In addition to the general hopes for my reading this year, which I wrote about yesterday, I have one specific and measurable 2025 goal as well.

In response to the current political shift in the United States: I’m planning to read 21 Latin-American books (by Latin-American authors or set in Latin-American countries and territories).

Latin America technically includes 21 countries, but I am particularly keen to explore Mexican writers.

I am considering renaming the part of my shelf currently labeled as The Shelf of America to The Shelf of Mexico. But I’d also like to read some Puerto Rican authors.

Even though I’m fairly satisfied with the diversity of my reading, I would love to read more Spanish-language writers (in translation).

And because I’m dissatisfied with the tenor of the current American administration and its supporters’ dismissal of the contributions that Latin-American peoples have made to society (and continue to make), I am going to make more space—not less—for their writers and storytellers in my small corner of the world…on my bookshelf.

We can, literally, take these matters into our own hands. We can choose the books we hold, choose which stories hold importance in our minds and hearts.

(I live north of the current American border, but anti-immigrant thinking and xenophobia exists everywhere; it’s not an American phenomenon, it’s a human phenomenon, one that we can counter with our own day-to-day choices.)

To keep this reading goal in concert with my general hopes for this year’s reading, I haven’t decided on specific authors or titles, so if you have favourites you’d like to share, please do.

Or if you have a longtime shelfsitter by a Latin American author you’d also like to read, perhaps we can make a plan.

If you didn’t read a book by a Spanish-language author in 2024, just choosing one book/author for 2025 is affording these writers and artists more space in your stacks than last year. If you did read ten, eleven would still be “more”.

I’d be thrilled to have company in this, but I am not thinking of it as an event (although…The Shelf of Mexico has a nice ring to it).

Part of me is nervous about this (relatively unstructured!) project and part of me is excited. That’s a great mix, I think.

As part of my Desktop-calendar-inspired reading project in 2020, I discovered just how little I knew about Mexico City.

And I never got around to reading the books that I listed at the end of that post, which I had borrowed with the project in mind, and in some cases started to read but then focused on others instead.

So for now, that’s where I’ll begin (again). And my pencil is ready, awaiting your recommendations.