Back at the start of the year, I mentioned I was planning on using two planners this year. One was a Passion Planner weekly for managing my writing goals that I also planned to use as a reading journal. The other was going to be my free-form bullet journal which would be where I kept track of my daily to-do lists and household admin tasks.
How it started…
That set-up lasted about six months.
Can you guess what caused my system to fail?
If you guessed the Passion Planner, then you probably have been reading this blog for a while. You may even have said to yourself, back when you read that post at the start of the year and saw that I was making another attempt at using the Passion Planner this year, “Good luck with that!”
If you did, give yourself a prize. You were correct. The Passion Planner didn’t work for me. Again.
Never have I really wanted a planner to work so much before. I mean, that cover is SO CUTE! And the whole set-up is all about achieving your goals! How much more “me” can you get?
I think the problem is that I just hate using multiple planners. I need ONE that does everything. That means monthly, weekly, and daily views. Plus some blank pages for random stuff I need to keep track of.
The twist is, around the same time that I came to that conclusion, I realized that bullet journaling wasn’t really working for me, either.
I started bullet journaling because of the flexibility. It allowed me to have any kind of view that I wanted. I just needed to create it on the page. But, the more I found what worked for me, the more I got sick of creating the framework for each day or week or month. And because I had to create everything as I went along, I never had a good place to park future tasks and milestones as I planned out projects. I just couldn’t get that whole “future log” thing to work for me. Every time I made one, I would completely forget it existed.
Frustrated and annoyed, I went in search of “the perfect planner.” Which, just to be clear, I know does not exist.
I ended up buying a Hobonichi Cousin Avec to try using for the second half of 2023. It’s not perfect, but it does have monthly, weekly, and daily pages.
How it’s going…
Then I pulled the reading journal pages out of the back of my Passion Planner and made them into a little booklet so I could continue using them.
So far, this has been working pretty well. I still hate having the reading journal stuff separate, but at least now I can tuck them into my planner and pretend it’s all the same notebook. But next year, I want to incorporate the reading journal stuff into my daily planner.
The big thing I’m struggling with is STILL future planning. But now it’s not because I don’t have a place for it. I think I’m realizing that not having a place for it meant it wasn’t getting done effectively.
As an example, I like to plan quarterly and refine that plan monthly. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good space in my Hobonichi for noodling out my quarterly goals and associated projects. Maybe it’s just because this is the half-year version of the planner, but there aren’t a lot of blank pages at the back.
For Q4 of 2023, I did all my goals brainstorming and associated project planning in Obsidian (which I’m just starting to mess around with). Once I had that all sorted out, I transferred my October goals onto the monthly calendar in my planner, and then started adding milestones and weekly plans to the monthly, weekly, and daily calendar pages. But I kept November and December in Obsidian. This way, I could tweak my plans based on how October went before finalizing my November goals, projects, and tasks and putting all that into my planner.
Will this bring me planner peace?
This new system is working well enough that I bought the full year Cousin for 2024. Aside from slapping some stickers on the front, I haven’t started to set it up, yet. I think I’ll wait until at least mid-December to start messing with that.
If you like, I’ll do another post at the end of the year to walk through my new setup once it’s ready to go. But next up will be my October reading recap. Did I finish everything on my list? Stay tuned to find out.
In my last post I said I was getting rid of my reading journal, and I am. But that’s only because I’m moving the reading journal stuff to a new home. See, I’ve nearly filled up the notebook. It’s getting super chonky, and I don’t think there are enough pages left to last me through 2023.
So, I had to decide. New notebook? Or something different?
I opted for something different, because I wasn’t really using that journal for more than a fun monthly art project. I haven’t been writing deep thoughts about the books I’m reading like I’d planned to do. While having a dedicated notebook just so I can do monthly reading spreads is a totally valid choice, I also wanted to consolidate the number of journals I’m using at any given point in time.
My solution? Do the same thing I’ve been doing, but do it in the blank pages at the end of the Passion Planner I bought to use as my 2023 writing and publishing planner.
Now I have two journals instead of three.
I’m still using a bullet journal (A5 Dotted Leuchtturm 1917) to do all the usual bullet journaling things (Ryder Carroll style). But, I realized in 2021 that trying to use “collections” to track my writing and publishing projects just wasn’t working. So I spun all that off into a dedicated project planner at the start of last year. Unfortunately, the notebook I picked (monthly overviews with a bunch of blank pages at the end) was a little too unstructured. After much consideration, I decided I need both monthly and weekly spreads for the full year in order to stay on top of my project plans.
Result: the return of the Passion Planner for 2023.
I say “return” because in 2021 I tried abandoning bullet journaling and moving entirely to a Passion Planner. It didn’t work because I need my daily logs, and the Passion Planner weekly doesn’t have a good place to do that. But I don’t need daily logs for my project planning and tracking. I just needed a place to do future planning and a way to break bigger goals into smaller tasks and assign them to specific weeks. And I’m using the days in the weekly layout to track how I’m using my time.
So far, this combo of notebooks is working really well for me. And, since I know I’m going to have it for the full year, I decided it’s also a great place to plan and track my reading.
I made a bookcase where I can draw in and color code the books I read this year.
And I made a cover page with a key for the bookshelf color code. Opposite my cover page is the page I made to track the one goal I have for my reading this year. Can you guess what that goal is?
If you guessed “read or DNF/donate my backlog of Fairy Loot special edition hardcovers,” then you are correct!
As I mentioned in my 2022 wrap-up post, I did a terrible job reading physical books last year, even though I didn’t really travel anywhere, and I don’t have a commute. I seriously have no excuse. Well…except that I hate reading hardcovers in bed. Mostly because I don’t have (or want) a bedside reading lamp.
Since I don’t expect this year to be any different, I’m making some changes. My plan is to add one of these books to my TBR each month. I know there are only nine on that page, but I have ten, total. These are just the nine oldest, so they are the ones that I MUST get through this year. But I don’t necessarily have to finish all of them. DNFing is an option. If I read at least 25% of the book and am not sucked in, I will count that book as “done” and DNF/donate.
If I don’t complete (or DNF/donate) at least one of these each month, then I am going to suspend my subscription for a month. If I miss two months in a row, I’m going to cancel my subscription. I REALLY don’t want to do that because, even though it makes no sense whatsoever, I love special edition hardcovers. And the books that Fairy Loot picks are usually really good ones. So, I think the threat of cancelation is going to be enough to make this plan work.
It may also help that I just purchased a clip-on, rechargeable LED book light that I can use to read in bed. It’s not here yet (ordered online), but I’m hoping that helps as well.
So, is that really my only goal for this year?
Well…. Sort-of?
I have a stack of writing craft books I want to read for a project I’m working on. Plus I still want to read more books about social justice issues so I can expand my knowledge and awareness (target = 4 total). I’ve already identified several and added them to my TBR, but I’m on the lookout for a few more options in very specific areas.
I also want to continue to read books by diverse authors and with diverse main characters and from diverse publishing paths. I have some targets in mind that I’d like to hit, but I’ve been doing pretty well on that stuff organically. So I’m not going to focus on stats for those until mid-year. If I check in July, and I don’t like the look of my stats, then I may have to focus on that a bit more.
But the current priority is determining if there’s a place for special edition hardcovers in my life or not. So that’s my primary reading goal for 2023. Read in print. Specifically, the books I’ve already purchased.
I’m curious, do you also have a backlog of hardcovers from subscription boxes that you haven’t read but want to? Do you track how much you read in print vs. e-reader vs. audiobook? Does it matter to you? Are you trying to change any reading habits this year? Let me know in the comments.
Okay. That’s it. Data tables and spreadsheets have been officially banned from my reading life in 2022.
Then, later that month, I posted my 2022 goals and said I’d decided to go back to using a spreadsheet. So that “resolution” lasted almost three weeks. Because seriously? Who was I kidding?
Of course I went back to tracking my reading in a spreadsheet! I’ve been tracking my reading stats since 2017. You can pry my spreadsheets from my cold dead hands. I’m a data geek for better or worse. What can I say?
Upside? Hey! I have some reading stats to share! Woo hoo!
I read 66 books in 2022 with no DNFs (though I did have a few books I started and then put aside to come back to at a different time). In total, I read 20,525 pages, which averages out to about 311 pages per book.
The fiction to non-fiction split was almost exactly the same as it is every year: 83% fiction and 17% non-fiction.
92% of the books I read were on my Kindle. That’s the largest percent of digital reads since I started tracking stats. By far. Print books made up only 5% of my reading (despite my love of special edition hardcovers) and audiobooks accounted for only 3%.
Coincidentally, 92% of the books I read were categorized as adult. This stat was also a big surprise to me. For what it’s worth, I may keep a spreadsheet of the books I read, but I don’t monitor my reading stats throughout the year. That stuff is all on a separate tab, and I mostly ignore it until it comes time to do a year-end wrap-up like this.
Anyway… In 2021 the split between adult and YA books was 76% / 24%. So this is a big change, year over year. This is by far the largest percent of adult books read since I started tracking stats. I can’t say I really missed the YA books this year… BUT… I do have a stack of Fairy Loot hardcovers I want to either get through or officially DNF this year. More on that when I get to my post on goals, though.
38% of the books I read in 2022 were romances (this includes all subgenres of romance). That’s just a bit more than 2021 at 34%. but 2021 was almost double what it had been in previous years, so romances continue to trend upward as a percent of total books read for me.
Here’s how my reading breaks down by genre:
Fantasy — 28 books (42%)
Sci-Fi — 14 books (21%)
Contemporary — 7 books (11%)
Mystery — 2 books (3%)
Self help / writing / business — 8 books (12%)
General non-fiction — 2 books (3%)
Memoir — 1 books (2%)
Historical — 4 books (6%)
As for my 2022 reading goals, here’s how I did:
Read at least 52 books — Done. I read 66.
Read at least 12 books by Black authors — Done. I read 12. (but in 2021 I read 13, so…)
Read at least 12 books by other authors of color — Not quite… I read 8. (same as in 2021)
Read at least 12 books with LGBTQ+ representation (main character) — Done. I read 16. (increased from the 13 I read in 2021)
Read at least 5 indie published books — Done. I read 17! And they weren’t all by the same author!
Read at least 6 non-fiction books about anti-racism and/or social justice — Nope. I read 2. Better than zero, but not great.
Read or donate at least 3 of my unread physical TBR — Hahahahaha. No. I only read 2 books in print and both were brand new books purchased in 2022. Sigh.
So, there you go. Overall, not a bad reading year. A couple of misses, but I read a lot of books I loved. I achieved most of my goals. And my spreadsheet is back.
That said… I am planning on making a few changes in 2023. Including, ditching my reading journal.
WHAT?!?!
I know. Sorry. More on that in my upcoming 2023 goals post! Until then, happy reading!
While I was also in the middle of a massive reading slump…
I tried not to let that influence my thinking.
I’ve finally started to enjoy writing notes about the books I’m reading. Not for review purposes, but just as a way to think through how stories work and what makes them work for me, specifically. In other words, figuring out the commonalities in what I like vs. what I don’t like.
So, I’m not ditching the reading journal…yet.
But, I decided that I definitely needed a new plan for how I track my reading stats. After all those weeks of reflection, I broke down and spent an evening modifying the most basic reading spreadsheet I could find and adapting it to track only the metrics I care about.
This new approach means that I’m using three different tools (Goodreads, reading journal, and spreadsheet) instead of just two (like last year), which is not ideal. BUT each of them are going to be used for different purposes. Here’s how I’m thinking it’s going to work…
Goodreads is a pretty good database tool. Its search function is not great, but I’m not planning on building my own database of books anytime soon, and I don’t think anyone else is doing the book database thing better. That probably has something to do with Goodreads being owned by Amazon, but whatever. I don’t need to (or want to) reproduce all that info in my spreadsheet when they already did it for me. So I will continue to use Goodreads to browse book covers and other relevant info when I am trying to decide what to read next.
Then, once I decide what I want to read, I’ll enter it into my spreadsheet. When I’m done reading, I’ll mark it as read on Goodreads, write some notes in my reading journal, and repeat.
That covers my process changes, but what about reading goals? That was the topic for this post, right?
At the end of 2021, I drafted up some pretty ambitious goals for 2022. Then I proceeded to enter a reading slump and read zero books for the first half of January. Not good.
I’m reading again now. So I’m going to give it a little more time before I revise my initial 2022 reading goals. I mean, goals are just goals. They’re meant to point you in a direction. You don’t have to necessarily achieve them. You are allowed to change your mind about your desired destination along the way.
When I drew that table on the left-hand page, I assumed I would be using it to tally up reading stats. I just wasn’t sure what stats I wanted to track, so I only made one column for number of books read each month. Since I decided to go the spreadsheet route, I’m going to leave that space blank and use it to write notes on my reading mood and/or trends for the month and/or my favorite book I read that month. TBD.
The right-hand page is where I really went big. Not only did I give myself more goals than last year, I also made myself a little TBR pocket. With sideways evergreen trees. Do you think that maybe I should have taken that as a sign that this was probably a bad idea? Can I hear you saying “uh oh… what was she thinking?”
Let’s break it down.
The first two goals aren’t bad. They are the same ones that I gave myself last year and that I give myself pretty much every year. Specifically:
Read at least 52 books
Read at least 12 books by Black authors, at least 12 books by non-Black authors of color, and at least 12 books by queer authors (or featuring a POV queer character with positive representation).
The problem is that I decided to add a few reading projects to challenge myself a bit:
Read at least five indie-published books, and ideally not all by the same author — this goal is somewhat associated with Fantasy Romance February which I’m participating in this year.
Read at least six non-fiction books about anti-racism and/or social justice — this is a continuation of the goals I set for myself after reading Me and White Supremacy last year.
Read (or DNF and donate) at least three books from my unread physical TBR — my unread stack of paperbacks and hardcovers is getting too big, and I’m not buying any more bookcases.
At the moment, this seems like too many challenges, but I’m not going to give up yet. I’m planning on revisiting this list in a few months. I’ll see how I’m feeling about it then and recalibrate as necessary. This first quarter is particularly challenging for me because I have a lot of writing and publishing stuff that I’m focused on. Reading is taking a bit of a back seat. It’s probably not going to be like that all year, though. This may seem a lot more do-able by the end of March.
I have, at this point, finished at least one book this month. And I finally finished this post! Even better, I feel like I’m back in the reading groove. So I’ll have something to talk about in my January wrap up! Hooray!
Unfortunately, it’s nearly time to set up my reading journal for February…
I really hope your year in reading is off to a better start than mine!
Now that I’ve had a week or so to reflect on my 2021 reading and collect my reading stats, it’s time for another recap. I almost didn’t post this one. It was a total pain to put together. I couldn’t figure out why I was struggling so hard to compare this year’s reading to previous years. Then I remembered that because I didn’t use a spreadsheet to track my reading this year, I must have accidentially or on purpose? changed all the data I was collecting. Oops. Oh well.
If you stick with me through my painstakingly gathered stats, I’ll reward you with my top five favorite books at the end of the post. Or just skim the stats and skip to the bottom. Either way is fine with me.
We will start this journey by paging through the reading summary pages I made back at the end of 2020 when I was setting up my reading journal for 2021.
Remember the bookshelf spread I made? Here’s how that turned out.
Surprise! I actually really like this spread.
If you remember, I had a color code I used to mark the books spines with the appropriate genre, and I added a little heart to the spine if it was also a romance. I did it this way because I wanted to track romances separately from genre because romance novels come in all genres, and I didn’t want to lose track of the genre breakdown just because I marked something as a romance. The only problem is, because of this completely logical and brilliant change, it turns out that I completely busted my ability to track my year over year genre stats. Whee!
Oh well.
I counted up the spines (another sad side effect of not using a spreadsheet) and twenty of the fifty-nine books I read in 2021 were romances (meaning they had a primary romance plot that ends “happily ever after” or “happily for now”). That’s about one third of the books I read last year.
I don’t really have any sort of goal or target or limit or whatever associated with how many romances I read each year. It’s just a meaningless data point. The first of many in this post.
I suppose what is interesting is the distribution of where those romances fall on my tracker, which is something you can’t see easily when you’re tracking things in a spreadsheet. Score one for the reading journal approach, I guess? Anyway, as I was saying, if you look for the hearts on the spines in the image above, you may notice that my romance reading was heavily weighted toward the end of the year, just as things in my life (and in the world) were starting to get stressful again. Coincidence? Probably not.
Oh, yeah. One more side note. For any detail-oriented folks reading this, yes, there are sixty books on the shelves in that photo, and I keep saying I only read 59. I ended up abandoning one of these books at about the halfway point, but I’d already drawn it in. I do plan to finish it later, so I included it on my shelves. I just decided not to include it in my total stats. I suppose this is one downside of drawing in pen. Not really a problem if you use a spreadsheet. I guess that’s minus one for the reading journal approach.
After more spine counting (and re-counting, just to make sure I didn’t mess it up), here’s how many books I read in each genre and what percent of my reading that turns out to be, in descending order (most to least read).
Fantasy — 15 books (25%)
Sci-Fi — 13 books (22%)
Contemporary — 12 books (20%)
Mystery — 8 books (13%)
Self help / writing / business — 6 books (10%)
General non-fiction — 2 books (3%)
Memoir — 2 books (3%)
Historical — 2 books (3%)
If you’re thinking, “Aren’t these just more meaningless data points?”, the answer is yes!
What do I even do with this information I’ve gathered? Nothing.
I mean, I don’t have any goals pertaining to which genres I read, and I don’t plan to create any for 2022. And, because of the genre tracking changes I made, I can’t even compare these percentages to last year in any meaningful way.
Are you beginning to see why this was a very frustrating post to try to write?
Oh hey! Check it out! When you turn the page, there are even more book stats and goals to review. This should be fun.
Whatever possessed me to create a table with numbers that I was going to have to eventually tally up in a notebook?
This right here is why god invented spreadsheets. I really want to kick past me in the shins right now. Once for the data table and then a second time for thinking that creating a “21 in 2021” TBR was a good idea.
Here are some fun stats that I collected in that sweet data table that I didn’t have any goals associated with:
86% of the books I read were ebooks with 7% paper and 7% audiobook.
76% of the books I read were adult vs. 24% YA.
I got 58% of the books I read from the library.
29% of the books I read were new releases (published in 2021).
93% of the books I read were traditionally published.
Dear future self: Stop compiling meaningless reading stats. Just stop.
Also buried in that table on the left page are the numbers I needed to add up to help me determine if I accomplished my actual reading goals or not. Here’s how I did on my 2021 Reading Goals.
Read at least 52 books — Accomplished! I read a total of 59.
Read at least 12 books by Black authors — Yep. I read 13.
Read at least 12 books by other authors of color — Not quite… I read 8.
Read at least 12 books by queer authors (and/or with strong positive queer rep) — Done. I read 13.
Read my “21 in 2021” TBR — Hahahahaha. No. I read 1 of the 21 books on this list.
Not terrible considering that I think we can all agree that the “21 in 2021” TBR was a very bad idea. So I’m not going to feel bad about that epic fail.
I feel a lot worse about the four books I fell short of my goal on reading books by non-Black authors of color. At least I did better on those metrics than I did last year (36% total books written by BIPOC authors vs. 28% last year, and 22% written by queer authors and/or with queer POV characters vs. 12% last year). These are possibly the only data points I’m tracking that I care about.
But hang on! We’re not quite done, yet. (Even though we probably should be.) On the next two pages I also decided to track a couple more things that weren’t part of my goals.
Why do I do this?
On the bright side, it looks like I did complete a handful of the 2021 Read Harder Challenge tasks without really trying (5 out of 24, or 21%).
However, it appears that I abandoned the book haul list I’d intended to keep. I know I bought more than three books in 2021. I suppose I could go back, figure out what I purchased, and then fill this page in, but who am I kidding? That seems like a lot of work, and it’s just more meaningless data.
I honestly wish I could say that I learned something from this exercise, but I think I just can’t help myself from collecting data, even if I’m doing nothing with it. It’s like I’ve become the evil boss guy from Office Space with the TPS reports. Gross.
Okay. That’s it. Data tables and spreadsheets have been officially banned from my reading life in 2022.
But I’ll keep my color-coded book spines with the little hearts on the ones that are romances. That’s fun.
All right. We’re done with the data. Phew. And I promised you a top five list. So let’s move on from the numbers and get to the unquantifiable part of my 2021 wrap-up, shall we?
Back when I was trying to decide if I wanted to make a reading journal, I watched a bunch of reading journal set-ups on YouTube. Come to think of it, that may be where I got the terrible idea for the “21 in 2021” TBR in the first place. But there was good stuff in there, too. I think.
Anyway, I remember seeing some people do a sort of “battle of the books” bracket tournament thing. I liked the idea. The only catch was, I didn’t think it was fair to pit two books against each other just because I happened to read them in consecutive months. So I did my favorites a little differently.
I meant to put something in the middle of this spread, but then I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I ended up leaving it sad and blank.
As you can see in the photo, I picked a favorite book read from each month. Then I eliminated the two non-fiction contenders, because I didn’t think it was fair to mix fiction and non-fiction. That left me with ten favorite fiction books, and I wanted to narrow that down to a top five. Because I like top five lists.
Because Internet and Why We Swim were the two non-fiction books that get honorary “favorite non-fiction from 2021” awards.
And here are the top five (fiction) books I read in 2021 (listed in the order I read them):
Unsurprisingly, they are all sci-fi / fantasy novels. Possibly more surprising is that only one of them could also be considered to be a romance (Winter’s Orbit). They are all really good reads, though. So, if you haven’t checked them out, go read the blurbs and grab one that sounds appealing to you.
Now, that this post is done, it’s time for me to have a long think about what data associated with my reading that I actually care about tracking in 2022. While I do that, let me know in comments, what was your favorite book that you read in 2021?
I’ll be back soon with some “looking ahead to 2022” posts (aka “2022 Goals”). Until then, happy reading!
Taking a quick break to do the Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag… This is a thing that happens over on BookTube, but I’m going to add my contribution over here on my blog.
1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2021:The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson 2. Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021:Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #6) 3. New release you haven’t read yet, but want to:Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa 4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:Never Saw You Coming by Erin Hahn 5. Biggest disappointment:Poseidon’s Wake by Alastair Reynolds 6. Biggest surprise:Master of One by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett 7. Favorite new (or new to you) author: Micaiah Johnson 8. Newest fictional crush: Stoker from the Veronica Speedwell series 9. Newest favorite character: the telepathic fox from Winterkeep by Kirstin Cashore 10. Book that made you cry:More Than Maybe by Erin Hahn 11. Book that made you happy:The Checklist by Addie Woolridge 12. Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received): I am still waiting on my Fae Crate special edition of Son of the Storm, and I expect that is going to be pretty fantastic. However, since I haven’t received it yet, I’m going to have to go with the special edition hardcover I purchased of The Space Between Worlds (see photo below). 13. What books do you need to read by the end of the year? I haven’t made much progress on my “21 for 2021” TBR, yet (3/21 books read). So I should probably make an effort to read a few more of those before the end of the year…
What was the best book you’ve read so far this year? Let me know in the comments.
A little while back I asked for advice on what I should do to streamline my reading tracking for 2021. After posting that, I spent some time thinking about why I track reading metrics, and what metrics, if any, were most important to me. My hope was that, if I could reduce the amount of data I want to keep track of, maybe I could eliminate the spreadsheet, at least.
Then, because I knew that journaling about what I was reading was important to me and something I definitely wanted to add, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos where folks showed off how they set up their reading journals. Turns out that there are a LOT of really inspiring reading journals out there.
Many of these reading journals have extensive artistic collage layouts with lots of washi and stickers, and most include some sort of tracker for “days read.” I’m not sure how artsy I’m going to get with my reading journal, but I did decide to incorporate a few of the more popular spreads, with my own personal twist, of course.
My plan is to use Goodreads as my book database since I’ve already got all my shelves set up so I know what I own and haven’t read yet and if it’s on my Kindle or on my bookshelf. I also use it to keep track of what books I have on hold at the library, and what’s on my TBR. Plus, it’s easy to sort things by number of pages or title or author or whatever. But… I don’t review stuff there.
That’s where the reading journal is going to come in.
Step one: I took a plain (not dotted) Leuchtturm that I had in my stash of blank notebooks, and started covering it with bookish stickers.
Next I took my list of ideas from the YouTube videos I watched and started laying them out in pencil. Once I was happy with what I had, I started inking things in and adding color.
I started with a title page that also serves as a key for my “year in review” bookshelf on the next pages.
I divided the two pages into three “shelves.” My plan is to draw books on these shelves in clumps that correspond to the months of the year, starting in the upper left where you can see that I wrote “January” on the black strip that serves as the top of the shelf. If you look closely, you can see that I’ve penciled in some books on the shelf as placeholders.
Once January is over, I’ll go draw in the appropriate number of book spines in some combination of horizontal and vertical, leaving space for February on the same half of the page. Depending on how many books I read in January, I may just hold off on drawing these in until after February. I’ll add the titles to the spines and then color them in according to genre, adding a little red heart on the spine if the book is also a romance.
Once that was set up, I spent some time drawing a grid to track my reading stats, and making a page for my 2021 reading goals.
My plan is to capture my reading stats each month and then enter the data here. In general, I decided that I wanted to track the following things:
Total books read (goal is at least 52, or one per week on average)
How many books I read that were published in 2021
How many Indie published books I read
How many books I read in each format (audio, ebook, and paper)
How many books I read that I own vs. that are from the library
How many books I read that are written by Black authors and/or other non-white (goal is 12 by Black authors and 12 by other non-white authors)
How many books I read with LGBTQ+ main character(s) and/or written by an LGBTQ+ author (goal is 12 books) — Note: I decided not to just make this about the author demographics because, while I strive to prioritize Own Voices books, an author’s sexuality is none of my business.
And finally… how many books I read that are YA vs. Adult
I know, it’s still a lot to keep track of and maybe in 2022 I’ll decide to streamline it more. I tried to only keep the metrics I wanted to set goals for, but a couple more (like YA vs. Adult and Indie pub books) snuck in there. I couldn’t help it. I like data.
Underneath my very short list of goals, I added a “21 in 2021” book cover collage. These are the books that I’ve been meaning to get to for way too long. They either get buried on my Kindle, or I’ve walked past them on my bookshelf so many times that I’ve forgotten they’re there. I tried to pick only the ones that I am most excited to read and not focus on stuff that I feel guilty for not reading.
You may also notice that there are only twenty covers pasted in right now. I’m still debating on what book gets that final slot. It somewhat depends on what book(s) I manage to finish before the end of 2020. If you have a book you want to make a strong case for, let me know in the comments.
Finally, I added one more spread for the year before diving into my monthly pages.
I couldn’t resist adding the 2021 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge tasks. I am not going to be actively participating in that challenge this year, but I wanted to add the prompts just for fun. If I do happen to read a book or two that check any of those boxes, I’m planning to write in the page number that corresponds to my notes on that book.
I left the opposite page blank to be filled in with books that I buy in 2021. I’m not sure if I’ll do another cover collage or if I’ll just make a list of titles and authors. I may start off by writing a list in pencil and then going back and adding covers in batches, once I have enough that it makes sense to print them out.
After that, I started a spread for January.
This one is still in-progress. I got a little crafty and used bits of a cute wrapping paper to dress it up a bit. I’m still working on my TBR. Again, it kind of depends on what book(s) I manage to finish before the New Year. I’m thinking of this like a bullet journal, but for reading. So that would make this my month cover page and goals page.
The two pages after this will include a list of what I read in January, plus my January book stats (kind of like a “month at a glance” spread if this were a bullet journal). That will be followed by entries for each book I read with at least a page of notes (and favorite quotes, etc.) from each (sort of like “daily pages” in a bullet journal).
Is this a lot more work than keeping track of my reading in a spreadsheet? Maybe…. But it’s also more fun. Plus, I am attempting to move to using a “regular planner” in 2021, so this will fill the bullet journalling hole in my life.
What do you think? Do you keep a reading journal? If you do, is it artsy? Or do you keep it pretty minimalist? Let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for me in the comments.
Taking a quick break from writing to do the Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag. This is a thing that happens over on BookTube, but I’m going to add my contribution over here on my blog.
1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2020:A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine — I’ve talked about this already, but this book is really well written, I really enjoyed the characters and the plot and the world. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves Ursula K. LeGuin, especially Left Hand of Darkness. 2. Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2020:The Reluctant Queen by Sarah Beth Durst — I love the new character(s) introduced in this sequel. I was a little skeptical of the ending until I read book three. Now I can safely say this was the best sequel I’ve read so far this year. 3. New release you haven’t read yet, but want to:Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim — This is a Count of Monte Cristo retelling, and that book was a surprise favorite when I read it a couple years ago, so I’m excited to see how I like this retelling. 4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:Seven Devils by Laura Lam — This book sounds so awesome. I’ve never read anything by this author, but I am very excited for this book. 5. Biggest disappointment:Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston — I’d heard so many gushes and squees about this book before reading it. I liked it but didn’t love it. I think I was expecting too much. 6. Biggest surprise:The Last Emperox by John Scalzi — Not a surprise that I liked it, but tons of surprises in the story itself. There were definitely some bold twists in this book that I did not see coming. 7. Favorite new (or new to you) author: Ilona Andrews — I’m now caught up on their Innkeeper series, and I definitely want to try reading some other books by them. 8. Newest fictional crush: Jackson from Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai 9. Newest favorite character: Maud from the Sweep of the Blade by Ilona Andrews 10. Book that made you cry:Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy — I cried when I watched the movie, and I cried again when I read the book, even though I knew what was coming. 11. Book that made you happy:Sweep of the Blade by Ilona Andrews — I love Maud and Arland! 12. Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received):Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie 13. What books do you need to read by the end of the year? Everything I’ve bought but haven’t read yet, specifically:
Since the year is half over (what? how? and also… only half? seriously?), I thought it might be a good time to catch up on how I’m doing with my reading goals in addition to bringing you the usual Inbox / Outbox summary. This is going to be a long one. Ready? Here we go…
Outbox
Here’s what I read in June:
I managed to finish four books in June, even though I spent the first fifteen days of the month trying to get into a book that I was buddy reading with friends. After realizing I was staring at social media instead of reading, I gave up and decided to read something else. I may come back to it eventually, but I just wasn’t enjoying it.
To get my reading groove back, I picked up Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover, the last book in Sarah MacLean’s Rules of Scoundrels series. It’s been a while since I read book three, and even longer since I started reading this series. I thought this would be a sure thing to get me out of my reading funk. I have been really looking forward to this book ever since I began to suspect Chase’s secret back in book two or three. But, when a character has a secret that big, it’s hard to make a believable romantic arc work. As much as I loved the characters in this book, I did start to get annoyed that there didn’t seem to be a strong reason for the secret keeping. It was a small quibble. I still devoured this book, and I think it was a solid (if a bit “old-school romance”) ending to this series.
After that, I read The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole. I’ve been wanting to listen to this on audiobook since I first heard it announced, but I wasn’t about to go and get an Audible subscription just to listen. So, I waited patiently until it came out on ebook. Folks, I am here to say, it was worth the wait. This book had the perfect mix of plot and romance for me. In the SFF genre, this would be considered “hard” sci-fi (meaning plausibly science-based sci-fi). I just do not see very many (any?) romance books with a hard sci-fi setting and plot. So good. If you’re a sci-fi fan who wants to dip a toe into romance, start here.
Then I read Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett. I’ve never read any of the Stephanie Plum books, but I imagine that if you like books in that genre, you would also enjoy this book/series. I loved it and immediately downloaded book two in the series. This was such a fun read! If you like cozy mysteries that don’t feature cops as the main characters, definitely check out this book.
I also read The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark. This is one of the novellas that has been nominated for a Hugo award this year. I read his other Hugo nominated novella (The Black God’s Drums) last year, and it was my favorite of the bunch. I also really enjoyed this novella, which is set in an alternate history version of Cairo that is populated with magical creatures and futuristic technology. So cool. The world-building and characters are fantastic. Another one I highly recommend reading.
Inbox
I already mentioned three of these books in my June TBR update (Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden, Stormsong by C. L. Polk, and The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole). The other three were books I bought after reading Hollywood Homicide and remembering that there were a bunch more “light and fluffy” ebooks by Black authors on my wishlist that I’ve been meaning to buy.
I had some gift card money left over from my birthday, so I grabbed Mating the Huntress by Talia Hibbert (I haven’t read anything by her, but I’ve been following her on Twitter for a while, and I think she’s great, so I thought this would be as good a place as any to start), Rafe: A Buff Male Nanny by Rebekah Weatherspoon (the subtitle says it all, plus I’ve heard so many folks have raving about this book, unfortunately my library hasn’t bought a copy yet, so I decided to just buy it already), and In Tune by J.N. Welsh (I added this to my wishlist after an interview with her on Smart Podcast Trashy Books because one of the main characters is an EDM artist and the author was talking about all this research on EDM for the book, and I listen to quite a bit of EDM, especially while writing, so I really want to read this).
Mid-Year Goals Update
I had to go look up my reading goals for 2020. I had a vague recollection that there were four of them? But I didn’t remember what they were. Turns out that there were five. I’d conveniently forgotten about goal #4. Probably because I hate goal #4.
Here’s my brief update on how I’m doing toward achieving my reading goals this year:
Read at least 52 books. (or book-like things). — So far this year I have read 35 books, which is 67% of this goal. I’m ahead of schedule, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to increase my goal. I have a LOT of writing that I’ve been procrastinating on that needs to get done in the next few months, and that is going to cut into my reading time. So the goal is staying at 52 books total.
Read all purchased books within six months of purchase. — Hahahaha. I currently have 5 books that are “overdue” for reading according to this goal. One of them is the third book in a series where I still need to read book two, but I have no excuse for the rest. This goal needs a little more focus in the second half of 2020. But I still think it’s totally manageable. Unlike the next goal…
Read at least one owned book for every book I purchase. — Why do I create goals that are annoyingly difficult to track? This took me way too long to figure out, but I’ve purchased 6 books this year (I’m not counting gifts or books purchased with gift card money), and I’ve read 2 books that I purchased prior to 2019 (the ones I bought in 2019 are covered under goal #3). So, I am 4 books behind on this goal. But the thing is, if I prioritize goal #3 (which I think is a better goal for me than this one), then the likelihood that I’ll achieve this goal is slim. There are just too many new books I want to read, and I’m able to get almost all of them from the library. So, I don’t have much incentive to read pre-2019 backlist stuff, and I’m not sure I care. Ugh. I’m going to keep tracking this, but someone please stop me from making this goal next year.
Read more books by marginalized authors (measured by % of total books read). — My targets and actuals are as follows:
At least 33% books by “non-white” authors. Currently: 23% (8 books)
At least 15% books by queer authors. Currently: 17% (6 books)
At least 10% books by indie authors. Currently: 17% (6 books)
At least 50% of books written by female-identifying authors. Currently: 73% (29 books)
So that’s where things stand for me going into the second half of 2020. I plan to continue to focus on reading more books by authors of color (especially Black authors), and I plan to catch up on the books I bought this year and last year.
How are you doing on your reading goals for 2020 (if you have reading goals)? Let me know in the comments. I’m curious. 🙂 And, until next time, have a great 4th of July weekend! Stay safe and wear a mask! ❤
And now a break from the reading summaries, stats, and updates to share my bullet journal spreads for 2020. Unlike most, I don’t bother starting a new notebook at the start of a new year. If I still have pages left in my current notebook, I just keep going.
Before diving into my 2020 spreads, I used almost ten pages planning my 2020 writing schedule and goals which I’m not showing here. In general, I laid out a future log for the entire year, four months to a page, divided horizontally so I had space for mini calendars on the left and notes on the right in each box. Then I used pencil (not normal for me) to start putting in rough plans for what writing project(s) I wanted to be working on each month.
In addition to that, I came up with two major writing goals for the year. One is a revenue goal and the other is to “build my backlist.” After that, I made sure my Q1 goals and projects tied to my 2020, and that’s it. All that’s left is to set up some sort of Kanban board to track my tasks associated with those project and make sure it all gets done. With that more or less set up, I moved on to my reading goals for 2020.
I’m keeping it pretty simple with this two page spread. On the left side, I can keep track of new books that I want to put on hold at the library (or add to my wishlist). There’s an 8×8 box for each month, and I’m writing the release date and title in each box for the books I’m excited about. On the right side, I’ve listed my reading goals for the year (which I’m going to talk about more in a separate post). Then I’m using the bottom half of the page as a tracker for the books I’ve purchased to make sure I’m buying and reading books rather than buying and hoarding them.
Next up is my month at a glance. I like the traditional line-a-day view for this. I’m putting my regular life events on the left side and my writing business stuff on the right side. I also have a little habit tracker on the left side for the four habits I’m tracking in January (vitamin, meditation, cardio, and stretching).
The right hand side also has a mini habit tracker because I have a goal of writing 1000 words every day in January. They can be in any of the three Modern Fae projects I’m currently working on, but blog posts and outlining and brainstorming don’t count. It has to be part of a story scene, even if I eventually end up cutting it from the finished product. Ultimately, I want to see if I can keep this up all year, but I’m going to take it one month at a time so I don’t get overwhelmed by my ambition.
On the next page, I have a big blank page for capturing what I read that month and any favorites from my “culture consumed” (like podcasts, music, movies, tv shows, etc.). I’m not sure exactly what this will end up looking like, but I’m intending to try to make it a bit of a collage. I’m thinking of printing out mini book covers to paste in, or maybe doodling the covers of the books I’ve read. I’ll probably add ticket stubs from movies, if I go to any. I’m leaving plenty of space to be creative and have a bit of fun.
I’m also trying something new this month. I’ve never done a mood tracker before. I thought it might be helpful to be able to visually compare my mood to my movement, so I came up with the idea for this chart.
The days of the month are across the bottom. Number of steps are on the vertical axis alongside a very basic mood scale from “no good very bad day” to “everything is awesome” with “meh” in the middle. I’m using some symbols to track what kind of movement I’m doing for my daily cardio (for me this means at least 30 minutes of continuous movement). I’m really curious to see how this turns out.
One of the reasons I wanted to try a mood tracker this month is because I’m not great at being mindful about how I’m feeling. I’m hoping this will force me to stop and think about it at least once a day. I suspect I’ll feel better on days I move more, but who knows. Maybe I won’t. It will be interesting to find out.
The final new thing I’m trying this month is this reference page just before I start my daily pages where I can do some meal planning and write down admin tasks that need to get done but that I don’t want to add to my daily log for whatever reason.
I have these little post it flags that happen to be almost exactly 3×10 squares. So, I made a week and then started writing some of our regular meals on the flags. This way I can move them around and re-use them throughout the month. The lime colored ones will be crockpot recipes and the blue ones will be for everything else. That way if I know I need a crockpot recipe on a certain day (because I won’t be home until late, for example), I can see at a glance that I’ve got myself covered. I’m hoping this will also help me stay on top of groceries for the week.
And that’s it. That’s my set up for January. I don’t like using weekly spreads. I keep trying them and then hating them for a variety of reasons. I like the flexibility and the focus of daily logs. So, that’s what I’m sticking with for January. I definitely lean more towards the traditional bullet journal method rather than the “instagram friendly” bullet journaling that gets featured a lot on YouTube and elsewhere. But, if you like this sort of thing, let me know in the comments, and maybe I’ll do more posts like this.
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