Happy weekend, friends! Today, I’m sharing my reading journals with y’all. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how I track my reading and what apps I use, so this post will answer all of those questions.
I use several different journals to keep up with my reading, but the only app I use is Goodreads. I use Goodreads mainly for the yearly reading challenge, but it’s also the best way to quickly look up books and see upcoming releases. It’s also great to see what your friends are reading and how they feel about certain books. I occasionally shelf books there, but honestly I’m not the best about keeping up with everything I want to read digitally. I much prefer to write down my TBR lists or just look at my bookshelves. I do like to use Goodreads as a way to keep up with every book I’ve read throughout the year though. If you want to follow me on Goodreads, click here.
Now, let’s chat about my actual reading journals. I normally use 2, but this year I’m incorporating this review journal:
Now, the cover of this one looks completely different than what is pictured here. The actual cover looks like this:
I didn’t love that cover though, so I changed it with a little paper and mod podge! 🙂 The inside looks like this:
It contains 110 pages and since I’ve never read over 100 books in a single year, this works perfectly for me. I’m excited to try this out this year and see if I like writing these mini reviews. I think it will be neat to look back at the end of the year and see what I thought about each book in one journal. We’ll see!
Now let’s chat about the two I have actually used for several years. One is my IG planner and the other is my reading tracker.
For my IG Planner, I always use a planner that has both a monthly and a weekly view. This year, I’m using this one by Emily Ley:
I like to plan out my content, especially posts that contain books I get from publishers, so I like the monthly view. Here’s what my July spread looked like:
I usually put a green check once I’ve photographed a post and then I put a purple star next to the ones that I’m working with a publisher on.
The last journal I use is my favorite. It’s my reading tracker. It’s simple, but I love looking back throughout the years to see my reading progress for each month. For this journal, I always use a planner that contains a monthly view only. This year, I’m using this one from Sugar Paper:
Now, I love all those amazing looking bullet journals that you see all over IG and Tik Tok, but I have no artistic ability whatsoever, so I sadly cannot create one of those. My reading tracker is extremely simple, but it allows me to see what I’ve read each month and how much I’ve read each month. It also lets me see when I finished each book, which is really neat because you can clearly see by looking at each month when I have a lot of time to read or when I’m really busy!
Since this reading tracker journal doesn’t start until January, I’ll share a page from April of 2020:
I include the book title and a star rating for each book. I also color code genres which is neat to look at and see how many of one type of books I’m reading. This helps if you want to challenge yourself to read a variety, which I need to do more of in 2022! I also make sure I record the book on the exact day I finish the book. That allows me to see how long it took me to read a book and how much time I have to read. For example, I finished Love Her or Lose Her on the 22nd and then I finished To Have and to Hoax on the 25th, which means I read that book in 3 days.
I also like to use the notes pages in the back to record upcoming books and their publishers, as well as books I need to photograph. Usually with a monthly view only planner you get a ton of notes pages, which I love!
So, there are my reading journals! I realize it’s very simple and there are so many other amazing looking journals out there. This works for me though! 🙂
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