The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

Hi people!
I'm wondering if there are any of you who keep a reading journal. I've just started one, as an experiment, to see if I like it.
Do you keep a reading journal? What do you write in it? Is it helpful to you?

I'm thinking of buying 'My Reading Life' by Anne Bogel. It is a book journal that can keep 100 books.
I think I might start it in january, to track my 2022 books in it.
Are there people here who own it and use it?
What do you think? Would you recommend it?

Cheers! :)

Hannah

I keep what could loosely be called a Commonplace Book or Reading Journal. I've kept one over the years and what I put into it changes some over time.

Right now I have a Table of Contents first. I like to keep some of the quotes I put in under certain headings, like Books and Reading or Relationships. Then there's Misc., which gets a lot of them. I also have a sections for sentences with new words or hard-to-pin down ones.

Some of the books I read get Reflections pages, where I write some of what I'm thinking while I read them. I just finished rereading Mansfield Park and I have some thoughts on why Sir Thomas is a lousy father/guardian. lol (I save 2 pages for those, 4 for the topics. If I need more I just put another entry into the TOC with the new page numbers.)

So I put quotes that I like, or thoughts about books or characters, observations about the writer's style, pieces of poetry, points I want to remember from nonfiction, or ideas of what to read next. I used to keep a blog about books and I put ideas of posts in my journal then.

At the very end I keep a list of books I've read with author, date and a star rating. I start this on the last page and work toward the front of the book so I don't have to guess how many pages I'll need for it.

Formal books to keep track of your reading can be helpful, but I find them confining, so I buy a pretty lined journal and use it instead. Sometimes I finish a book and have nothing to say about it. Other times I find lots to save or comment on, so I prefer my more flexible style. It works for me. But keep it simple and only write more if you really want to Otherwise it becomes onerous and you're likely to quit.

Teri-K wrote: "I keep what could loosely be called a Commonplace Book or Reading Journal. I've kept one over the years and what I put into it changes some over time.

Right now I have a Table of Contents first. ..."

Interesting... I like how it changes over time, and also for every book... Thank you for sharing! :)

I wonder what my preferences will be after a while.. right now I mostly want to keep track of what I read, some quotes I like or think are horrible ;) and some notes whilst reading, of things I might want to put in my book review...

Maybe a formal book could be to small, like you say.. hmmm good to think about.

Since joining GR i have not really kept a journal everything is here and sometime i feel constrained to write deep and meaningful in a journal even if i hated the book

Marie (UK) wrote: "Since joining GR i have not really kept a journal everything is here and sometime i feel constrained to write deep and meaningful in a journal even if i hated the book"

lol I get that!
Though my first entry in the try-out journal is quite straightforward on things I really don't like about the book. I don't think I would dare write all of that here on GoodReads...

I keep a book stats spreadsheet in Google Sheets to track books, pages read, genres read, etc. It is based on a template by Brock Roberts https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Over the years, I have adapted it to my own needs.

Lauren wrote: "I keep a book stats spreadsheet in Google Sheets to track books, pages read, genres read, etc. It is based on a template by Brock Roberts https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/......"

Oohhh thank you! That is interesting... So many things to fill out and keep track of.

Hannah wrote: "Oohhh thank you! That is interesting... So many things to fill out and keep track of"

Sure! I even use it to keep track of SRC. I just added a sheet for each season.

Lauren wrote: "Hannah wrote: "Oohhh thank you! That is interesting... So many things to fill out and keep track of"

Sure! I even use it to keep track of SRC. I just added a sheet for each season."

Ohh I can see how those can work well together. I have another great spreadsheet on GoogleDocs for SRC. I got it from another SRC'er, can't remember who it was right now...
And then I added some tabs myself, like to see how much I spent and what order I should read in if I want to start with highest scoring books first ;)

Hannah wrote: "And then I added some tabs myself, like to see how much I spent and what order I should read in if I want to start with highest scoring books first ;)"

Yes. The spreadsheet is great for keeping track of all of those aspects of the challenge.

I haven't used one before, but I am going to start my first one in 2022. I also got mine from Amazon. It has a log sheet and places for 100 books I hope to do serious reading this year.

I will wait and see if he posts a spreadsheet for 2022 and may try to use it for SRC. However, I easily become overwhelmed, esp. by spreadsheets LOL.

I am going to try a formal format, I think it will help me to keep track better than a notebook by giving me a finite set of tasks to complete the page.