I decided the time had come to do a reading tracker setup in my bullet journal. Since starting my small business, I haven’t had much time to read, but recently I’ve come to really enjoy audio books. I’ve mostly been listening through my local library but then signed up for audible. Combine these with my e-reader and books already on my bookshelves, I have basically lost track of all of it. As such, I decided to setup this reading tracker in my bullet journal. Now, I know there are much simpler trackers out there, but I am hoping this will capture what I need. Once this layout is filled, I can reassess what did and didn’t work and make a new one.
You can catch my setup video here, otherwise, these are my supplies, a further look into my setup, and some tips and tricks.
Setup Supplies
Very basic supplies – basically the ones I use every time I setup a bullet journal layout: Crayola Supertips, Tombow Mono Drawing Pens, Washi I purchased from Amazon, and a ruler. My notebook is my trusty 160 GSM Scribbles That Matter bullet journal.
Reading Tracker Setup Details
I have my cover page for my little “Reading Nook” in my bullet journal. The quote I use is “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are” by Mason Cooley. If you would like a copy of the sticker I used, you can grab that below. Please note this is for personal use only!
In order to create the “Reading Nook” effect I wanted, I decided to use a kind of reverse dutch door setup. This allowed me to capture everything I wanted but to keep it all together. I removed two pages from my journal, making sure to leave a bit of a margin, gluing it down to help to keep the opposite page stable. I then attached the pages with washi. This attaches the loose pages but also creates a book mark of sorts, allowing me to easily find the reading tra.
I included a layout for my audio books and one for my “actual” books. I labelled the columns with a number, title and author, read, rating, library, audible/digital, and own. This is to capture whether I have read the book, my rating (1-5), and then 3 columns to determine the platform – library, audible/digital. As I type this, I’m not sure if the final column “Own” is actually useful or not, but we’ll see how it goes.
Inside my dutch door, I included two pages to capture my book series that I want to follow (I already have 3 series that I’m enjoying). Next is a reading wish list with a ratings legend at the bottom of the page. This page is followed by a tracker for how many books I’ve read/listened to. I also decided to include a list of authors that I want to look into some more.
Throughout the pages I made sure to include some decorative elements just to keep it fun!
Reading Tracker Setup Tips and Tricks
My initial quote page was pretty elaborate and I didn’t think it quite fit the calmness of my title page. Since I had already finished my title page, I just grabbed a piece of paper out of the back of my journal and glued it over the original quote. I used white out on any bits that stuck out.
I want to take this opportunity to emphasize that you can never ruin a bullet journal! You can turn the page or glue the page, but you keep going! It’s the best part of bullet journaling (once you get over the initial hesitation of putting pen to paper). I do share one of my fears in my video, but since you’re here reading, I’ll share it here too. My issue isn’t with putting pen to blank paper. My issue lies in actually using the layout. This tracker is all pretty and ready to go, but now I need to fill it in and that’s where my hesitation kicks in. But, there’s always white out or gelly roll to fix it! So I’m working on that.
As mentioned above, using the washi to attach the pages to the reverse dutch door, created a book mark. These pages will be easy to flip to as I continue using my journal.
I hope you enjoyed today’s video and post. If you would like access to many more layouts and stickers, subscribe to my newsletter for access to my From Blank to Brilliant Library.
If there are any other videos or blog posts you would like to see (relating to lettering or bullet journaling), let me know down below!
Talk soon!
