Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Hi! I'm Mike - this is Riff Raff's Reading Renaissance. Happy New Year! Today I share my 2026 booktube reading plans — not rigid goals, but a curated map to keep the joy of reading alive, a literary menu rather than a contract. If you enjoy classics, literary fiction or thoughtful reading discussions, you’re very welcome here. 👉 Like, subscribe, and read along in 2026! QUESTION (Tell me in the comments) Are you planning your reading year, or do you prefer to mood read? Let me know what you're planning to read below!
Link to @DrCrankyPantsReads video
youtube.com/watch?v=zjMIYhM57aM&t=277s
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction & New Year Reflections
01:50 Creating a Curated Reading Plan
02:25 My Reading Speed & Time Awareness
03:10 My 8 Reading Categories Explained
05:18 I declare War on Homer's Iliad
07:41 Wolf Hall & the Matrix explained
09:25 Lonesome Dove - the one western to read
10:20 All the King’s Men - The dark world of US politics
12:08 Bleak House - My Dickens Vic-tober pick
13:39 Earthly Powers - My Burgess bromance continues
16:00 Shorter Fiction Picks - Morrison, Harper Lee, Le Guin & more
27:13 Short Stories, Essays & Poetry Plan
37:20 South African Fiction Project
46:23 South African Nonfiction & local Politics
48:00 Four must-read music biographies - Dire Straits, Dylan, Miles Davis & Shostakovich
52:24 Historical picks - Anne Frank & corrupt governments
55:33 Biographies - A comic genius, a fallen prince, Irish troubles, Shakespeare & Spies
57:34 Final Thoughts on Reading Flexibly
58:29 Closing & Thanks
Booktubers cited
Dr Crankypants - @DrCrankyPantsReads
Randy Ray @LiterateTexan
Steve @saintdonoghue
Emily @emreads25
Gareth @bookssongsandothermagic
Mark @BookTimewithElvis
Books mentioned
War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
The Iliad — Homer (translation by Robert Fagles)
Books That Changed The World - Andrew Taylor
Books That Changed The World - Robert B Downs
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry
All the King’s Men — Robert Penn Warren
Ethan Frome — Edith Wharton
Bleak House — Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray
Earthly Powers — Anthony Burgess
Nothing Like the Sun — Anthony Burgess
Erotic Vagrancy — Roger Lewis
Anthony Burgess - Roger Lewis
A Month in the Country — J. L. Carr
Beloved — Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
The Left Hand of Darkness — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
The Warden — Anthony Trollope (Barchester Chronicles)
The Outsider / The Stranger — Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
New Boy — Tracy Chevalier
Othello — William Shakespeare
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold — John le Carré
Diamonds Are Forever — Ian Fleming
A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens (mentioned again)
Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol — R. William Bennett
Nocturnes — Kazuo Ishiguro
Collected Short Stories — W. Somerset Maugham
Short Stories — Anton Chekhov
Nabokov’s Dozen — Vladimir Nabokov
The Complete Short Stories — Graham Greene
Woodhouse on Woodhouse — P. G. Wodehouse
A Century of Fiction — The New Yorker (anthology)
Fictions — Jorge Luis Borges
My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories — Frank O’Connor
Quantum of Solace — Ian Fleming
Last Christmas — (Anthology)
Collected Essays — Graham Greene
Great English Essays — (Anthology, edited by James Reeves)
The Best Poems of the English Language — Edited by Harold Bloom
Looking on Darkness — André Brink
The Story of an African Farm — Olive Schreiner
Native Life in South Africa — Sol Plaatje
Mhudi — Sol Plaatje
Waiting for the Barbarians — J. M. Coetzee
Disgrace — J. M. Coetzee
The Lying Days — Nadine Gordimer
Magersfontein, O Magersfontein! — Etienne Leroux
Coconut — Kopano Matlwa
Poppie Nongena — Elsa Joubert
Tsotsi — Athol Fugard
The Heart of Redness — Zakes Mda
Down Second Avenue — Ezekiel Mphahlele
The Deal — Mandy Wiener
Not Without A Fight — Helen Zille (Autobiography)
No Future Wuithout Forgiveness - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
New Apartheid — Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
My Life In Dire Straits— John Illsley
Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs — Greil Marcus
Three Shades of Blue — James Kaplan
Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich — Dmitri Shostakovich (with Solomon Volkov)
Words About Music — (Anthology)
The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank
Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail — Peter Hain
What Have I Done? — Ben Elton
Entitled: The Rise & Fall of the House of York — Andrew Lownie
Say Nothing — Patrick Radden Keefe
Shakespeare — Bill Bryson
Shakespeare — Anthony Burgess
A Spy Among Friends — Ben Macintyre
Happy 2026 and good reading to you all!
And for the almighty algorithm -
#BookTube
#ReadingPlans
#ReadingList
#Bookish
#TBR
#BookLovers
#ReadersOfYouTube
#LiteraryFiction
#ClassicLiterature
#BigBooks
#ReadingClassics
#SlowReader
#LiteraryClassics
#ThoughtfulReading
Hi! I'm Mike - this is Riff Raff's Reading Renaissance. Happy New Year! Today I share my 2026 booktube reading plans — not rigid goals, but a curated map to keep the joy of reading alive, a literary menu rather than a contract. If you enjoy classics, literary fiction or thoughtful reading discussions, you’re very welcome here. 👉 Like, subscribe, and read along in 2026! QUESTION (Tell me in the comments) Are you planning your reading year, or do you prefer to mood read? Let me know what you're planning to read below!
Link to @DrCrankyPantsReads video
youtube.com/watch?v=zjMIYhM57aM&t=277s
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction & New Year Reflections
01:50 Creating a Curated Reading Plan
02:25 My Reading Speed & Time Awareness
03:10 My 8 Reading Categories Explained
05:18 I declare War on Homer's Iliad
07:41 Wolf Hall & the Matrix explained
09:25 Lonesome Dove - the one western to read
10:20 All the King’s Men - The dark world of US politics
12:08 Bleak House - My Dickens Vic-tober pick
13:39 Earthly Powers - My Burgess bromance continues
16:00 Shorter Fiction Picks - Morrison, Harper Lee, Le Guin & more
27:13 Short Stories, Essays & Poetry Plan
37:20 South African Fiction Project
46:23 South African Nonfiction & local Politics
48:00 Four must-read music biographies - Dire Straits, Dylan, Miles Davis & Shostakovich
52:24 Historical picks - Anne Frank & corrupt governments
55:33 Biographies - A comic genius, a fallen prince, Irish troubles, Shakespeare & Spies
57:34 Final Thoughts on Reading Flexibly
58:29 Closing & Thanks
Booktubers cited
Dr Crankypants - @DrCrankyPantsReads
Randy Ray @LiterateTexan
Steve @saintdonoghue
Emily @emreads25
Gareth @bookssongsandothermagic
Mark @BookTimewithElvis
Books mentioned
War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
The Iliad — Homer (translation by Robert Fagles)
Books That Changed The World - Andrew Taylor
Books That Changed The World - Robert B Downs
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry
All the King’s Men — Robert Penn Warren
Ethan Frome — Edith Wharton
Bleak House — Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray
Earthly Powers — Anthony Burgess
Nothing Like the Sun — Anthony Burgess
Erotic Vagrancy — Roger Lewis
Anthony Burgess - Roger Lewis
A Month in the Country — J. L. Carr
Beloved — Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
The Left Hand of Darkness — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
The Warden — Anthony Trollope (Barchester Chronicles)
The Outsider / The Stranger — Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka
New Boy — Tracy Chevalier
Othello — William Shakespeare
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold — John le Carré
Diamonds Are Forever — Ian Fleming
A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens (mentioned again)
Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol — R. William Bennett
Nocturnes — Kazuo Ishiguro
Collected Short Stories — W. Somerset Maugham
Short Stories — Anton Chekhov
Nabokov’s Dozen — Vladimir Nabokov
The Complete Short Stories — Graham Greene
Woodhouse on Woodhouse — P. G. Wodehouse
A Century of Fiction — The New Yorker (anthology)
Fictions — Jorge Luis Borges
My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories — Frank O’Connor
Quantum of Solace — Ian Fleming
Last Christmas — (Anthology)
Collected Essays — Graham Greene
Great English Essays — (Anthology, edited by James Reeves)
The Best Poems of the English Language — Edited by Harold Bloom
Looking on Darkness — André Brink
The Story of an African Farm — Olive Schreiner
Native Life in South Africa — Sol Plaatje
Mhudi — Sol Plaatje
Waiting for the Barbarians — J. M. Coetzee
Disgrace — J. M. Coetzee
The Lying Days — Nadine Gordimer
Magersfontein, O Magersfontein! — Etienne Leroux
Coconut — Kopano Matlwa
Poppie Nongena — Elsa Joubert
Tsotsi — Athol Fugard
The Heart of Redness — Zakes Mda
Down Second Avenue — Ezekiel Mphahlele
The Deal — Mandy Wiener
Not Without A Fight — Helen Zille (Autobiography)
No Future Wuithout Forgiveness - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
New Apartheid — Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh
My Life In Dire Straits— John Illsley
Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs — Greil Marcus
Three Shades of Blue — James Kaplan
Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich — Dmitri Shostakovich (with Solomon Volkov)
Words About Music — (Anthology)
The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank
Liberation and Corruption: Why Freedom Movements Fail — Peter Hain
What Have I Done? — Ben Elton
Entitled: The Rise & Fall of the House of York — Andrew Lownie
Say Nothing — Patrick Radden Keefe
Shakespeare — Bill Bryson
Shakespeare — Anthony Burgess
A Spy Among Friends — Ben Macintyre
Happy 2026 and good reading to you all!
And for the almighty algorithm -
#BookTube
#ReadingPlans
#ReadingList
#Bookish
#TBR
#BookLovers
#ReadersOfYouTube
#LiteraryFiction
#ClassicLiterature
#BigBooks
#ReadingClassics
#SlowReader
#LiteraryClassics
#ThoughtfulReading
