Reviving the Joy of Reading: My New Year’s Mission

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, curates her favorite narratives in this weekly newsletter.

My resolution for 2025 is straightforward: rekindle the joy of reading. Readers worldwide appear to face similar obstacles in cycles — many of us experienced mental fatigue during the Covid years or delved into escapist literature and post-pandemic themes, depending on our preferences.

However, for both teenagers and adults, what seems to be most essential today is returning to reading as an activity of sheer enjoyment. Instead of being yet another obligatory task on your never-ending list, reading could become a delightful indulgence, a journey of exploration rather than a chore. In November, I messaged a friend who had stalled with an ambitious goal to read solely biographies of prominent figures: “Guilty pleasures are acceptable! Consider a fun reading objective — sometimes a hot chocolate topped with marshmallows is just as needed as the beetroot-and-celery juice.”

For numerous book enthusiasts, the task is to step out of familiar territory and experiment with new genres. In 2019, after reading over 150 novels as a Booker judge, British writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch remarked: “Like many of us, I choose my books to reflect what I already comprehend. Engaging with stories I would never have picked, wrongly thinking them to be dull or too distant from my interests, [ . . . ] has gradually transformed me.”

It’s perfectly acceptable to maintain a must-read list — the significant novel or non-fiction work — but I’m encouraging myself to venture more, too. I experimented with Hirsch’s method, trying books from unfamiliar genres — such as philosophy, business, and travel studies from uncharted territories — and it felt akin to plunging into a fast-moving river after years of wading in the shallow end of the pool, an exhilarating cold-water jolt to the senses.

Excessive structure can be a restrictive confinement; we ought to follow our curiosity and instincts more frequently, reaching towards what seems captivating.

If you reside in a city rich with numerous bookstores, consider the advice from Paul Yamazaki, chief buyer of San Francisco’s renowned City Lights Bookstore, and author of Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale (2024). “For anyone intrigued by printed materials, the more bookstores you visit, the more you’ll discover how many diverse ways there are to be inquisitive,” he stated in a recent interview. Most book lovers have favored bookstores for valid reasons — but I also aim to explore various alternatives in 2025, perusing indie and local shops during my expeditions. As Yamazaki notes, “Every store possesses its unique manner of welcoming you, embracing the reader and expanding a sense of the universe.”

Some readers are well-organized, navigating effectively through well-curated reading endeavors each year. Then there’s the rest of us: perhaps too much structure can be a limiting cage; maybe we should often follow our curiosity and instincts, accepting what appears enchanting or piques our interest in book critiques and literary discussions.

For children and teens, the option to select what they desire to read and having access to a wide array of books, is crucial as highlighted in numerous studies regarding the development of reading habits for enjoyment. The late Robert Gottlieb, a publishing titan and legendary editor, expressed in his 2016 memoir, Avid Reader: “From the beginning, words were more tangible to me than reality, and certainly more fascinating.” Allow children to read as diversely and freely as he did — his preferences ranged between the classic children’s stories of the 1930s, such as Dorothy Kunhardt’s Junket Is Nice, to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Arthur Ransome’s thrilling adventure series Swallows and Amazons, along with comic books, pulp magazines, The New Yorker and War and Peace.

Provide children with fewer lists and lessen the reading-as-homework mentality in 2025, allowing them to discover like James Baldwin, who frequented the New York Public Library on 135th Street, what it means to read anything they can acquire. “I went at least three or four times a week and I read everything there. I mean, every single book in that library,” Baldwin recounted in 1964. “In some blind and instinctive manner, I understood that what was taking place in those books was also occurring around me. And I was endeavoring to forge a connection between those books and the life I observed and the life I experienced.”

Preparing for a more laid-back reading year, I’ve established a screen-free reading nook, complete with a comforting stack of cherished books — what the American novelist Susan Choi refers to as a “touchstone stack.” Additionally, I enjoyed assembling a second, “comfort stack” — a collection of works on food, cozy mysteries, and travel classics — that solely provide an element of indulgence. The “comfort stack” is already expanding, a welcoming invitation to settle down with a cup of ginger-star anise chai and festive cookies — alongside a commitment to myself to reclaim enjoyment through reading in 2025.

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