Reading journals have become big business recently, in large part because of a growing movement that promotes mindfulness in a hectic world. Whether you read paper books, ebooks, or audiobooks, it can be extremely valuable to track your reading. However, it can be hard to get started and even more challenging to keep with it.

Here are some of my thoughts on reading journals.

Reasons to track your reading:

• you want to remember what you read.
• you want to get more thoughtful about books.
• you need a place to take notes from the things you read.
• you want to make sure you’re reading a variety of genres.
• you want to connect with other readers by writing reviews on GoodReads, StoryGraph, or a blog.
• you want to read a certain number of books in a certain time frame.
• you’re curious about what books you gravitate towards.
• you’re curious about what tropes you like.
• you want to compile a list of your favorites.

Got more reasons to keep a reading journal? Let us know in the comments below!

Pre-Made or Bullet Journal Style?

There are a ton of pre-made reading journals out there, to the point that, despite oodles of reviews online, you may find it overwhelming to try to pick one. In that case, I recommend making your own!

The rest of this article will deal primary with make-your-own reading journals, with a heavy influence from the Bullet Journal Method.

Think: what is the purpose of your reading journal?

The main purpose of my reading journal is to remember what I read, because I have memory issues. I often feel like I don’t know what I did with my time, including what I read, so I keep track. I also like to give myself credit for all the reading that I do before I decide a book is not for me, so I even keep track of books I started but didn’t finish!

Yours might be different, and become a place to list all the exciting things you might read next! Or maybe you’re goal-oriented and want to see how many books you can finish in a year! Or maybe it’s primarily an art journal! The possibilities are endless.

My point is, it’s important to choose a primary reason for your reading journal so that you know what to include or which one to buy, if you’re taking that route.

Here are some reading journal page ideas, from my own reading journal:

• A title page. I recommend that this have your name and contact info in case it’s lost, as well as the dates the journal covers. That way, in the future, you can easily find what you read by time period.
• A Table of Contents like in the Bullet Journal Method. I only include pages I will want to reference frequently, but you may choose to include everything.
• A running list of the books you have finished. For me, this is a simple numbered list with the book’s title, author, and the date I finished it. I make a new list for each year.
• A reading log. This is different than the books you’ve finished, because it’s arranged by date and chronicles books you may not have finished. I don’t always finish the books I’ve started, and I still want credit for them, dammit! My reading log is a chart with the date, title, author, and a column where I can draw a star if I finished it that day. I do this particular chart with the notebook turned landscape so I have more room to write the title.
• A library books tracker. For me, this is another chart with the title, author, three columns for me to write the due date, and a column to check off if I’ve returned it. In my library system, we can renew books twice, so I might need all three spaces.
• A To Be Read, or TBR. Obviously! Make sure you write down both title and author.
• A review template. Mine includes title, author, publication date, star rating out of five like on Goodreads, genre, diverse voices, and who I would recommend this to. If you like, you can also include the format (like ebook or audiobook). The rest of the page is divided into two columns: things I liked and things I didn’t like. I make a review page for each book I start and write in it as I go, but other people may choose to only do review pages for books that they have finished.
• Review pages. My review pages are rewritten from the review template, and contain a big star if I finished it.
• Book notes. You might be reading fiction or nonfiction– I know I read both– and either way, you might want to write notes. I often write chapter summaries for fiction. For me, these are separate from the review pages.
• Quote pages. Sometimes a quote from fiction or nonfiction will really strike me, so I write it on its own page. Make it artsy if you like!
• Vocabulary. If you’re an enthusiastic reader, you might not often come across words you don’t know the definition of, but when you do, you should definitely write it down and look it up! Camp Damascus stumped me with “gelid” and I have never really understood what “philology” is. If you keep a running list, you will avoid being stumped in the future and learn something new!
• Recommendations you’ve gotten and who recommended them. Sometimes, the person doing the recommending matters a lot! You may have reviewers whose tastes match up with yours, or friends whose opinions you trust! I have a special page for books I was recommended through my single month of Tailored Book Recommendations. (I was so curious I had to give it a try, and I learned a lot about my own preferences just from answering the questions that the service gives you!)
• A list of your favorite books of all time. For a challenge, try to pare it down as much as possible!
• Least favorite book of all time and the book that challenged you the most. Mine are, respectively, Ethan Frome and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
• DNF (or Did Not Finish) page, with a list of your DNFs and why you stopped reading.
• Series lists, to keep track of each book in a series.
• Finally, an index. Mine is in the back of the book and records titles as well as authors (by last name) and the pages on which they appear. I allotted about 10 lines per letter and just fill them in as I go.

Do you keep a reading journal? Have I missed anything? Let me know in the comments below!