by Public Service Associate Juliana
January is a perfect time to set up new systems. Last year I decided to start a Reading Journal.
I was interested in more than keeping a list. I’ve kept a reading list for years, and it didn’t feel like enough anymore. I read lots of books and spend lots of my time reading, and in 2024 I noticed that while my year end totals were admirable, I wasn’t retaining much of what I read. I couldn’t spout out plots or tell you spoilers. I rarely ever remembered the endings. I wanted to be able to have something to say about a book a month or year after I’d read it or at least have the journal to refer back to. Ultimately, I wanted the time I invested in reading to count for more.
“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
–Mortimer J. Adler
Rather than plowing through books to set a new all time high reading count, I wanted to slow down and sink in. I knew a reading journal would help me do this. So I chose a notebook and got started.
I sat down and asked myself what I wanted out of keeping a journal. I watched a couple of YouTube videos related to reading logs to help me figure it out. The videos helped me get into the right mindset and also see how other people have gone about documenting their reading journeys. I paid attention to how their journals were organized and what they included for each entry. From there I was able to shape my own general structure to follow.
The videos helped me discover and narrow down what was and wasn’t important to me. Summaries, for example, weren’t important to me. I knew if I included that as a requirement for each entry I would feel the same anxiety I felt when I was asked to write summaries in school, and I’d be likely to avoid my journal altogether. If I needed a summary, the internet is a great resource for that.
Instead, I focused on tracking things that were easy enough to keep me showing up. The journal needed to be structured but not intimidating, serious but not too serious. I wanted this to be something I could maintain for years, not a habit that fizzled out in a month or so.
For each book I read, I documented the following:
- Title, author, year published, genre, date read
- Rating: love, like, didn’t like and a sentence or two about why
- A list of words, characters, phrases or themes associated with the book (whatever comes quickly and easily into my mind)
- Quotes from the book
- Additional resources related to the book (author interviews, podcasts, documentaries, biopics, feature films, memoirs, etc.)
These five bullet points helped me prioritize reading broadly — fiction and nonfiction, older and newer books, books by diverse authors, books I wanted to live inside, books that could teach me something, books read for sheer enjoyment.
But my favorite part of my journal routine turned out to be searching for related resources. A great example was when I read Trout Fishing in America in July (an odd little book from 1967). After finishing it, I discovered Brautigan’s daughter had published a memoir, You Can’t Catch Death, about her relationship with her father and her grief over his suicide. It wasn’t until this month, January 2025, after I finished reading her book that I felt more of an impact and had a better understanding of Trout Fishing in America.
This helps to show how a reading journal can pull the thread of things you read through your life, to nudge you to go in directions you maybe wouldn’t have gone in otherwise and to make surprising and meaningful discoveries.
It bears mentioning again that reading journals are completely customizable. I know some people who keep a log of titles and authors and a star to denote whether they liked a book or not. And that’s enough. Maybe you’re not scarred by school memories and are a person who likes to write a summary with each title. Maybe you’re a digital person and use a platform such as Goodreads to keep track and write reviews of what you read.
Whatever type of journal you create, I hope you find a way to archive your reading life in a way that works for you and that you continue to adjust and adapt as needed. Wishing you a wonderful year full of reading!
