Philomath's 50 (?) book challenge for 2026

Hello, everybody.

I have returned to LibraryThings after spending a little over a decade away from it. I recently decided to try and get back into one of my most favorite hobbies - reading, writing, and learning new things. 2025 was a rough, but transformative year for me: I was diagnosed with ADHD-I, GAD, and Persistent Depression Disorder in September after a lifetime of being undiagnosed. After getting medicated and starting therapy, my therapist recently suggested that I try to gently get back into my old hobbies in spite of my depression, to at least try and see if I could do it and if I couldn't then at least I made an effort and we can try other strategies.

Depression makes the things I used to deeply love feel hollow and empty to the point that when I try them I feel nothing afterwards, making it even harder to try again. I wasn't expecting to get anything out of trying to get back into reading after so many years of not reading anything outside of required texts for college and work, but I then remembered I used to use LibraryThings a lot to keep track of what I was reading and my overall reading library. After cleaning up my collections, it really helped motivate me to try reading again.

But I've never been all that interested in "read X-amount of books" challenges, so instead I tried to find some more thematic and unusual reading challenges to keep me interested and motivated to keep reading.

So, for 2026 I'm not going to try to read 50 books this year (hence the question mark in the title of this post). Instead, I'm going to try to read at least one book a month, for a total of 12 books read this year. If go over - great. If I go fall short - also great. Quantity is not the focus here.

On top of that, I'll be coming up with an ever-evolving set of little book challenges for myself to hopefully keep my interests up. On recommendation from my therapist, I'm keeping this challenge very flexible and gentle - no beating myself up if I skip a month or if I "fail" a challenge.

Nothing is set in stone here - if I dislike a book or get bored reading it, I can and will drop it with zero questions. If I don't like a challenge I came up with, it gets tossed. I'm also going to be incorporating my other main hobbies I used to enjoy alongside this reading challenge: learning new things for fun and writing, so I'll be keeping a journal of my reading journey, as well.

So far, these are my current personal challenges I've come up for myself (in no particular order):

Philomath's 2026 Reading Challenge

1. Read a book by an author who shares either my first or last name.


2. Read a book that was published on my birthday


3. Read a micro-history book.


4. Read a comic book and/or manga and/or graphic novel.


5. Read a book that is randomly selected for you using the website:Random Book Generator
   
   
6. Read a book that is a hybrid/genre fusion of your favorite genre and a genre you rarely/never read. (ex. Fantasy + Historical fiction, Sci-fi + True Crime, etc...)


7. Read a lesser-known classic book (tip: do a "lesser-known classic books" Google/Duck Duck Go search for recommendations, just try to stay away from the more renowned authors like Hemingway, Austin, Twain, etc...).



8. Read a book whose POV is primarily that of something/someone whose non-human in nature. For example: A book whose POV is primarily that of a planet who observes the goings-on of the creatures that exist on its surface. Think books like Adam's "Watership Down" "Raptor Red" by Bakker, and "Black Beauty" by Sewell.
   
   I'm also going to try very hard to stay away from "easy" picks, so no vampires, werewolves, elves, orcs, and/or zombies (unless they are non-human zombies). I suspect this challenge may be very difficult to complete due to how potentially rare such books like this are, but I think it'll be fun to try and research something.


9. Read a book that takes place in a single room and/or building. A good example of this is "Misery" by King, but generally the book should primarily take place in a single room and/or building the vast majority of the time.


10. What was the last thing you ate and/or drank OR what are you currently eating/drinking? Read a book either about that food/drink item and/or a book that heavily features that food/drink item. (ex. You ate tacos? Great. Read a book either about the history of tacos and/or maybe a book about someone who runs a taco food truck).


11. Read a book that has unusual/strange formatting. Good example is something like "House of Leaves" by Danielewski.


12. Read a book recommendation that was randomly generated from the Libby app's "Inspire Me With..." feature. (THIS CHALLENGE REQUIRES HAVING A VALID LIBRARY CARD). How this works is that when you download the Libby app, there is a "Inspire me" book recommender that let's you pick several different options, such as fiction or nonfiction, the book audience (adult, teen, etc...) and then what sort of emotion/mood/tone you want the book to feel like.
    
    Once you do that, you'll get a list of one-sentence descriptions to pick from, at which point you get recommended 5-6 random books with a 0-100% match rating. I'm planning on randomly selecting every option by using a random dice roller and assigning each option with a number to roll off of.
    

So these are my starting challenges. I'm excited to get started reading again. I've already binge-read one book to count for the month of March 2026 - Eleanore of Avignon: A Novel." so 1 down, 11 (?) more to go!:

Second book of my reading challenge is:
The Last Town on Earth - A Novel."


So far, the book is fairly interesting; bit a slow burn, but so far I like what I'm reading. I had expected the prose to be a bit drier and more academic, but I'm glad it's not.

Spent the past few days setting up a free cross-platform workflow so that I can easily read on my PC and phone without too much trouble.

If anyone's interested, my workflow is (running Win 10 and Note 9 android):

* Main PC Ebook Reader/Library: Calibre (free, customizable with built-in reader) and sometimes Koodo Reader. On my android phone I'm currently using Readera - free to read books.

* I store all my ebooks on an external hard drive. There's three folders: A main Book folder, and two subfolders - Calibre Library and Actively Reading. All of my books go into the Calibre Library folder, and any books I'm currently reading get moved into the Actively Reading folder.

* Because I couldn't find an easy and free way to sync my reading progress between devices, I instead made a simple .rtf Reading Progress document that exists within the Actively Reading folder.

Whenever I feel like reading on my phone, I quickly open the document, write down the page number/place I left off reading, and save it.

* My main syncing device is Syncthings. It's free and easy to set up. I sync only my Actively Reading folder to save space on my phone.

* On my phone I read using Readera - free edition. I specifically use Readera because it shows file previews without having to actually open the document, meaning I can see at a glance where I left off reading and navigate quickly to that page/section.

* I made a folder on my phone also called Actively Reading and have Syncthings sync directly to/from it. Inside Readera, I set the auto-import directory to that folder so that any changes I make either on my PC or phone will get auto-synced via Syncthings almost instantly.

* When I want to switch over from my phone to read on my PC, I open the Reading Progress on my phone, edit it, then save. Syncthings recognizes the modification and syncs back to my PC where I can quickly find my reading place and continue reading via Calibre.

So far, I really like my setup. It's simple and most importantly - it's free: no subscriptions, no paywalls, and no ads.

Congratulations on getting back into reading and learning, and welcome back to LibraryThing! Best of luck with your reading challenge. Cheers!