Out of all of the reading practices I've adopted over the years - withstanding, of course, this personal, venerated platform upon which I am currently inscribing - I think that keeping a book journal has been one of the most rewarding.
Over the years, Goodreads has fallen out of my favor, while Storygraph never even properly managed to engage my interest; the "BookTube" and "Bookstagram" micro-communities of more active social media platforms quickly fell victim to the poppiest of pop culture crowd (and while I've got no personal qualms against reading what I personally think of as "popcorn" or "blockbuster" fiction, I resent having been vehemently offered Maas as reading material by such aggressive supporters, when I already underwent the same from the blogging faction back in the original 2012-2016 years. I literally reviewed Crown of Midnight on here in 2013! That's a decade ago!).
In terms of more tangible models, I never really got into annotating my reading material... beyond what was desperately necessary back in my English major years, when you've got in-class essays to write. And nowadays, I save my vast Post-It Note collection for my various cookbooks, instead.
But a Book Journal? Man, does it go the distance.
Hands-down, it has been the absolute best for not only collecting all of my handwritten book reviews in one place... but also, for organizing my thoughts and feelings for various blogposts, cataloguing how much I manage to read in a month, tracking things like purchases, library checkouts, new vocabulary, and so much more!
The first step, of course, is choosing the format that suits you. I knew that I wanted to incorporate bullet-journal-style elements into my Book Journal's construction, so I opted for something that would accommodate a lot of personalization, while being structured enough that I would still be able to write paragraphs in it without issue. I use a personal favorite, the Leuchterm A5 Dot Grid journal. (This year is my fourth year using it for this purpose, but I also have two additional within my personal stationery, as a collector for both recipes and gardening updates.)
And hands down, what has become one of my favorite mini-rituals to mark the yearly transition to a new installment, is by picking out what stickers with which to adorn the exterior from the ample ranks of Redbubble offerings. I try to find a pretty robust mix that serve as references to not only my personal reading habits and opinions, but hint as to some of my favorite novels and series. (For instance, favorites from my last journal included a "Clue Crew" flashlight in Nancy Drew's signature colors and font, the Goosebumps logo made up of some of its most iconic covers, and a QR code, which led to one of my favorite scenes from the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.) Can you guess the origins for any of the stickers I opted for this year?
The first couple of pages in my journal, serve as sort of an over-arching, general year-at-a-glance set of record-keeping, in how many books I've set a goal to read in the coming year, and what the best book I read in each month was.
These are similar in theming to pages that I had incorporated into last year, but one has gotten a minor upgrade: whereas my last book journal simply included a series of boxes to be filled in when each book was checked off my Goodreads challenge, this year, I've taken inspiration from more than a couple of different Bookstagrammer friends, and demonstrated the progress by way of a bookshelf, instead. For every book I read, I'll fill in each boxy shape with a corresponding monthly color... by the end of the year, I'm hoping to have a full, colorful bookshelf!
I left a little more leeway in filling out my "Best Books of the Year" page, as well, as last year, things got a little bit... chaotic. Due to a couple of reading slumps I suffered over the course of the year, there were months where I was left to select from a meager amount of books, none of which made my personal grade of standard, whereas other months, I managed to read eight or ten, many of which had garnered personal preference or five-stars. Therefore, I left this year's boxes without monthly designation, so I can add them as I move along throughout 2023's literary offerings.
Next up, my "Stats" and "Goals" pages, reflecting my reading progress the previous year, and what I'm aspiring towards in the coming one. As you can see in my 2021 reflections and 2022 goals, I had some pretty lofty ambitions for what I was looking for from the past year, which came about with... ahem... middling success. (I definitely hit that "three book Bingoes for the SPL Summer Reading Challenge" though, so we'll take it as a win!)
Trust me, I was a lot more moderate in my planning for this year, with a lot of personal emphasis placed on actually ENJOYING the time I spend reading, rather than holding myself to a lot of self-determined numbers I'm supposed to hit. (Imagine, actually managing to enjoy a personal hobby, rather than feeling strung-out and sad when your Goodreads Challenge resets every December 31st... who'da thunkit?)
What can I say? It's really easy to beat yourself up about numbers when you surround yourself with people whose Instagram accounts regularly boast upwards of 70 or 80 (or in some surprising cases, 120 and 180! And those people are like, real, actual people, who work as lawyers and counselors and engineers, and some of them even have children!). This year, my goals are a reflection of the idea that I should actually be allowed to have a good time, sometimes.
More planning for the coming year, organized around similar mental pathways, but with very different purposes: "What I'm Trying to Read in 2023" and "What I Want to See on the Blog / Social Media" this year.
When I say "what I'm trying to read," I was originally trying to generate a space for some direct, tangible titles off of my TBR shelves: a plan I could make for myself, and a list to pull from whenever I was feeling uninspired in choosing a new read. Instead, what ended up happening, was I started writing down genres, like "More Rereads of Books That Have Inspired Me in the Past" (like The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, or So Yesterday, by Scott Westerfield), or "More Thick and Dense Science Fiction" (like The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin, or Leviathan Wakes, by James Covey). As it turns out, I'm such a mood reader, that it extends to my goal-setting, too: I can't tell you exactly what titles I'm intending to hit by the end of the year, but I certainly know what vibes I want to feel.
Meanwhile, my "What I Want to See on the Blog" and "Instagram Plan" pages are similarly minded. As these have, in the past, served as a concrete space for discrete and specific goals to hit, they are now a space for detailing how I want these spaces to make me feel. Instead of counting comments or daily hits, I used this space for generating aspirational qualitative goals, rather than quantitative. And again, a lot of them are focused on personal enjoyment!
For instance, from my Blogging goals page: "More proof that I'm having FUN while I'm reading and writing... more jokes, memes, GIFs, and general good vibes, all around." Meanwhile, from my Instagram-focused goals: "Focusing on sharing the things you enjoy about reading communities, and having a good time!"
And certainly not a mention of follower counts in sight.
Beyond all that, I've got a couple more pages you'll be seeing on this space in the coming weeks... both tied to other kinds of records I'm keeping for myself this year, and personal challenges I'm striving to meet in 2023. But to be perfectly honest, they're pretty personal, and not the most relevant to anyone else setting up their book journal, so I figured they could find a home in a couple of different blogposts instead.
And with that, our reading year is off to a great start!
Do you keep a regular Reading Journal as a part of your bookish practices? Have you already checked off a title or two for your Goodreads Challenge this year? Let me know, in the comments below!
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