Happy New Year, everyone!

Something that I love about the new year is the process of setting up new planners, journals, and that feeling of being on top of things while putting them together. And while any time of year is a good time of year to get organized or try something new, it always feels nice to have that reset during the new year.

Today I’m sharing with you my 2021 Reading Journal Setup. I’m still using my Archer & Olive Neapolitian Journal that I started using mid-last year, and I have a feeling I’ll be using it for a while.

I really enjoyed the gothic + floral elements I put together when I originally set up the reading journal for 2020, so I did something similar for the new year. Then for January, I went for the opposite and created a light and soft theme.

With this setup I’m also changing what yearly spreads I use, as I realized that some spreads just work better digitally for me. So here’s how I set it up!

2021 Title Page

I absolutely love that my journal was going from black to white pages when I did this spread, because I think the contrast looks really cool! I wanted to make my title page two pages and include a little quote, and this one is actually from Mexican Gothic. It’s a short and sweet one, but I felt like it encompassed the atmosphere of a lot of books that I’ve been loving lately. There were three fonts I used to handletter from to create this quote – Carolus Klein, Dark Roast, and Neoncity Script.

I find that adding the scrap paper is an easy way to dress up my journal, so I’ve been doing as I have with past spreads and continuing that trend. And of course, lots of washi tape!

I also did something I don’t do often and drew out some flowers. I looked up some ways to draw them and copied the methods. Despite the amount of detail, they weren’t very difficult to draw!

And I save the 2021 for last, because I kid you not, this took the longest to do! I started by trying to mix my red Tombow marker and white paint pen on the black paper, and it was too bright for me. So then I went over it in a black marker and then it looked purple-y. So then I put white paper over it, put the tape around as a border and then wrote 2021. But THEN it looked bad so I had to put ANOTHER page over it and rewrite 2021. It was the silliest little thing and I’m clearly a mess.

Books Read

While I’ve used this spread in journals past I haven’t kept up with it as much this year. I think I still want to use it this year though as I really like the visual, and it just feels like a reading journal staple at this point!

It’s pretty similar to last year’s spread as well, and I just layered the title over more paper and tape.

Goals & 80 in 2021

I wanted an at-a-glance page to see my reading goals, so I created a quick spread for it here. I was able to squeeze in my blog and bookstagram goals as well. I realize for this year that the only place I had my reading goals were on my blog, so when I started writing my goals post I was like, “Huh. That was a goal I set?” So this year I’d like to be a bit more organized with that. 

I also included an 80 in 2021 spread, where I’ll fill in the boxes for each book I read until I hit my goal of 80. This spread really wasn’t necessary (and to be honest, I’m not so sure I’ll keep up with it!). But I wanted to put something else goals-oriented on this page and I wasn’t sure what to put, so it stays for now! 

Stats

I reference this page all the time in my 2020 spreads, so this was a must for 2021. Here I’ll keep track of my month in numbers, including the number of books read, pages read, average rating, and how many books of each type I read. This is really helpful for not only writing wrap-ups, but also viewing my reading trends over the months. 

Balance

One of my biggest goals for 2021 is to get my physical TBR down as much as possible. So in order to ensure I’m making progress, I made this balance sheet. Each month I’ll write how many books on the physical TBR I started with, ended with, and what the net was for that month. This spread was an absolute must for my reading journal this year. I think it will help out quite a bit with my goals!

Yearly Spreads that didn’t Make the Cut

Not everything I did for my 2020 Reading Journal made it over to 2021. Before I show my January spreads, I want to show what I decided not to carry over and why. These spreads didn’t work for me, but maybe they’ll work for you if you have a reading journal!

Series Tracker

I have a tracker for all of the series I’m in the middle of and how many books I have left in each. I actually am still using this one! I just didn’t want to make an entire new spread for it if the page wasn’t full yet. 

Physical TBR Tracker

I had some drawn-in shelves with the spines of books on my shelves, and I was going to color them in once they were read. But I quickly realized that this was going to be complicated if I brought on more books, DNFed books, unhauled books, etc. – so I’m not continuing with this one. I think the balance sheet is a lot less complicated and will work better for me in this case!

ARC Tracker

This was a simple table with information for each ARC, such as the Title, Author, Publisher, Pub Date, and any Notes I had. This spread was a bit small, end I stopped using it after about six ARCs. This is something I’d rather either track digitally, or keep deadlines in my planner. I don’t like to take on many ARCs at a time, so right now I only track when I should have reviews up for these books. Additionally, I try to only request books when I’m ready to read them soon, so I don’t usually have a huge backlog that leads to a need for a spread like this. I may revisit this one in the future, though! 

And now it’s time for the January spreads! Oftentimes my themes are inspired by the stationery that I have, and I recently acquired some stamps and memo pads that I really wanted to use. I’ve usually gone for lighter themes in January as well, so I felt this was a perfect fit for this month.

Title Page & TBR

This theme is so opposite of my usual style, but I still like the way it turned out! I just opted for some quick script with my black gel pen for the writing. Then I started adding sticky notes and memo pads. I love the new ones I just got with the bear and the frog on it, and so I incorporated them onto this page. I added some purple and crescent moon washi tapes as well, and finished it off with all these new stamps I got. I’ve been getting into using more stamps lately and I really want to try incorporating them into my spreads more.

My TBR ended up being huge this month, so I almost ran out of room! I was able yo make it work though.

Books and Pages Read

Just my normal books read and pages read tracker! As much as I loved the blackout pages, I am also happy to be back to the white paper. I used paint pens to fill in my pages read chart, and the paint pens were just not smooth after a while. I’ll probably find a simpler way to fill those in in the future, but for now I’m happy that I can just fill them in with Mildliners again.

Anyway, that’s all for my reading journal this month and for 2021! Are you tracking your reads this year? Let me know!

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