2026 TBR

Challenging myself to slow down and engage

As 2025 wraps up, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about things I want to leave behind when 2026 starts. I’m going to be honest, it was a tough year. And I spent a lot of time doom scrolling to distract myself. But, to be honest, it didn’t make me feel any better and it prevented me from doing other things that I love, especially reading. So, I decided in 2026 that I want to reduce my time scrolling on social media and instead take time each day to engage with my (ever-growing) to read (TBR) stack of books.

While searching on TikTok (yes, I recognize the irony) for ideas on personal curriculum and intentional reading, I found a new favorite creator: @thisstoryaintover. She created the “Anti-Brain Rot Challenge” and many of the elements align with my goals for the year. I will also be pulling from Cait’s Monthly Humanist Reading Challenge to make my own reading agenda for 2026. You can click to view the challenges and see if they will also work for you.

Photo by Olga Tutunaru on Unsplash

This post will highlight my goals and challenge elements for this year and the books I will use to fulfill the requirements. As the year, and the challenge, go on, I will be documenting my experience through essays, book reviews, responses, etc here on Substack. Some of them will be free, though some of them will be exclusively for my paid subscribers. Please consider supporting my work if you are able to. (Though, I will still keep plenty of my posts available for free.) I’ll be starting this challenge on January 1st. If you decide to join me, please let me know! I would love to connect with others who are taking this challenge on.

Challenge Goals:

• Read at least 24 books (12 fiction and 12 non-fiction)

• Read at least 2 scholarly articles per month, with annotations. (1 art history, 1 education - my two areas of research)

• Read for at least 30 minutes per day, while annotating what I read. Thoughts will also be recorded in my visual media journal.

• Read more books by BIPOC authors.

Challenge Books

For most of my fiction books this year, I will be following Cait’s Monthly Humanist reading challenge. (One of the months is non-fiction focused). You can find her challenge linked above.

Fiction:

1. The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

2. Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

3. Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser

4. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

5. James by Percival Everett

6. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

7. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

8. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

9. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

10. I, Cladius by Robert Graves

11. Inanna by Emily H. Wilson

12. I, Medusa by Avana Gray

Non-Fiction Picks

1. Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

2. The Great Chinese Art Heist by Ralph Pezzullo

3. Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser

4. The Rise of Athens by Anthony Everitt

5. The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton

6. A Little History of Archaeology by Brian Fagen

7. How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

8. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

9. The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus by James D. Tabor

10. History Matters by David McCullough

11. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon

12. Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham

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I look forward to seeing what you are reading in 2026!