How To Read More Books in 2026 (Without Stressing)

Hi bookish friends! Today’s newsletter covers:

• Early access to my video essay about the new Doctor Who spinoff, The War Between the Land and the Sea.

• Meeting some of my oldest bookstagram friends in person for the first time.

• Why Netflix’s Shadow and Bone TV show failed.

But first, a look at the tips and tricks I’m hoping to use to read more books in 2026, as someone who gets stressed about reading goals.

Every new year, book lovers share their annual reading wrap-ups with the internet — and every year, there’s a new round of discourse about it, often fueled by people being secretly butthurt that they didn’t manage to read as much as everyone else. The fact is, it doesn’t matter how many books you read. It just matters that you’re enjoying yourself!

I’ve never been one of those people who reads 100+ books every year. In 2025, I read 29 books, which was an improvement over my reading stats for 2024 (24 books) and 2023 (11 books — I can thank my senior year of college and an intense internship for that). The ever-increasing nature of my TBR pile makes me keen to see if I can read more in 2026, but I have to employ some strategies that will work for me.

To that end, here are three things I’m doing this year to read more books without making it feel like a chore and getting frustrated:

1. Don’t Set a Number of Books as a Reading Goal

In the years when I’ve set a specific number of books as a reading goal, I tend to become stressed out when I inevitably start falling behind.

Instead, in 2025, I set the goal to make reading a habit — that is, I wanted to read at least one page every day. In the end, I read 5 more books than I did in 2024 and was way less stressed about it.

According to the tracker in my bullet journal, I read at least one page on 88% of the days in 2025. I want to get that percentage closer to 100 in 2026. (So far I’m 19 for 19. Woohoo!)

2. Give Audiobooks a Try

Audiobooks don’t work for everyone, but if you’re even a little bit curious about them, I’d highly recommend giving them a try! I can’t really focus on audiobooks unless I’m doing something else with the non-verbal parts of my brain, such as chores, knitting, or driving — but that just means audiobooks are perfect for multitasking. Just listening to audiobooks on my morning commute adds a book or two per month to my reading tally.

3. Free Yourself from Your Phone

Many times, it’s not that I don’t have time to read — it’s that my free time gets eaten up by endlessly scrolling on my phone. This year, I’m determined to be more cognizant of when I’m spiraling into a mindless doomscroll and try to pick up a book instead.

Deleting TikTok and Reddit off my phone and installing the Focus Friend app have been great first steps for me (I still have my TikTok account — I just access it via desktop now). As the year goes on, I’m hoping to break my habit of reaching for my phone in every spare moment and replace it with stories of the bookish kind, not the Instagram kind.

It bears restating that the number of books you read in a year does not matter. Whether you get through two books or two hundred in 2026, you can still call yourself a reader if that’s a label that resonates with you. However, my hope is that by following these tips, I (and maybe you) can build a healthy reading habit that leads to discovering some amazing new stories.

Watch Early: The War Between the Land and the Sea — Doctor Who’s Most Controversial Spinoff?

In December 2025, the BBC aired a five-episode spinoff of Doctor Who called The War Between the Land and the Sea, in which the classic Doctor Who creatures the Sea Devils have had enough of ocean pollution and rise from the deep to confront humanity. The show requires no prior knowledge of Doctor Who, and has done surprisingly well in terms of viewing figures, even outstripping some recent Doctor Who episodes.

However, as The War Between the Land and the Sea went on, fans’ reactions became strikingly mixed, with some loving it and some hating it with a burning passion. My new video essay breaks down why this series garnered such polarizing reactions.

The video will be public on my YouTube channel in a few days, but email subscribers get to watch it early!

Meeting My Oldest Bookstagram Friends

I’ve been making bookish content on Instagram since 2019, and in that time, I’ve connected with a lot of really cool people. In December, I got to meet not one but TWO of my favorite booksta friends!

First, I got to hang out with the fabulous Basma from @bookishbasma for a bookstore trip and dinner. Basma and I have followed each other on Instagram since December 2020, so we met in person almost exactly five years after meeting online!

Then, the very next week, I got brunch with the lovely Kathryn from @metaphorsandmisc, who I’ve been Instagram mutuals with since July 2020! It was amazing to sit and chat with both of these amazing people about bookish shenanigans.

To commemorate the occasion, Basma and I posted a little video from our meetup on Instagram and TikTok:

Why Netflix’s Shadow and Bone Show Failed

One of my recent Youtube video essays was an unnecessarily deep dive into the rise and fall of the Shadow and Bone TV show, which Netflix cancelled after two seasons. As I do with many of my YouTube videos, I edited some of the topics into short versions for posting elsewhere. First, I created a short about the general circumstances behind why Shadow and Bone met its demise on Instagram and TikTok:

Next, I posted a rant on Instagram and TikTok about why my all-time favorite romantic subplot, the slow-burn relationship between Kaz and Inej from Six of Crows, didn’t hit the same when translated to screen for the Shadow and Bone show:

Thank you so much for reading! Until next time, bookish friends.

Love,

Ellie