Hello!

We’re heading surprisingly quickly towards my favourite time of year – New Years, goal setting and brand new journals.

I’ve been bullet journalling since 2017 and whilst my journals look pretty different and I’m no artist, I still love both the functionality of designing my diary to look however I want it to look and dedicating the time every night to filling in my trackers and an afternoon once a month to design the next month’s spreads (it’s an incredibly creatively fulfilling task).

In my 2023 journal, I included a few pages on my reading habits – tracking what I’ve read, making a note of what genres I’m reading and keeping track of things like the alphabet challenge and my book bracket to determine my favourite book over the year. Alongside this, I also have this Booktok journal my sibling kindly gave me for my birthday last year. Whilst it’s been fun to fill in and I’ll love looking back on everything I read this year, I just can’t get past the freedom of being able to design a layout that works perfectly for me, regardless of the extra effort (especially when I enjoy the extra effort).

So I’ve got a beautiful journal I’m going to use, I’ve got some sticker paper that I’m going to use to print out book covers that I can stick in and I’m so excited about all the layouts I want to design, so I thought I’d share a few here in case anyone else is considering making their own journal for next year!

Planning this out in double page spreads, I want to start with a key for my rating system – I use the basic 1 to 5 stars (because .25/.5/.75 is too many options for my decision fatigued brain!) and assigning a colour to each of these ratings makes things really consistent and visually recognisable in later spreads. I’m also tempted to make on of those little corner bookmarks with this key on as well. On the facing page, I’m going to make a spread for my reading goals – I want to set myself some more challenges beyond a number of books to read and putting them right at the front makes the most sense to me!

Next up, I want a double page spread for my yearly stats – basically a table I fill in once a month so I can see any trends over the year in the number of books I read, the number of pages and minutes I listen to, the format over physical, ebook and audio, how much I’m using my library, how much I’m reading from my tbr, how many books I’m buying, how many books are on my total tbr and how I’ve made an impact on that over the month (optimistically, I should be able to read 4 or 5 books from my tbr a month… realistically I really like buying books).

On my next double page spread, I want to list the 24 books I want to read in 2024 and then create space for an alphabet challenge layout. I’ve not dedicated myself to this challenge this year and I’ve inadvertently managed to read about 70% of the way through the challenge so it’s a nice one that doesn’t take too much effort to participate in!

Then my favourite part – drawing the book shelf where I add spines of the titles I’ve read throughout the year. This will be the biggest version of this spread I’ve ever done and I’m hyped about it. This is where the key comes in handy because I use my rating of the book to colour in the spines and it’s a great way to see at a quick glance how well my reading year is going!

Speaking of how well my reading year is going, next I want to have a page for my reading goal tracker – this year I literally drew 42 boxes and coloured them in (using the aforementioned rating system!) when I finished a book. I’d like to think of something more creative but also I do really like how it looked and sometimes simple really is the most effective! On the facing page I’d like to have a genre tracker – in previous years I’ve made essentially a bar chart listing a bunch of genres and using that handy rating system again to add a mark when I’ve read a book in that genre. The colours make it really easy to see which genres I’m rating the most highly, but I just need to make sure that I’m leaving enough space, cos I filled up my fantasy, contemporary and romance bars really quickly this year.

The next spread I want to make is an idea I snatched from TikTok and it’s a book box subscription tracker – I recently subscribed to Illumicrate and their romance subscription Afterlight and I think it’ll be lovely to have a little record of all the special edition books I’ve collected over the year! And if I happen to pick up any other subscriptions I can add them in too.

This one is a bit unusual, but I have a list on my phone of book shops I want to visit – mostly indie, but then some Waterstones that I’ve seen videos about and sometimes even whole bookish towns (maybe 2024 will be the year I go to Hay-On-Wye!), so I thought I could print out a little map of the UK and add to my map of where book shops I want to visit! Totally trivial but could be really cute.

The next double page spread is going to be two really simple tables – a book buying tracker and a book wish list. I really want to buy less next year but I’m not delusional enough to believe I won’t buy anything, but limiting the table to only one page will definitely keep me aware of how much I’m buying!

Next will be a spread for my monthly reading log – a double page broken down into months where I can make a list of the books I read each month. I’ve just about squeezed it all on this year and seeing every book I’ve read on one page is really satisfying.

Then I’ll make my yearly book bracket – I want to experiment with using sticker paper to include the covers of the books I’m choosing as my favourite each month and I have every faith that this spread is going to look really cute.

Next I’m going to have a double page spread for my 5 star reads of the year – again, it’s lovely to see them all in one place, especially with the variety that end up on that list! And I’m definitely going to be using my sticker paper here.

On the next pages, I want to list 2024 releases and then have a little box for 2025 releases so I can note down any authors I love that have new books coming out, any anticipated releases I might have pre-ordered or even special edition release dates! Having a calendar in a journal is always helpful.

Then it’s on to the monthly spreads – I want to start each month with a title page where I can list my tbr for the month, then I’ll have my review pages where I can track more data, use more stickers and write my thoughts and feelings, and then I want to end the month with a wrap up page basically covering the same details that will go into my yearly stats page, but making them more detailed and pretty (and using more stickers).

I’m genuinely not sure how many pages this will take up – I’m using a lovely notebook I received in my most recent Illumicrate box and the paper is so high quality and the cover is so pretty I’m even more excited to use it. So with not knowing how many pages I’ll use, I actually intend to use the back of the book too – I’ve thought about writing my entire tbr out but that’s well over 300 books and I have a digital spreadsheet and apps for that, I do, however, like to keep track of any series I start reading and doing this at the back means I can add any new series without potentially running out of space if I put a spread in at the front. I’m not entirely sure what I want this to look like yet so if you have any suggestions, please do let me know!

I love planning out my journals and spending time on something so physically creative and offline, but then I also love watching videos about people’s journals so if you have any recommendations throw them my way because I obviously need more ways to procrastinate…

Thank you for reading!

Sophie xx