My portable reading journal for remembering everything I've read
Plus a Notion template for paid subscribers!
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Below the paywall is a link to my Notion template so you can create your own digital reading journal and a quick video explainer on how to use and customize it. Enjoy!
Hi friends,
It’s something readers joke about all the time. Picture this: You’re reading an amazing book. It’s so good that you’re gushing about it to everyone you know. You inhale the last chapter, close the book, and…promptly forget everything about it.
We’ve all been there. It’s natural — we can’t remember everything we consume! — but it started to bother me. Discussing a favorite book with friends brings me the same deep satisfaction most people get from dissecting the latest buzzy TV series together. I love hearing what my friends thought of the characters, what they related to, and why they liked or disliked the book. If we don’t buddy read the book, though, I can’t always remember what I wanted to discuss by the time we’re ready to talk. On top of that, I wanted an accessible way to store my thoughts on what these books meant to me, what they made me ponder and question, and what connections I’d made from one book to another.
So, I decided to start a reading journal! Scrolling through Bookstagram, I’d seen image after image of perfectly crafted book journals. I wanted that. I tried! I love that analog life. But at the end of the day, I had to accept that I’m a digital girlie, so I turned to my favorite online planning and project management tool to create my own digital bookshelf.
Introducing my digital reading journal in Notion!
One of many great things about Notion is that there are endless ways to customize and organize your information. I’ve been tracking my reading in Notion since 2021, and I absolutely love it. My digital reading journal displays what I’m currently reading, my progress toward my yearly reading goal, and my top reads of the year. It also has some pretty cool charts on my reading, but we’ll dive into that later!1
Book notes
Every time I start a book, I create a corresponding book note where I enter any information that I want to track while reading. Using a standard template with preconfigured categories, I log my likes and dislikes, lessons learned, memorable quotes, new words, and information about the book, like the genre, format, total number of pages, and so on. With the template, creating a new book note is as easy as a click of a button. Here’s an example of my book note for a novel that I highly recommend, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai. (Click the screenshot to enlarge and zoom in!)
What else is in the reading journal, you ask?
There are a five different pages within my digital reading journal. The LIBRARY page tracks the books I’ve read and stores all of my reading notes.
The GENRES page sorts all of the books in my journal by sub-genre, so I can easily see how many books I’ve read in each category. I can also click into each genre to see more details on the books within.
The YEAR page tracks my progress toward my reading goal and links my book notes to the year I read the book.
The COMMONPLACE BOOK stores memorable quotes for later reference. From here, I can see the quotes on their own and navigate back to the book to which it’s linked. You can learn more about how I use my digital commonplace book in this post.
Finally, the WORD BANK stores new words that I learned while reading. I find that recording new words helps me remember them the next time I encounter them and incorporate them into my own writing!
Reading stats
Based on the information I track at the top of my book notes (like publication year, format, total number of pages, and more), Notion gives me a picture of my reading. As a data nerd, I love seeing these charts grow and change as I build out my digital bookshelf. For example, the chart below shows the publication year of every book I’ve read in 2024. At a glance, I can see that although I’ve read a lot of new releases, I’ve also spread my reading across the past decade. The table below the chart also displays the individual book notes so I can easily see what books I read in each publication year. I love using charts like these to see my own trends in reading and to challenge myself to read different perspectives, too! (Unfortunately, free Notion plans will only get you one chart, so you’ll have to upgrade to premium for displays like this.)
Other ways to use this bookshelf
I only track books I’ve read, but thanks to Notion’s customizability, you can track a lot of other things, too! For example, you could add books you want to read next. You can tag DNF books to see how many you’ve DNFed throughout the year. With some basic Notion skills, the world is truly your oyster!
Ready to begin your own digital book journal? Let’s go!
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