The “Big Ole Books” Mini Challenge

I love a challenge–a little goal that gives me structure and guidelines within a hobby, like reading, that can seem endless and boundless. At the end of 2025, I finally read Fourth Wing, flying through it pretty quickly. As I looked at my Storygraph statistics for the end of the year, I also noted that it calculated how many books I had read that had moe than 500 pages—and it was only 5.

Now, “only 5” is a very subjective, Aryssa thing to say. Some people never read a book more than 500 pages. But I know that I am also a quick reader, and I love kid lit, and therefore there are a lot of popular, great, or important books more than 500 pages that I’m missing, and for no reason other than that the length of them has turned me off in some way.

I decided that I was going to challenge myself to read 12 books 500 pages or more in 2026. Then, I modified that challenge for a very important reason. I wanted to use this challenge to read books I already had or was already interested in. Upon exploring my bookshelves, I realized a lot of the “long” books I had were JUUUSTTTT a smidge under 500 pages—but all over 450 pages. And so, here we have the “big ole books” challenge.

“Big books” are relative to everyone…but for me, I’m measuring it as moe than 450 pages, but not making a genre or age limitation. If it’s a 600 page murder mystery or a 465 kid lit fantasy, it counts!

Here are the 12 “big ole books” I’m planning to read this year:

1 .Iron Flame

2. Onyx Storm

3. A Thousand Heartbeats

4. Skander and the Spirit War

5. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

6. Intermezzo

7. Gilded

8. The Women

9. An Enchanted River

10. Gifted and Talented

11. The Little Friend

12. Immortal Consequences

The goal, obviously, is to read one “big ole book” a month and I started 2025 strong by reading Iron Flame! I’m sure this will ebb and flow throughout the year—but I’m excited to see how this stretches me as a reader who lvoes flying through a book and finishing it in a day. A lot of these books are also more fantasy than I usually read–but of interest to me either because of a dark academia vibe, the author, or the cultural moment.

What “big ole books” are on you list to read in 2026?