My Guide to Book Journaling

Being a reader is one of the greatest pleasures in my life. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember, and I don’t plan on stopping.
Most people in the reading community track their books through Goodreads or StoryGraph, but as the analogue girlie that I am, I prefer to track my reading with pen and paper. 

I started keeping a reading journal last year, and it has now become a mainstay of my reading life. I started book journaling because I was curious how many books I read each year, but it has also helped me remember what books I love, record my thoughts about books, and come up with my own rating system. 

This year I decided to up my reading journal game by making it more of a scrapbook, and since some of my bookish friends and some of you have mentioned how aesthetic it is, I thought I would share some of my favorite spreads and how I make them!

I will come right out and say that I am not very artsy. I don’t like crafting and art projects are not something I do "just because".  All that I do in my reading journal is just for fun, and it's a lot of trial and error. I  mainly just stick things down. So if that’s your speed, keep reading.

In my reading journal I do all different types of pages, I have a page for all my favorite books of the year, I do a spread for each month, to be read lists, little journal entries about writing my own books, series trackers, literary bucket lists, and of course, scrapbook like pages for each book.

A lot of the ideas in my journal aren’t my own. Many I’ve seen on booktube, blogs, and Pinterest and have interpreted them in my own way. The big thing for me about reading journaling is just about doing something for myself that I enjoy and that makes me happy.

Here are some of my favorite spreads from the year (so far).

This is the intro page for the journal, I tried to create a vintage bookish first spread with cute stickers, swatches of blue (my favorite color) and of course the adorable Elizabeth and Darcy sticker (unfortunately the etsy shop I got them from is currently not selling items.)

I skipped showing you my favorite books of the year spread because I want to save that for my end of the year reading recap, but basically that has a box for an image of the book covers and the month I read them written on top.

This spread isn’t the prettiest, but it’s a lot of fun. On the left is a TBR (to be read). It’s a list of books I would love to get to at some point. It’s not the most active TBR, it’s mainly classics, but I love crossing things off once I do get to them.

​The spread on the right is a book tracker by tens. So every ten books I read, I color in a space on the thermometer. It’s a super fun way to visualize how many books I’ve read so far, (yes I'm currently in the 60's).

As I said before, every month I do a page for the month. I like to include a quote about the month and record Dnf’s (books I DidN’t Finish), and favorite quotes, books, literary couples etc.
This (obviously) is my January spread.

Onto the book spreads!

When it comes to summing up a book I like to think about the setting and overall aesthetic of the story. I also pull a lot of inspiration from the cover. It’s also fun to include images about things that have significance in the story. 
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With every book spread I make I keep track of the genre of the book and whether it’s a young adult book, a middle grade book, an adult book, or a classic. This makes tracking everything easier.  This is just me, but sometimes I even make up genres (take vintage contemporary for example, books that are old and set in the time they were written but aren't considered classics.)
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In the top left corner I always put what number the book is, and also I have little doodles that help me track stats about that book. I draw little headphones for audiobooks, glasses for re-reads (nerd alert essentially), and a tear drop for books that made me cry.

I also put star rankings in for the books. This makes talking about books so much easier! It's definitely not necessary but when you’re always talking about books (aka me recommending books to you), having ratings helps a ton. Here are what my ratings are and how I define them, maybe it can help you with yours.

1 star -  At least you were a book. Terrible book with moral, story, or other issues. I was bored, annoyed, and all around hated this book. I hardly ever rate books 1 star because I tend to DnF them first.

2 star - I hated this book, but it held my interest enough for me to finish it.

3 star - A fun book, but maybe not an excellent book. I enjoyed it but probably wouldn’t think about it much. The vibes were there but there wasn't much of an emotional punch. I would recommend it, but with discretion.

4 star - A fantastic book! So much about it that I loved it. Maybe there was a plot hole or two, or some characters I didn’t love, but overall I would re-read this book, recommend it, and rave about it.

5 star - Perfection in book form. This book had everything in it that I love. It emotionally impacted me, spoke things I’ve felt but haven’t put into words, surprised and delighted me. This book is a favorite and I would recommend it to anyone.

I also give half star ratings (ie. 3.5 stars), this is for anything that’s not quite in the other categories. I don’t do any other fractions as it gets too confusing.

I love this first book spread of the year! I think both pages sum up the books so well!

This is another favorite spread, the aesthetics of it just make me happy!

I adored The Wonderland Trials and had so much fun finding stickers to sum up the story. I'm not quite as proud of the spread for The Blackbird Girls, but sometimes books just don't have aesthetics, this is an example of that.

For February I made this extra spread to track my favorite literary couples throughout the year, I totally thought there would be more by this point. Let me know in the comments your favorite literary couples!

While both of these spreads are so pretty, the Emma spread is one of my all-time favorites. It reminds me of the picnic scene and the strawberry picking scene and the art I found of Emma painting Harriet's portrait is so perfect.

The spread on the left is for a poorly written middle-grade book, but I had a lot of fun with it by using an envelope and a wax seal and putting scraps of loose paper in the envelope with my thoughts and ratings on them.

The spread on the left is from a book on Queen Victoria, it makes for a really simple, but good looking page to just find a portrait of a historical figure and slap it on the page. This one is a modern artists rendition of a real portrait.

This March spread is pretty much just me having fun with stickers which is literally the best thing!

Two five star reads back to back (I originally rated Mansfield Park 4.5, but since I've been thinking about it ever since reading it months ago, I decided to up it to a 5). 

​Although I loved The Last Bookshop in London, the spread is kinda boring. But the spread for Mansfield Park is so perfect. I had so many thoughts on this book so I glued a folded piece of stationary on to fold out and write all my thoughts on it.

I love it when I have two books on a spread that have a similar aesthetic.

The spread I did for The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry uses one of my favorite reading journal techniques, cutting the background out of a landscape photo and having the building stand out on the paper.

Sometimes authors or publishing companies release extra images from the actual book, this is what happened with A Drop of Golden Sun - it's the front and back cover art, but as a landscape.

This June spread is a little crazy, but it was so much fun to make. I showed the summer reading bingo a few blog posts ago and am still obsessed with it.

​Another case of colors from two books going so well together. I love this spread.

I showed this last week, but I need to show it again. I re-read Anne of Green Gables this year and decided it needed a two page spread. I just love how it turned out. My favorite spread of the year so far!

Finally here is my very patriotic (and unfinished) July spread (and a cute middle grade spread as well.)

​Are you interested in starting a book journal? It’s super simple. I’m going to share my tips and favorite supplies (spoiler you probably already have most of them).

Possibly the most important step and supply is a cute journal. Mine is a little clothbound journal. It’s lined, but you could use a bullet journal or a blank sketch book.

Scrapbook paper is used for backgrounds. I normally just tear a piece off and glue it down. I bought this one pack years ago, and it's lasted me for so long. There's really no need to buy lots and lots of different papers.

Honestly, you don't even really NEED scrapbook paper. If you have letter writing stationary and different colored envelopes you don't mind tearing up, those work just as well.

All the images I use on my pages are just taken from the internet (I can't draw well). I like to look up the book, fanart, and  watercolor images of different things mentioned in the book such as the place or something that plays a major role in the story (could be food, flowers, an animal, etc). Then I just print them on printer paper and I’m good to go.

Stickers are key. This is literally all I use. The four sticker books (from Hobby Lobby, 5Below, and Amazon), the random bookish stickers from Amazon, and two rolls of washi tape (Hobby Lobby).

A lot of these are things I’ve just randomly collected from over the years, without much purpose, now I get to use them!

I recently purchased this pack of scrapbooking ephemera. It’s a small pack of papers that look like vintage ads, tickets, stamps etc. These are fun to glue in place of any of the aforementioned items.

As for actual art supplies, I don’t use anything special. Crayola colored pencils, a tiny pair of scissors, and an Elmer's glue stick. I tried using a fancy scrap booking glue roll, but I prefer school glue (yes this is just the purple glue stick you used in kindergarten.)

The only special item here is my pen. This is specific to me, I pretty much only write with a fountain pen. Obviously you can use any pen you want.

Although my reading journal is fancy, tracking your reading doesn’t have to be fancy at all. Last year I just wrote down the stats and small reviews. Do what you want to do! I have friends who use notebooks, their notes apps, spreadsheets, or plain old Goodreads.

But if you have the chance, I would highly recommend getting out your stickers and spend an afternoon with your favorite drink, a lit candle, maybe a podcast or some music, and your reading journal!

​When I make the time to work on my journal it often is the highlight of my day. As someone who who exercises her creative muscle a lot and shares a lot of what she produces, I love having something that I can just create without having to worry about it fitting anyone's standard.

Do you keep a reading journal? If not are you thinking about starting? What's your favorite spread I showed? Do you have any tips for reading journaling? Let me know in the comments!

Belle Thomas

​Belle is the writer and dreamer behind An Old Fashioned Girl. She is passionate about reminding girls of their identity in Christ, classic books, history, Louisa May Alcott, and earl grey tea.