There was a year I read 127 books. I still remember the number, because I was so absurdly proud of it—until I noticed I could barely remember most of them. They’d turned into notches on a belt I never wanted to wear. I’d stumbled straight into the reading-challenge trap, and my reading life was gasping for air.
I’m Maren Lindqvist-Berg, and if you’ve spent any time here at In the Pages of a Good Book, you already know I believe reading should be a slow, deliberate act of connection, not a competition. Today I want to talk about building a reading life that runs on curiosity, mood, and the plain joy of getting lost in a story—without a single number hanging over your head.
The Tyranny of the Tally
I get why reading challenges exist. They hand us a sense of accomplishment. They nudge us toward books we might otherwise ignore. For someone rebuilding a habit, a modest goal can be a gentle push. The trouble starts when the goal becomes the point. When we pick shorter books to pad the count, skim endings just to move on to the next title, or eye a 600-page masterpiece and see a liability instead of an invitation.
Reading challenges tend to whisper that more is better. But more what? More pages turned without absorption? More plots forgotten by Tuesday? I’ve come to believe a reading life built on challenges is a house built on quicksand. It sinks the moment you miss your target. It makes you feel guilty for rereading an old favorite instead of ticking off something new. It twists a deeply personal act into a public performance.
The opposite of a challenge-driven reading life isn’t aimlessness. It’s intentionality. It’s learning to trust your own instincts about what you need from a book right now, in this particular season of your life.
Curating a Mood-Based Reading Stack
I keep a small stack of books on my nightstand—usually four or five—and I let my evening mood choose for me. Some nights I need the quiet, aching prose of a Japanese novelist. Other nights I want a sharp, witty essay collection that makes me argue with the author in the margins. Sometimes only a thick, sprawling Victorian novel will do, the kind where you can live inside the sentences for weeks.
This practice began when I noticed how often I forced myself to finish a book I wasn’t in the right headspace for, simply because it was “next on the list.” I’d blame the book, when the fault was really mine for demanding it meet me on my terms instead of its own. Now I let my emotional weather steer my choices. If I’m anxious, I reach for narrative comfort—a familiar voice, a setting I know well. If I’m restless, I pick up something that demands my full attention, something structurally daring or linguistically dense.
This isn’t about being undisciplined. It’s about respecting the relationship between reader and text. A book isn’t a task to be completed. It’s a conversation, and you’re allowed to have that conversation when you’re ready to listen.
Rereading as a Radical Act
Nothing exposes the poverty of a challenge mindset quite like the question of rereading. Most challenges don’t count rereads, or if they do, we feel a twinge of embarrassment marking them down. We’ve swallowed the idea that reading is about accumulation—new titles, new authors, new facts. But the deepest reading experiences of my life have almost all been returns. I’ve read Middlemarch four times. Each time I was a different person, and the book was a different book.
Rereading is how we measure our own growth. It’s how we discover that a novel we thought was about marriage is actually about vocation, or that a character we once despised now breaks our heart. When we treat books as items on a checklist, we rob ourselves of these layered encounters. A reading life that makes space for returning is a reading life that understands books aren’t consumed but inhabited.
I have a ritual: every January, I reread a book I loved a decade ago. I don’t plan which one until the day arrives. I walk to my shelves, run my fingers along the spines, and wait for one to feel warm. This year it was Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, which I first read in my twenties and found slight and quiet. Now, in my forties, with a father growing older and a child of my own, it nearly undid me. No challenge would have led me back to it. Only a habit of listening to my own readerly hunger did.
The Art of Reading Slowly
I’m a slow reader. I’ve always been a slow reader. For years I felt apologetic about it, as if my pace were a defect. Challenges, with their baked-in expectations of speed, only deepened the shame. But eventually I realized that reading slowly isn’t a weakness—it’s a way of paying attention. When I read slowly, I notice the rhythm of sentences. I catch the small echoes across chapters. I sit with a difficult passage until it yields its meaning.
There’s a particular pleasure in taking a month to read a single novel. You live alongside it. The characters become companions. The weather of the book seeps into your actual weather. I read The Goldfinch over six weeks one winter, and by the end I felt like I’d been in New York and Amsterdam, like I’d held that painting in my hands. If I’d raced through it in a week to meet a quota, I would have missed the very thing that made it matter.
Reading slowly also means giving yourself permission to stop. I used to finish every book I started, out of a misplaced sense of duty. Now I abandon books freely. Life’s too short and my stack is too tall. If a book isn’t working for me after fifty pages, I set it aside. Maybe it’s the wrong time. Maybe it’s the wrong book. Either way, I refuse to let obligation poison my reading life.
Building a Reading Journal That Serves You
If you’re letting go of challenges, you might wonder how to mark your reading life without numbers. I keep a reading journal, but it’s not a log. I don’t list titles or dates or star ratings. Instead, I write a short letter to myself about each book I finish. What was I feeling when I read it? What sentence did I underline? What question did it leave me with? These letters are a record not of what I read, but of who I was when I read it.
This practice has made my reading life feel rich in a way spreadsheets never could. When I look back through my journal, I see a map of my interior life. The summer I read all of Tove Ditlevsen’s memoirs was a summer I was wrestling with my own childhood stories. The autumn I devoured nature writing was an autumn I needed to feel connected to the physical world. A challenge tally would tell you none of this.
If letter-writing feels too formal, try a single sentence. Or a list of three words the book left you with. The point is to create a small, private ritual of reflection. It doesn’t need to be shared online. It doesn’t need to be impressive. It just needs to be honest.
Finding Community Without Competition
One paradox of abandoning challenges is that you might feel disconnected from the reading world. Social media is saturated with goal-tracking and wrap-ups. It can seem like everyone is racing. But there are quieter corners. I’ve found deep satisfaction in a small, real-life book club that meets in a member’s living room. We read one book a month. We talk about it for two hours. There are no points, no leaderboards, just eight people who love sentences.
If an in-person group isn’t possible, seek out readers who share your sensibility. Follow people who write long, thoughtful reviews rather than quick ratings. Comment on their posts. Start a correspondence. Some of my richest literary friendships began with a single email about a shared love for Penelope Fitzgerald.
The goal is to surround yourself with voices that remind you why you read in the first place—not to finish, but to understand. Not to count, but to connect.
Letting the Seasons Shape Your Reading
I’ve stopped fighting my seasonal reading moods. In winter, I want long books and cold settings. In spring, I crave poetry and slim novels that feel like buds opening. Summer calls for sprawling family sagas and books set in hot countries. Autumn brings a hunger for gothic tales and dark academia. When I honor these rhythms, reading feels organic, like a natural part of the year’s turning rather than a manufactured project.
This doesn’t mean I never deviate. But having a loose seasonal framework gives my reading life a shape that isn’t dictated by a challenge prompt. It’s dictated by the world outside my window and the world inside my head.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I genuinely enjoy reading challenges? Is it wrong to keep doing them?
Not at all. If a challenge brings you joy without pressure, and if you can walk away from it when it stops serving you, then it’s a tool you’re using well. The thing is to check in with yourself honestly. Are you choosing books because they excite you, or because they fit a prompt? Are you reading more but enjoying it less? If the answers trouble you, consider a break. Try one season without any tracking. See how it feels. You can always go back.
How do I remember what I have read if I do not track numbers?
Memory isn’t built by lists. It’s built by reflection. Write a few sentences after you finish a book. Talk about it with a friend. Reread a favorite passage a month later. These acts embed a book in your consciousness far more deeply than a Goodreads update. If you want a record, keep a simple notebook with the title and one impression. But trust that the books that truly matter will stay with you without any system at all.
I feel guilty when I abandon a book. How do I get past that?
Guilt about abandoning books is often guilt about perceived failure. We think we’ve failed the book, or failed ourselves. But reading is not a moral obligation. Every book you set aside frees up time for one that might change you. Start by giving yourself a “fifty-page rule.” If a book hasn’t earned your attention by then, let it go with a clean conscience. The book will survive without you. And you’ll be happier.
Won’t I read less if I stop setting goals?
Possibly. But reading less is not the same as reading poorly. A year with ten deeply absorbed books is richer than a year with fifty forgotten ones. If you’re worried about losing momentum, build small habits instead of goals. Read for fifteen minutes before bed. Keep a book in your bag. Make reading a pleasure you return to, not a task you complete. You might be surprised to find that without the pressure of a goal, you actually read more—because you want to, not because you have to.
A reading life built beyond challenges isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing differently. It’s about trusting your own curiosity, honoring your own pace, and letting books be companions rather than competitors. The pages will turn. Let them turn slowly.
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