How to Use a Reading Journal

What Is a Reading Journal?

If you’ve ever found yourself looking at the cover of a novel in a bookshop, desperately trying to remember whether you’ve read it before, you’ll know how useful it can be to track your reading. A reading journal is a written record of the books you read over the course of a year. As well as logging key details such as the title of the book, author, genre and when you read it, you can also use your journal to note down any thoughts along with your favourite quotes.

The Digital vs Analogue Debate

These days, if you want to track your reading, there are a variety of digital ways you can do this, from the Notes app on your phone to platforms like Goodreads and StoryGraph. I designed my reading journal because I wanted to put down my phone, return to pen and paper, and create a written record of what I’m reading.

As my children grow up, I want them to see me reading a book, writing, getting outside and doing as much as possible without my phone. I still use Goodreads, and I enjoy the annual reading challenge, but it’s my physical reading journal that’s helped me increase the number of books I’m reading each year. Discovering audiobooks has also helped! I now read a lot while I’m out walking for my mental health.

To Bullet Journal or Not to Bullet Journal?

When I first decided to keep a written record of my reading, I tried to emulate the amazing bookish bullet journal spreads I’d seen on Instagram and TikTok. As I'm creative, I thought I'd be able to produce something similar, but it was a disaster and incredibly time consuming!

I realised there must be other readers like me who want a reading journal that looks and feels like a bullet journal. Readers who want something functional and pretty, with hand lettered titles and illustrations, but who don’t have time to spend hours creating spreads before logging their reading.  

How to Use a Reading Journal     

I designed my reading journal to be quick and easy to fill in, making it ideal for readers who want to spend most of their time reading! Let me walk you through it, page by page…

1. Use the introduction page to personalise your reading journal with your name and return details.
2. Complete the book rating scale to colour-code and define the criteria for your ratings.
3. Use the reading goal page to track your yearly goal by colouring each book as you complete it. There’s space for more mindful colouring on the page opposite.
4. Each time you finish a book, add the title, author, and star rating to the reading log pages where there’s space for up to 60 books.
5. Head to the detailed review pages to add the book’s cover, title, author, genre, dates read, format, favourite quote, and your thoughts.
6. Use the monthly tracking tables to record the number of books and pages read each month.
7. The monthly review pages allow you to summarise your reading. There’s space to note down your favourite book, rating stats, and total books read, plus any other details you’d like to include.

There are reading journals with hundreds of pages and loads of different challenges and charts. I wanted mine to be simple but beautiful with hand lettered elements and doodles to colour. My favourite part is the tick boxes on the book review pages where you can mark down whether you’ve read a physical book, the kindle or e-reader version, or listened to an audiobook. I love the process of writing down my book reviews, filling in the bar charts, seeing my progress, and sticking in book covers that I print locally a couple of times a year.

And If You Read More Than 60 Books a Year…

You’ll be pleased to hear I’ve designed a 100-book reading journal that will be available to purchase very soon! Sign-up to my mailing list to be among the first to know when it goes live. In the meantime, happy reading!