Books that make me feel deeply — any emotion. Make me cry, make me laugh, make me want to hug my friend, make me say “did you know???”.

• Magic: Fantasy is my truest love, but I love any book in any genre that includes even a little bit of magic. It’s more prevalent than you’d think!

• Community: One of the primary reasons I read is to be in community with other readers (like you!), discussing and loving the same books together. Why else would I read through so many prize lists every year?

In 2025, I want every book on my TBR to touch on at least two out of these three words. For example, the right fantasy gives me emotion and magic — and when I read Hugo nominees or join the throngs of people reading SJM or Fourth Wing, I also get community. The right nonfiction gives me emotion (“mind blown!” “this is unjust!” “how cool!”) and often community (“I gotta talk about this!”). And frontlist literary fiction gives me emotion and community — although this year, I’m going to be unabashed about prioritizing those with magic too.

I’m really excited about this, my friends. I have a good feeling about my reading in 2025.

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As always, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me! It would mean a lot if you were to take a second to like this post. I’d also love to hear your three words, if you have them, in the comments!

Finally, if you like this newsletter, please send a few friends my way.

Until next time,

— Deedi (she/her)