Why You Should Start Journaling about Books You Read

Last Updated on February 8, 2025 by Kate Darktea

Reading is an important part of our lives, and journaling about books can help us remember what we’ve read as well as being fun. During your reading life, you could read a lot of books so it becomes easy to forget the story or the points you found interesting for your own personal growth. Keeping a reading tracker will help you remember which books you’ve read and your thoughts on them, whether you read fiction or non-fiction books.

What is book journaling?

Book journaling is the practice of keeping a record of your thoughts about books you have read. At its simplest it can be a list of books read with a mark to show whether you enjoyed it or not. It could be a dedicated book journal for example with a page for each book, a picture of the book cover, details of where you got it from, key quotes along with your thoughts. Or it may be a few sentences about what you liked or disliked about the book in your existing journal.

Why keep a reading journal?

Keeping a book journal is an excellent way to track your reading progress and reflect on what you’ve read. By writing down your thoughts and ideas, you will be more likely to process and retain them. This means in the future you will move beyond knowing you read a book a few years ago, to remembering what you thought about it. This can be useful for both fiction and non fiction books, especially if you want to discuss them with other people. 

 Benefits of journaling about books you’ve read include:

• helps you remember what you’ve read e.g. characters, plot, key thoughts
• prevents you buying books you already own or have read
• a place to store important ideas you want to remember
• you’ll understand more about the authors and genres you like
• a place to store book suggestions and books you’d like to read

How to start a reading journal

The most important thing to note is there is no correct or best way. You need to decide

• what information you may want to refer back on in the future
• what you’re willing to capture while during and after reading a book
• if you want to be able to access it while you’re away from home.

Knowing this will help you decide the best approach for you. If you don’t know what to do, don’t let it stop you start with a minimalist approach of a list of books and the date finished. After you’ve been using it for a few months, you can decide if you want to adapt your approach. You could start a new journal or use an existing notebook. You could begin a journal at the start of the year or at any time you want to start.

Different ways to keep a book journal

There are many different types of book journals. I’ve included some suggestions here, but you may have your own journal ideas. It is worth thinking about how you want to approach journaling about books. Consider how you want to journal, so it doesn’t negatively impact your reading experience. If you want to capture your thoughts as you go along, you probably want a pen and some paper to hand when you read to jot down thoughts, or you may want to write a book review once you finish a book.

Digital Journal

• Online website e.g. Goodreads
• spreadsheet / word processor document
• blog
• vlog
• mobile app

Analog Journal

• in your main journal
• create a DIY reading journal (you can get inspiration from bullet journal layouts), a dot-grid notebook is popular for this
• Using a pre-printed book journal

What do you include in your reading journal flist of

There is no shortage of reading journal ideas, just look on Instagram. But remember what you decided earlier, so you don’t get overwhelmed by the variety and beautiful journals. Remember your journal entry should meet your needs, not be compared to what other people are doing.

Book log or reading tracker

A book log is one of the simplest forms of book journaling, yet there are still different ways of creating one. It could be a:

• list of book titles and authors
• checkboxes to simply show the number of books read
• drawing of a bookshelf with the name of each book read written on the spine

Books to read

Again there are different ways to keep a running list of books you want to read, depending on how you want to keep the information. 

• list of book titles you’ve been recommended
• more books in a series you’ve read
• more books by the same author
• genres you’re interested in exploring more

Favourite books

You may want to keep a list of your absolute favourite books, so you can easily refer to them in future, for example if you want to recommend books to other people. If you read non fiction books you may want to keep lists of books you’d recommend on different topics.

Reading Challenges

If you decide to participate in a reading challenge you can track them in your reading log. You join a shared challenge or create your own based around your reading goals to keep you motivated e.g. annual reading goal

Book club

If you’re a member of a book club you may want to record your thoughts on the books you read on its own page. You could include who chose the book and any interesting discussions you had in the group.

Index

If you are keeping your book journaling within your normal journaling practice, or you have several years within one book you may want to create an index to help you find specific information. This could be a written index at the back of the book with a page reference or adding stick on markers to the pages such as denotating the start of each year.

My reading journal

As I love journaling I’m surprised I didn’t consciously start a book journal. I started with a list of books I read; just the title and author. And although I’ve done this for many years I’ve kept it in so many different places it would be impossible for me to come up with a list of every book I’ve read in the past. Looking back on my book trackers I wish I’d kept more details about my thoughts as I can’t remember some of the books I read. I now keep some notes when I read, either in the ebook or a paper notebook if it is a physical book (if I have it to hand).

During 2021 and 2022 I’ve been recording my reading habits in my weekly log. This includes the name of the book, when I’ve read it and whether it was a physical or audio book. I’ve also use this blog as a way of journaling my thoughts about self help books.

For the last few months I’ve been experimenting with a few digital ideas. In Notion, I’ve got all the books I own and want to read, so I can easily find the ones I want to read next. I’m also storing quotes and thoughts for books once I’ve read them. I’m doing something similar in Airtable except I’m assigning categorises because if I find enough interesting ones I may share them in a future post.

Conclusion

Starting a book journal can be an enjoyable experience for avid readers. It helps in remembering and reflecting on the books you’ve read, prevents duplicate purchases, and is a place to note your thoughts. You can choose to customise the journal how you want, to fit your approach to reading and your lifestyle, whether a simple list of titles or a long review. Ultimately, journaling about books allows you to track your reading journey and provides a meaningful way to look back on your literary experiences.

How do you journal about books? What do you like to look back on? I’d love to see your reading journal or how you keep track of your reading.