Hi there Harmony Hustlers, welcome to a post detailing my Personal Reading Curriculum for 2026!
Over the past few years, my reading life has completely transformed. I went from picking up a book here and there to falling headfirst into the bookish world. The fact that I’ve gone from reading maybe 1-2 books a year to finishing 44 books this year honestly feels wild. A few years ago, if someone had told me this was possible, I would’ve laughed and said, “Absolutely not.”
I found my way back to reading at a time when I desperately needed to slow down. Reading 1-2 books a year turned into 4, then 10 and then 24 and suddenly reading became my daily respite.
At the start of this year, I set myself a soft goal of reading 20 books before the end of 2025. Though I don’t take reading goals too seriously, since I don’t want it to feel like another deadline. But surpassing that number this year feels like such a personal win. Not because of the count itself, but because I finally built a habit that feels nourishing, grounding, and genuinely joyful.
If anything, it’s my reminder (and hopefully yours), that it’s never too late to create a new habit, especially one that gives more than it takes.
Now that l’ve built a strong reading habit, l’ve been craving a bit more depth in how I engage with the books I read. I already love sharing my thoughts online and creating little critical reviews through my videos, but I found myself wanting something more structured. Something that pushes me to connect ideas across different books rather than looking at each one in isolation.
That’s what sparked the idea for a comparative study.
Personal Reading Curriculum
I want to read with intention, to explore recurring themes, and understand how different authors approach the same questions from completely different angles. With this in mind and inspired by the personal curriculum trend that’s taken the internet by storm, I decided to create my own.
My personal reading curriculum is a way for me to take my reading further, stretch myself intellectually, and turn my love of books into something a bit more thoughtful and immersive.
If you want to know how I set up my personal reading curriculum, let me know, and I’ll draft something up.
Bringing Lit’ to Life
From the books that I have read in 2025, on theme kept resurfacing again and again: motherhood. More specifically female reproductive autonomy, and it got me thinking about the impact that Society has on women’s choices. Society still, in subtle and not so subtle ways ties a woman’s worth to her ability or desire to have children. The more I read, the more I realised how deeply this narrative runs across cultures, time periods and genres.
My curiosity in this topic turned into a research project. I then decided to shape my entire personal reading curriculum for the first quarter of 2026 on this subject., naming my self-developed course as:
Of Wombs & worth – The Surveillance of Women’s Choices.
An Exploration of 'The Surveillance of Women's Choices' through Literature
Of Wombs & Worth – The Surveillance of Women’s Choices
The idea behind this course is to explore the intersections of reproductive autonomy, motherhood and societal expectations through literature. I’ll be exploring how historical, political, and social contexts shape maternal identity, agency, and worth.
While I’ve learned that it is absolutely possible to read more than one book a year and even more than one a month; I knew I didn’t want this curriculum to feel overwhelming or overly academic in its pace. The goal isn’t to inhale as many books as possible, instead it’s to sit with them, analyse them, and let the themes reveal themselves slowly.
So instead of packing the syllabus with endless reading, I decided to focus on three core texts for the first quarter of 2026. This gives me the space to read deeply, not hurriedly.
Core Texts to be analysed in my Personal Reading Curriculum
- Beloved – Toni Morrison
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Stillborn – Guadalupe Nettel
When selecting my top 3 picks, the above stood out as the deepest, most layered and most thematically powerful anchors for a syllabus intending to explore:
- motherhood
- womanhood
- fertility & infertility
- oppression & choice
- social punishment
- bodily autonomy
- the politics of women’s worth
The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stay with me by Ayobami Adebayo were close contenders. However in an attempt to avoid making the syllabus too onerous, I opted to have these as supplementary texts rather than core texts.
Why beloved, The Handmaid’s Tale and Still Born formed the core texts for my Personal Reading Curriculum
1. Beloved by Toni Morrison
During my research, I discovered that this book is the foundational text on motherhood. It is referred to as the most powerful literary examination of motherhood under systemic violence.
From the entire list of books I have read, and intend to read, no book explores reproductive control, maternal trauma and womanhood under oppression with the same depth.
Beloved captures the historical roots of reproductive exploitation, the psychological weight of motherhood and the brutality of systems that commodify women’s fertility. Therefore this being the top pick was a no brainer!
2. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
After having spent years on my ‘to be read’ list, I finally got round to reading The Handmaid’s Tale in Autumn 2025. Having read this book it was clear that this is the best articulation of reproductive oppression turned into policy in literature. It perfectly mirrors the themes in Beloved but reframes them in a modern, dystopian context.
The Handmaid’s Tale raises questions such as, who benefits from women giving birth? What happens when fertility becomes a social currency? Is a woman’s worth reduced to her reproductive capacity?
Given that it is the most thematically direct companion to Beloved, I had to add this to my personal reading curriculum as a core text.
3. Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel
Whilst companion reads are great, I thought a third book could offer some counterweight to the discussion. This is why I picked Still Born since it offers exactly that. Where The Handmaid’s Tale and Beloved explore motherhood under force and expectation, Still Born explores the refusal of motherhood and the social backlash against it.
Still born brings philosophical nuance to the syllabus as well as cultural depth, since it was originally published in Spanish by the by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel. The English translation was published 2 years later in 2022. Given the publication dates of the other two books, (Beloved 1987 & The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985), it felt apt to consider a more contemporary piece of fiction in a course taking place in 2026. Still Born brings into the discussion a more current perspective of women who choose NOT to mother, and therefore challenging the narrative that only motherhood brings purpose to a woman.
It introduces a third and important axis of choice. Without a discussion on elective womanhood, I think the syllabus would be missing a well balanced conversation.
Learning Outcomes for Personal Reading Curriculum
What use is a course without having your learning objectives/outcomes planned out. After all, I need to know all the effort will go to good use.
Since I’m assuming you’re curious to know what I’d like to achieve from this 3 month course, I’ve added it below:
| Learning Outcomes |
| Advance skills in reflection, critical thinking, and thematic analysis. |
| Develop a critical lens for analysing motherhood in literature. |
| Gain insight into historical, political, societal and psychological pressures on women’s reproductive roles across time and culture. |
| Build a personal reading and journaling habit for deeper engagement. |
| Become competent in applying insights from literature to broader conversations about reproductive autonomy, culture, and evolving definition of womanhood. |
Start your personal reading curriculum in 2026
If my personal reading journal inspired you, it’s a sign to consider creating your own. Alternatively if you’re interested in the subject I will be studying from Jan 2026 through to Mar 2026, then feel free to join in on the discussion.
I am currently considering whether to start a bookclub on @fable. Depending on how much interest there is, I may go ahead and do that! In the meantime you can still follow along on BookTok and/or on Fable.
If this post resonated with you, you might also enjoy:
- Daring & Disruptive: How Fox & Windmill Is Really Shaking Up Publishing
- Anam Iqbal – The Author Of The Exes & The New South Asian Voice To Watch Out For
- How to Journal for Confidence: 4 Steps to Overcome Self-Doubt
Happy Reading
Umay x