Reading Accountability Group 2025

Let's help each reach our reading goals

Over the past few days, I’ve been doing some reflection. I’m trying to slow the riptide of daily life and come up for more air. It seems to me that this is what it means to cultivate consciousness. Too often in life, I’ve found myself moving on to the next thing and the next thing. It reminds me of my favourite Emerson quote:

“When skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed”

After last year I feel like I’ve fallen through the thin ice and found my way back to solid ground; I feel I’ve wrestled a bit of consciousness from the maws of my rumination. Also last year I read an awful lot of books. I noticed a trend in a lot of great minds (as I talked about in “The Books that Saved My Life”) that they read a whole lot of hero stories. Having benefited from such archetypal infusion in the past I reckoned it would help me out of my funk. Usually, I hold back from reading epic stories because I find them a tad too addictive. I find myself unable to resist their seductive charms. Last year seemed like a good time. And it was.

In total, I read 72 books last year. It’s the most I’ve ever read in one year and I’m real proud of it. No doubt this number is mostly down to giving myself permission to dive into the aforementioned addictive stories. Of these 72 a LARGE portion (24 to be precise) were written by Brandon Sanderson. I read the entirety of works in the Cosmere which those of you who know Sanderson know that’s a whole lot of words. The next most consumed author was Ursula K. Le Guin at 8. While they may not have given me the wild archetypal boost I’d hoped for, they did provide me countless hours of joy.

This year, my goal isn’t to read more books but to tackle some books I’ve procrastinated on for years. And to give me a kick up the arse, I thought I’d share it with you all and benefit from some group accountability. If you’d like to read more I’d love to have some company on the reading journey. Depending on interest I might make a monthly post checking in or start a thread in the Discord and do regular check-ins there. If it’s just me I’ll probably just go for quarterly updates. Lemme know if you want to join. If you do, you can comment below with what books are on your list for this year and I’ll link back to this post in future check-ins so you can easily remember and check your progress. My goal is about reading specific books but maybe yours is more like my goal last year and it’s more about reading a certain number of books. Whatever you want, it’s more about helping each other be accountable.

Without further ado here’s my list for the year: