A Melodious Sonnet

Around a year and a half ago, I shared a post about a new reading journal I was starting. At the time, I was just becoming aware of the wide and wonderful world of Booktube, and starting to see some videos of different people’s reading journals. I’ve always been a fan of collecting useful information together, and it made sense to start a reading journal—even if I didn’t know exactly how I’d use it in the long run!

Today, I thought it would be fun to give you an update on how my reading journal has evolved over this past year—it’s become something I use almost daily now, and I love it more and more the longer I use it!

(I’ve made the pictures below clickable, so if you want to see them bigger, they should expand for you.)

One of my favorite things about these kinds of journals is the flexibility—there’s no right or wrong way to go about this! And one of my favorite kinds of spreads—which I have not utilized yet nearly as much as I would like—are these lists of books by favorite authors:

You’ll see more of these author pages as I go through my journal, but I can’t tell you how fun it is to look through these pages and see all these possibilities for what I could read next (not to mention, this is helping me find some books by favorite authors that I’d have no idea were even a thing otherwise!).

One thing I started doing last year—something I wanted to do for quite a while—was read the entire Works of Josephus and take notes on it as I went to try to help my retention. I was able to keep up my notes on the book for a while this way, but it soon became a lot more of a drain than a help. I stopped taking notes altogether for a while, but have recently returned to doing it in a much more succinct form on a note-taking app on my computer—I type much faster than I write longhand! So this type of spread below, while I kept it up through part of last year, is no longer a regular feature in my journal.

More favorite author lists…(and hey, if these are some of your favorite authors, too, and you want these lists, comment below, and I can send you an Excel document with these titles—yes, I’m a nerd that way, too).

This was a spread I was super excited to make! It’s not perfect, but it was so much fun to narrow down what series I am actually in the middle of, and give me a visual way of trying to make sure I get through all of them eventually!

More author spreads…

I loved having all my reading challenges in one place this year. That made it a whole lot easier to plan my reading for the year, and it’s so satisfying to see them almost all filled out now! I’m looking forward to putting next year’s challenges into this journal, but I have to wait until early January to do that.

You may remember this spread from my last reading journal post. I’ve found this list to be super helpful for keeping track of the books I’ve read, as well as various metrics about each title (fiction/nonfiction, where I’ve reviewed it online, how I read the book, etc.)—this is one list I make every single year, and use continuously! There are two other pages for this particular log this year, but I didn’t get pictures of them.

My new thing since September this year is to include my monthly TBR list in the journal! It’s so satisfying to physically check off every book as I read it through the month, and it is much nicer to go back to this list to figure out what I’m supposed to read next rather than having to look back on my blog post (it also helps me keep track of which books were for which reading challenges, so that’s a bonus!).

The other new thing I’ve introduced since August (after getting to see my grandma’s reading journal—thanks for showing it to me, Grandma!) is notes on each book I read. I’ve combined several different ideas into something that works for me, and so far, I’m loving it. As a visually oriented person, I enjoy having all these pretty covers on display. I also like that I can be totally honest in my mini-reviews of each book, and don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, haha!

Here’s a failed experiment in the reading journal—I saw an idea somewhere of having a calendar and tracking all the books you’re reading, from the time you start to the time you finish the books. While it was fun to have that visualization, I realized pretty quickly that I read too many books (and too many different ones at any one time) to be able to keep up with this and have enough space for each book, so I dropped it after just over a month.

Another example of my book journaling pages—I’ve got quite a few of these in the journal now!

Instead of doing the tiny calendar with one colored line for each book, I decided to try an idea I saw on someone’s YouTube video at some stage (I’m afraid I can’t remember who it was, sorry!). It was to keep a bar graph showing pages read in a day. It looks a little chaotic, but if you zoom in on this picture, you’ll see that each of the different colors goes with a specific book. This is only counting the physical books and eBooks I read; I don’t put audiobooks on this calendar. My format for writing down the titles and number of pages read changed to some extent throughout October, but I grew to really love this layout, and I’ve continued using it through November and December. (It’s also fascinating to see how much I read on certain days of the week—Sunday is often my most-read day!)

I remembered several more favorite authors in October and decided to list their books, too, because I’d love to read everything they wrote eventually! I haven’t figured out what to put in under Christmas Carol Kauffman yet—I think I could squeeze another author in there—but it’s fun to see how many (or how few!) books I’ve read by each author so far.

In November, I got a bit more organized about keeping a few statistics at the end of the month. That will make my yearly wrap-up a bit easier, and it’s also just plain fun to see how many pages I’ve read in a given month and what types of books I read (for example, I read an equal number of physical books, audiobooks, and eBooks in November—that surprised me!).

On the right, you’ll see that I have several uncolored spaces left on the calendar—I tend to wait until I finish a book, and then do all of the squares at the same time, which helps with consistency. (Also, if you’re curious, the colors are based on the predominant/striking colors on any given book’s cover.)

Because I was enjoying my page count calendars so much, I went ahead and made one for my Josephus reading goal for the year. It was somewhat sobering to see how much of a slacker I’ve been so far this year, but on the plus side, that motivated me to think through how I could change up my goal, and I read a lot more last month than I averaged other months! Initially, I was aiming for reading a page a day, but because I never got around to that, I’ve changed to aiming for ten pages per week—which means if I dedicate my spare time over two or three days per week, I’ll easily meet that goal. So far, it’s worked pretty well.

And here’s my last spread in the journal so far (aside from more book journal pages!). I enjoyed finally finding a place to put one of these book stickers I was given—and isn’t that a great reminder?—and I’m looking forward to seeing what my monthly stats look like once January rolls around. So far, I’ve only read one of the on my TBR list this month—I’ve mostly been focusing on David Copperfield—but I’m hoping to get through another one or two soon.

Oh, and the sticky note is of a short story I saw recommended today, and I’m planning to read over Christmas; it sounds like a lot of fun!

Whew! That was a lot of pictures. Hopefully, something here was inspiring to you. I’m thoroughly enjoying having this journal, and fully intend on carrying it on into the new year.

If you keep a reading journal, I’d love to see pictures and/or a video of what you do! I’m always looking for fresh inspiration for ways I can keep better track of my reading life.

Have a blessed day, friend!