Bullet Journaling 101: 5 Spreads To Track Your Reading

Hey you guys and welcome to another post in my Bullet Journaling 101 series! Today I figured I would continue on from Wednesday’s post all about how to read more by showing you guys how you can use your bullet journals to both keep track of your reading but also motivate yourself to read more (if you’re anything like me) by creating different spreads and getting to use them actively!

In a surprising turn of events, I’ve actually been using my bullet journal a lot more this year and more importantly, consistently using it! I used to think that I had to set mine up the way everyone else does it which often resulted in me not actually doing much with the spreads I created because I didn’t need them. It’s only really been this year that I’ve cut down a lot on the spreads I create and use and it’s been a much better experience!

And the one thing I enjoy most is keeping track of my reading with different spreads in my journal. Right now, I have four spreads that I update regularly with the reading I have done so I’ll share those with you guys, but I’ll also share some I have seen other people use that I thought might be helpful too!

Books/Pages Read

One of the first spreads I set up for myself for 2018 was this one! I know Goodreads tells me all of these things too but I like having a record of this in my journal too. And since they are all just blank squares at the beginning of the year it’s so much fun to color them in as I read more and seeing the two pages become more colorful each month!

I didn’t think of this right away when I created my spreads, but I think it would be really fun to color in your squares with a dedicated color for each month of the year – that way you can check how much reading you got done each month instead of just your overall reading progress! That’s something I should keep in my for either 2019 or for when I get a new bullet journal and redraw these spreads!

Here’s a look at what these two pages look like in my actual journal (because I was too lazy to redraw them in the one I usually use to show you guys what I’m talking about):

If things go according to plan, I’ll run out of space on my Books Read spread as it only has room for 40 books and my goal is at least 50 – but that’s okay! I’ll either create a second spread to continue on or I might be in a new journal by then so I can create a different spread with enough space!

Page/Minute/Hour Tracker

I don’t personally use this spread for my own reading but I’ve seen quite a few people do it and I think it’s a fantastic spread! I think I mainly saw booksandlala do this for the pages she reads. But if you also really love using audiobooks, I feel like you can adapt this and make it into a minute and/or hour tracker which should be easier to update!

A fun twist you could put on this is to use a different color for each book you’re tracking within this tracker. This way you know how long it took you to finish any given book on top of knowing how much reading time you got in general!

I originally wanted to share two pictures here from Lala and Lotte on Instagram of their spreads for this, but they only shared them as an Instagram story so I’ll need you guys to check out their profiles in Instagram as they have them as part of their highlights!

Series Tracker

I think most of us enjoy reading (or binge reading) series but sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of a series because there are just too many books releasing at all times and you just never remember which series is getting a new book and more importantly: when.

This way, you always know how many books are in a series and more importantly how many you still get to read! Luckily, I don’t usually read too many different series at once (HA. I didn’t even realize how many series I was in the middle of until I created this spread and as we can see, I do in fact read a lot of series at once…) and know when to expect a new book (but that might be because I also blog about books and like knowing when things release) but that might not be true for everyone!

Unread Books

This spread I created towards the end of 2017 to make sure I had a visual representation of how many unread books are currently sitting on my shelves and to help motivate myself to read them as I would (once again) get to color in all the books I had read! You’ll see that there are three books already colored in and those are eARCs that I apparently thought needed to be colored in right away – don’t ask why. I have no idea. xD

This is definitely a spread you can use to keep track of the books you’re reading instead of the unread books you own too!

2018 Reading Goals

You might remember that I shared my 2018 reading goals in a post a couple of weeks ago and while I hadn’t planned on creating a spread for them at the time, I, later on, went back and created one because I enjoy getting to color in things way too much. But it’s also a fantastic way to show myself how much progress I’ve made (or not made) towards my reading goals and can help motivate me to step up reading wise!

This particular spread isn’t pretty in any way but I also never planned on actually showing it to anyone so there’s that. xD But I do love going back to it and updating it!

How about you guys? Do you use anything to keep track of your reading? Do you use Goodreads or do you like keeping a record of it someplace else too? Let me know in the comments down below!

Those of you who bullet journal too, do you have spreads dedicated to your reading too? Or maybe even a separate notebook? Let me know in the comments below!

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