My Reading Journal: Backstory and Set-Up

In August, after watching one person’s reading journal, I convinced myself that I needed to have one too. So I continued watching a lot more videos, got inspiration, had a plan in my head and then bought a few supplies and even more that I did not need.

Seeing that I was already tracking my reading on goodreads, I did not need to have one. But I started being intrigued by bullet journals, and started getting into drawing. I wanted more of that. Plus I love having journals so I could look back on it later on. I may not want to look at it right now because I don’t want to remember some things, but I will grateful for having it later on. Seeing that I was getting into reading, I wanted to have my own outlet, to do it how I wanted. It could be photos or an actual review or drawing. It was mine to do. And yes it may have officially been started in the middle of the year, but there is no rule telling me I couldn’t start with January 2020.

Its my journal, so I did what I wanted to.

I may not have all the fancy stationery that everyone else has like Archer and Olive journals or Tombow brush pens, but I used what I had already and bought what I could. It came out amazing and my drawing skills have improved.

So I am just going to show you how I set up the first few pages, and in another post will show the first few months.

In terms of the book I used, it was a Cleverfox 2.0 dotted journal in rose gold. Basically the same one I use for my new grad bullet journal. The quality is amazing for the price.

This is my opening page. Its meant to represent me. A girl with curly hair reading her book. I don’t wear socks though, but the photo I used for inspiration, had socks, so I drew socks.

This is my 2020 cover. Going to be honest here, not a big fan of it, just because it looks weird. The calligraphy is questionable and twenty-twenty has its issues. But you know whats thats my drawing and calligraphy journey.

So these are the books I read in 2020. Well up until August because I haven’t filled out the rest. Most people tend to do the bookshelf set-up. I was not a big fan of it so I stuck the book covers instead. Once again, not sure what is going on with the lettering. But I do love how it turned out.

Once again lettering is questionable. Other than that I struggled with what the goal should be. I didn’t want it too high that I couldn’t achieve, but I also didn’t know how much I would read. So I stuck with 40, might increase it to 50. Not sure. I am already at 39 at the time of writing and its October 19th. Whatever the number ends up being, I will have a goal drawn and a stick a photo of my goodreads challenge.

Oooh. This page has a story. Lets just say the more I tried to fix something, the worse it became. In the end I do like how it looked though. In the beginning, I had FAVE and TOTAL written in each box with a highlighter but turns out I couldn’t write over it. So I tried to color with black marker but it looked horrible. So I stuck black paper in each box and loved how it turned out. Also, I have issues with the white pen.

This was to record my 2020 releases in the form of a future log style. Turns out there were not that many releases I knew of. Fun fact, I messed up the header while I was drawing it, so I printed it on paper and stuck it.