Reading Journal: Updated January Spreads and February Set Up

Hello hello! In the past, I’ve only shared my reading journal posts for my beginning of the year set ups, but this year, I really want to keep up with my journal this year and I thought that sharing updates throughout the year would help me with that! So, since January is over, I thought I’d share my updated spreads for January and show everyone my February set up!

As y’all saw in my Reading Journal Set Up post, I have a lot of trackers! What can I say? I just love tracking data. I think of my trackers in two different ways. I have trackers that I update regularly throughout the month, and then trackers that I only update at the end of the month.

I have three trackers that I regularly update throughout the month. Those trackers are my reading goal, days read and days when a book is finished. I really like seeing them progress throughout the month; it really is very satisfying! I’m especially enjoying how the days read and days when a book is finished trackers are looking. I think splitting each month into its own column instead of a year in pixels style tracker is much better for me, aesthetically. I don’t actually have a goal to read every day or finish books in a specific time throughout the month, but I do like seeing it all together throughout the year, and if any patterns arise. I ended up reading 29/31 days in January, which I think is amazing! And you can really tell what week Winterween was through the days I finished a book spread because they’re much more bunched within that week than the rest of the month.

As for my every book read in 2026, genre tracker, monthly stats, favorite book of the month, standout reads, 26 in 2026, a-z challenge, buzzwordathon, 4-5 star and my favorite things bingo, and reading around the world spreads, those all get updated at the end of the month. I prefer to do those spreads all in one go as opposed to throughout the month. Especially since those require printing book covers, I’d rather print everything all at once.

I always select a color to represent each month in my journal; for choosing colors, I either go purely based on vibes or pick a theme. Last year, I did different shades of purple. This year, I’m challenging myself to do the rainbow so that I start using some colors that I don’t normally use. Which means that January’s color is red, so that’s why you see star ratings and the reading around the world pages filled in with red. That way, when I’m looking back later, I’ll know right away that those books were read in January, etc. I’m really excited to see how this turns out once the year is over!

I was really thrilled with how my January spreads turned out when I set them up and I’m still really happy with how they look all filled in! A lot of these washi tapes I actually used in my February bullet journal set up, so I like that even though it’s for different months, the journals are connected in a way.

I set up a simple cover page with these stained glass stickers that I’m obsessed with (from Journalsay), the rose washi tape I believe I got from Notebook Therapy, some basic red washi tape and some paper from an old dictionary. I want my headers to be consistent throughout the year, so I set them up in Canva and then print them and cut them out. I actually really like it because it gives the page itself some dimension that I’m not good at achieving on my own. 

Truthfully, I wasn’t totally sure what to do with the other page of the spread since I went with a single page monthly cover, but I do like how it looks to have all of my January reads there and then we move into the stats.

With having both monthly stats and genre tracker spreads in the yearly set up, is it a little redundant to also put some of that info in my monthly wrap ups? Yes, but I want it there anyway. So, in the monthly wrap ups I’m tracking: books and pages read, hours listened, my owned tbr at the start/end of the month (which is something I’m trying really hard to pay attention to!), top genres, reading format, book format, how I got the books, new reads vs. rereads, and star ratings.

All of these things are things that I track through my digital reading tracker, so it makes it super easy to pull up these stats at the end of each month, which I am very grateful for! This is the first time that I drew out the circle graphs, and I mean, it could be worse 🤣 I will say, filling them out myself was far more satisfying than printing them in Canva though.

January was Winterween month, so of course I had to have a Winterween set up! I set this spread up while watching People We Met On Vacation for the first time and oh my gosh it was so fun! I printed out the prompts graphic and then used my Winterween stickers and some washi tape for this set up — including the moon washi stickers that I’ve never used before – and I actually really love how it turned out! I think it really fit the vibe for this year.

I want to be one of those people who puts a review spread for every book they’ve read in their journal but that’s just not me. I read too many books a month to make that happen, so this year I’m going to try and just do review spreads for my top books of the month. 

In January, my favorite read was The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst and my honorable mention was The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark. These spreads are really simple, I didn’t really have a lot of inspiration for spreads with the products that I already have on hand, and I did want to do this in one go, but I like the simplicity! I may add some more decoration later — I didn’t want to put too much and not have space to actually write my reviews — but I’m okay with it being simple.

With the January spreads all done and filled out, it was time to set up my February spreads! Since I’m going in rainbow order for colors, that means that February is orange. I love the color orange, but I don’t actually use it much in my journaling, so I’m actually so excited to be using it this month! I found this really lovely floral washi tape from Journalsay that I find of centered everything around, then some simple orange grid and plain washi and some stickers from Moehrenkunst. I used some brown craft paper and torn pages from an old dictionary to add a little more to the spreads as well.

The functional spreads for January worked really well for me, so I decided to try it again for February!

And there you have it! My reading journal update for January. As I mentioned before, I’m feeling really motivated to keep up with my reading journal and I’m excited to continue filling out all my trackers and trying new things when it comes to the spreads in my journal.

In the past, I haven’t really shared journal updates, but I had fun walking you through the process, so let me know if I should continue sharing journal updates at the end of each month!

I’d love to know if you keep a reading journal, or any kind of journal! Let me know in the comments.

Until next time 💜