My Bookish Bullet Journal / Reading Journal for 2023

It is with much sadness that I declare: gone are the days of an elaborate bullet journal that I struggle to keep up with and labour with my time and effort for little return. I’m back on the minimalist and practical book tracking baby!

My reading journal has definitely changed a bit – last year was already a more minimalist version of what I used to do and this year, I evaluated how I used it in 2022 and culled a few more spreads that weren’t really sparking joy.

Here are my new pages for 2023 (in the same notebook, to save paper):

Similarly to last year, my second page is my reading challenge page. I’m trying to read 100 books this year, which is insane but something I’ve never been able to achieve (maybe since primary school). I really want to get to it! So I used the same box washi tape I got from Muji and popped in 50 boxes so that every line I cross is a book (so a full X is two books) to save space and washi tape.

Instead of popping my reading log on the third page, I thought it made sense to have my book stats there rather than so I have an overview of the books I’ve read throughout the year in a monthly breakdown. I did slightly misjudge how many lines I had so November and December had to be stuck in an odd column but it’s okay. I’m slowly learning to deal with my perfectionism and it took 10 minutes for me to calm down and avoid tearing out the page.

Then I have my reading log! I’ve left plenty of space with 4 pages as I do hope to read 100 books and I’ve kept it super simple with the number, book title and rating so that I can see each book I’ve read. I was going to put them in a table like last time but I found that I ran out of space for longer titles in 2022 so I want as much real estate as possible this year.

Last but not least, I have my dreaded physical TBR. Reading every book (or at least most of the books) on this list is my second goal for reading this year. After the unhaul I did a month ago, this list had 51 books on it, which is every single line with a box on this spread minus TWO. So it’s a lot but I’m really excited to tick them all off as I go and I’ve left this as the last spread in my reading journal because as I read more books and inevitably purchase or get more books to read from work, this physical tbr will slowly increase.

So this list is also to keep my book buying and book collecting under control to make sure I don’t read above my means. I ideally want to have no more than 10 books on my TBR at a time so that’s what I’m aiming for.

And that’s basically my reading journal for 2023. It’s not super fancy but it’s practical, and functional and I think it’s exactly what I need for my busy lifestyle.

Let me know what you think and what your reading journal is like if you have one!

Until next time,