Bullet Journaling for Bookworms

Bullet Journaling is great for a number of reasons. It's an outlet for creativity, a self-care activity, a non-screen activity, an excuse to buy fancy pens, and you get a cute day planner out of the deal, too! I use my bullet journal not only as a day/week/month planner, but also to keep track of all my bookish activities. Here's how you can do it too :)

What's a bullet journal?

Bullet journals have become very popular in the last few years. It started out as a simple idea for a day planner and journal in one based on intentionality (read more about it here), and has since blossomed into something of an art form. Because it's made from scratch, a bullet journal can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. I like to make mine fancy and pretty, but you can just as easily make it super minimalist and leave out all the fancy fonts and spreads that other people do. The point is to do what is best for YOU and to intentionally make it work for you.

What do you put in a bullet journal?

Anything you want. Seriously. You can use it as a day planner, as a journal, as a tracker for habits you want to build, a sketchbook, literally anything you want to put in a book you can put in this bullet journal. Everyone does their journal a little differently of course, but here's what I've got in mine:

Year-at-a-Glance: Just your standard calendar.

Important Dates: a list of important dates - birthdays, holidays, anniversaries.

Self-Care Menu: a list of things I can do to try to boost my mood when it's low.

Monthly spread: A month long calendar at the beginning of each month

Weekly spread: a day-planner-esque spot to write down the stuff I need to do each day

Trackers: I like to track a few different things so I can see my progress at the end of each month. I track reading, writing, mood, and habits. The habits are a new thing this month so I don't have a picture here.

Quotes galore: I put a quote at the beginning of every month and basically everywhere I can fit them without this becoming a book of quotes.

Bookish Trackers

There are a couple different bookish things that I have in my bullet journal.

To Be Read: This is a list of all the books on my shelf that I haven't read yet. Most of them I've owned for a while but just haven't gotten around to reading yet.

Bookshelf: I write in all the books I've read and colour them in. This is gonna look awesome when I fill it! I actually designated two whole pages for this, so assuming I hit my 100 book goal, I'll have lots of space to fill it out.

Books Per Month: Tracking how many books I have read each month. I also include audiobooks and ebooks in this count.

A Year in Rating: keeping track of how many stars I'm giving each book. I also track the ones I didn't rate because I wasn't paying enough attention to give it a solid rating, and the ones I didn't finish. None there so far!

Wish List: Books I want to read but they're not on my "official" 100 book list.

Book of the Month: I've made a space to put my favourite book that I read each month here. I was going to just write the titles and colour the boxes, but I decided to actually print out thumbnails of the cover and tape it in. It just looks so much prettier.

Book Challenge: This idea originated in March when I decided to do attempt to read 100 fantasy books this year. I wanted to make a way to track which books I've read, so I started out in my sketchbook with titles and colouring in the boxes, but once I got back into bullet journaling I moved my tracking over to that and used printed thumbnails. It's a fun thing to get to cut out the little picture and tape it in when I'm done, and the pages are going to look so pretty when I'm done!

Reading and Writing Trackers: I track how many pages a day I read and how many words I write, including blogging and poetry and whatnot. I mostly focus on the book I'm currently writing, but blogging counts as writing too :) This helps me to see progress and when I'm feeling particularly useless I can look back and see "Hey, I have done stuff."