I have not set up a separate reading journal since June.
If you remember, in my July Bullet Journal-esque set-up, I included a Notes page at the end of every week.
On this page, I tracked crochet projects, books read, and any other information or tidbit I need to keep up with.
This has worked out for me fairly well.
This is the one notebook that I can assure you I am working in or flipping through no less than three or four times every single day, and sometimes more.
When I am logging things into Goodreads or Storygraph, I may still have to skim the week’s pages to find start and finish dates, but that’s a heck of a lot better than having to skim an entire month to find that information.
And, no, I don’t think I have updated Goodreads or Storygraph since June.
Except for a book that I received in my August Nightworms subscription package:
Feral and Hysterical by Sadie Hartmann. It was too good to forget anywhere. (More on this amazing, and highly recommended, book, another time.)
Goodreads automatically picks up any book that opens in my Kindle, whether I want it to or not, so it’s not always a great representation of what I am reading when. It’s awesome for tracking the Kindle books, and the Libby books (as I read them on my Kindle).
The other issue is I haven’t been reading many books since June. I had already hit a slump before July, but July turned out worse than I would have thought.
I was working on The Dogs by Allan Stratton when August arrived. The second my Nightworms package arrived though, it felt like a dam had burst. I spent that first day, nestled up with Feral And Hysterical, licking my chops to get to the other book that had come in the same package as soon as I finished with the first book.
I now have a good seven new books on my Kindle, four loans from Libby on my Kindle and fifteen holds waiting to come in, ten bound copies of various books on the way to me (I ordered them to be shipped), and a new tag on Libby called TBR, which is a list of books I plan to request, in whatever order strikes me, once I finish reading what I have on-hand.
Now, you will remember, originally, I took a step back from Libby because every time I started a book I had in hand, or even that I owned on my Kindle, a Libby loan would come in and disrupt everything. I would feel compelled to read the Libby/library book as quickly as I could, so putting down other books, so no one in line after would me would be waiting unduly.
Plus, I am mostly a mood reader. I read what strikes my fancy when. Books that were coming in from Libby from my holds were books I had wanted to read when I put the hold on them, but once they came in, not a lot of them were anything I wanted to read. Towards the end there, I didn’t even bother to try to read the ones I knew wouldn’t appeal to me where I was then. Most of those were book club books, read-along books, or book prompt books.
I will tell you, this new way of reading tracking is working better for me. I will often write little comments on the day I read something, and may make notes at the end of the week. I have never gone back to my first half of the year reading journal to write in all the missing reviews. I think there are at least three months, as in an entire quarter, where I did not write reviews. Not even for books I DNFed.
This also means that if I read enough, I am going to start letting you guys know what books I read, which ones I liked and which I didn’t and why.
How is your reading going this year? This quarter? This season?
Do you keep a journal of books you’ve read? Do you track what you read?
Let me know in the comments.
And, please, recommend good books you’ve read, your favorites, even steer us clear of your least favorites.
Thanks for stopping by.
Tabitha Low 