Keeping a Reading Journal

I've always wanted to keep a reading journal - I've had a blog for a few years now and even travel about with an ever present laptop and PDA, but there's still something tempting about paper. I think part of what's keeping me back is the time it takes to write down an entry for quasi-public consumption, so perhaps I should streamline it a bit it won't be as intimidating...

Title:
Author:
Genre: I suppose this could be useful at the end of the year
Source: Bought-Borrowed (from whom?)-Library-Recommended-Gift
Notable Quotation: ? I do have a liking for bon mots
Review:? Maybe a short one

That sounds like a good idea to me ... and certainly something I'd consider doing after reading your post.

I'm using Librarything as something of a reading journal at the moment, but paper would just be so much ... neater.

There's something concrete about it... particularly if I can manage to use that nib pen I have about :) Now, I must admit, that won't be as neat!

Well, maybe not. The next question though is what type of notebook. I'm certain that I need one with lines, as I'm too messy a writer otherwise. There's the temptation to get a Moleskine, but even then: what size? Hmm.

There are some reading journals here that I like. So far, I have resisted and just visit them!

I've looked at those before (particularly nice because they can be refilled!), and ones in bookstores, like Potter Style one. I remember with the Potter Style journal in particular it seemed too small :)

Thank you so much for the invitation!
I started keeping a reading journal about two years ago, in fact that is what I used to enter my library here, since the rest of my books are on another site. I'm cheap, but I notice it's time for a lifetime membership here anyway....whoops, back to the journal. A reading journal is the only journal I have managed to be faithful to.
I use a standard writing notebook used in schools, you know, the kind with the black and white motley cover. Even has useful information such as charts and tables inside the covers :) The reason I use this is because my niece covered it with lovely ivy patterned (I'm partial to green plant designs) wallpaper...or some kind of paper. She ran a strip of black tape down the spine. It has held up very nicely and is special because of her. I enter the date I finished the book, the title, author and an opinion and thoughts about it, good or bad. Sometimes if there is a quote or passage that blows me away I will enter it too. Also, I have used it to keep my thoughts around when I'm reading something extremely long such as Winston Churchill works or Les Miserables. Sometimes I have very good conversations/arguments with authors in it, such as George Orwell in 1984. These are nice because I always win.
When this is full, I would love to have some worn leather covered or old journal looking thing. But again, did I mention I'm cheap?

you shouldn't all be showing me so many nice notebooks! :).

I've started keeping a journal these last two days, using more or less the format parelle suggestd above (I may fiddle with it a bit, as time goes on ...) But I've started the first in one of the many 'spare' notebooks that lurk here, as I really shouldn't be buying anything before the new year ...

... but now I am dreaming of moleskines and leatherbound reading journals and many other things besides, fie, fie I say! :).

I splurged on a Moleskine. Oh maaaan. It is niiiiiiiiiice. The paper is lovely and the cover feels so good. Worth every penny.

I started keeping track in 2005 of which books I read when I read them. I just list the title, author, and what month I read it in a file on my computer. I guess I'm too lazy to do the whole 'review' thing, lol. Just last week though, I bought a velvety blue journal off the bargain book rack at Borders and transferred my list over. Like parelle said, there's just something more tangible about a list you can hold in your hand and flip back and forth through.

I also make a post in my LJ on the first of every month listing which books I read the previous month, and I have 'Currently Reading' and 'Just Finished' tags in my journal's sidebar.

I tried doing that for awhile, particularly with the sidebar, but it made for a crowded looking journal so I canned it when I changed layouts. What I'd really like is an LibraryThing LJ widget which could be useful... but I don't think that's happening any time soon.

Here's another reason for a "book-in-the-hand" reading journal. When I inherited all of my grandmother's and her mother's, etc. papers, it was lovely to read through the personal things they had written in their handwriting. Somehow it made me feel close to them. I don't know if any of my descendents will ever have any interest in reading mine, but I try to leave a little of myself, the way I think, at least about books, in my reading journal.

The only book review I have from my younger self is one of the The King's Buccaneer, which was part of a series of fantasy books I very much liked in Middle School. That said, I've always enjoyed going back and reading it - how much more interesting it must be to read your grandmother's words!

From the notebookism blog, a DIY Reading Diary. Simply put, a doublet page for 4 books intended to be self-printed into a booklet.

Gosh, I didn't want to post three times in a row, but this article from Read magazine does a great job of pointers on how to start a reading diary

I started one on a blog, since I never get around to writing on paper anymore.

Confession: I own the Levenger AND the Potter Style journals. The Potter Style IS small, but not bad. Levenger's idea is good, but I found it very unsatisfying in a sensory way. I actually love the free reading diary template parelle linked to, and printed out several sheets to assemble: we'll try again in 2007. Actually, my best success has been in a cheap lined journal I had lying around. Prettier than Levenger's, larger than Potter Style's, and completely free-form. I'd write titles & authors on one sheet per month, and comments on subsequent pages. This year, I'm trying for a little more detail, and a lot more consistency.

Parelle: I'm glad you did post again. Nice article on what's valuable in a reading journal. It's lovely and helpful, in thinking about my own written response to reading.

#14 parelle; I just read that article and found it very helpful as well. In the past I have only written about a book when I've finished it, but I think I will change that and write the title and date begun. Then I can write down quotes and thoughts as I read them. Right now, my journal is getting sloppy because I want to comment on a long book such as Winston Churchill histories or Les Miserables, then I forget and add in a review on a short book finished in between. So now I have several entries for one book.
It is hard to tell at the beginning of a book how it will effect you and how much you will want to write about it. In that sense, I wonder if a looseleaf binder type of journal would be better for me. Then I could just move the pages. Being the paper miser that I am though, I will fill up the journal I have first. Can't stand empty pages in a book!

#18 MrsLee ~ I'm just the opposite. I'll usually start a journal, misplace it before it's finished, then start another one, which also ends up misplaced before it's finished. I must have a good half dozen journals for various purposes in various states of unfinished-ness (is that a word?) hiding all around my house. So this year my resolution is to start a reading journal, avoid misplacing it, and continue writing in it until the end of the year (or I run out of room, whichever comes first). I usually read 100+ books a year, so I have a really thick journal ready for the first entry, which is Here Be Dragons by Penman. I think I'm going to probably be brief, though ~ no long commentaries or quotes from the books. Unless it's a really really comment-worthy book. :)

So, after receiving a pocket moleskine for Christmas, I've started writing things up there. I may have the ditch the system though - I've been using a single page front and back, and I don't think I'm writing enough to satisfy me in the end! I've been writing when I start a book, though I've only been including the end date... which, now that I think about it, I just forgot in my last entry. Oops.

Also, for those of you still looking, here's a lovely looking reading diary from a moleskine cahier unbound and printed!

#20 parelle; If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again :) I don't beat myself up any more about forgetting an entry, etc. I just pick up where I am and go on. After all, something is better than nothing, even if it is sketchy.

That moleskine looks pretty, but it didn't look like enough space for me. I like to write out my thoughts about the book and author. I've started using a whole page, front and back in my writing notebook. I don't always need that much space, but I am "manfully" swallowing the wasted space and moving on. It's hard on my compulsiveness though.

I actually keep two journals...

1. A small reading journal I picked up at Barnes & Noble, probably not my ideal, but it gets the job done. I carry this with me. Not much room for a lot of notes so I also always have my planner which has sticky notes/flags which I use in the book.

2. Then when I have more time I enter them into my LT account so that I can access them at work and home and everywhere. The tags on LT make it really easy for reader's advisory (I'm an assistant librarian) since my memory seems to be failing me at the young age of 29!

I am always on the look out for something better and change up journals a couple times a year because I get tired of them, the print ones that it is :)

Happy reading!!

I think that'll be the advantage of the pocket Moleskine I'm using - that I can carry it around in my purse. I think I'm going to pick up some nice index cards to put into the back pocket tomorrow for making lists and an index.

I started my first reading journal two weeks ago after reading this post. I'd never thought about it before & you guys gave me this great idea. Well, I've got three books recorded so far. We'll have to see how long I can keep it up.

You can do it! Here's a motivational quote from Harriet Shaw Weaver's biography for you:

Written by her mother; 'It is more difficult to overcome a bad Habit, than it is to form a new one; for this reason, the Grecian flute-players were accustomed to charge double fees to those pupils who had been taught by inferior masters...'

After a few misfires, it will become second nature and go with your reading. Now my friend suggests I start a Health journal...to motivate me to do all those lovely things a middle-aged woman should do. Floss, walk, record what you eat, vitamins, water...we shall see.

I'm pretty much using LT as my reading journal because I find it much easier to type than write. I know, I'm bad....

For most of January, I was finishing out the pages in an older notebook. Today, I wrote to the end, and came across a list from 2004 of 'Books to Re-read' - a necessarily stringent 'best of the year', as I'm not much of a re-reader and must love the book or find it of real interest to bother with the investment a second time. It was an excellent list, of books I truly loved: in fact, I was pleasantly surprised to realize I had read all of them the same year. It gave a sense of value to that year which I'd denied it. I decided to copy it into the back of the large book I'm using for my newly expanded, but basic, record (v. the other notebook, for comments and musings), leaving space for the intervening years, and more to come. (The book, I estimate, will last about five years.)

The next step would be reconstructing what I'd read in 2005 - which at first looked impossible. Then I found the journal I'd begun recording books in, filled not, as I thought, through March - but all the way through June!!! It felt like stumbling on a treasure! Thumbing through validated every impulse I've had to record my reading; it was like recapturing my life. And so often, reading is most of my life.... The latter six months should be easier to extrapolate, especially as I became an LT member that September. With the best books of 2006 sitting together on a shelf or two, still, I'll be able to put the rest together easily. It's a simple process, but reducing my year's reading experience into an amalgam of its high points, of the things I don't want to forget or lose, is, I am finally learning, very precious.

Sorry to prattle, but it made me very happy. Thanks to everyone for encouragement in trying it again, without which I'd neither have the different records and engagement of this month, nor - consciously - those remnants of the last few years.

>27 Eurydice: I'd love to see your 2004 list of re-reads.

Oh, huzzah Eurydice! It's wonderful you managed to find all of that. Think how much you'll like to read it again 10 years from now :)

Exactly, parelle! :) :) :)

Morphidae, I'm almost embarrassed, now, but keeping in mind I was terribly ill that year, they are:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Second Common Reader by Virginia Woolf
Embers by Sandor Marai
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
Evening by Susan Minot
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Fraud by Anita Brookner
The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles

The latter two are the least 'serious', and I'm not sure what the order signifies: importance, reading order? I know To the Lighthouse is the one I was most concerned to read again, and Fraud perhaps least of the more legitimate novels. Given that it then moves to one work of non-fiction and two of genre fiction, I suspect it's value-based.

Not to slight genre fiction, either. :) I read lots of it, in present and past tenses.

Heh, don't be embarrassed. How do you think *I* feel? I only recognize one book and two authors!

I'm currently using a "Write to Remember" reader's journal that was created specifically for this. Of course, it doesn't matter that I have it if I keep forgetting to use it, ;). Anyway, check it out, type "Write to Remember" in to Google, it should be the first or second one to pop up.

I had just decided that I was going to keep track of what books I'll have read during 2007 when I found this group. Right now I'm just writing down the titles, date finished, and author's name on a piece of notebook paper. I can usually remember at least vague details about a story from the title and author, so I don't feel like I need to write much about the books (but I'll probably regret not including more information later).

#32 morphidae; I'm not far ahead of you, 3 books, 3 authors. Here's something else, what is genre fiction?

#34 I just have one thing to say, how old are you? Maybe it's just me, but after 35 my memory just got up and found someone else. But I never wrote down anything until about two years ago. On the plus side: I get to read lots of mysteries and such without having the ending given away, 'cause I don't remember from before!

Sorry, MrsLee. It's only meant to designate books with a particular style or collection of concerns, as you would music or other arts: mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, espionage, westerns, horror, etc., etc. are all 'genre' fiction. :)

To you and morphidae, both: A number of the books and authors, in contrast to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, are not well-known, so I wouldn't worry. I did like them, though, and can recommend To the Lighthouse, Embers and Fugitive Pieces very highly, provided you like books of the type. Sayers, of course, I love even more in non-fiction than fiction.

Thank you Eurydice, that seems obvious enough, sometimes my dullness factor kicks in and I type before I think. *blush*

I'm still looking for Sayers non-fiction. I know I could buy from eBay or Amazon, just haven't taken the time. I kind of love the serendipity of finding long looked for books in used bookstores or at library sales.

I can second the recommendation for Embers.
Eurydice - have you read Conversations in Bolzano?

MrsLee - you are right about memory starting to get a little wonky after a certain age. Sometimes it's hard enough remembering what day it is, never mind the details of a novel.

I managed to find a copy of The Mind of the Maker off a library table not too long ago, so keep your hopes up! I've devoured all of Lord Peter, but I know I need to start on her nonfiction. My boyfriend (aforementioned, I know - he's ryangabbard here on LT) has most of her nonfiction, luckily, so at least I can get my hands on them :)

Not at all. :) Just hearing something applied a little differently can be disconcerting; and it's better to be someone willing to ask.

I was very fortunate in regard to The Mind of the Maker: a local independent mystery bookstore tends to stock writing outside their authors' expected offerings - so they carried Sayers' non-fiction. Even Wodehouse is well-represented! :) But I did receive Letters to a Diminished Church from Amazon - a book I liked even better.

Parelle, that's the beauty of men with libraries. :) Alas, that certain libraries whose owners I could borrow from are not in reasonable proximity to me!

To all on memory-I think that once I had children, they sucked up any memory I had. It seems as they get older, more of my memory space is being used by trying to keep their schedules straight. he he!

Check this out ~ I got it from BookCrossing. It's the website of Art Garfunkle, who's kept one serious list of books he's read since 1968: http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library.html

#43, That is really amazing, not only for his commitment to keeping a record and the voraciousness of his reading, but also because it's really a trip down memory lane to see some of what he was reading, along with the classics, in the late 60s and early 70s.

I am humbled.

#43 That's great. Now wonder the pair broke up, Garfunkle was too busy reading!

His list gives me the idea to go back and highlight or red-star my favorites from each year.

*twitch*

I could put it on ListsofBests.com...

Nib pen!! (parelle #3). Way back in 1950 at school we were forbidden, under pain of a caning, to use any other sort - what we then called 'biros' which were quite expensive. The janitor used to go round every morning and fill up the inkwells but some could afford fountain pens. And exercise books full of ink blots.

PossMan - It's the ink blots I suspect will follow :) Though I've been keeping my journal decently up to date, I haven't tried the pen quite yet.

Can one receive self-revelation from ink blots formed with a pen? Possibly a journal within a journal....

After lovingly fondling the leather journals at Barnes and Noble, and finding that though they were lovely, none of them quite fit all my requirements (size, lines and such), I opted for the .59 composition notebook at Staples. I have some lovely paper which I am going to past on and some brown book binding tape to finish. That's what I've been using, and it's always easier to continue than to change. I think a proper leather one would intimidate me. I can scribble in this if I want to.

This thread's not dead...
for bookmarks, i use postcards. i try to find one that matches the book (although it's only a guess before you start). when i come to something really good, i scribble three words about it and a page number. so my bookmark for Through a Scanner Darkly has three references, about life and god, and my bookmark for The Supper of the Lamb has a dozen.
Normally i leave the bookmarks in the books, cos page numbers change with editions and things. but this thread has got me thinking i could get them all out and bind them into some beautiful thing, all funny sizes and shapes and full of disconnected ideas...

yeah. thanks.

52 -> Yay for someone who matches bookmarks to the books!

I also opt for ephemera over store-bought bookmarks, and while most are randomly shoved into mark-less texts, I do try to add something relative to the books when I can. My current read, Tex and Molly in the Afterlife has a religious pamphlet called Heaven or Hell??; On the Road has an old bus ticket stub, etc. Never thought to scribble notes on them, though...

Far as the reading journal, I've been keeping them for about four years now. I just use cheap smaller-sized notebooks.

What got me started, though, was when I accidentally bought a student's assignment notebook. Each page was divided in 3 parts with spaces for date (used as date read) and class (served as the title area) and a few lines which I used to record the author, publication date, and the first sentence of each book. Rather than becoming trash, it turned out perfect for the purpose.

In terms of bookmarks, sometimes I use post-it notes. There is a series of books I'm reading (non-fiction) that comes with a little card with a prayer printed on it, and I use the cards for bookmarks. Also, I got a book from my Aunt for my B-day this year, and a really cool card (notecard style) so I've got the card tucked into the book and am using it as a bookmark at the moment.

Since about August of this year I have been pretty slack about keeping up my journal. I've also started about eight books in the last five months and only finished two. I didn't realize how far my reading and recording has fallen off until I found my journal at the bottom of a huge stack and decided to leaf through it.

I'm currently trying to reconstruct when I've started most of these books and can only remember when I finished one because it was just this weekend. I'm feeling proud of myself because when I saw what I'd done, I didn't just say 'forget it'. I am actually trying.

I really enjoyed keeping a book journal this year. It was my first time and I hope to continue it for the rest of my life.

So, how is everyone else doing with theirs?

I've managed to keep an pretty accurate journal of what books I've read and when for the past 3 years. This year I started tryint to review the books I read, and so far I think I've managed to review about 50% of what I've read in 2007 (even the ones I don't own, and therefore don't publish on LT).
Sometime this year I decided that I wanted to keep track of when I reread books too, not just new books, but this is not going nearly as well.

I've also kept track of what new writers I've read and when in 2006-2007 - this is for the ABC challenge, which I've never made (how many authors last names start with Q anyway?)

Zeesosa - The beginning of my first reading journal is full of notations like, "Oops, think I've read..." It gets easier the more of a habit you make of it. :)

amberwitch - If you fudge a little, there's Ellery Queen.

#56: (how many authors last names start with Q anyway?)

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I suspect your question was rhetorical, but you got me wondering. When I go to amazon.ca > literature > alphabetical authors > Q, there are 159 different books listed. Most of them are by Anna Quindlen.

# 57, 58 Thank you for the suggstions - since I haven't read anyhing by either of the suggestions, I now have enough Q fodder for two years challenges:-)