I love organizing my reading and keeping of track what I’ve read and how I enjoyed a certain book. As of right now I use, like many other readers, goodreads. But let’s be honest that website is trash in a lot of aspects. So for next year I want to get in the habbit of keeping a reading journal, where I can track all the books I’ve read however I want. No restrictions.
Quite frankly, though, I keep my journal pretty simple despite the endless possibilities. I just like to keep it simple so it doesn’t feel like an additional chore in my daily routine. I want to keep the focus on reading instead of making cute pages. So if you came for some cute spreads, I have sadly to disappoint you, because you will not find it here.
I have a title page, so I can seperate previous years from this year. I’ve started this journal in 2016 but in 2018 I stopped using it for no particular reason. Well, I started Uni then so maybe I just got overwhelmed by the workload so I didn’t want any additional writing. Or maybe I just got lazy, who knows..
Behind my title page I made a goal list that I want to achieve in this year.
Mainly, I want to work through my TBR pile which contains 38 books at the moment. If this doesn’t sent a chill up your spine I don’t know what will.
The next goal is very closely tight to this, which is to not buy one single book the next year. I want to approach a more minimal lifestyle anymore. And why should I buy any other books when I have so many already? That makes no sense. I always justified my excessive book buying with the fact that I buy 95% of all my books secondhand and if I saw one that I really liked, I just bought it because you never know when to stumble upon another copy of that exact book. But not in 2021.
Anonther goal I have is to not be afraid to dnf (do not finish) books. This year I did not dnf one book although there were a lot that were dnf worthy. Life is just too short to read books you are not interested in, no matter if it is a book that “one should have read at least once in their lifetime” or if it just a pretty cover.
My last goal is to form more reading habits. The only habit I currently have, is that I read on my commutes to uni and work. But I want to read 5-10min in the morning before getting out of bed and 30min up to an hour before I go to bed. Because I almost don’t get any reading done at home. Most of my books I read on my commute in the train.
That’s for the goal page. Then I have a monthly cover page, where I write the month (duh), my tbr and my book count Of my tbr. I hope this will keep me motivated to be reading. Also I include a quote that resonates with me. Bookish or non bookish.
Then for every book I read, I dedicate a page on which I write the title and author, the date started and finished, my rating (1-5 stars), a short review with my thoughts and opinions and I am thinking of doing maybe some memorable quotes from the book.
And that is honestly it. It is very simple, nothing to elaborate but it gets the job perfectly done for me.