March Reading Journal wrap up

Hello, hello my lovelies,

This is going to be a new monthly post from me where I will share my reading journal with you. You will get to see what I put in it and what it looks like and also how it develops over time. In fact some pages have already changed since I took the photos but that's the beauty of it.

Do you keep a journal? I don't know about you but I am a stationery addict. Give me a notebook and pens and I'm happy. At one time, my dream job was to work for W H Smith as they sold books AND stationery. What more could a girl want!

But I love to make notes about things and keep lists. I'm a list fanatic. Do you write things on a list just so you can cross it off so it looks like you've done something? I do - but not in my reading journal though.

First up is all the books on my kindle.

You can see that I've been using different colours. As I've started this way, I will keep going, but next year I am going to limit the colours I use. I also started putting the yellow highlighter for Arcs but I've stopped that now as you can see in the picture below.

I absolutely adore physical books but when I'm reading at night, I have to use my kindle as my eyesight isn't great and I can't see the text very well when I'm in bed. So most of my books are read on my kindle but then I buy or am gifted the physical books as well.

When I have read a book, I put a black line through it and on my kindle I put in a folder of finished books. I'm not sure how many books a kindle can hold but if it gets to the point where there isn't much memory left, I will delete books from here first or those I have a physical copy of.

Now, I'm not getting on with Goodreads AT ALL. I know some love it but I'm finding it infuriating but I'm obviously doing something wrong. For instance if I'm on the APP it tells me my challenge fine, but I can't access as much as I would like to and I don't find it very user friendly. On my PC, the challenge is different. Grrrr.

I am not a fast reader and after a day teaching, followed by marking and everything else, I'm generally shattered. I do read every night in bed but the amount can vary from a couple of chapters to a couple of pages. This is why, at first, I set my challenge to 12, thinking that if I read a book a month I'd be happy.

However, I think I met that target easily this month so I had to re-evaluate and with the lockdown, I'm hoping to read much more.

This is a poor photo (sorry) but is how many books I have on my kindle. The previous pages were the titles and authors, this is just numerical. This also doesn't include books in my finished collection folder or my DNF collection folder.

Here is my reading log. Here I jot down the date I finished the books, the title, author and how many stars I gave it.

Still with finished books, I then have pages where I write a bit more detail. I was going to write my actual reviews down, but if you've read any, I tend to waffle a bit and need to work at them being a lot more succinct; so I decided to write the synopsis instead. These pages act as memory joggers when I look back.

Another poor photo alert. This is a new page I've just added. Here I'm going to list the book series I'd like to read. The column at the end is where I can add the number of each book I've read in the series.

Next up is a numerical total of how many books I've read each month.

I've realised I have one more page but I didn't take a photo. It's books which I want to buy a physical copy of.

I absolutely adore my journal and it has soooo many pages left so will hopefully last me a couple of years.

Have you any ideas of anything else I could include? 

If you have a reading journal, I'd love to see it. I follow reading journals on Instagram but I can never get mine to look as beautifully neat as theirs. But this is mine and I love it.

Happy reading,

Allison xx

Reading Journal

Hello hello my lovelies,

Do you keep track of the books you've read? I used to just have a little notebook that I would write the name and author for each month and then tot the number of books up at the end of the year,

This year I've decided to enter into the bullet journal world. I've tried bullet journalling (not for books) before but whilst I absolutely loved it, having to make the spreads each month got tiresome and I gave up.

So for my reading journal I've decided to keep it plain and simple. This meets my needs easily and shouldn't be too hard to maintain. We'll see!

So let's have a little look inside. I have an index as well but I didn't photograph that. 

As you can see, I haven't filled this in yet. I'm going to start it from January 1st so have 1 book to add here. I just have columns for the date I finished the book, title and author plus my rating.

Next up is books on my kindle. I started filling this in last night but haven't finished yet. This is literally just the title and author. As you can see, I've written each book in a different colour. I just love paper books but unfortunately my eyesight isn't that brilliant. I've had a cornea transplant in both of my eyes. I can drive and work absolutely fine, but if I'm reading in bed with a bedside lamp, I just can't see the text well enough. If I read a book on my kindle and love it, I'll buy the book to keep on my shelf. I have a kindle paperwhite as it has a back light and I can control the brightness plus I can also enlarge the text size.

Next up is my NetGalley reviews. Obviously I can read the reviews I've written on NetGalley too so for this spread I've just got columns for the title, author, fiction or non-fiction, a quick comment and a rating.

This is my wish list. This needs A LOT of filling out!

Now I have 2 spreads. On the left is my GoodReads challenge. I only set a challenge of 12, which I should easily meet. I'm one of those people that needs to either meet a goal or go flying past it to be motivated. If I don't meet it, I loose interest.

On the right is a simple layout I've done for a book review. I will just copy this page out.

I also have a quotes page after these.

I'll try to remember to show inside every couple of months or so , so you can see how it develops.

So there you have it. What do you do? I'd love to see yours and read about them too.

Happy reading,

Allison x