Reading With Tyler

We made it to the end of 2025… How did our Reading Challenges fair?

We began the year with 4 challenges, and 3 of them stayed with us. Let’s talk about those first!

12 BOOKS TO READ IN 2025

We almost made it with this one! I read 11 out of 12 books, and the only reason A Love Letter to Whisky wasn’t read is because it no longer felt like a book I wanted to read or thought I’d enjoy… I’m keeping it on my radar just in case I change my mind, but this December (given everything I’ve got, and those around me have going on) I didn’t feel like this was a good fit for me.

However, this list did provide me with some absolutely brilliant reads! Throne of Glass, Belladonna and Metal Slinger were all excellent! Red Rising was one of those that I have been dying to read for so long that it felt amazing to finally get there! And Spark of the Everflame was easily one of my favourite reads of the year!!

I do not regret doing this challenge at all – however I knew I wanted to do 26 in 2026 and I couldn’t do that alongside a list of 12 recommendations, so I’ve encorperated some recommendations into my 26 instead.

2025 BINGO

I really enjoyed crossing off these squares throughout the year! However, if I was to do bingo again I would probably say it can’t use books being used in other challenges… Which somehow made it feel like I was cheating at my own challenge… Ridiculous, but there it is… I am glad I did this though because I did look forward to crossing off sections! If I did it again, I’d probably have to try and make the challenges somewhat harder so it felt like I really had to consider a read for each square!

SJM’S SECOND CHANCE

This doesn’t look like it was successful, but it really was! I managed to read the entire Throne of Glass series after DNFing it when Heir of Fire came out! Not only that, but I actually enjoyed most of it. Yes I was let down by Kingdom of Ash, but all in all, it was a good series! And I can understand why people love it!

I am actually planning on taking this challenge into 2026 with me because I do want to give A Court of Thorns and Roses a try next! So, I’m looking forward to continuing on working on this challenge next year!

ENTERING THE COSMERE

This is the challenge that has been dropped – and not for any fault of Brandon Sanderson’s work! I actually really want to keep reading The Cosmere, but I’m not going to be continuing this challenge. I will read the rest of the Mistborn series when I get to it, and I’ll decide on the rest of The Cosmere then!

MOVING INTO 2026

I really don’t want any of these challenges to feel like a chore – which is what The Cosmere was starting to feel like. I want these challenges to be fun – TBR busting – horizon expanding – challenges. So I am still looking to confirm all the challenges I’m doing in 2026. But I am taking forward the SJM Second Chance challenge at least!