Inspiration for your next Book Journal or Reading Journal Setup
2022 was the year of books for me. Whether as a book or an audio book, I don’t think I’ve read as many books in my entire life as I did last year. And there were some great stories, but also some that bored me. Fortunately, I have recorded my thoughts on the plots, characters and other themes in the books in my book journal.
In case you’re wondering what a book journal is, here’s a quick summary: a book journal is the journal/notebook/place where you can write down all your thoughts about a book. It can become your booklet for memories of stories, heroes or places, or simply a list of books you own, want to read or have heard of.
Here you can find an article on how to get started with a book journal: How to Start a Book Journal
Your Book Journal as your personal reading inspiration
For me, the first page in a book journal is always a page whose only purpose is to make me want to open that journal. This means that this page must inspire and motivate me to open a book, to read it and then to want to write about it in this book journal. The easiest way to do this is always with a quote or a cool saying. My trusted source for this is always Pinterest. I also discovered the saying “Books are a uniquely portable magic” there.
I decorated the page with a picture I also found on Pinterest, some kraft paper and a fake page from an encyclopaedia or translator. Unfortunately, I don’t own a book that explains English words in English, which is why I always have to help myself with print-outs for such pages. But you can often find very cool pictures on Pinterest.
Books of 2022
My first page in this book journal is actually a page you can do without. My Book Journal 2022 unfortunately didn’t have enough pages to cover all my books for the year. I read a few more books in December, so they didn’t have their own page and didn’t fit on my list of books I read. Therefore, I have decided to transfer this list to my new Book Journal. This page contains all the books I have read in 2022.
The table always shows the title of the book, the name of the author and my rating in stars (a maximum of 5 stars is possible). At the bottom of the right-hand page I have added my goal for the year and will add the actual number of books read. I am very proud of myself that I have more than achieved my goal.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of decorating the page before I had entered all the books. As you can see, I used the dictionary/translator-printouts again on the right side in combination with other pictures and stickers. What I hadn’t considered was that I still needed space for my ratings. In the end, there was no more room for them in the last books, which annoyed me a bit. Nevertheless, I find this page visually very appealing and was able to learn something directly for my overview for 2023.
Books of 2023
My overview of the books I will read in 2023 is therefore much more minimalist. Here is only the table with the columns for title, author and rating. I have only minimally distributed decorations in the margins. And in contrast to 2022, I have even prepared 2 double pages for this. So there is more than enough space for new books and also books with long titles or authors with long names.
My tip for you: Think in advance about what you want to see on your book list for the year. I think the title of the book is a must, but everything else is optional. Do you want to add a rating and the name of the author? Or maybe the genre or the number of pages in the book? Depending on what information you would like to have at a glance, you can easily add columns to this table as you wish.
Books to be read in 2023
Last year I had a page in my Book Journal with 22 books I wanted to read in 2022. I must honestly admit that this page stressed me out more than it brought me joy. I think this would be a great page if you read a lot and set realistic goals. But since my goal was “only” 23 books in total, I felt like I was very limited in the books I read. Every time I read a book that wasn’t on the list, I felt guilty. On the one hand, it’s stupid, I know that – after all, I had made this list myself and there were absolutely no consequences whatsoever to what happened to this list. On the other hand, I simply realised that I am an absolute mood reader. That means I only like to read the books I’m currently in the mood for. Books I don’t feel like reading tend to put me into a reading slump very quickly.
So there is no such list this year. But I have created a “to be read” list. On this page I will paste book covers of books that I would like to read in 2023 or that will be published in 2023. So that there aren’t too many books on here, I’ve planned quite a lot of space for the covers. One cover is 3 x 5 cm and a total of 14 book covers fit on the double page. The point of this list is to inspire me as to what books I might read next. It is not a list of books I absolutely have to read.
Ready for your Book Journal?
These were all the pages I prepared for my book journal this year. You can now add as many pages as you like in advance. You can find great inspiration on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
My tip for you: Before you start into the detail pages for the individual books, I recommend that you leave one page blank. Perhaps in the next few months you will come up with overviews that you would like to add, or the space in one overview is not enough and you need another page for it. Then it’s always better to have a little more space. In the “worst” case, you can close this page at the end of the year or turn it into a quote page.
I hope you found inspiration. Which overview do you think belongs in every book journal? Xo – L.
