August Reading Journal Set-Up

Tomorrow is the first day of August, and we’re having a rare overcast summer day today. Perfect weather for a little crafty time! So, rather than just writing “August” in the middle of the cover page and surrounding it with doodles, I decided to bust out my Tombow dual tip brush markers and a drawing tutorial video and get my reading journal set up for the new month.

For the image on the cover page, I used a drawing tutorial from Draw So Cute on YouTube. I’ve been using her videos to help me draw birthday cards to my niblings. A few months ago, in the process of searching for cute stuff to draw, I found this teacher appreciation video that featured books and tea. I bookmarked it to come back to when I needed a cute cover page for my reading journal, then I forgot all about it until it was time to draw another birthday card. That ended up being earlier this week, which was perfect timing for my August cover page.

On the opposite page, I went with my usual book list, but I added a little envelope to the bottom. Since most of the books I want to read are on my Kindle, I sort of forget that they’re there once they get bumped off that first page of books. I’ve realized that these little book covers that I print out for my “Outbox” page at the end of the month are a pretty good substitute for a physical book stack. But I don’t want to glue them down to the page and then have to print them out a second time (and waste more paper and toner). So, I figured out that I could just print a bunch of them and keep them in the folder at the back of my notebook.

Then I got the bright idea to make a little envelope where I could keep a few of the covers for the books I think I want to read next. This way, I can still read what I feel like reading by rotating covers between the little envelope and the folder in the back of my notebook depending on my reading mood. Then, at the end of the month, I’ll take the covers for the books I’ve read out of the little envelope and paste them onto my reading summary page. If this little process improvement works, then I’ll make a new envelope for next month’s book list page.

I struggled a bit trying to pick which books I most want to read next… At the moment, I’m not quite a quarter of the way into A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. Since I most likely won’t finish it before I got to sleep tonight, that was an automatic addition to the envelope. I also recently remembered that I want to read Dangerous Alliance by Jennieke Cohen. It’s a Jane Austen-esque historical romance with a mystery subplot that has been hanging out on my Kindle for a while and sounds like it would be perfect for that mystery kick I’ve been on lately. The sixth Veronica Speedwell mystery made the cut for a similar reason. Then, all that historical romance reminded me that I still haven’t read The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan. So I tucked that into the envelope so that I don’t forget (again).

I made myself stop there for now. I have a bunch more covers printed out for other books that are on my mind. So, I may switch things up depending on what sort of books I’m craving this month.

This is what it looks like with the little covers tucked into the envelope: