Aside from reading, crafting is my biggest hobby, and of the craft hobbies, journaling is my absolute favorite! I keep a lot of journals: my bullet journal, work journals (one for all year/general work and another just for summer camp programs), a theatre review journal, and I’m planning on starting and actually keeping up with a memory keeping journal this year. And of course, I have a reading journal!
Last year, I definitely fell off the reading journal wagon except for putting in my basic stats at the end of each month. However, this year, I’m feeling really motivated to keep up with it and I’ve been obsessively working on it!
I’ve had quite a journey with this reading journal already. I pre-ordered the Vintage Library journal from Archer & Olive in August, knowing that it wouldn’t arrive until mid-December. Then I started working on it the day after Christmas. I spent the entire weekend working on it and I was loving my set up and then…the worst happened. My tea spilled all over my desk and my journal, absolutely wrecking an entire journal set up. When I say that I had a breakdown about it, I mean I had a breakdown about it. It was actually incredibly upsetting. Luckily, I was able to save the majority of the stickers that I used since I had layered them on top of washi tape for decoration, and a blank journal on hand.
It took a little over a week, but I finally finished my setup and I’m so excited to share it with all of you! So, without further ado, let’s take a look at my 2026 reading journal.
This year I’m using this stunning journal from Tiefossi! It’s my first time using one of their journals, and I’m really loving it. It’s an A5 journal, which is my standard size. It is 26 dot grid spaces across, and 37 dot grid spaces down. That is one less dot grid space than Archer and Olive’s A5 journals, which at some points did mean that I had less space for decoration, but it’s not really an issue.
I decided to center my theme around stickers from one of my favorite artists, Marigona Suli, so throughout the initial set up, every sticker you see is created by her. In addition to some washi tape, some letter stamps, and all the headers I made in Canva and printed. The stickers from Marigona Suli informed the colors that I used for this set up, so the main colors throughout this set up are purple, pink, blue and green.
I knew I wanted to use one of the large stickers I have from Marigona Suli and I just love this potion witch, and it has purple in it, so it only makes sense that I used it for the cover page. I wanted to keep it simple, so I added in some purple cardstock, stamped out my name on some white paper and viola! My cover page is done. This page I was actually able to completely remove from the journal that got ruined and just glue it into this journal and I’m so glad that it worked because I only had one of these stickers and really loved the simplicity of the setup.
While I don’t know if this journal will get me through more than one reading year (most likely not as I tend to switch to a new journal every year), I did want to make sure that I had the date somewhere, and I wanted it to kind of match the cover page. I had this sticker of dragons with tea that I absolutely love and knew this would be the perfect place for it. I added some of that purple cardstock from the cover page, and used these really pretty number stamps that I got from Michael’s.
This year I’m moving away from using the word goal for certain things. Sometimes the word goal can come with unnecessary pressure, and I don’t need that in my life, so I’ve decided to use the word intention for things that I’m planning to accomplish throughout the year. Again, keeping it very simple. I covered the whole page with some green cardstock, then used an off cut to give me the white space to write my tensions and then just a few stickers surrounding the cut off.
Now let’s move onto the trackers! I have quite a few trackers; I just really love stats and data. So first, we’ll go with my reading goal page. Yes, I’m aware I just said that I was moving away from the word goal, but that doesn’t apply in this instance 🤣 My reading goal for the year is 150. That’s a very manageable goal for me and one that I’ve hit every year (and surpassed) since 2020. I ended up reading 178 books in 2025 and that was with a few reading slumps, so I’ve set a secondary goal of 200. I won’t be mad if I don’t get to 200 books read, but once I hit 150, that’ll be my next milestone.
The washi tapes really do make this layout and keep it from just being a bunch of little boxes, and I really like it! I created a dutch door (you can see in the second photo that I accidentally added an extra box so it’s 201 on here. That’s what happens when you get in the zone with drawing those little boxes 🤣I like to pick a color for each month so that there’s a clear difference for when the months have changed, and this year I’m challenging myself to do the colors in rainbow order so January will be read, February is orange, March is yellow, etc. etc. etc. as a way to make sure that I don’t just default to purple all the time. Plus, that way, at the end of the year, I’ll have this beautiful rainbow of colors to represent the books I read, which I’m really excited for!
I’m not sure what I’ll do with that last facing page yet, but I’m glad I have the space for something! I could use it to track when I hit some major milestones like 10 books read, 20 books read, 50 books read, etc. etc. but we’ll see!
Next is one of my favorite spreads, the every book I read in 2026 spread! I love pasting in the covers of the books I read and then adding the star ratings (my star rating stickers are from ARKCreationInc). I really like having this all in one place, it’s so satisfying to look at as the year progresses and even more so once the year is done! I had to do a lot of these pages to fit 200 books — I didn’t end up doing a dutch door style for this spread because if I did, I would’ve ended up using even more pages because I’d be able to fit less books. Without the dutch door it goes from page 8 to page 20. Could you imagine how many it would’ve used with dutch doors!? While I have little headers to display what number books these are on the top (and bottom depending on the orientation of the spread to help keep the bulking up of the journal even) I also want to put the numbers in the boxes themselves so that as book covers get put it, it’ll be easy for me to quickly glance and see how many books I’ve read so far. I didn’t realize that I didn’t do that until I was taking these photos, so I’ll have to do that soon! I specifically marked once I hit 200, and then I have a blank page in case I read more, and if I don’t then maybe I’ll make a collage in Canva of every book cover in rainbow order and then paste that in there? We’ll see, but I do think that could be fun!
I’m really happy with how my genre tracker turned out! I love the colors (me? loving something purple? shocker!) and the stickers. The books and flowers and plant pot is so me. This is one of my favorite types of layouts for year long trackers (you’ll see it again!). On the top I’ve got all the months listed and then on the side I’ve got my genres, listed in alphabetical order of course. The genres I’m tracking this year are: biography/memoir, classic, contemporary, dark academia, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, literary fiction, non-fiction, play/musical. romance, sci-fi/dystopia and thriller.
I literally did not realize until this moment of writing that I missed mystery! Which is…absolutely insane considering that is my most read genre…I’ll have to go fix that. Wow, this is one of the fun things about making this post, I find out what I messed up/forgot things! So far we’re on set up #6 and I’ve missed 2 things. I’m thinking that I’ll combine contemporary and literary fiction to make room for the mystery category, wow, still can’t believe I missed it. Anyway, each month I’ll write in how many books in that genre I read (I’m thinking I might just leave it blank if I didn’t read any in that genre for the month), and then I can add the yearly totals at the end of the year and see all of that info at once.
While I don’t have any sort of intention to read every single day, I do read almost every day and I like keeping track of the days that I read, so I’ve set up a days read spread. Each month has its own column, which is different from how I did it last year. Last year I did it like a year in pixels layout (you can see that here) and I just didn’t love how it turned out, so I thought I’d separate each month, and I’m liking this a lot! I did decide that for this spread and the next one, I’m going to color in the corresponding days with the same color I used to stamp out the numbers because I’d like it to be a bit more uniform.
I also like to track the days I finish a book, so I used the exact same set up as the days read spread, but this is to track when I’ve finished a book. This is actually one of my favorite spreads in the whole journal. I really love this pink and the combo of the washi tapes and the stickers — how cute are the strawberries and the tea cup with the flowers!?!??! I’m absolutely obsessed.
Onto my monthly stats; see, I told you this layout would appear again! For my brain, this is the best way to do the monthly stats. Last year I had the stats listed on the top and the months down the side which actually got a little bit confusing, so I decided to switch it and I think that’ll work much better. The stats I’m tracking monthly are: number of books read, number of physical books, number of digital books, number of audiobooks, number of immersive reads/multiple format reads, pages read, hours listened, arcs read, from my owned tbr, library reads, rereads, new 5 star reads, and average star rating.
Next is my favorite book of the month spread. It’s exactly what it says it is, I don’t think much explanation is needed here 🤣 I like to include the star rating sticker because it’s not always guaranteed that I’ll find a new 5 star favorite in a month, so I also like to see star rating wise what my best book of the month was. I really love the decoration on this page. I’m especially obsessed with that plant sticker and was trying to figure out where I could use it and I thought it was perfect for this spread.
I think that some months it’s really easy to figure out your favorite read, and then other months you’ll read a whole bunch of bangers and it’s so hard to pick just one, so I decided to make a standout reads spread as well! I have no idea how many books will end up here, so I decided to keep the decoration simple and just in the top left and bottom right corners and then I’ll paste in the covers for my other standout books each month.
As always, there are so many exciting books coming out this year! I try to keep my list of anticipated reads to authors that I’ve read from before, and then I like to have another sort of anticipated list that can include authors I’ve read from before that have new releases I’m excited about but aren’t my most anticipated reads, and also include some books from authors that I haven’t read before. I included the release date for these reads and the star ratings so that once I read them I can color in the star rating.
Since these lists go hand in hand, I did a double spread for this and I’m so happy with them! I love how the pink and green look together and it’s giving off such spring vibes. I do have ARCs of both What We Did to Survive and I Could Give You the Moon which I’m very excited to read! Beth is Dead is already out and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of it, and both The Elsewhere Express and A Box Full of Darkness come out in a week, so there may be a bookstore trip in my future!
The next section of my journal includes lots of reading challenges and book club spreads, and I’ve got quite a few of them. What can I say? I love a reading challenge and a book club!
You can read more about my 26 in 2026 here to see how I sorted all of these books into different categories, but for the spread in my journal I decided to sort them by color because I do love sorting things in rainbow order and I think this spread is really satisfying to look at when the books are sorted by color!
I do the a-z reading challenge every year, though I’ve never completed it. The x and z are always trickiest for me, but that won’t stop me from doing it every year! I pulled out the letter stamps from the set that I used earlier to put the letters in each outline for the book covers and I’m so happy with it. I think it’s so lovely and that helps the spread look complete even without the book covers. I’m also so obsessed with that duck sticker and was trying so hard to get it somewhere in the journal and I’m glad it worked here. Also, the hat sticker on the left page is giving me major Anne of Green Gables vibes. I just love the green and can’t wait to see how this one looks once it’s all filled in.
Kayla’s Buzzwordathon is one of my favorite reading challenges to do, it’s so much fun and I love that last year she introduced a cover challenge along with the title challenge and that she’s doing it again this year. I made a dutch door so that I could have the prompts for each challenge easily accessible and that way I only had to decorate this page once. I love this one so much, even though the dutch door has a hard time staying down when I flip to the cover challenge page 🤣
I love a good bingo board and I decided to do 2 different bingos this year. The first is a 4-5 star bingo; this will just be for new to me 4-5 star reads. I also did a “my favorite things” bingo, where I picked some of my favorite things in books. On one side I made little boxes for the corresponding bingo box and covered it so that I’m not picking reads to specifically get a bingo and each box reveal will be a surprise for me, then I’ll paste the book cover on the facing page. I was too lazy to resize my templates in Canva, so I just made the cover section the same size as all the other book covers that I print. These two were especially fun to make, even if I was a little too specific with cutting out that washi tape to cover each bingo box.
I won’t lie, as I was setting up my spread for the read the rainbow challenge, I was not sure if I liked it, but now looking at it, I really love it! I’ve had the Pride Witch stickers for so long and was waiting for the perfect time to use them and this is definitely the perfect time! The other two witches you can see in other spreads, but I thought these ones were especially perfect for this spread. I wanted to make this a little more challenging for myself to complete, so while I’ll obviously be trying to read covers that are predominantly red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and pink, I decided to add in pastel versions of each color and black and white as well. I actually originally had a few other things planned (like a rainbow cover, metallic covers, that kind of thing) but with the way I planned on setting this spread up, I could only fit 16 book covers on the page, but I’m really happy with it.
There are three main book clubs that I’m part of this year, so obviously, they needed their own spreads!
My main book club is the book club that we have in the Nancy Drew server that I’m in. The acronym for the server is HAND, hence why it says Hand Book Club, which I realize is a little confusing out of context 🤣Since the CW Nancy Drew series involved a lot of magic (honestly if you haven’t watched it by now do yourself a favor and watch it!) I knew that I had to use the rest of my stickers from the Potion Witch sticker sheet and ugh I just love how it turned out, it makes me so so happy, I absolutely love this one!
I finally joined the Patreon and Channel Membership for two of my favorite BookTubers, Meg from megwithbooks and Kayla from BooksandLala and they both have book clubs! So obviously, they both needed spreads in the journal. I am especially pleased with the spread for The Besties Book Club. I’m obsessed with those boba stickers and was so glad to finally use them, and the wintery stickers worked so well for The Hidden Library Book Club because the name of the book club just gives that cozy vibe! Honestly, I just keep looking at these spreads because I love them so much.
Now onto my last 3 yearly spreads!
I read a lot of books set in the US and the UK, simply because so many books are set in those countries. This year I want to challenge myself to read more books set in other places, so I decided to do a reading around the world challenge! I printed out a map that has the countries listed (I was far too lazy to get a blank map and label them myself) and then once I’ve read a book set in that country I’ll color it in. I think I’ll color code them by the month that I read them. I had glued in some paper from an old journal for this, so I can flip open the page and then glue in the book covers and write which country the book was set in so that I have all of that information in one place and I was able to save some pages in the journal as well!
Visiting new bookstores is one of my favorite things to do each year and I wanted a place to keep track of those bookstores. So how this spread is going to work is whenever I go to a bookstore I’m going to make sure to take at least one photo and then I’ll print out a little photo and put it in the spread and write down the date that I went and maybe my favorite thing about the store. I haven’t fully decided yet, but I’m really excited to fill up this spread!
A romance bookstore just opened near me and I haven’t had a chance to visit it. Additionally, my mom just went to a used bookstore we’ve never been to before, so she said she’d need to take me there. I can’t wait to visit both bookstores and add them to this spread! I will also include the first time I visit one of the bookstores in the year, even if it’s one I’ve been to before, just to track that I went there this year!
I’ve mentioned the Anti Brain Rot Reading Challenge that Jananie from thisstoryaintover is hosting this year and I wanted a spread for that as well. I made these graphics in Canva with all of the rules, and then similarly to the reading around the world spread I glued in pages from an old journal so that I can flip it open and there I have a header for the personal curriculum that I’ve set for myself for the challenge, which is theatre/Shakespeare focused. I’m not completely sure how I want to use this spread, but I knew that I wanted the spread in there.
That’s it! That’s my yearly reading journal set up! It was a process to get here, and it took a very long time, but I am honestly so happy with how it turned out and this is definitely my favorite reading journal set up that I’ve ever done! I’m so glad that I can now use it and I can’t wait to see how the journal fills up throughout the year. I do track all of these things digitally, but I love having a physical representation of my reading year, and as I mentioned in the intro, journaling and crafting is my favorite hobby besides reading so this is very relaxing and enjoyable for me.
I have set up my January spreads, but I think I’m going to include before and after photos of it in my January Wrap Up post, or if you want me to share more reading journal posts let me know and I’d be happy to share them!
Do you have a reading journal? If so, what spreads do you include in your set up and which are you most excited to use? If you don’t, how do you track your reading if you participate in any challenges or book clubs? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time 💜
WOW These are incredible spreads! Brava!
Thank you, Roberta! 💜