While I’ve always had at least a few spreads dedicated to tracking reading in all of my bullet journals over the last several years, it wasn’t until last year that I created a second journal dedicated to journaling about my reads. Even though I still have some spreads in my main journal, I do plan on migrating them into the reading journal exclusively after this year.
My enneagram-5 ass loves tracking things, so I have a variety of spreads I have used to compile my bookish data. Here’s some of my favorites PS – I primarily used these suppliesto make these spreads!
Books by Genre Bookshelf & Reading Tracker
This spread was a new addition this year, although it’s a variation of a spread I have done in the past. It’s now one of my favorite spreads of all time! It was inspired by my friend Maria’s reading journal spread where she visually documents her reads exclusively by genre. I originally planned to track by genre alone, but ended up adding the names of the books on the spine. I love colorful, visual representations of information, and I think this is such a fun way to instantly see how varied (or not varied) the genres I read are throughout the year.
Reading Journal Cover Page
A fun little doodle and quote cover page to start out the 2022 portion of my reading journal. This isn’t really a tracking spread, but I really liked how this came out, so I wanted to share purely for aesthetic reasons.
Reading Bingo
At the end of last year I talked aboutwhy I was lowering my reading goal for 2022. After analyzing some of mystats from 2021, I was a little disappointed in the lack of variety in my reading. Much of what I read was prose books written by people who grew up very similarly to me; I didn’t really explore reading mediums too much (graphic novels, magazines, poetry, short essays, collections) and didn’t branch out a ton when it came to genres or authors.
So for 2022 I wanted to focus more on expanding the variety of my reading instead of focusing on hitting certain numerical goals. While I still do that to some extent (it’s impossible not to if you’re on Bookstagram, BookTok, or Goodreads), I don’t let it influence me as much as it did last year. I made this bingo spread so I could prioritize some different types of writing I wanted to explore. This was inspired by aspread from Johanna(@johsjournal).
Reading Tracker Calendar
This spread was actually inspired by a hometown friend who bullet journals. I thought it was such a cool way to visually track when and how long you read certain things. However, this isn’t a super useful layout for anyone who reads multiple books at one time. I ended up stopping after June 2021 because I was frequently reading 2+ books at a time, and it just got too squished.
However, if you keep monthly pages in a reading journal, I think tracking books like this on a larger, single month calendar would be super cool! I might do that when I expand into an A5 reading journal next year.
To-be-read Book Tracker Idea
I’ve more or less used this same spread the last several years. It’s becoming slightly redundant, since as most of you know, a TBR list is constantly evolving. It’s much easier to keep this list digitally on a platform like GoodreadsorStorygraph.
I limit myself to a single page, because I could probably fill up a whole journal with my never-ending list if I wanted to. I typically fill out the whole thing shortly after I make it at the beginning of the year. It is fun to see which books I actually read by the end of the year, and which ones are deprioritized. I will say this does come in handy as quick reference guide when I’m in-between books, and want a suggestion without getting choice overloaded from my Goodreads list.
Standard Book Log
This spread has also stayed *mostly* the same through most of my journals. It’s a very simple numbered log of the books I read that includes:
- title
- author
- date started
- date finished
- star rating
Pretty simple and straightforward!
I also included a Did Not Finish section after my book log, also inspiredone of Maria’s spreads.
Although it’s rare for me to DNF a book, it does happen a few times a year for a variety of reasons. I wanted a place to log those books if they’re books I want to come back to in the future. I can log where I stopped so I don’t have to completely re-read everything if I come back to it.
Monthly & Yearly Review Spreads
This isn’t exclusively a reading spread, but this is where I round-up some of my reading stats for the month. For reading, I list which books I started & finished, # of pages read, # of hours listened, and how many books read total.
These spreads make it super fast and easy to go back and add things up for my yearly review spreads where I summarize some of my reading and book statistics for the year (top right corner of spread to the right).
Standard Reading Journal Entry
This is currently the standard layout I use when I log a book in my reading journal. It takes up one page in a B6 Archer & Olive journal. I print out covers of the books I read (you can see a tutorialhere) and glue them in, then add in some stats.
I typically include:
- What # book of the year it is
- Title (sometimes I experiment with lettering styles for this)
- Author
- Dates read
- # of days read
- # of pages OR hours to listen
- Acquisition (rented/owned/borrowed)
- Media type (audiobook, physical, e-book)
- Acquisition source (friend, specific library)
Then I write a brief summary of my thoughts on the book, and then if it was a book I enjoyed, I will usually include a quote or two.
There ya have it! If you’re looking for more inspiration for reading journal ideas, you can check out the Reading Journal Inspiration Guide that I created on Instagram. It includes some of my favorite reading journal creators to go to for inspiration!
Do you prefer to track your reading digitally or manually? Or a combination of the two?
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