The past couple of reading years have been the right blend of challenging and fun for me—so my plans for 2026 won’t vary much. But I’ll share a few specifics, just in case any of the books I’m eyeing are on anyone else’s TBR or figuring in your 2026 plans: I love to read in company, especially new and challenging books (but also old and beloved ones).
#ShelfofMexico 
Renaming part of my bookcase #shelfofmexico after the current American administration renamed the Gulf of Mexico revealed just how narrow my experience of Mexican literature has been. Carlos Fuentes’ Great Latin American Novel (2011; translated by Brendan Riley, 2016) has brought countless new-to-me writers and books onto my TBR and into my stacks. Despite more than half of my reading in 2024 being by writers of colour, I could count the South American writers on one hand, and 2025 revealed some of what I’ve been missing. This year I’m planning to read some author interviews alongside more fiction. What Latin American (or Spanish-language) writers are in your stacks for 2026?
Filling the Gaps
I’ve read approximately one Latin American classic (by Machado de Assis), but I’ve also missed quite a few western canonical classics along the way. Maybe this will be the year for Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and I hope to read some more Chekov, and I’m absolutely loving Proust’s neverending sentences. Solidly on the list are lesser-known classics by Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Delarivier Manley from the early 18th century, inspired by Dale Spender’s Mothers of the Novel and Regan Penaluna’s How to Think Like a Woman (which I read for an event Bill hosted last year that invited us to think about the early writing that inspired canonical writers). Has your relationship to reading classics changed over time?
Series
On the CanLit scene, I stalled last year in rereading/reading Michel Tremblay’s Mont-Royal series in French (because my copies are sit-at-a-table copies, and my reread of Middlemarch this year claimed all that time) so I’m already rereading the first volume (its opening and closing scenes, with the three sisters knitting, are true favourites). And starting July 14th, I’ll begin reading the first of nine volumes in Marie Claire-Blais’ Soifs series—but in English translations. The first is These Festive Nights, originally published in 1995, reissued in House of Anasi’s handsome A-List series, and translated by Sheila Fischman. It’s 312 pages long; it’s also one sentence long. Do you have a series project in mind that you routinely overlook?
Mini-Binges
Over the past two years, Lorna Sage’s twelve essays about women writers were so inspiring, I’ve selected six other women writers myself, planning to read some of their fiction over a month and related works the next: Julia Alvarez, Alexis Wright, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, and Gish Jen. Starting with Julia Alvarez, which will also require more listening than has been my habit in recent years; I need to practice navigating through audio files, because I always want to revisit passages or sections, so I hope it gets easier, as I would like to listen more often. Are you a good listener?
Months-long
In 2024, I really loved reading slowly through Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning over about six months, and last year I read Tanya Talaga’s The Knowing over several weeks (it was a borrowed copy, I had to rush a little). This year I’ve pulled David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything from the shelf. It has twelve chapters, perfect for scheduling either one or two chapters each month (let’s see how it goes), and it challenges the ideas in some other books I’ve enjoyed—by writers like Charles Mann and Jared Diamond—so I’m quite curious. Is there an intimidating tome in your 2026 plans?
Bookishness
Last year, Mr. BIP treated me to a bunch of new memoirs and essays, all bookish. Usually I hoard this kind of book, distracted by the idea that I should read more other books in connection to them first, but this year I’m going to blunder into them sequentially. And though I have Bron’s year of reading Non-Fiction in mind, I’m unlikely to post about very many of these here, so I’m not sure my plans are suited for a year-long group undertaking. Two of the skinniest volumes in the stack are Stacey D’Erasmo’s The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry and Edwidge Danticat’s We’re Alone: Essays, but maybe I won’t read them all this year. Are you lazy as I am about reading the books gifted to or recommended to you?
As a notoriously moody reader, these ideas are just specific enough (the Mont-Royal and Soifs series, The Dawn of Everything, and six specific writers but not specific books) to give me the sense of selecting while still having some goals in mind. I hope there’s just enough structure here to curb the doom-scrolling and to fan the fires of curiosity instead.
If your reading interests align, feel free to cmment and maybe we can plan to read something together. If I’ve missed your 2026 post about goals, intentions, ideas for reading this year, please feel free to link below and I’ll catch up. Regardless, I hope we’ve all got super-satisfying reading years ahead of us in 2026!
Love this intentional resistance to the administration here in the U.S. and how you continue to focus on/include authors of color in who you read (I strive to do the same)! Sounds like great books and helpful for me to know more about them too. My reading has been satisfying this year so far even though the books definitely have not been as stellar as my 2025 reads so far- but that’s okay, maybe we’ll get there.
Not even two months into 2026, there’s still plenty of time to stumble onto some amazing reads. But, at the same time, they can’t all be amazing, eh? They wouldn’t stand out so delightfully, if there weren’t a lot of “good” and “fine” books in the stacks too!
I’m not sure I will get to Alexis Wright this year (I plan to read her books in publication order) but I do have several books by Annie Ernaux and Olga Tokarczuk on my TBR so I will endeavour to read at least one of them around the same time as you do, for the fine company 🙂
I’m a couple chapters from finishing PLains of Promise now (I can’t remember, but I think that’s her first?) and it’s really interesting to read it AFTER Carpentaria and Praiseworthy and The Seam Book (I haven’t read Tracker yet). But if it had been available here with the others, I’d’ve rather read PoP first.
I think AE and OT will be July/August and Sept/October, but it will require resuming my library habit after the snows melt. I knew you were keen on AE but didn’t know about OT: how exciting!
I will note those dates/authors in my diary – thanks for the heads up 🙂
I’m so glad your #shelfofmexico went well for you!
I’m sorry to have missed out on The Knowing with you and Bill. But that Dawn of Humanity is very tempting…
One advantage to reading in a relatively new vein, is that it’s really easy to find reading possibilities because I’ve not read very many yet.
It’s at least triple the size of The Knowing and covers eleventy-million more centuries, so there’s that.
Lovely plans! I try to read my TBR in order of acquisition, although my main project this year, apart from starting to re-read Iris Murdoch again, is to get hardbacks read before they come out in paperback, which necessitates some picking-out! I am doing well with the ones I selected that had already come out in paperback when I acquired them, so doing OK so far! Happy reading, whatever you choose …
I share your hardcover intentions for this year, actually, although I didn’t include it here. Not sure why, really, because it’s a very sensible idea. Well, my stack of hardcovers-pre-paper includes ten at most…but, maybe that’s true for you too? Neither here nor there, the figure; I could, in a panic, just stop everything and read them all in a month, whereas these other projects have to stretch out, take up space through most of the reading year…so I guess that’s why these felt different, cuz I feel like I’m gonna need reminding. Maybe I should post sticky-notes on the mirrors, like when you’re memorising vocab!
I think I had about six and I’ve got them done pretty well. I acquired another this month but allowing myself to read that in February!
Oh, well: how inspiring! I just checked, and I haven’t finished a single one yet. And…there’s only one in my current “stack”, so I’d better cram at least one more in there!
These plans sound great! I am not a planner at all – I just tend to grab whatever book catches my eye or work my way through the huge backlog on my Kindle. But I enjoy reading about other people’s plans and imagining what it would be like to be organised 🙂
I think a backlog or stuffed-bookcase(s) can serve as a plan. I s’pose my approach is what happens when those sorts of elements have become too…overwhelming. (Note: avoiding judgey language like ‘unreasonable’.)
Great projects.
I love Michel Tremblay, I think I’ll read another book from the Mont Royal series.
I really didn’t like the Marie-Claire Blais I read, it was so bleak!
I’m happy you’re enjoying Proust. I have a Reading Proust page, you might want to check out my billets about Proust related exhibitions: lots of pictures.
I’d like to read Ivanhoe too, I’ve never read it. I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea but it was so influential when it was published that I’m curious.
PS : I’m terrible at reading the books I received as gifts. I have a special shelf for them now, to remind me I should read them first.
Thanks, Emma. I was reading him last night and I just love his playful language and scenes (but how he incorporates darker realities naturally, too).
Yup, that sounds like her! heheh She’s smart, incisive, poetic (sometimes), but I must wear my “student” cap. Which one did you read?
I’ve been trying to think when I would like to do that (check your pages) because I am longing for some visuals but I also don’t want to spoil anything.
That’s my feeling about it too, but I picked up his previous book The Heart of Midlothian, and now I think I’m more interested in Scott, in terms of the themes of social change. However, the essay I read compared him to Stendhal and I don’t think you’re a fan? I will let you know when I finish THoM and see if Ivanhoe is an option for you sometime after that (and if it’s not, no problem).
P.S. It’s bonkers, isn’t it? They should be the FIRST books we are excited to read, especially when they are also good matches.
I’m not sure our reading will align much this year, mainly because I rarely make any actual plans haha As you know i just go with what’s been sent to me, peppered by books that I’ve seen at the bookstore or library that I feel I just have to read, no matter what the publishers have sent me. But that’s why I enjoy following your blog! I like reading about stuff that’s different that what I’m reading about. And the projects people embark on always give me new ideas for the future me that has more time to read
I know what you mean, sometimes it really is more about seeing what’s up in somebody else’s stacks. And it feels like we’re both reading a little less Canlit in the past few years than was previously the case, so that means less overlap even there. I looooove spotting ideas for new reading projects. It’s so much fun-imaginary reading! heheh
I like how your grouped your reading aims into different categories here, which might make them feel more manageable? Maybe that’s something I should do myself, rather than continue in my traditional rather scattershot approach! My primary aim, as usual, is to keep reading my way through some of my favourite authors, e.g. Elizabeth Taylor (just one short story collection left!), Barbara Pym (maybe one novel to go), Anita Brookner, Margaret Drabble, and of course, William Trevor – luckily, I have plenty to go at with the last three!
As for Spanish language authors, I’m hoping to read more Claudia Pineiro and Nona Fernadez this year, as I have at least one novel by each of these writers in my TBR! 🙂
I don’t know if anything feels more manageable when, being such a moody reader, one’s “current” stack is always at least a dozen books high. But it does force a sort of prioritisation, and I think that helps? We share all those favourites. I was thinking about another Drabble or two this year, and Trevor is one of my story project options (that I continually overlook).
Both of those are on my list as well! (CP for another, NF for the first time…I think Space Invaders is the one I can access via the local library.)
I’m not sure I have anything particularly Latin American on my list at the moment, though having enjoyed the other Machado de Assis, maybe this is the year I actually read Bras Cubas. I do have an Eduardo Mendoza (an actual Spaniard) from the library at the moment–I loved the one I read by him earlier, and have been meaning to try another.
I’m a terrible audio book listener and almost never consume books that way–I’m either not paying attention or repeating it so much I never make progress.
I’m also thinking Silko this year. Ceremony isn’t quite fifty years old but it’s close!
Bras Cubas is back in stock; but, then, I ordered a book about the comic strip Mafalda instead (which is proving to be very interesting).
Yes! That’s it. Nice to know I’m not the only one. Podcasts work for me, but I think of them as news (they often are); so, I’m doing very short sessions with fiction for practice, but it’s not coming easily.
Ceremony is in my sights. I have her books here at home, so I’m probably going to read her in inclement weather when it’s too snow to get to the library. Maybe March, or November. LMK if you’d like to read together-ish.
I saw about that book on Mafalda–it looked pretty fascinating. There was a Mafalda exhibit when we were in Spain a few years back & I insisted we go, but I still don’t know the strip as well as I feel it would be worth knowing.
I would definitely be interested in doing a buddy read of Ceremony. I’m out of town the latter half of March, so depending on your schedule maybe later is better? But I could do early March, too.
I’m thinking this kind of reading could help fill the gap where my understanding of LatinAmn countries’ history should be; the commentary about class and culture does seem to offer a much-needed context.
Oh, yes, later is definitely better. hee hee My Alvarez reading is going very slowly; I realise that my rule for reading with the Sage essays was just one book plus essays, but with my own six selections I seem to be thinking minimum-of-three and that’s already proving…impossible. #choices
Those sound like great goals/intentions without being too restrictive. I appreciate specificity with freedom (as a fellow mood-reader.) Best of luck with them!
It’s a real challenge, isn’t it: there are so many books I really want to read, but the minute “duty” gets mixed up in there, enthusiasm xtarts to fade.
As you know, I don’t do reading goals per se. I just have intentions and they remain pretty much the same: to continuing reading women writers (with an emphasis on Australians, but not exclusively), to read some/more First Nations literature (fiction/nonfiction/poetry/whatever), to read translated fiction (with which I have been truly woeful recently), to delve into the TBR because I bought those books for a reason, and to read a classic or two. An ad hoc one is to continue working through the books of short stories my American friend sent me – Dover editions, one for American women writers, and one for African American writers. I have started the latter, and post a on a few of the stories to date.
So, what will I read this year? Who knows, except I am currently reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (my suggestion for reading group when someone else suggested Gaskell) and Jane Austen’s Persuasion (as part of my JA group’s current Austen slow re-read program).
I think I share all your intentions, only if I don’t get just a little more specific, I simply choose other things to do and don’t read very much. But, on the other hand, I can’t be TOO specific or I feel like it’s homework and I freeze in place (and also don’t read very much). But I do like the idea of ad hoc reading projects, and short fiction is a good way to go about that. Very not-ad-hoc though, I might yet start another start-to-stop short story project this year: I’ve had three contenders in the back of my mind for some time now. Gaskell would make a great reading project; I remember Bill read one a couple years ago and I wanted to read that one as well (I’ve only read her Bronte biography and seen some PBS TV series…I get them ALL confused…MY fault, not hers heheh).
Mini-binges – what a wonderful idea! I’ll have to plan some of those….
I like your way of stringing things along too, though…making it last.
I hope this is the year for reading Ivanhoe. I’ve been meaning to reread it for a while, particularly in light of its Jewish heroine.
I’m afraid I’m reading Africa while you’re reading south of the Rio Grande, though I did read the wonderful Dengue Boy (SF from Patagonia) last year.
Of your six women I plan to read Wright, Ernaux and Tokarczuk. (After all you at 200 books/year read at twice the pace I do).
I thought The Knowing was brilliant (and Kinauvit? was good), so I’ll let you recommend something to take their place this year.
As for series, I bought another Murderbot today, though at just 210 minutes it will be gone pretty quickly
I was just looking at Ivanhoe then realises that The Heart of Midlothian (also on my shelf) was actually published a year prior, so perhaps i’ll fall back on chronology.
It’s very hard to read meaningfully from more than one literary region that’s reliatively new-to-one’s shelves. Espeically when one lacks historical/polotical context. But, OTOH, it’s never boring!
Hah, I see your math there. I did ILL a copy of a James Welch novel last summer (also a favourite of Emma’s I believe) but the humidity was too much for me to wade through its beautiful language and descriptions before it was due back. I think I’ll buy him instead?
But look at you supporting those novella writers (despite their occupying a miniscule number of minutes in your listening day).